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Thursday, April 29  

DEV

My self-taught course in CSS continues, and here's a good primer of appropriate use: Semantics, HTML, XHTML, and Structure. I'm working on implementing CSS in my St. Earth site, pointing every page to a single external stylesheet and then, at long last, stripping out all those crusty font tags, bg images, etc. Whew - a Herculean task that I can't figure out how to automate. Global find/replace is great, but not when your original code is a complete mismash! I must have 40 variations of font=verdana, arial, helvetica in there - lordy. But when I'm done, what a clean nest I'll have!

Then, hopefully this summer, on to tackling the new site design, and perhaps even killing off tables entirely. Ahh... like a holy grail.

Tuesday, April 27  

Work on Sunday

So here I am again, working on Sunday. It's typical - I rarely take an entire day away from the webjob or studio, and in the months before a sale it's becoming common to work 5 or 6 weeks straight without a break. Bad for the body and mind, I suspect, but I can't seem to find my way out of it. This is no sob story, because it's all by choice, but there are big decisions and goals I make, (like having two jobs, two sales a year, etc.) that dictate a lot of smaller decisions. So today I'm firing a kiln, glazing for the next one, and transporting and loading a bisk kiln, all to stay on schedule for my big event May 8th.

The strange part is that I've really forgotten what it used to be like to rest on Sunday -- to take an entire day to screw around or go to a movie or watch tv and read. I only do that now if I'm sick (and then it's absolutely no fun anyways). I'm a slave to my ambition in the studio, either working because the thrill of it keeps drawing me in, or working to meet the next goal or deadline.

Work, work, work.

Even the blurred line between outright toil and 'hard fun' doesn't make much difference when it all boils down to a long stretch of days with (seemingly) little leeway, few choices and too much on the to do list. I see the occasional "Americans are Working Harder!" story and think, "Well, as self-congratulatory and stupid as this journalistic trend may be, yes... I am." Not to keep the kids in braces or anything, but I'm certainly grinding away at it like it's better than sex.

And my feeble, reptilian hindbrain, (long-neglected in it's attempts to get me to lay in the sun and savor the endless now), slumps over and mutters: how did I get this way? My life used to be slacker central -- too little ambition and direction instead of too much. Goals seemed remote and fuzzy, so I generally settled on not trying. It was all hindbrain all the time! I imagined that the best there was in life was to hang out anytime you could get away with it; I filled time with passive hobbies and non-commital interests that were often amusing but rarely challenging. I once proudly wrote down a quote by the Russian philosopher Kropotkin for my friend Adam, thinking I'd found historical proof that our lifestyles were justified: "After bread is secured, leisure is the supreme aim." I still have it memorized, but can't find it's meaning anymore. Quite a strange 10 year transition.

I also wonder about how this compares to other people. Some books I've read recently suggest that there's a long-held American trend to outwork the rest of the world. David Brooks suggests in On Paradise Drive that this is so culturally ingrained that we don't even realize it. My Protestant Guilt Complex refuses to believe this is true! Perhaps it's a communist plot, designed to make us slow down enough for them to catch up! A-ha! Oh... that's right, they're not the bad guys anymore... who is it we're deathly afraid of now? Fearmongering just might generate more serious labor (to stave off more fear, of course) than even greed. The greed to be safe from fear.

Cindy and I haven't made the big decision to have kids yet, but many of our peers would say that parenting is their 2nd job (or 3rd); perhaps they too feel like they're on the go for months at a stretch, and that they can't "choose" to take a day off from being parents. Or people who have those killer, life-consuming jobs - the 80 hour, sleep under your desk, endurance marathon kind of gig. Do they feel like it's optional? Are their long-term decisions and goals (kids, careers, "success") eating up their short-term quality of life? Do they like to work on Sunday, or do they do it because they've convinced themselves that they have to? I know I have.

But hey, there's always Monday.

Friday, April 23  

The Simpsons Know Religion

OK, I confess that pasting quotes into my blog is lame, and that these are a skip away via Google for anyone who wants to find them (and probably even old hat to anyone who cares...). But I'm feeling lame today, so the action matches the mood:

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Bart: "Christmas is the one time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Santa Claus."

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Homer: "Dear Lord, The gods have been good to me. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here's the deal: You freeze everything the way it is, and I won't ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done."

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Homer's Ghost: "Marge you gotta help me, I have to do one good deed to get into heaven.
Marge: Well I got a whole list of chores: clean the garage, paint the house...
Homer's Ghost: Whoa whoa whoa. I'm just trying to get in, I'm not running for Jesus.

Tuesday, April 20  

Sticker Stamps: Civilized Progress or Decadent Excess?

Occasionally, I'll be stumbling along through life as usual when something prompts a mini aha-moment, such as while putting stamps on 700 postcards. viz., "Say, this used to really suck before they made self-adhesive sticker stamps. Why, I remember back in the day when...". Yes, this is a sign of rapidly approaching middle age.

But that train of thought lead to a bit of track where I mused about other things that had noticeably improved in recent memory (buying stuff via the internet, searching for houses via the internet, renting DVD's via the internet -- OK, a bunch of stuff via the internet). Then, naturally, that track lead to a Y, with Optimistic Perspective on one side and Pessimistic Perspective on the other, and, seeing how this is a virtual train that can forgo the puny laws of physics, I went down both paths a bit, all the while applying stamps to postcards like a tin wind-up monkey.

So: sticker stamps, the infomatic superhighway, no-iron fabrics, decent mexican food in smalltown Indiana - is life getting better, or are these just signs of our impending cultural collapse? Perhaps we've gone too far when a guy like me thinks not licking a stamp (or 700) is a historical event of note. Remember those smart-ass Romans?

The train eventually pulled into Inconclusive Ambivalence Station, where I got off and wondered about how this stuff rates historically. For example, is the web the equivalent to the invention of the telephone or television or written language? Are sticker stamps more significant than bottled propane or less than the pull-tab that stays in place on an aluminum can after you open it? Speaking of outmoded technologies, remember the old kind? (If just barely, then we're probably of the exact same sub-generation, circa 1970.)

I dunno, friends and neighbors. [That's right, I can see all 4 of you right now through your computer monitors. Remember, I'm one of those computer guys.] Anyhow, it's all so muddled and intertwined that I really have no idea. I can certainly imagine how the world ends: starbright contrails of incoming warheads in a warm Sunday sky, me sitting at the dining room table, my best Homer Simpson grin of satisfaction that THE STAMPS STICK THEMSELVES, as I and everything else is instantly converted to cosmic meaningless dust.

Or, if I'm really lucky, I'll be sitting here typing my blog.

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OK - my guilt complex forces me to address the moral aspect of this too. As in "Who gives a flyin' shit? Don't you know there are people out there starving and a sad lack of good drama on network television?"

Well, yeah. I know. But I've gotta admit that in my small, myopic, day-to-day life, sticker stamps pretty well balance out war in Iraq and the meaningless void of contemporary politics. I think more about the neat tricks provided by the web than about world hunger or AIDS or domestic homelessness or environmental holocaust. I dwell on clay instead of God, efficiency instead of soulfullness.

Personal progress or my own decadence?

Friday, April 16  

Roger, Wilco

So I'm not really mister Johnny Fresh Music News or anything, but one of my 2 sources for info from the outside world cued me in to the forthcoming Wilco album, now streaming in Quicktime format from their site: Wilco - A ghost is born. Bloody brilliant! Glad to see they're still thwarting standard music industry practices.

My first impressions of Ghost are mixed, which reminds me that it took a while for the grandness of Yankee Hotel to sink in for me too. It'll be an awfully hard one to follow up, but I'm looking forward to finding out if they did. For me, that'll probably mean getting it from the iTunes store (yes, I'm aware that it's a disease) and cuddling up to it over a period of time in the clay studio... that seems to be where I do my best listening these days. It's reassuring to think that there's more good music to come in this world, and that there are getting to be better and better ways to acquire it.

Thursday, April 15  

UPDATE FROM THE SPAM WARS, Pt.III: One Guy's Quest For An Empty Inbox

OK, so I'm a tad obsessed with this spam problem, I'll admit, but there's been a startling improvement to last week's flash-email-hider solution. My friend/coworker/bandmate/walleyball colleague bcraft wrote this handy little javascript that does the trick even more elegantly:

<script language="JavaScript">document.write("<a href=\"mail" + "to:" + "yourname" + "@" + "yourdomain.com\">Send e-mail to Your Name</a>");</script>

It's running on my St. Earth contact page - try it out! To use it on your site, just copy and paste the above into the HTML of your page, replacing "yourname", etc. with the appropriate values. I'm sure there are more elegant or intelligent solutions out there too; for now, this is mine. Let's just hope they don't make spambots that execute javascript anytime soon.

Tuesday, April 6  

More Mail Fun

Well well, perhaps I've stumbled upon a solution to the spam deluge. I just removed every "mailto:" tag on my site, with all the Contact links going to a single page (requires two clicks, but if you really want to talk back... you know.) There, I inserted a 2K Flash file that has the email address with a button action to trigger it in the browser - Voila! Aside from the font getting that Flash-blur, most visitors will never know a difference, but I, Lo May It In Fact Be True, I should be preserved from future harvesting of my email address. (The idea came from a comment at the bottom of this page here. The alternative method of using an @ graphic sounds good too, but I disliked removing the actual hyperlink. That's still what the web is best at, and it may well be an admission of defeat if we let the spam phenomenon take it away from us.)

Step 2 will be the one I've dreaded, but which is probably as necessary as pulling the arrowhead out the other side: killing off my old address and birthing a fresh one. Ug. Worse than changing your street address.

 

But Wait...

... I forgot to mention that I'm living under the psuedo-protective umbrella of McAffee Spamkiller, which has helped some, but is fallible in some pretty outrageous ways. Maybe it's my fault for hanging out in the gladiatorial arena in such a cheap suit of armor, the old pros taking free shots at my scantily-clad flank and laughing at my pitifully flimsy excuse for a shield. Huhrm. I know! If you have a better product to recommend, why not SEND ME AN EYE-CATCHING EMAIL to announce it. I'm certain that will work out great.

 

Spam me, spam me, oh goddamn me!

A while back I was considering a post detailing some of the more outrageous spamination that's graciously crossed my electronic threshold, but nowadays it's just such a common daily life dredge, like taking out the real trash, that it hardly seems worth dwelling on. Yet still I do... on the average weekend, when I stay away from my personal/business inbox as much as possible, I'll get 90 messages; 3 is about average for those that contain actual content and that's just not a signal-to-noise success rate that I'm willing to tolerate.

To make matters worse, the people that dream this stuff up (or the software one smart guy writes and hundreds use) is getting better: subject lines like "memento", "pallid" and "contrite", while not likely to be the way I'd start off a message, are just too intriguing to ignore. The mental image I carry around of these people, in order to allow myself to hate them with such unfiltered intensity, does not contain room for them to have a working knowledge of words like "pallid"; that thought is downright depressing on a variety of levels (e.g. why not get a job using $2 words to write snappy advertising copy instead, a product that is useful to socie... er... that has some socially redeeming,, - yes - uh. Money made ethically and responsibly to create a product that people actually want to... ah fuck it.)

Did I mention that the expanded vocabulary is startling?

Fight Spam on the Internet!