gigamatic

i turned in a load of crap today as my design assignment. i'm not sure the colors matched, and not 100% certain that the assignment met all the stated criteria. in fact, i'm pretty sure a couple were lacking. but, i also got to use the PDF annotation tools. that was fun.

flash still sucks, though. i fail to see most practical applications, which is probably also part of the reason i hate the people in my class. just because you CAN use flash and pretty graphics-and-table-based navigation doesnt mean you should.

i've gotten so far away from the imaginative side of development and design that i cant churn out anything but D grade crap. seriously, it takes me months to get anything close to done... not a week.

but sometimes, i guess things just gel. i'm 50% done with a new design for a new site, which i won't be advertising here. in fact, it's unlikely to be someplace people other than family and professionals go. it'll be that less-assholish, less uninhibited side of me... the one you can take to meet your mom.

and if you thought THIS site was boring... wait till you see that one.
oh wait, you probably won't.

bah. it's 10:30. it's cold in the house. and i'm finally tired.

no idea if i'll finish the site before work or not. but one thing's for sure, before i show it to nala, i'd better get archive templates together.

Posted by gigamatt at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

kelmeister and i have both thought about a basso bean reunion. i'm seriously going to set a date and pick a place and just do it...

i thought it would be ironic to descend upon Panima (the old Basso space) and just order coffees all afternoon, totally pissing off the workers, but I'm not even sure that place still exists.

i'll bet, if we picked a place with wireless, even Shawnoula could attend, virtually.

Posted by gigamatt at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My online photo gallery is staying with flickr for now. I'm not sold on the unified authentication to even test zooomr (since nobody has gotten back to me, plus it's a "beta" and to me that sounds like "asking to die and take your photos with it"), and picasa just plain sucks for features and flexibility. I'm implementing a tool called "Gallery" on one of my domains, just for testing, but I can also tie it in to the message board system I use there, and cut out one level of complexity for my users. That makes sense for that application, but not for others.

Posted by gigamatt at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had a realization thanks to the classes I've taken this quarter... wikis are cool, and perfect solutions to some things, while not being solutions to every collection of information.

For instance, a cooking and recipe website with a wiki engine back-end could be a very useful tool. As members try the recipes and tweak them, the changes could be tracked, and the evolution of the recipes could be noted. The recipes could be discussed in detail, tagged with other information (like which brand or ingredient types work best, where to find them, etc), and the collection could really grow organically. For instance, my great-grandmother's cookie recipes change dramatically depending on whether you use blackstrap molasses or light molasses, and whether you use bleached or unbleached flour, and the consistency changes completely depending on whether you use organic peanut butter or mass-produced el-cheapo peanut butter with added oils.

Since I am the keeper of the family recipes, I really want to make them easily available to the rest of the family, and putting them online makes a certain amount of sense. I save the money needed to publish them, and allow immediate access.

Now I just need to register that domain name.

Posted by gigamatt at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new guy doesn't start at work till the 12th, so I'm off the hook there till then. He and I can discuss it further when he starts. I'm glad I've got seniority on the name, but even so, I know what work-names can do to a person, which is why I'm not caving to changing mine yet. Let the new guy suffer through being a "JJ" or "3J" for a few years, if at all possible. Those memories for me are cringe-inducing.

As for domain names, I've killed off two of mine this month, and KP Duty, the TikiPalace, and I-palindrome-I have all moved over here to this one, and been encompassed in my single installation of M0vableType. The move was fairly painless, thankfully. Later this year, between two and four more domains will fall off into the ether, and I'll be free of some poorly conceived ideas.

However, I'm still thinking of moving my own personal (and private) space to a different domain. My cousins have become a bigger part of my life, and as our family gets closer on the Internet, I don't want to share every single part of my life with them. I write here because it's fairly anonymous... I can kvetch and bitch and moan about almost anything that bothers me. Including family.

I've almost decided on a name. It's a variation on an old joke my family made while I was in high school and still dreaming of a career in architecture. Since my cousin was already going that route, they thought we should start a firm together, and give it a silly name. Since I'm not sure I want my last name all over the net, I'm dropping that part of it, and using the real joke as the domain. My uncle already has an email address which is a play on his full name. It's really well done, you might say. Too well done, I'll tell you. It's crafty, and memorable. Just like the domain I've chosen.

Posted by gigamatt at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ugh.

So, we're hiring a new guy, who I will be working directly with. His name is my name. My boss told me I have seniority, so the new guy and I will have to decide how we will differentiate between the two of us. I haven't had to think about this in a LONG time.

I'd use what my family calls me, but that's the name of another guy we work with. I'd use my middle name, but that's ANOTHER guy. The new guy had better have a middle name or another name he goes by, or we're stuck using our last names.

My only other option is JJ. And I'm not ok with that.

Posted by gigamatt at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I gave up on Picasaweb. It sucks. It's just not anywhere near Flickr. That said, is anybody using Zooomr? Zooomr allows you to authenticate with other services like level9, meetro, gmail, livejournal or openid. I still think it would be difficult to switch, given my time and experiences with flickr. I just don't like most of what Yahoo offers. I hate their 360 product. I hate their mail product. I think their chat product is second-rate. But flickr? OMG I love flickr.

Gmail, docs & spreadsheets, earth, maps, and every other google thing I've used seems good. but picasaweb is missing 90% of the features and flexibility of flickr and seems like a first-generation piece of crap app. (no offense to you if you worked on it, but it's so far behind the times, I cant even entertain any thoughts of using it.)

But, zooomr scares me. it's too new. too edgy. and unless someone like yahoo or google buys it up and funds it, i'm not convinced to jump on board.

Posted by gigamatt at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

it's saturday.

last night, we had a nice sit-down dinner in the dining room, with salad, pasta, garlic (in the) bread, and a good bottle of wine, followed by an old episode of doctor who.

---

i'm disappointed with the phone sale i got. bait and switch amazon bs. i probably wont see the $150 rebate.

the books of maps i ordered finally arrived. they're poor quality reproductions at 50% scale, and look like those mimeographs we used to have in school. *sigh* better than nothing. at least some of the names can be read.

snow sucks ass.

the good? i made cookies and they were tasty. nala hated em, which was also a good thing. i made him breakfast this morning, and ate all the leftovers in the fridge.

Posted by gigamatt at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ok, i broke down and ordered a new cell phone, from spr1nt. my battery life on my sidekick is total crap, and the plan doesnt account for any airtime, yet is still $40 including insurance. i can't have that.

so, i went the way of spr1nt, again. it works everywhere (except my home), and the plan has even more minutes than i used to have, and it's got a $150 rebate. new phone, more features, less money, and rebate.

i had to do it before the 17th and i was afraid i would forget. 3 weeks on tmob, and that's enough, i think. now the phone is in the mail, and i should get it by wednesday. then, i'll cancel tmob before my month runs out, and move my number over.

(forgive the m1sspellings, because if I spell everything right, i get more spam.)

tonight, after class, i'll do my taxes and homework for tomorrow. the month is almost half over already! hooray!

i also got my vacation scheduled from now thru June, for all dates i know of, at least. toy-show setups, botcon, and doctor appts, and days i had to use or lose. only took me 8 forms.

Posted by gigamatt at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)