I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure--that is all that agnosticism means... ~Clarence Darrow
04 October 2007
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on October 4th, 2007 @ 09:54:23 pm, using 383 words, 256 views
I was browsing my favorite free stock photography site last weekend and found a few high-resolution images which, when viewed side by side in Photoshop, gave me immediate inspiration for a redesign of the main site pages of thedarksighed.com. I spent a few hours in Photoshop with several different layer blending techniques and some creative use of masking tools, then switched over to EditPad and put together a new layout for the main site.
I’ve set up the homepage to pull the latest RSS feeds from the blog and display them on the left side of the page. To the right of the RSS feeds I’ve inserted a condensed display of my most recent graphic design projects, though I’m still trying to figure out a way to have these pulled automatically from the blog rather than having to update them manually. As of now, I’ve only posted a few of my most recent photo-manipulations to the blog, though I have several in the queue, so that section of the homepage is so far limited to only the most recent designs.
The new site layout follows the design philosophy of the b2evolution blog templates I’ve recently been building. Like my recent blog skins, it’s designed for a 1024x768 monitor resolution. It makes use of valid XHTML Strict markup and valid CSS Stylesheets. Where necessary, the markup is XHTML Transitional, as in the contact form page, which uses a Captcha image. The Captcha no longer functions properly when constrained by the code requirements of XHTML Strict markup.
I’m considering building a blog template around the same design, simply to streamline as much of the site as possible, but that’s an endeavor which will have to be left for another day. Right now I’m working on bringing over as much of the old site into the new style, and finding little time to do so. I plan to keep working on the site move in my spare time over the next few days.
Anyway, let me know what you think of the new layout. Any feedback is appreciated…
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping…
Fila Brazilia - Old Codes New Chaos
This post is the creative work of Yours Truly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
17 August 2007
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on August 17th, 2007 @ 03:07:35 am, using 1599 words, 3119 views
This evening I checked out a website (http://planet.intertwingly.net) which had linked to my Acura mobile computing blog and, while there, noticed an interesting article on a recent attempt by site owners to block visitors using the Firefox web browser from accessing their sites. Their protest stems from the fact that one of the many available plugin extensions for Firefox, the AdblockPlus extension, allows internet users to free their web browsing experience of intrusive and often resource exploitative advertisements. These sites have begun to employ various blocking scripts, essentially user-agent sniffers, to detect the Firefox browser and prevent access to the page and its content. The rationale (I apply the term loosely) is that these sites are losing advertising revenue due to the fact that internet users who demand a clean and streamlined internet experience are avoiding the ads displayed on certain web sites.
Being a loyal Firefox user since the initial beta releases many (many) years back, and a naturally inquisitive person, I decided to check out the site which is, apparently, spearheading the effort and serving as a soapbox for all those site owners who feel they are being cheated by internet users who have the AdBlockPlus extension (myself included) installed.
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22 June 2006
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on June 22nd, 2006 @ 11:47:56 pm, using 448 words, 1215 views
Along with several billion other people, I've been following closely the World Cup football tournament being hosted this year in Germany. Since we weren't able to get tickets to see any of the matches, I'm forced to settle on watching them on television, and being subjected to the sheer stupidity of some of the announcers on the ESPN network. The specific idiots to whom I'm referring are Shep Messing and Glenn Davis, but there are some others who may have escaped notice.
So, why do these idiots need a geography lesson? Well, in watching the recent match between Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, their lack of knowledge of geography and grammar, not to mention a limited knowledge of the game of football in general, became glaringly obvious. Let's take a look at a simple map of Europe, taken from the following URL:
http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/eu.htm
Okay, so what's the issue? The issue is that the name of the nation located north of the Black Sea is Ukraine. It is NOT the Ukraine. However, I was forced to listen to 2 hours of inept commentating by Glenn Davis and Shep Messing, wherein they continually referred to Ukraine as the Ukraine. What is that? The name of the nation is Ukraine. There is no 'the' in there. A simple look at an atlas or a world map (yes, it requires opening a book or a website and actually learning something) would help these two idiots immeasurably.
My next point of contention comes from the incorrect usage of simple grammatical structures which, again, could have been avoided by these two guys had they simply been given a brief geography lesson. When implying possession, as in the team from a specific nation, (in this case Ukraine), the proper grammatical construction is "the Ukrainian team" and not "the Ukraine team".
While we're on the topic, let's discuss pronunciation as well. The word Ukraine is pronounced with the emphasis on the second, not the first, syllable. It is correctly pronounced U-kraine. It is not pronounced U-kraine.
I can understand that there is a certain inherent lack of knowledge of other parts of the world among many Americans, but these guys are commentators on a major television network. I'd think that ESPN could afford to buy an Atlas or a map for these two idiots...
So, once again, for the record, the name of the country is Ukraine. It is not, nor has it ever been, the Ukraine.
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
Thievery Corporation - The Lagos Communique
This post is the creative work of Yours Truly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
16 February 2006
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on February 16th, 2006 @ 09:45:29 pm, using 395 words, 1267 views
We wanted to blast the world free of history.... picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.
"Imagine," Tyler said, "stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you'll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you'll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles."
I am the all-singing, all-dancing crap of this world.... I am the toxic waste by-product of God's creation.
I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.
Step forward into your cave. Find your power animal and slide. ;)
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
The Pixies - Death To The Pixies 1987-1991
01 February 2006
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on February 1st, 2006 @ 02:53:00 pm, using 263 words, 580 views
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15 December 2005
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on December 15th, 2005 @ 08:40:04 pm, using 232 words, 4879 views
I've been listening "almost" nonstop to the Philosomatika stream on netradio using the PVR system I built around a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 TV Tuner. Since I haven't been watching television for going on 5 weeks now, I figured a good alternate use of my homemade tivo would be to use it for streaming netradio streams. It's basically just Shoutcast radio, but displayed on my tv screen in the GBPVR software interface. The Hauppauge WinTV-series of TV-Tuners give phenomenal picture quality for the price. Since they have an onboard video-encoding chip, they can function equally well on older hardware since the video compression routines are done on-board, in hardware, rather than in software which relies on the speed of the processor to keep up with the incoming video stream.
The Win-TV PVR 250 card has:
- Integrated 125 channel cable-ready TV tuner, hardware MPEG-2 encoder, dbx stereo audio with IR remote control
- Composite Video, S-Video & audio inputs, for connecting VCR or camcorder
If anyone wants to check out the philosomatika stream, just download the .pls file here, and drop it into winamp, or you can grab it yourself at the philosomatika website.
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
Tranan - Restarter
This post is the creative work of Yours Truly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
25 November 2005
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on November 25th, 2005 @ 12:40:02 pm, using 913 words, 978 views
I hadn't turned on my television in almost 2 weeks. I remember seeing several commercials, specifically on the Spike Channel advertising the Spike Channel, which went something like "There's no reason to think. Just sit down in front of this box. It will entertain you. It will make you happy." Being something of a contrarian when it comes to implied suggestions of control, I decided to do exactly the opposite. I turned the box off and didn't go back to it.
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