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Reading
Ever wonder what we’re reading here at PhotoMatt.net International Headquarters? Well now there’s a sidebar widget that says what I’m reading now and links to the edition on Amazon, and I even get a kickback. Comments welcome. I’ve been doing a lot of tweaks to the menu and navigation in general so if you have any comments on that leave them here.
One Down
The first paper is done, but I’m going to forego my usual practice of posting them here because I think it’s quite bad. Yes I know that was the original point of posting them, but any writing attempting to tie together Aphra Behn and Immanuel Kant should not see the light of day, much less the web.
Papers
Two major papers due in the next twenty-four hours. Blogging forecast is light. Don’t despair though, check out my blogroll for the latest and greatest in the independent web world. It can keep you busy for hours, as it does to me often.
Fast Company Gets It
On their new XHTML and CSS based website Fast Company does pretty much everything right. Even their source formatting looks good, plus it all validates. Hat tip: Doug Bowman.
While you’re at it, go read everything Jeffrey said today, it’s good for the mind and the soul.
When CSS Goes Bad
When Good CSS Goes Bad, next on Fox. We forgive Nick though, because he’s one of the groovier people we met at SxSW. I feel sorry for people on Mozilla sometimes because they must miss half the April Fool’s jokes out there. But then I remember the tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking they have and the feeling fades.
Many Updates
The photolog has four new albums and about a hundred new pictures, including some of a family trip, an Apple sticker, a peace protest, and two jazz concerts. I had another very nice post lined up but I forgot that Tantek’s site occasionally crashes my browser so it’ll have to wait until I find some more free time.
Free Cupholders
For a limited time only PhotoMatt.net is offering free cupholders to all Internet Explorer users on Windows. Get ’em while they’re hot! Hat tip: Waxy.
Bizarre
I was just browsing around Ryan’s pictures when this one caught my eye. Apparently it’s Jason’s iBook with what appears to be a picture of Derek and myself, and seeing it there is quite a bizarre experience. I’m guessing it’s EtherPEG, but that still raises the question of just who was looking at that image over the network? Mysteries abound.
BlogRolling Update
Major new look over at blogrolling headquarters. I really dislike the new interface, nothing is more annoying than dropdown option boxes when you’re trying to get something done. I hope Jason rethinks this and brings back the list of links that worked so well before.
Intro to PHP5
These slides are not only quite informative about some of the new features of PHP5, they are laugh out loud funny. Houston really needs a PHP user group; anyone else interested? Every month the meetup fizzles because of too few people.
Chilly
Someone must have bumped the thermostat upstairs, because it has gotten quite chilly around here, at least compared to how the weather has been for the past few weeks. Time to closet the hawaiian shirts (and certainly the no shirt) and break out the sweaters again.
Post-Gig Analysis
Today’s gig was painful in a way only a very special combination of lost music and missing people can make it. If it was a bad group I wouldn’t be so disappointed, but the group usually sounds a lot better than we did today. On the upside, there was free food afterward that was quite good, and I was asked to participate in a much nicer group starting next year when they have an opening in the sax section, and I’m very excited about that. That in addition to being in the UH jazz band should fill the musical void that’s been in my life this year. Time to shed!
Send What?
This is not a post about the war. They’re doing something just like this in Houston, and I heard on the radio today that the two items really wanted over there are baby wipes and beef jerky. Now think about this a second, and tell me why when we’re spending billions a day we can’t get the fine men and women risking their lives for us some freaking baby wipes? Third party groups have to beg us for money for support operations when we already give gads of money to the government for the very same purpose? I’m sure there’s a good reason, I just don’t know what it is.
Gig Tomorrow
I’m going to be playing a big band gig on the Kemah Boardwalk tomorrow, Sunday, at 2 PM. Okay the gig is actually at University of Houston Downtown, and it’s going to be with the amazing pianist who won the Great American Piano Competition last year, Deanna Witkowski. There is more information here. I’m going to be playing lead alto and I have a couple of solos and we might do one of my features this week. I’m performing a lot less this year, but next year my schedule will be as such to allow me to participate in more groups with hopefully more performances like this.
For Those Lonely Nights
HoldTheButton.com. What else is there to say?
Compress Your Pages for Fun and Profit
Well hot diggity, the lovely Christine has kindly posted an article I wrote called Compressing Webpages for Fun and Profit to the Bloggy-sweeping website Scripty Goddess. Go check it out and make your pages faster. Every time you gzip a page an angel gets its wings.
Gallery: 3-29-2003
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Axis of… What?
Got this from my darling sister, enjoy:
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the “Axis of Evil”, Libya,China and Syria today announced that they had formed the “Axis of Just as Evil”, which they said would be more evil than the Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of in his State of the Union address.
Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new Axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. “Right. They are just as evil . . . in their dreams!” declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. “Everybody knows we’re the best evils . . . best at being evil.. . we’re the best.”
Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil. “They told us it was full,” said Syrian President Bashar al- Assad. “An axis can’t have more than three counties”, explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “This is not my rule, it’s tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy, and Japan in the evil Axis. So, you can only have three, and a secret handshake. Ours is wickedly cool.”
International reaction to Bush’s Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as within minutes, France surrendered.
Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what has become a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan and Serbia announced that they had formed the “Axis of Somewhat Evil”, forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the “Axis of Occasionally Evil”, while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the “Axis of Not So Much Evil Really as Just Generally Disagreeable”.
With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling up,Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the “Axis of Countries That Aren’t the Worst But Certainly Won’t Be Asked to Host the Olympics”.
Canada, Mexico and Australia formed the “Axis of Nations That Are Actually Quite Nice But Secretly Have Some Nasty Thoughts About America”, while Scotland, New Zealand and Spain established the “Axis of Countries That Want Sheep to Wear Lipstick”. “That’s not a threat, really, just something we like to do”, said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell.
While wondering if the other nations of the world weren’t perhaps making fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axis, although he rejected the establishment of the “Axis of Countries Whose Names End in ‘Guay”, accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chadguay denied the charges.
Israel, meanwhile, insisted it didn’t want to join any Axis, but privately world leaders said that’s only because no one asked them.
Personal Details
A remark was made to me the other day that there are scarce personal details of me on this site, a fact I can’t deny. This obviously means one of two things:
- My life is so interesting I’m currently in negotiations with MGM over the rights to be used as the basis for the next Bond movie, or
- My life is so incredibly boring that if I were to post details of it here people would actually fall asleep while reading and then the comment section would be full of random letters as a result of people’s heads hitting their keyboards.
The jury is still out on this one. Anyway, so today I was eating a cheese sandwich…