Headaches

by

Argh — I’m really starting to wonder if this whole site redesign was a bad idea. Between the fact that I’m learning how to correctly code CSS-based layout as I write this, and the bugginess in the current version of Internet Explorer (Exploder?) for Mac OS X, I’m never sure if something isn’t working because I screwed up, or because IE decided to tweak out on me again.

I think that I’ve got things so that they should be visible at the moment — at the very least, the page displays correctly under Opera for Mac OS X — but with IE crapping out every time I make a change, I’m not entirely sure. Keeping my fingers crossed, that’s for damn sure….

But, I’ll keep playing with it…hopefully I haven’t completely broken my site for anyone out there.

Yet.

Site design: why CSS?

by

As I’m currently with a fair amount of time without a whole lot of neccessary things to do, I’ve decided to explore one of the ideas I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a while. I’m redesigning the site (I know, I never got around to finishing the last redesign — but I found some tricks midway through) to comply with current Cascading Style Sheet standards. While I’d been using CSS for a while now to standardize and simplify the formatting across the site, this is my first foray into using CSS for the actual site layout.

Previously, I’d been using a table-based system to lay out the page. It works — and in some ways could be considered a de-facto standard across the web at the moment — but it’s kludgy, makes the code difficult to read, and is a royal pain when facing a site update. By switching to CSS-based layout (the basic framework was found at Glish), my code is much leaner, and once done, I’ll be able to make large, sweeping changes to the site when I decide to redesign in the future by editing a single .css file, instead of having to recode every page on the site. Much, much nicer.

There is one downside to this — certain browsers (either older browsers [Netscape 4.x or previous, or IE 4.x or previous] or browsers still in development [such as OmniWeb for Mac OS X] will not display my page correctly. If you’re using an older browser, visit the Web Standards Organization upgrade project to see what browsers are available to you. If you’re using a current browser that is not standards-compliant, write the company to request compatibility with the currently published standards.

Of course, what this means at the moment is that if you start bouncing through my site, there are currently three different ‘themes’ to the pages — the older blue/green layout, the grid-background I was recently working with, and this CSS-based layout. I’m hoping to get the entire site converted over to this new style fairly quickly, however — this main page was just the matter of a couple hours work, and now that I’ve got the tweaking finalized, the rest of the pages should fly by fairly quickly.

So that’s it for now — a bit of work in front of the ‘puter to give my skin a rest from the constant flirtation with sunburn that I’ve been playing with for the past couple weeks. Ta ta for now….

Back again!

by

Woohoo! We’ve reconfigured a few areas of the network here at Casey’s house, and it seems that things are back up and fully functional for me again. So, as things go here, I’ll do my best to return to updating my pages on a regular basis. I know, I know, something of a shock after about a month of near-nonexistent updates…but I’ll try.

Things for me are still in something of a holding pattern at the moment. I got word from the landlord of my apartment complex that the carpets are scheduled to be installed this Monday, so I should finally be able to get into my place Monday afternoon/evening sometime. I’ve made the requisite calls to the telephone and electric companies and am all set up there, so should be good to go as soon as I get the word from the landlord on Monday. I’ll be sending out the mailing address and phone number to those who need it in the near future.

Internet access options for me are still being investigated. I’m hoping to get set with a DSL line, I just need to get in contact with the local ISP‘s to see if my apartment has that as an option. I’m assuming it does — I’m going to be living right on Capitol Hill, just about 20 blocks or so uphill from downtown Seattle — but I’m not entirely sure yet. In any case, Casey has graciously allowed me to keep my webserver at his place until I have things up and running at my apartment, so the server shouldn’t be going down again at all, however there may be a couple weeks where my online abilities are severely limited until I get my own connection up and running. It’ll all get straightened out eventually — I’m just glad to have friends down here who are able and willing to assist me in all of this

In other news, I’ve been playing a lot with my digital camera since I got it. I took some time recently to stitch together some panoramas I’d taken. The first three were all taken before I left Alaska — from top to bottom, the Inlet as seen from Earthquake Park in Anchorage, a view of the Palmer hayflats where I hit a bonfire with some friends, and Jewel Lake, a popular destination in South Anchorage.

Cook Inlet, Anchorage, AK

Bonfire Panoramic, Mat-Su Valley, AK

Jewel Lake, Anchorage, AK

The fourth shot was taken at Gasworks Park here in Seattle during the 4th of July celebrations, about an hour before the fireworks display. I wanted to try and capture the sheer mass of people — later reports placed it at around 6,000 people just at this park (and it was one of two major fireworks displays within Seattle). I think it came out pretty decently.

4th of July 2001, Gas Works Park, Seattle, WA

I’ve been out to see two movies since I came down here so far — since it’s been a bit since I’ve seen them, I’ll just give brief rundowns of each. First off was Atlantis, Disney’s latest animated flick — another fun one from Disney. Not one of their all-time classics, but very enjoyable, with some absolutely breathtaking animation at times. More recently was A.I., the Spielberg/Kubrick sci-fi collaboration. In brief — I believe it to be an astounding piece of work, quite possibly Spielberg’s best work yet, and a film that, while getting wildy mixed reviews, is very likely to stand the test of time like few other recent films. Very, very impressive filmmaking, and my hat is off to Spielberg, Kubrick, and the rest of the forces behind this film. I’ll most likely post more about it after I’ve had a chance to see it a second time.

That’s the majority of the big news so far. As mentioned earlier, now that things are up and running again, I’ll do my best to return to a more reliable update schedule here. It’s good to be back….

Made it to Seattle

by

Well, I’m in Seattle. It may be a while before I am able to put another update on my page, unfortunately. I’m currently staying with some friends who have been kind enough to put my webserver and main work machine on their network, however due to their firewall, I’m not able to update my page from my own machines! Bleah. Hopefully this will be resolved fairly soon — I’m currently posting this from a machine at Kinko’s in downtown Seattle.

The trip down was fairly uneventful — a redeye flight where I didn’t want to turn on the reading light and disturb my seatmates, so — as I can’t sleep on airplanes — I spent the entire 3 hour flight zoning out to music. Oh, well. Got picked up at the airport by Dez and Chad, and have been staying with them and Casey at their apartment in the Ballard area.

My days have been spent bouncing between exploring the city (mostly in a ‘V’ from Ballard to Downtown to Capitol Hill and back), learning some of the layout and bus routes, and apartment hunting. I’ve been holding off on the job hunting a bit until I know where I’m going to be living, to avoid landing a job that I then find out is near-impossible to get to reliably.

Hopefully, the apartment situation will be resolved soon, however — I’ve put down a holding fee and submitted an application for a tiny little studio apartment just six blocks away from where I’m staying now. Now I’m just in the ‘hurry up and wait’ stage while the landlords go through my credit history, rental history, yadda yadda yadda — my least favorite part. Ugh.

So that’s the reader’s digest condensed cliffs notes version of the past week or so…I’ll try to get more up here when I can, but it may very well be sometime in July before I have my own reliable, steady, non-glitchy connection to the ‘net from my own place. Until then….

God of Ecstasy!

by

My friend Aliena pointed me to Emode, a fun little site that has a ton of different personality-style tests on it. I took the “Are you a sex god?” test, and thought my results were hilarious — here’s how it rated me:

DIONYSUS, God of Ecstacy.

You are one sex-loving deity! And you sure know how to turn any bedroom into an unforgettable party for two. You are sensual and fun-loving, and you will do just about anything to get some play. You have an insatiable desire for sexual pleasure. You have a young, playful spirit that makes the bedroom your personal playground. Because you are housing a god within you who used orgies as a method of worship, you have no limits to your exploration. Your experimentation and lack of inhibition make your sex life all the more interesting. Your open-mindedness and irrepressible energy allow your sexual energy to keep going and going and going. And when the day is through, you’ve left a trail of satisfied mortals in your wake.

Hmmm…not bad, eh? Woohoo!

Moulin Rouge

by

In happier news, I went out to see Moulin Rouge this evening, and just loved it. I don’t think it’ll be a major hit with the general public, but anyone involved in theater, music, or both should fall in love with this movie. Baz Luhrmann (the director of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet) is a genius in my book right now. The production was absolutely incredible, absolutely visually gorgeous (there are so many single frames I’d love to have framed and hung on the wall just to stare at), and musically a delightful smorgasbord of songs and styles. I was completely drawn into the entire thing, and walked out of the theater just amazed at the show I’d just seen. Much of it feels to me like it would have made a wonderful stage musical, but by doing it on screen, they were able to do so much more to it to make it even more visually appealing through effects and camera work. The entire movie is a lush, sumptious feast for the eyes and ears. Wonderful, wonderful film.

Homophobic idiots

by

Okay…I’m pissed right now. My friend Kirsten just tipped me off to an article in todays Anchorage Daily News. In case the link dies, the basic gist is that there was a display put up at the Loussac library dealing with gay pride issues on Monday evening. Before the library opened on Tuesday morning, though, Mayor Weurch had ordered the library to pull the exhibit. The reason?

“I just said ‘no,'” Wuerch said. “This is a fundamental responsibility of the mayor, to make decisions. Once in a while, you have to say no.”

Ugh…this is so aggravating. The fact that we’ve got such a backwoods, predjudiced, homophobic mayor in office is downright depressing. From the accounts in the newspaper story, the display was fairly low-key, nothing overly controversial at all, a display case that had gay-themed books and videos couldn’t be seen unless you were right at it, and the library has hosted displays dealing with controversial issues in the past. However, because this dealt with gay issues, Mayor Weurch decided to effectively pull rank — after the display had been approved by the library administration and set up, mind you — and had it taken down, before more than a very few members of the public ever got a chance to see it and make their own judgements.

Argh. I’m just going to stop there, before this post goes any further downhill.

Catching up with old friends

by

Most of the day was spent on getting some more bits ready to go. I went out (on another gorgeous day) and got my car IM’d and registered so it’s all legal to sell, as it looks like I’ve got a buyer. Kinda funny — the first time in about a year and a half that my car will be legally registered, and I’m only going to have it for probably a few more days. Ah, well…so things go in the life of a procrastinator, right? Anyway, got that done, then came home and did some more work on the room, but then got stalled when I realized I’d run out of boxes to actually put stuff in.

A while after I’d stalled on the room, James and Marc came over with their usual war cry — “We’re bored!” As always, none of us could really come up with anything amazingly interesting to do (fairly typical for Anchorage), and ended up just kicking back here at the house for a while, chatting and killing time with Rick, and then later Erika, Deven, and Don when they stopped by. As usual, I got more than my fair share of age-related cracks…somehow, being the ‘old man’ of this group of friends isn’t really all that good of a deal. Remember when kids were taught to respect their elders?

Well, okay, so neither do I, but it sure seems like a good idea sometimes. :)

Since Marc has the misfortune of needing to be up and awake at 3:30am for his job, we eventually all parted ways for the evening. Still stuck in the throes of boredom, James and I decided to head out and find something to do, and started by heading over to James and Marc’s apartment to let Marc crash out and get a change of shirt for James. When we got out of the apartment, however, I was greeted by the sight of two pranksters sitting in my car going through everything they could find — the one time I don’t lock my doors….

Luckily, it happened to be Royce and Rod. They’d stopped by the same apartment building to talk to another friend, and had noticed my car on their way out. As I’d left the door unlocked, they decided to have some fun — until I walked out and caught them red-handed. They decided to join James and I in our quest for ‘something to do,’ and the four of us ended up heading out to ‘koots, having a few drinks, and babbling for a while. Was quite nice — having known Royce since 4th grade (and yes, the rumors are true — Royce’s dad is responsible for gracing me with the nickname of “Woody”), and Rod since high school, I’d wanted to get a chance to see them both before I left. We spent a couple hours catching up, then took off.

After dropping James off back at his place and talking for a while longer there, I finally decided it was time to take myself home and fall over. So, here I am again, doing my usual late-night post before crashing out. Funny how these keep getting later and later — I knew that as soon as I wasn’t working, I’d start slipping back into my nocturnal ways. Good or bad, I’m not sure, but I’m quite definitely a night owl….

DVDs: Closets, aliens, and dinos

by

I was only planning on one purchase for the week, but ended up with three, as I got a $25 gift certificate from Suncoast the other day. This weeks acquisitions:

The Celluloid Closet: A friend introduced me to this absolutely fascinating documentary a few years back, I’m in the midst of reading the book that inspired it, and it finally got released to DVD this week. It’s a really entertaining documentary about the portrayal of homosexuals in movies over the first 100 years of moviemaking, loaded with some great interviews, and tons of clips from various films over the years, from some of the earliest movies made to some as recent as the early ’90’s. One of my favorite documentaries that I’ve seen, and it’s nice to finally have a copy of my own.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: If you haven’t heard of this one — what rock have you been living under? One of the seminal Sci-Fi films to come out, and one of Steven Spielberg’s best works, this classic also holds the distinction of being one of the few films I can think of off the top of my head (aside from Starman, ET and Contact) to look at alien encounters in a positive light. This looks to be a nice special edition, with two discs — one for the ‘definitive’ director’s cut of the film, and the second packed with extra features.

Allosaurus: A continuation of the excellent Walking With Dinosaurs documentary, this program follows the life of ‘Big Al’, an Allosaurus whose nearly-complete skeleton was discovered in 1991. The skeleton had been so well preserved that scientists have been able to reconstruct an amazing amount of details as to the life of the beast, and it is presented here in the same ‘nature-documentary’ style that the previous shows were. The disc also includes a clever making of special that explains some of how the dinosaur’s life was reconstructed.

Unemployed weekends

by

Well, it’s official. As of 5pm today, I am officially unemployed. Now I’ve got no solid pans for the next two weeks other than getting everything I own sorted, packed, and ready to ship to Seattle. Kinda cool — kinda scary. I haven’t been without a job in about ten years…this is a new thing for me.

Friday night I went out to the Last Frontier bar out in Muldoon and met up with some of the people I talk with online in the chatrooms. Aurorawhisper and her husband are being shipped off to Germany in about a month — and I’m incredibly jealous, by the way — so a few of us had gathered to have a small going away celebration. Was a fun night, with some very amusing moments. At one point I’d stepped outside for a smoke (as the bar was just way too hot for most of the night), when the DJ came out and we chatted for a few moments, and he complimented me both on my dancing, and the fact that I had no fear when it came to dancing — I’ll just head out into the middle of an empty floor and have fun. As I turned to head back in, though, one of the bouncers stopped me to ask how much I’d had to drink — apparently he wasn’t as convinced my dancing style was natural. Too funny…especially as all I’d had was one Smirnoff Ice, and was nowhere near even buzzed. All in all, a fun night.

Today I had my last day of work, and came home afterwards to a pleasant surprise — my friend Andrea had stopped by with Kyle, her brand new (one month old) son. She’d wanted to make sure to see me before I left, and came into town tonight to visit for a bit. We sat around and talked for a while, but eventually I started wearing down, and decided it was time for bed.

So, I’m updating the page, and then it’ll be bedtime for me. Tomorrow begins two projects — the quicker being the finalizing of the sale of my car (yuppers — looks like I’ve got a definite buyer), and the major one being the packing project. Wish me luck — I might need it!