September 2003

The mock up becomes reality! If you were unfortunate enough to stumble upon jinkies.org when I initially uploaded the new files to the server, I apologize. It was a horrible sight, though worth a good laugh or two. The random quote engine is back, and a few other features will be trickling in as I have some time to work on them.

Putting together the CSS is much easier having read a few books on the subject. Not to mention that troubleshooting is easy when I know what it is that is actually causing the problem.

Comments? Suggestions?

I made a mock-up of a potential new layout for the site. It’s simple, but feels about right. I’m not sure if I’m sold on the color scheme I picked out, but it’s definitely coming along. Not only that, but I’m creating it in Photoshop (literally a mock-up using shapes and trying out colors) and I already know that what appears in Photoshop is something that I’ll be able to translate farily easily to CSS. New layout includes an easier-to-read black on light colored background and possibly a image-less logo.

CSS trial by fire. It seems to be working pretty well for me. The music-right-now issue is going to be worked on, as I try out some third party solutions in an effort to find something I like. The random quote engine actually works, but I’ll be holding off on that until I impliment the new layout. It doesn’t fit quite right in the few places I’ve tried.

Alias season premiere was tonight. Hoo boy. Now I will admit that I didn’t actually see the end of season 2, so I cheated and read TV Tome’s recap of season 2 before the show started tonight. It was helpful, but what will be more helpful is getting season 2 on DVD when it comes out December 2.

My thoughts? It was very cool, and not at all the direction I saw it going in. I don’t really have any particularly deep thoughts on the episode, save that Syd’s speech to Vaughn was harsh! Ouch. One of the things I enjoy so much about the show is continuity. (Chris Carter eat your fucking heart out.) I like that retrieving the plans to get her father released was much like the series premiere, where she retrieved something in order to get back in the good graces of SD-6.

Now on to Angel! Bring on the Spike!

My car, which I love so much, I looking at retirement. Based on my conversation with my mechanic (who is family and has been enormously helpful), I’m going to need to have the transmission pulled sooner rather than later. Now you have to understand that this is my dream car that I finally own. A ‘91 Toyota 4Runner. Rachel and I used to drool over it in magazines when we were in junior high. Getting this car was a huge deal for me.

However, the idea of having a new car also appeals to me. I’ve never had a new car, and maybe it’s a family disease now. My aunt recently bought a Toyota Matrix, and my parents ditched the minivan for a Toyota Highlander. Then my brother’s old Prelude bit the dust, so he’s got my mom’s old Camry, and my parents replaced it with a Toyota Tacoma. It’s my turn now! Well, supposing I could afford it.

Bryan and I went to the Subaru dealership after I got home from work today. We were really just there to look, but we were quickly approached by Ellen, who was enormously helpful and personable. Not at all car salespersonish. I am just drooling over the mere idea of getting a Subaru Impreza WRX Sport Wagon. Gimmie! Squeaking in at just under US$25,000, it’s even feasible after my year-end bonus at work and if I collect on a debt.

I am a boy. I am lusting over sporty design and 227HP. Vrooooooom!

Yes, my little jinkies.org was down for about five days, thanks to the lovely Hurricane Isabel. Servers were b0rked, but things seem to be working just fine now.

Just an update to say that yes, we are back! I’m working on new colors and possibly a two column layout. Things are still broken here in IE 5.5 Land (a barren and depressing Land, also known as My Work Computer), and I don’t really care.

Tonight on HBO was the summer (series?) finale of Sex and the City, which I started watching, oddly enough, while I was in Japan. So I caught that, and then stayed for the new HBO series, Carnivále. OMG. What a wonderful creep-fest! If you’ve got HBO, check it out. It’s visually stunning, and the story already has me asking questions. (Not to mention that’s is fabulous to watch a television show that is filmed and presented like a movie…complete with widescreen and completely commercial free.)

It looks like I’ll have three shows to watch this year. Carnivále, Alias, and Angel. Unfortunately, Carnivále and Alias overlap time slots, but the former is also re-run on Monday nights. I’m going to be pissed if this is what makes me agree to getting a Tivo…

What seemed like a perfectly simple exercise in adding a line of HTML has turned into editing the package of a Konfabulator widget. Not that I’m really complaining, but I’m having issues with the random blank space that the author of this widget decided was a good idea around the image. Feh. Not that I’m begrudging his widget–I’m actually enormously happy with it. Let the tinkering and breakage commence!

Controlling another computer remotely is cool. I’m using a combination of ssh, Remote Desktop, and the Finder’s ability to mount another computer on the desktop. I won’t really go into the gory details of how much I hate iTunes, but it’s fucked me again.

Thus I’m re-ripping a bunch of CDs (which was supposed to be my activity last night, but I spent hours reorganizing my music that iTunes felt the need to rearrange), and finally trying to get my whole music collection on the Cube. I’ve ripped several GB of music already, and will continue to do so all night.

Happy 1 year and 9 months to Bryan and I. :D

Blue is nice, eh? But now that the site is looking less like a kid was playing Pollack and more like DaVinci (a *kid* as DaVinci, mind you), I’m already thinking of a new look. Lighter, possibly? I’ll probably throw something together, and see how it looks. The whole idea of the color scheme came from the logo that I came up with.

I’m very tired, but will curl up in bed with my new CSS book and get my learn on.

Today I was very surprised when my new DVDs arrived. Both Alias: Season 1 and Angel: Season 2 were released on the 2nd, so I was surprised to get my DVDs on the 3rd (as I’d cheaped out and done free shipping which is 5-9 days). I already own quite a bit of television on DVD, racking up seven seasons of The X-Files, four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the first season of Angel, Dark Angel, and 24. However, my Alias DVDs are the first that aren’t produced by 20th Century FOX’s home entertainment division. Alias is done by Buena Vista Home Entertainment (a division of Disney).

Let me tell you that as far as packaging and extras go, BVE has a long way to go before their product is as slick as FOX’s. With the exception of the packaging for The X-Files’s DVDs (which were a pioneering step in getting television series on DVD), FOX is very consistent. The discs are on a fold-out piece, with a nice dust cover for the fold out. (The X-Files is different in that its dust cover slips over the fold-out vertically, which leads to problems in keeping the set looking nice.) There’s a nifty little booklet that gives episode information about the season, episodes, and extras.

What do I get from BVE? The same style dust cover box, but with Amaray double keep cases. Yes, it serves the same purpose, but lets be shallow for a moment…it gives me a less “oooooh” feeling when I first open the packaging. There isn’t any paper material inside the DVD set, and I had to read the back of each of the three Amaray cases to find out which episodes were on which DVD. However, nowhere on any of the cases did it indicate where the extra features were. I just guessed that they’d all be crammed on the sixth disc, and I happened to be right. Extras are decent, though their inclusion of five tv spots seems a pale shadow of TXF sets including both the 60 and 30 second spots for every episode of every season.

Kudos to BVE for giving us a very nice looking anamorphic transfer, but FOX gets the same appreciation from me for the second season of Angel. My beef with BVE is all aesthetic at the moment, but it’s an important issue to me. I hope to see a few improvements with the December release of the second season of Alias.

Lots of work was done on the site today, and a lot of it is “behind the scenes,” as it were. The table that I was using up top has disappeared, while the logo image is spanning the entire top. My random quote engine will be back tomorrow, possibly in a new location. Trackback and pingbacks from my side display properly, and preview on comments should work now (thanks for pointing that out, raena).

I’ve still got a bunch of stuff left to work on, but knowing that the basics are nailed down makes me feel a lot better.

Our new neighbors are moving in as I type. Three guys just out of college. We sort of met them tonight (let them borrow our dolly) and they seem nice. Definitely “college dudes.” I hope they’re not too loud. I’ve enjoyed our relatively quiet existence.

Bryan would also like to announce that he beat me at Scrabble tonight.

Oh the irony.

I’ve been talking about taking a yoga class for a while. I was going to try aikido, since my friend from Japan, Jen, loves it, but decided that since I work in retail, maybe learning moves to incapacitate annoying people would be bad. Thus, yoga.

Reformation Studio is moving to a location close to me. They do yoga and pilates (which I may or may not do as well), and for a reasonable fee. All others in my area cost quite a bit more for the same services. I’d pre-arranged my September work schedule so I could take the beginner classes on Wednesday nights. You’re not allowed to miss a beginner class (there are just 4 lessons) if you want to move on to a regular class. I can understand this…get the n00bs and teach them well blah blah. Except now the classes are either Tuesday or Thursday. When I work. Argh.

Tomorrow I will try and switch two work evenings with someone else. Or else I’ll be *really* tense.