Tag Archives: Internet

No Pants Day

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I had a big write-up planned about all the legitimately free music I’ve found, where you can find it, and my new favorite band (eX-Girl – a frightfully strange and completely musical group out of Japan), but I’m tired. Dodging eagles and watching people shock themselves senseless has taken it out of me.

I listened yesterday to Radio Free Pants – The voice of a new fashion sense, and I enjoyed it. It was a good combination of music I knew and liked and stuff I’d never heard before. Steve Martin punctuated the evening.

Alas, today I couldn’t hook up. Hopefully that’s because everyone in the world was already listening. I hope the link above works, but I may have screwed up and I’m frankly too tired to test it. If I didn’t do it right, just visit dphc using the link in the navigation section over there.

Thanks!

Ugh

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Someone explain to me why the (no longer supported) Mac version of Internet Explorer is more standards-compliant than the Windows version. On windows, my PNG is being blended perfectly – with the wrong color. Where the hell did that gray come from? Over at the Hut there is a similar problem, but since I’m flogging mac-only software I didn’t worry about it too much.

I mean, shit, when was the PNG standard adopted? I had big plans for a graphic treatment that simply won’t work if browsers don’t render images according to well-established standards.

Someone Microsoft laid off from their Mac Business Unit should go give the windows folks some lessons.

Meanwhile, I’d be grateful for some feedback from the field about how other winders and Linux browsers are handling my graphic. It should look like this:
Obviously, there was still a ways to go, but you see how the ampersand crosses into the lighter color? The ability to do that was very important for my plans. I’m sure there are ways to accomplish what I want to de despite Microsoft, but this way was easy.

I know it’s an old story: Microsoft choosing which standards to follow and which to ignore. I would have thought they would be all over PNG, since it gets them out of paying royalties.

OK, I feel better now. I have work to do. On my Windows machine. Huh.

Thanks!

I Need More Tunes!

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Alas, the bulk if my music collection is in a box in someone else’s garage, waiting for me to ship it overseas. I have 564 tunes on my laptop, which seems like a lot at first blush, but it’s just over 31 hours. Given that a few of the tunes aren’t very good (Enuff Z’Nuff will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes – what the hell was I thinking?) and I listen to my tunes quite a lot, the selection is wearing thin.

I really like emusic.com, where I have found several bands I never would have heard otherwise, but it’s a monthly subscription and you only get so many downloads per month. The 22nd of each month is download day, the day my account refreshes, and I have come to look forward to that day with great anticipation. By now I have several months worth of tunes queued up for download.

My hosts have a bunch of CD’s but I’ve now become too lazy to get up and choose another CD when the one finishes playing. I’m ambivalent about copying music these days; it’s kind of an extension of my philosophy that as someone who is trying to make my living selling software and eventually novels that I shouldn’t be stealing other people’s software and artistic output.

So, any of you have favorite bands with downloadable demo tracks? I can’t order CD’s because I have no place for them to be shipped.

Thanks!

A Note About Site Meter

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I like it. I like it a little too much. Sometimes I reload the page to see if the number has gone up. As in golf, the rare success carries you over much disappointment.

I have it trained to not count me, which means it may not count other roadrunner customers either. So if you’re on roadrunner and you’ve hit the site fortyleven times in the last few days, My statistics are blown. Still, as of this writing, there are 24 confirmed visits to the blog by people who aren’t me.

The counter has a “traffic prediction” feature which I just know will come in handy. You know, so I can, uh, justify my advertising rates. Yeah, that’s it.

Interestingly, when you walk across the Internet, you are not walking in sand, your footprints to be washed away with the next tide. You are walking in plaster of paris; it’s soft and receptive but it doesn’t forget. I worry that this is going to be creepy for you guys, and if it is I’ll remove the counter, but for me it’s great fun. If you click on the number over there you will see the same statistics that I see. At least I think you will.

For instance, today someone who had his or her computer set to Western Australia Time dropped by because of a trackback link I left over at Haloscan. He looked at the main page, and didn’t click any links. Not that there was any reason for him to do so unless a category name caught his fancy.

The stats never show enough to pin down the exact person, but with a little knowledge (now, just who could it be at hearthnhome.com? And Bob, don’t you have better things to be doing while you’re at work?) you can make a pretty good guess.

So, like I said, if this bugs you I’ll stop, or if you don’t mind me seeing the stats but don’t want the whole damn world to know I can fix it that way as well. I just thought you would find it interesting to know just what THEY know about every page you load.

Damn! I didn’t want to end this on a paranoid angle. I like seeing who’s visited, and I have no current plans to use the information for nefarious purposes. But anyway, it’s you guy’s call.

Thanks!

La Dolce Vida

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Right now I am sitting in my back yard in a lounge chair, one dog in my lap, the other sitting in the sun nearby, on a cloudless sunny day in late October. The wireless network has a good signal out here, and I have been working on my word processor and exchanging emails all morning. The screen is a little dimmer than I would like, and the fridge is a long way away, but those are quibbles.

This is really, really nice.

Addendum 4/10/04:
To all you people who got here because of the inexplicably high position Google gives this rather mundane blog entry when one searches for “la dolce vida”, welcome! Try the main page, and see what’s going on with my homeless tour, or put in your $0.02 on one of my Get-Poor-Quick Schemes. Perhaps you have a crackpot idea of your own to share. What fun!

Thanks!