Monthly Archives: January 2003

Nuns vs. Fans

Humor

There were these three guys at a football game and it just so happened that they were sitting behind three nuns. They couldn’t see really well over their habits, so one of the guys says, “Man, I wish I lived in Ohio, there are only 25 Catholics there.” One of the other guys says, “Well, I wish I lived in Idaho because there are only 20 Catholics there.” Then the last guy says, “Well, I wish I lived in Oregon there are only 15 Catholics there.” Then one of the nuns turns around and says, “Why don’t you go to hell — there are no Catholics there!”

If you’re offended get over it ;). It’s “Funny Friday” on PhotoMatt, so stay tuned. Hat tip: Mom.

Sad News: Dough Boy

Humor

Please join us in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community. The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71. Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Cap’n Crunch. The gravesite was piled high with flours. Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very ‘smart’ cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky in his youth and a crusty old man, he was considered a roll model for millions. Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough; two children, John Dough and Jane Dough; plus the bun they had in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart. The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

That is the funniest thing I have read in my life. Hat tip: Mike.

Fancy Caps Thingy

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I’m not sure how else to describe it, but if you’re browsing this with a modern browser you should be seeing the first letter of the paragraph of a post in a large serif behind the text. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while, but never got around to it. CSS is a beautiful thing. It can think of a few tweaks for it, but basically the hard part is over. I’m still debating over what font to use behind the text, but I have all of the letter images (which are PNG by the way) generated through a neat PHP script so changing the font or color is a trivial issue.

Let me know what you think! Font suggestions? Too dark? Too big? Oh, and thanks to Rebecca for helping me out with the initial letters. She’s a life-saver.

Nas / Mickey Mouse

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I was listening to Nas’ new album the other day and this stood out:

Pre-trial hearin is over, it’s real for the soldier
Walks in the courtroom, the look in his eyes is wild
Triple-homicide, I sit in the back aisle
I wanna crack a smile when I see him
Throw up a fist for black power, cause all we want is his freedom
He grabbed a court officer’s gun and started squeezin
Then he grabbed the judge, screams out — nobody leavin everybody get down!

For some reason it really reminded my of Eldred vs. Ashcroft and the whole Free the Mouse campaign. That is all.

GeoURL

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If you haven’t checked it out, there’s a new (to me) service called GeoURL which allows you to put GPS coordinate meta-tags on your webpage and it will tell you who your website neighbors are. I’ve had it on my sidebar for a little while though, but I’m never sure if anyone looks at that.

A neat trick for finding out your latitude and longitude if you don’t have a GPS is to map your address on Yahoo Maps and zoom in all the way. Then in the address bar you should see your exact coordinates, or at least as close as the mapping system has you. There, now you have no excuse not to go add yourself.

All Work and No Play

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Currently putting the final touches on two new websites, which I hope to link to here soon. One is for a single musician, the other is for a awards ceremony for a large organization, and I find the dichotomy enjoyable. For some reason when I work on projects in twos it keeps me balanced, from the manner in which the client is dealt with to the artistic freedom each project allows. One is usually a little on either side, and in the middle is me. I seem to do this with a lot of things in life.

The next two projects are lined up already, one for another musician, this time a lovely vocalist, and the other is going to be a national resource for Catholic educators teaching about the Holocaust. Links to come when they’re ready.

A Plethora of Pictures

Photolog

If you had come to the site yesterday, there would have been about 4,483 photos, now there are 4,935. I know I haven’t had much time to post lately, but that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I would espescially recommend checking out 12-29-2002 as it has a real range of every kind of picture imaginable. The shots from the cathedral under construction are particularly good in my opinion.

With that burden off my shoulders, I’ve finally starting taking pictures again. I took some night ones in the country yesterday, and today I started a project which I hope to finish up and post on the first of Feburary, a series of eleven portraits.

School Begins Again

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Yesterday was a very good day, today looks like it isn’t going to be that great. My classes are really good (and small!) so far and my schedule couldn’t be better. Now instead of racing across the huge campus between classes I have leisurely strolls. My classes are at times when I never have to drive through traffic, nor must I wake up unnatuarally early.

I start each day with Human Situation, the liturature class that this semester is focusing on modernity. Then alternately I have either Intermediate Macroeconomics, which should be a breeze, or Ethics. My latest class on Mondays and Wednesdays is Politics of the Greek Theatre, which looks like it is going to be quite good, though challenging.

Still, I am amazed at how disorganized the campus is at the beginning of every semester. Parking could not be worse; the lines trail on longer than at the opening of The Two Towers; most of the important parts of the campus website are down due to the high load (you’d think they could predict when it is coming). All that, and I left my OneCard at home, which means I can’t do a lot of the things I need to do today.

There are still issues with the laptop(s), but that’s too frustrating to talk about right now. My weekend was great—more on that later.

B-day

Birthday

Well the day so far has been really wonderful. Last night was spent with great friends watching movies, playing on the trampoline, huddling for warmth, and of course counting down to my birthday in central, mountain, and pacific time—new year’s eve style. After a few interesting experiences at House of Pies I found myself dog-tired and decided to call it a night.

This morning was a little rushed getting things ready for the HPUG meeting but everything turned out alright. We did something never done before and actually joined the Palm and Web Technology SIGs for a party. Since I lead the Palm SIG and present in the Web-Tech SIG that was a lot of fun for me, as I always feel like the two may never meet.

I’ve just gotten warning that there are people coming over to my house and that a blindfold is involved, so this should be interesting. Gotta go . . .

All birthday posts: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40.

The Birthday Post

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One more day!!!

Several people have said to me, “Matt, you live in Houston and I’m way over in [insert place], and I don’t have any money, so what can I do for you for your birthday?” Well, I’ve thought about it, and recognition is always nice. I spend a lot of time on this site, tweaking things, adding quotes, pictures, and I think overall it’s pretty dandy. Not to mention, nominations for the Bloggies are now open. Now I know what you’re thinking, who is this guy to try and be nominated for a Blogggie. Who am I? Exactly! There’s a category just for people like me called “Best-Kept-Secret Weblog.” It just takes a minute to fill out and it would be a great present to be nominated for something.

If you’re still in a voting mood after that, I can highly recommend checking out PhotoBlogs.org where photoblog sites are ranked like based on voting. For a while I was in the top 50 but lately I’ve fallen completely off the front page, but if you like any of the more than four thousand pictures in the photolog please leave me a positive vote (click the plus icon in the top right). Thank you!

If feel so dirty. Maybe I should do BlogWhore 2 ;).

Powerbook Revisited

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Although I touched on the subject yesterday ever so briefly, I really can’t let another minute pass without talking about the new Powerbooks. Never have I seen so much fawning in the blog world about a single product, and I challenge anyone to find a comparable product release in the past year.

That said, I’m completely entranced. The ads are top-notch; the specs are flawless; the screen looks gorgeous; the operating system is everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m so deep in the reality-distortion field I don’t even remember what it was like on the outside anymore. I want to iSync my T68 and iPod and publish my iCal while listening to iTunes and I can’t imagine any other way I’d want it. Bluetooth! 802.11g!

A note on the screen, until relatively recently my laptop had the largest screen of any laptop, ever. Then toshiba released one the same size, and even with higher resolution. (I’ve had a similar Toshiba in the past though, and it was really unpleasant to use though.) I wasn’t phased, but now this comes along. Not only is it thinner and lighter, it has a larger screen and the OS is based on one I have grown to love deeply, despite the lack of any Windows-equivalent GUI. Now I just need to think of a way to scrounge up $3300 fast, before something else comes out.

Here We Go Again

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Well the geniuses at Best Buy think it’s something wrong with the battery, which if so is fortunate because under the extended warranty they just replace the battery. However when they pulled up the information for the extended warranty, it showed up as expiring in 2000. Which, as the guy put it, is “odd because you bought the laptop in 2001.” Indeed. So part of tomorrow will be spent on the phone trying to straighten this out.

That said, I had some excellent chinese food at Hunan River with Josh, Lucas, and Rebecca. I think we had Tso’s chicken, sweet and sour chicken, some noodle stuff (Josh?), and sweet peas and water chestnuts. All quite good.

Finally I’ve got the new business card design ready to go. I’ve shown it to a few people and the responses have all been good, so I’m going to go ahead and print up a batch tomorrow and see how people respond to it in paper form.