Finally updated my sorely out-of-date friends page, which is such a hard thing to keep up to date when none of your friends sit still. The price we pay. A few more photos are available in the photo gallery as well. I want to post desktop-sized versions of a few of the photos, but haven’t gotten to it just yet… that would involve changing the database (oh no!)I picked up a new client recently, thanks to a referral from Mary’s sister, which is cool. I certainly like the idea of not having to run around frantically looking for gigs or work to keep my head above water. Of course, with more electricity rate hikes on the way here in california (fuck you, pg&e and all the rest of you who don’t understand how to run an energy company), and having to buy insurance and all that other crap adults are supposed to do, maybe a little scrambling will be in order. Ugh.At the very least, it’s been sunny and pleasant here. Lisa and I played basketball while we were in Seattle, which was the first time I had played in quite a while, since January I think. It turns out she has a naturally good shot. We played again today down the street, and again, she was shooting the lights out. She might be a little late for the WNBA, but this is just one more fun thing to do. Woo hoo!
Serious thing: I’m very happy that the senate is getting all mixed up. Once again check and balance has a chance, and maybe, just maybe, Bush won’t get the chance to drill Alaska all to hell.Not serious thing: this is fun. Requires Java.
Made some updates to the toys page and the Balderdash Archive. Seattle was really fun—I’ll post some photos as soon as I get them developed.
I wanted to get a bunch of new and newish photos up and ready for people, and it’s finally done. The photo gallery is now a lot easier for me to use, which means I can put photos up faster, hopefully. I redid the database backend so it will work better in the future. That’s not so hard when you only have slightly over 100 photos in there; once you get up to 10,000 and things start getting hairy.Also of note, the new banner is from amnesty usa. check it out—it’s a really easy way to help people escape the evil hand of … well, evil. Help save people from torture: click.
I was looking at the ever-prolific k10k site this morning, and checked out their link of the week. It’s really scary how cool some things get when you combine some technical saavy with solid artistic talent. You’ll need Flash to look at the site.
The new issue of Lisa’s magazine is now available. You must see it: the current issue and the past issues. If you’re reading this page, that means you should also think about contributing to it (if you haven’t already). Yes, this means you. You have talent. You’ve done something bordering on artistic that you’ve never shown anyone, haven’t you? Well, you’ve been found out! Believe it or not, people would love to see it, and enjoy it. email the management of the magazine and offer something to share.Now that the issue is officially released, I can officially release my contribution here: the Balderdash archive. There have been many instances of people wanting to keep their slips of paper with the funny answers on them. That’s a good thing, but papers can get lost, and only one person can ever have it. That’s no fun. If you’ve ever played balderdash, hopefully you’ll know what I’m talking about. Add your favorites to the archive. All your words are belong to us.
This and this are both much better written obits for Billy Higgins than those I posted previously. The IHT and New York Times have done much better than the Reuters feed, thank goodness. Also thanks go to Michael Bishop for pointing out the New York Times article.
Do you read news online? If so, you owe it to yourself to check out the International Herald Tribune. Their site is the best news site I’ve seen… if you have a standards-compliant browser (see my upgrade statement for more on web standards). If you don’t, it’s just like any other news site.This is the first working example of a three-column layout that is really easy to read online. The text size is adjustable to fit your needs, and you can selectively choose clippings to read later. I don’t often like talk of raising the bar, but this site has certainly done that. Now I have to start reading their news and see how I like the content. Apparently it’s edited in Paris and published in cooperation with the New York Times and Washington Post, at least that’s what I’ve read elsewhere.
R.I.P., Billy Higgins, one of the great drummers of jazz. We’re going to miss him; as I heard someone say, a part of jazz died with him.You can learn a little more about him than is shown in the news article at the EJN, and a pretty extensive list of recordings at allmusic. I’m sure it’s not everything he did, but it’s a good start.
Happy birthday to me. It’s a blustery evening in Oakland. Nights like this always make me think of running around outside in the dark, wanting to make what little mischief my conscience can stand, which never amounted to more than either running around hooting and hollering or being as stealthy and sneaky as possible.In other news, MacOS X is cool, but the browsers for it aren’t there yet. IE 5.1, in particular, bites. It should be using the same browser engine as the IE5/Mac, but it has some problems with CSS. Ugh. iCab will soon have full CSS support, and when it does I’ll be a very happy clam.