I have another story up on MacCentral today. It's titled "Gates attempts to fight anti-trust case with essay" and briefly discusses the Gates essay in the Economist yesterday.
Working away here at the Bump Interactive Laboratories. I moved the March and April Front Page News to the archives section. I am working on the links now.
I'm happy for the Utah Jazz.
There is a really good story for MacUsers on the BeOS on the MacCentral site today.
Bill Gates has written an essay that is supposed to prove that Microsoft is not a guilty party in this whole Anti-Trust suit. He and the others at Microsoft are probably the only people that really believe this. It's on The Economist Web site.
I won two tickets to a Stabbing Westward/God Lives Underwater show here in Atlanta from one of our local radio stations, 99x Which is great. I never win stuff.
I'm working on a story about Flash 3.0 as an evolving and robust technology so if you have thoughts share them.
Salon's 21st section has another really interesting story today.
I will be doing some extensive work on my links section tonight. I also will be weeding out the old news and putting it in archives. I am trying to brew a deal with a graphic artist to work together on this site.
It really was only a matter of time before I returned to the Macintosh news community as a writer. I am now an Associate Editor with MacCentral . You can expect to see several news stories by me each week and I will also be editing stories from a grammatical perspective. If you have a story that you believe will affect the Macintosh community or a product that you would like to see evaluated, please e-mail me.
My first story is up on their site today. It's about Kaleidoscope 2 and includes some interesting views from developers of schemes. Please read it.
It's my brother Chris' birthday today.(Happy Birthday Bro)
Netscape is including Flash with their new browser(Wired Story). I am very happy that I bought Flash 3 last week. Now if I just had free time to play with it.
Well I read Barbarians Led by Bill Gates , and you can read my thoughts on the books page which is finally getting updated. To summarize, if you are going to buy one book on the subject, don't buy this one.
I've been listening to the new Smashing Pumpkins record and I think it is a really ambitious effort. I will write more later.
You now can search the Web using Hotbot right from the bottom of this page! Hotbot has been my search engine of choice for a while now(mainly because I like saying Inktomi) so I've decided to add it to my page.
The very useful Robert Hess MacWorld Party List has been updated for the MacWorld Expo this summer in New York. This list is invaluable for planning an effective after-Expo. Thanks to Ilene Hoffman for maintaining this resource for us all.
Starting this weekend, you can now reach this site at the kungfumaster.com domain as well as the existing bump.net, dalai-lama.com, and yoda.org domains. Just one more way we here at Bump are trying to server your needs.
There is a Salon article in their excellent 21st section about the browser wars and the related books that are being released. It's called Instant histories of the browser wars . Strangely, I already have purchased one of the books (Barbarians Led by Bill Gates ), and I plan on reading it this weekend. I will share my thoughts on it here.
I belong to the Association of Internet Professionals . The monthly Atlanta chapter meeting is tonight.
As I attempt to clear the summit of the week, a few updates.
The Iconfactory has relaunched with a more complex interface and new team member. Check it out.
The Beastie Boys have posted Intergalactic, their first single, on the Web. I think this is great. They haven't even released it commercially yet.
In related beat news, I bought some mixed tapes from Turntable and they are great.
FireWorks , Macromedia's Web image editing tool, has been officially released. It's worth buying.
Maybe more updates later, maybe not.
I went back to E3 for my own personal pleasure today. Spent a lot of time playing Tekken 3, at the Nintendo booth catching Pokemon stuffed animals, and finding out more about Myth II Soulblighter. I have put together some of my feelings with some pictures on my Myth page(soon to become the general video game page.)
They redesigned the Frontier 5 Web site (I shouldn't be too far behind with Bump 2.0)
Here's a FEED article on our cinematic differences with Japan and the conflict over the Godzilla character. I was a little put out when I saw Godzilla last weekend. Crap.
There is something big about to happen at the Iconfactory .(I ran into these guys at E3)
My favorite Macintosh interface hack is taking it to the next level today. You can download it direct for Kaleidoscope.net .
I went to E3 today. I left feeling that a lot of game developers don't get the Internet at all.
Some points of interest:
I wasn't impressed with the level of net integration I saw. It looks like the console developers have given up for the time being. I will be attending the show again on Saturday, and I will report in more detail tommorrow and then.
My feet hurt
What are they?
QBullets are used to indicate the function of hypertext links. QBullets appear courtesy of Matterform Media. QBullets are freeware, copyright 1996 by Matterform Media. See the QBullet legend for the meanings of all the QBullets.
They are cool and Free.
I learned some valuable lessons about both myself and about work in the last month. First, it is very easy for me to overcommit to one thing and thus lose balance in my life. Something that I have always had a problem with. People who have known me in the past and for a while will attest to it.
I burned myself out.
For the last month, I have had a really hard time getting both personal and business work done. In the last three days, I have somehow started to turn it around. In terms of the work goals, I turned over a big project to my superior, and he gave me props. That helped.
Personally, I am resolving some issues. I think this was a good step in personal development. Now I have to get back to work.
There's no hockey in Atlanta until tommorrow. The Atlanta Thrashers unveil their logo Thursday. I am very excited.
You are saying to yourself. "This guy's a slacker." This is only partially true.
You see I have been ramping up our corporate sites at work for GlobalShop . At last count, I was apporaching the amount of hours I did all last month with a week to go in March.
I've also been working with Dreamweaver. It's cool.
I am humbled by masters of HTML and Javascript like the gentlemen at RAGE . They show people like me just how far our trade can be stretched.
I downloaded a beta of Macromedia's latest offering last night, and boy is it dandy.
Although it seems like the learning curve might be one more oriented to those already familiar with vector and raster based imaging software, this piece of software seems like it could unify a lot of tasks into one tool for me. I explored the quality and size of images that it produced and I was quite pleased.
I went to school here. Apparently, Scott Adams(Dilbert) did the same 13 years before me.
I'm the oldest of four boys. My younger brother Chris has a great band called Die Laughing . My brother Paul works with all kinds of very advanced manufacturing techniques. My brother Dave is an amazing athelete. We are each very talented, in our own ways. I hate to confess that I am not very close to the rest of my immediate family. Lots of little issues and a couple of big ones have held things up for years.
I am getting into something here that is for another time though. Chris' band is really solid. The Web site for his band is being reworked by me, and I expect that I will finish that job this week. Go and check out his band. Let me know what you think.
I'm spending another relaxing Sunday, candles burning and I am going through a Style Sheet design book. I put two projects essentially to bed this week, but I believe the weeks to come will only be more demanding.
If you haven't checked it out yet, you should go to www.audionet.com . I discovered that I can listen to the radio stations from my old home, as well as many shows that I wouldn't have access to in the market I'm in. They also are broadcasting some television stations and eventually will have some Internet only Television type stations.
C-SPAN is replaying the Computer Industry Competition Hearing this afternoon on their television network, and you can go and listen to it over the net at www.cspan.org .
I am doing some minor adjusting to the site today, but I am also evaluating some deeper changes. I need to make a commitment to providing more content. I think that the load time is great, it could and will look better in the future though. I purchased a cellular setup yesterday, and I believe that I will allow folks to contact me there through this site.
I went to my first meeting of the Association of Internet Professionals last night. The Georgia chapter meets once a month.
I joined this organization for a variety of reasons, but mainly to see what other people in my area are doing. One of the really big things for me at this year's MacWorld conference was the chance to talk to people who are in the same position as I am. I am a lone web developer in a medium sized company. The talk last night got into certification. Can we be certified? It is my personal opinion that this really wouldn't make too much sense. I look at the perversion that has twisted the networking world with the MCSE certification, and I don't want to see the same thing happen in Web site management.
Right now, standards are changing rapidly. I don't think that, if you were to begin work on a certification test today, all of the included materials would be out of date in six months. Do you test on content management, creation, technical, serving technology? What defines a webmaster? I am one and I don't know.
Well, welcome to the first March Installment of Bump.net.
As usual, lots going on at work. Two large projects going, with a third starting later this week. I'm carefully tracking my time, and I'm not bashful about the fact that, as a salaried employee, I worked 250 hours in February.
I had said that I would put up a list of icon oriented links a while back, but so many of these are good, I want to give them more attention.
My favorite (perhaps of all time) icon author would have to be Igarashi Susumu . Check out his very beautiful Web site and download some of his icons and color schemes for Macintosh.(I wish I had this kind of graphics talent)
Who is this guy? Why did he interrupt the Grammy's last night? Does the Soy on his chest mean Soy as in bean or is it Spanish for me? I am searching for these answers and more. I thought that his entrance, Dylan's reaction, and the performance that ensued were the highlights of the show.
On a darker note, I thought ODB's stealing the microphone was less than endearing. I like the Wu-Tang Clan, but please. What a classless display.
More Soy Bomb please!!
Once in a while, I download a piece of software that I know, in its simplicity, that I will be using on a regular basis. I can already tell that LinkPad 1.0 is such a piece of software. I live in links, and it manages links. It is free. Check it out.
I've been working so much that I have not had the energy to devote to the new domain and site. As it is Friday, I am preparing for a relaxing weekend. My plans include playing with pixels. I've been cruising various icon oriented sites, and I have decided that I will devote some time to graphics this weekend. In the process, I will throw up a large graphics links section and pass on the icon links.
I'm now commited to bringing this site to a whole new level.
I started this little project in November with a gentle time frame in mind. Recent events convinced me that now would be an excellent time to move to my own domain. As such, I have registered bump.net and will be putting up a slightly redesigned version of this site (rendered with Frontier 5) within a couple of days. I still have to wait for the registration to go through.
Today, I was home sick from work.
Tonight, I am working on the site redesign and importing my content into Frontier 5.
After solving a couple of server issues at work this afternoon, I went through my mail from the last year and cleaned out the junk. What a great experience. I now find myself mailing people I have lost contact with and trying to recreate the connections I had with them.
Spending a much deserved relaxed Saturday drinking coffee, watching some Olympic coverage, and reading up on Web Server technology.
They have all sorts of neat new stuff in this year's winter Olympics. Snowboarding and women's hockey are the first two that pop into my head. Coverage must be tough considering the time difference.
Nagano Winter Olympics Resources.
Web Review has a great article covering the new CSS specification.