So everyone is mailing me, "What happened to updating your site?"
I'm in deep thought mode. I've got a lot of projects on the table, and I feel like there are a thousand things that need to be explored, both mentally and technically.
Work is beating me up. Lots going on, mostly just more work than should humanly be pushed onto one person. I think that some of this may be in violation of the Geneva Convention.
I went to my local meeting of the Association of Internet Professionals last week. A good reminder of how good it feels to be around other people who get it.
I spent much of the evening tonight installing a G3 processor in my old PowerBook 1400. It really feels ten times faster. Despite the limitations of the original system architecture, this upgrade made an almost unusable computer feel snappy.
This InfoWorld Electric Story Welcome to the 'new Web Order' is a must read for those of you that may have missed it. This is the technological core of where the whole industry is going to be in the near future. Impossible to compete with this stuff using static tools to build static sites.
I regained contact after several months with a good friend and former employer this weekend. I think our brief email exchange helped both of us sort out work situations that we have each have been finding difficult. There's no replacement in this world for people who care about you and are willing to tell you the truth.
I have been spending a lot of time analyzing my process. Do I think about things with a clear head before I make decisions?
Kate has been away the last two weeks straight, and I think that has something to do with this introspection.
Amazon Will Offer Refunds . Maybe I'm just cynical, but I just assume when I go to a site like this one that the recommendations are partially paid for. Is this any different than selling placement on search engines? I know that in this case it means that a financial transaction occurs, but who is buying a book solely based on this recommendation?
I buy a lot of books, sometimes in bookstores, sometimes on the Internet, and sometimes direct from publishers. I don't think this is the big deal people are making it out to be. It's no different, for instance, than Oprah Winfrey having a stake in the film rights to a book she is recommending on her show. I don't see her shelling out refunds. However, this recommendation is also not all that it seems.
Don't take things at face value. Evaluate things for yourself and make good decisions based on the information available to you. I give myself this advice every day, and I wish I followed it more diligently.
The Falcons were crushed. They didn't have what it took to take Denver out of their gameplan. Since I'm a Giants fan, I can only say that the Falcons at least made it to the Super Bowl.
January has gone by so fast. Guess when you're busy, the time flies.
I picked up a copy of Web Design in a Nutshell , one of the newest O'Reilly books. It seems to have a ton of useful information. It's animal is the Weasel.
A friend pointed out that Bumpe , the round red cow from Sweden is getting a lot of press these days. While we at Bump are not affiliated with Bumpe, we endorse his general attitude.
I love having distinctive desktop pictures(wallpaper) and I change the backgrounds on both my Windows and Macintosh machines on a regular basis. Desktopia is a Web site(with an iMac-esque interface) that warehouses all sorts of interesting pictures for this purpose.
Regardless of what happens with my work environment(as you can tell, it dominates my mental landscape these days), this process has re-awakened some of the thinker in me that has been lulled to sleep over the last year.
In the meantime, there is a lot going on Web-wise. Plenty to read, and many technologies to become a student of.
As devoted to the Web as I am, I'm still a magazine junky. My current favorite is Fast Company . Real world material that applies to me everyday. They do the best job, of any magazine I've ever been a devotee of, of developing a community. It's almost as if they have applied the Web concept of community to their print publishing efforts, and it has worked.
I'm listening to some Beck and doing the baseline work for some pages I'm doing for a friend's wedding. What we came up with in the hour or so we have worked on it so far is here . I imagine we will improve it quite a bit going forward.
The has been a lot of community conflict(an ongoing thing) between Script Meridian and Userland Software . I have to say that it amazes me how difficult it is for people in any community, Web based or not, to get along without these sorts of dramatics. Egos get in the way mostly. People with different visions and competing egos are at the root of this. I just want to use software and make interesting things.
I found an eMate cheap, so I ordered it. It could become a good writing tool.
Well, I have to go look for a box to ship a Bebox in, expect more this week than in the last few as I am thinking and writing.
You'll find that I moved the December content to its archive page, updated the links page and the information page, and started working on more content.
My two week work induced hiatus is over. We went to New York(our home office) and kicked butt. Gave the presentation, and made all of the points we wanted to make. I think that it went as well as it possibly could. We essentially were introducing an Internet business model for the trade publishing business over the next five years.
So the decision on whether to proceed with this plan is now out of my hands. While that relieves me of a burden, it doesn't necessarily comfort me. We'll see how things play out. Without being dramatic, I think that I let this drag out too long.
All in all, it was great experience for me. We worked very hard to develop a long term plan, and I've never been in a situation where I was the one presenting to the CEO of a large corporation before. I learned a lot from the experience that I'm sure I'll use over the next twenty years.
I've always worked for smallish companies and this marks the first time that I really don't have access to the primary decision makers on a daily basis. It's definitely frustrating. It's really difficult to transfer your vision to someone in a two or three hour presentation.
MacAmp Lite 1.0 has been released by @Soft. It's shareware for $5 and worth every penny. They'll give you a five dollar discount off the full version when it is released too. I went over and bought it as soon as I found out. I really enjoy the whole MP3 thing. I just wish my RIO would work with my Macintosh too.
OK so I'm a dorky consumer and I ordered this Internet Time Watch from Swatch. It came today, and I think it's pretty cool. It keeps this Internet time in addition to regular time, includes a year 2000 countdown timer, and has a built in animation of a dog pissing on a lamp post. The band however is huge.
CNN is using Internet Time in their time stamp on their home page.
I'm using Internet Explorer 4.5 on my Macs now. It's pretty impressive. I really like the "Pageholder" feature that allows you to hold a page in a window to the left. I'm using the Bump Links page and it fits great, giving me access to all of my frequently visited sites.
It's really the first time I've strayed from Netscape in five years. I also have enjoyed the form autofill feature.
I may also move to Outlook Express on the Macintosh for my mail needs. I'm still pretty frustrated with the performance on Bare Bones Software's Mailsmith, and former Emailer engineer, Jud Spencer, is working at Microsoft on Outlook Express now. I use Microsoft Outlook on my PC's, and the Exchange Server version of Outlook at work, so it might be a good match.
Microsoft also has posted a site called MacTopia . Strange how much effort they seem to be spending to get Macintosh Internet customers. The site doesn't look terribly useful, but I'm going to monitor it.
You can actually get into the Apple Store today. I wish they were shipping DVD drives as standard components. It's the standard in the PC world for professional level systems. Come on, don't just give industry standards lip service Apple, set the trends. I'm glad that they finally got Firewire onto the motherboard though.(Even if Sony did beat them to it.) I'm waiting until I have all the specs before I make a final purchase decision on the new G3's.
Still big doings at work. I report to someone new. It's going to take some work to get him up to speed on things. I do like a challenge.
Well I've opened the new year in fairly good fashion. This morning was very very stressful, but I am settling down now.
I'm analyzing the log files at work from December. Hoo hum, it's pretty boring sitting around waiting for the logs to process.(Good thing I have two computers on my desk.)
I spent most of the weekend working on my machine at home. I added the 3dfx card, and played a fair amount of Myth II to test it out.
I'm still working on my list of things that I want to do in 1999. I also didn't finish my brother's site over the weekend(Sorry Chris, I'll get to it this week.)
Here's a site I did in an afternoon at work. I think I have improved, and I hope to keep improving in the new year.
I'm still cranking along with RealBasic . I may post an alpha version of the tool I'm building with it to this site as soon as February.
O'Grady's PowerPage posted a site redesign today. MacWorld announcements tommorrow should be interesting. It's the first show in a year that I have missed.
Closing in on the end of another year. I am mentally reviewing 1998, and I don't think it will be a terribly memorable year ten years from now for me. The Web continues to grow like a weed, and I am along for some of that ride.
It's not necessarily a bad thing.
Lots of excitement here at Bump over our recent purchase of a copy of RealBasic from Real Software. For 90% of the desktop level programming tasks I have in mind, this tool fits my needs perfectly. Of course, I'm only one day and 50 pages worth of tutorial into it, but it really makes building things that actually run very simple compared to a C, Java, or C++ environment.
In checking out the Company's support site, I discovered that there are a lot of resources available on the Web to help the newbie learning RealBasic. I'll be putting up a page on this site over the weekend listing these resources and my personal experiences with learning this environment.
I'm coding a Styled text editor with the intention of building a tool that stores it's files in an XML'd format. It will be open source when I am done.
Still enjoying my Christmas gifts. I got a 12 Mb Voodoo2 Card that I plan on installing over the long weekend. Should make my Myth II experiences even better. Bungie is resetting the Myth II leader board tonight, so I got some additional practice at the new games(Stampede, Hunting, Assasin) last night.
Lastly, I hope to launch the new site for my brother's band, Die Laughing, this weekend. I have been working on it over the last couple of weeks in my spare time. Just a couple more images and some Javascript work and we'll have soup.
I had a phenomenal Christmas holiday break. Kate loaded me up with so many Geek toys that I haven't even updated these pages in the last few days.
Follow this up with a tremendous back up of work at the daily grind, and you have a semi-stressed out Bump.
I will make every effort to get more up here over the next couple of days.
We went to see Cirque du Soleil's Quidam. It was fantastic. Great costumes and design, and an interesting plot. The performers did some really spectacular things, and I really enjoyed the way everything fit together seamlessly. As I said to everyone who asked, It was just twisted enough for me to really enjoy it.
One of my gifts, that I spent an entire day working with, was the LEGO Mindstorms . You build a robot, complete with motors, touch sensors, and light sensors, then use you Windows based PC to program the robot to do what you want. FUN STUFF. I do wish they had left more room for the tinkerers as the programming interface is completely graphical.
I'm looking forward to Tuesday's MacWorld Expo . Although I am not attending, I got invited to the local broadcast of the keynote. I think they are going to announce some big things. I know they are going to announce the new "Yosemite" machines, but I have a feeling that there is something else coming down the pike.
Userland has released Frontier 5.1.5 . I have upgraded my registered copy, and things are working great. Dave and the gang have really done some strong work over the last six months.
I've only been playing a little Myth II. They are resetting the ranking system tomorrow, so I look forward to that fresh start.
Well, I've got to get my work done. Plans for this weekend mainly revolve around reworking my brother's Web site. I am also looking into new Web hosting companies as I think I am paying too much.
The New York Times has a story that implies that Circuit City has been building "fan" sites for DIVX. I wouldn't put it past them. Again, I say that DIVX is a terrible deal for the consumer for a wide variety of reasons. The most distressing is the model it sets up and the precedent it establishes.
I spent several hours yesterday doing maintenance type tasks on my home workstations. I then went on to install PowerPC Linux on one of the stations. More on this process later. Not terribly user friendly. I wouldn't recommend it for casual computer users yet. The x86 verions I've played with in the last couple of months have been easier to install.
If you haven't checked it out, you need to experience the Psyberspace News Hub . I have no idea how Andy, whose site this is, manages to turn out the sheer volume of material. Some really good Cold Fusion pointers here too.
There is a new site for Macintosh-based Webmasters called MacWeb Developer .
AppleInsider has the scoop in Internet Explorer 4.5 For Macintosh Revealed! . Among the features is Form Autofill, something I am dying for. I currently use Netscape, but I am flexible. I wish the article had some mention if there are any changes in the parsing engine.
Ambrosia Software has released Slithereens . I bet its good.
According to a Computer Retail Week story , Apple is going to ship machines with Linux pre-installed in the new year. Yes yes yes.
I have used Hotline since almost its first appearance. Unlike many of the people that frequent the Hotline community, I actually paid for the software. A couple of years ago, I wrote one of the first reviews of this marvelously written piece of software.
Today, Hotline is being used mostly to distribute porn and illegal software, but I ocassionally fire up my copy and download amusing material and sounds. Here is a really depressing article on what is happening with Adam Hinckley , who wrote the software, and Hotline Software, the company he helped found. Shame on these people.
My Christmas shopping is starting to come to an end. I have to find a gift for my younger brother Paul still though.
The discussion on the impeachment issue heated up yesterday on the new discussion boards at scripting.com . I just think that the constitution is being used as a partisan tool in this matter. Shame on them.
My weekend was eaten by two work Christmas parties and a graduation. I am at work and Monday feels pretty rough on me. I'm coding some forms and adding data validation to them. Pretty boring, monotonous work.
I finally opened my Furby . He proudly announced that his name is "SUMO", and has been a lot of fun to play with. He is kind of rude and keeps farting and belching every time we feed him. Still, I can see why people are going so crazy over them. An interesting computer/gigapet/electromechanical toy combination. In case you were wondering, I paid $70 for him over the Internet.
The Iconfactory released their Photoshop plug-in for building icons and icon sets, Icon Builder . I downloaded it and it seems to be what I would expect from them, Quality. I especially liked a feature that isn't in the software yet: Windows Icon compatibility. It's planned for a future release.
I am making the frustrating round of phone calls I make every two or three months to the phone and cable companies asking about high speed access at home. I can't get either ADSL from BellSouth or Broadband cable access from Media One in my neighborhood yet. Hurry up!!!
On this note, I have to say that the level of customer service that these big utility companies provide is really bad. I wait on hold forever just to be forwarded twice before someone tells me what I want to know. I have a feeling that this might change when the cable company has some competition and AT&T starts to go for the local service as well as long distance. I know that, if there were an alternative cable provider, Media One would already be gone. Our service goes out almost once a week.
I ordered about 70% of my Christmas gifts this year over the Internet. They are starting to arrive slowly.
I got email from Bungie today letting me know that they would be charging my cards and my pre-ordered copy of Myth II would ship out before the end of the year.
Well I have to go back to the text farm, have a good day.
Myth II has gone golden master. This highly anticipated sequel to Myth should be shipping around December 31, as it is now in production. I got a chance to check out the development verions of this game at both E3 and MacWorld.(Here's a write up I did after E3.) I can't wait for its arrival. They will be releasing a demo version this month.
I have two Christmas parties to attend this weekend. One for my office and another for Kate's. I expect that I will be learning Dreamweaver 2.0 during the day as my copies arrived yesterday.
I purchased a couple of Furby's online, and they are arriving today. I will post my experiences with this year's hot toy.
I have an unopened Gold Collector's Edition Zelda Cartridge for the Nintendo 64 that I am looking to sell for $150.00. I have seen the regular cartridge(not collector's) go for over $100 online, so I don't think this price is too high. I will put it on eBay for auction if I don't find a buyer before December 15.
The Bump clubhouse Christmas tree has arrived. We are letting the little guy settle in before we decorate him.
Continued testing of the new MacPac seems to show that it is a very high quality product. I already am getting more use out of my Palm Pro than I have in months.
The Fire Ant has now proven itself to also be a high quality product.
I put a deposit down on the Volkswagon New Beetle of my dreams this morning. Expected arrival date is in February.
My sinus infection continues to plague my concentration.
I downloaded the new MacPac software from Palm Computing's Web site. It is amazingly good. I especially am enjoying its shared menu which sports an easy interface for opening the new desktop software, a quick to do list, and a search engine for finding contacts. It seems really stable on my machine(a G3 MT 266 running Mac OS 8.5) and I plan on bringing it to my home workstation tonight.
I'm still a little under the weather. I think I will be fine by the end of the day.
It never fails with me. I travel and then I get sick.
I've been laid up the last couple of days with kind of sinus flu bug. Been able to play some video games, but not to get a lot of work done. Even small things like going to the store have exhausted me.
I'm back at work this morning, but I'm already tired from just driving in so I may have not made the best decision in coming in at all.
MacWEEK reports that there is a Mac OS 8.5.1 update coming out in December that fixes a bunch of bugs in Mac OS 8.5.
The reports of Bill Gates' testimony in the Java case mirror the experience that the Justice Department had with him in the anit-trust lawsuit. He is openly hostile at times, and can't seem to remember much about anything or to confirm the meanings of simple colloquial phrases.(Mercury News report ). Some genius.
Well I have to try and get some work done before I pass out.
I had a phenomenal Thanksgiving. I spent it with my family in Connecticut, and celebrated my younger brother's 21st birthday in the process. The reconciliation with my family gives me one more thing to be thankful for this year.
I have a lot to be thankful for. In saying so, I am not just giving lip service to the tradition. Every day I wonder how I got so lucky. I get to work at something I love. I have people who love me. It's fantastic.
Now I'm back at work.
My RIO PMP 300 arrived this morning. I won't be able to check it out until tonight, but expect a full writeup either then or tommorrow morning.
Rasterweb has a new Code section . Looks like I might find it useful. It reminds me that I want to add some of my Applescript and Frontier efforts to Bump.
I went with my three brothers, their girlfriends, and Kate to see Enemy of the State I thought it was really good, but not great. I still haven't seen A Bug's Life
I started out using Mosaic as my first browser. It was a few years ago, and I hardly remember those early days of using the net. I remember the change to Netscape only slightly, but I do remember each version change in those early days. We'd check Netscape's FTP server waiting for the new betas. Before I was doing the net as my full time gig. It was special. This marks the end of an era, and rather than resisting, I am going to choose to embrace the change.
Plenty of news coverage of the announcement already.
Update: An enterprising reader has pointed out to me that you can order the Episode 1 poster(single-sided) for less than $20 from the Official Star Wars fan club. They can be reached at 1.800.truefan. Thanks for the heads up Eric!!
It's a shortened week so I won't have too much time for updating, but I will try to get something up every day.
AOL-Netscape deal close is an SJ Mercury article on the impending acquisition of netscape by AOL and Sun Microsystems. Am I the only one who sees this as a bad idea? Partnering would be a good idea, but I'm convinced that this is akin to Pepsi owning Pizza Hut. Other ISP's aren't going to want to fund their competitor's expansion. The offshoot of it will be that Netscape's browser will lose marketshare.
They would have to fundamentally change their strategy because, right now, everything is leveraged off of that browser marketshare. Sun owning server software that runs on Windows NT might not be the best idea in the world either. I sonehow think that they will improve the Solaris version of Enterprise server before the NT version. As you can see, I am very skeptical of this deal. I'm not convinced that its a good thing for anyone in the long run.
I am addicted to eBay . I found the Episode One poster that I have been looking for there, as well as the Japanese Pokemon figurines that I have wanted since Nintendo was showing them off at E3.
Those recent to Bump as readers may not be aware that the second domain I registered(and one that still leads to this site and my mailbox) is yoda.org. I am a Star Wars fiend, and proud of it.
Yesterday, I finally got to see the trailer for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I was blown away, and the if this is any indication of how good the movie will be, they will break the Titanic record.
I am now searching the Web for a copy of the poster . If you know where I can get one, please email me.
Salon Magazine is tracking the flood of trailer news, and Slashdot.org is posting a list of places you can download the trailer off the Web.
My next redesign will include a Phantom Menace page and I will begin to track news from here on out.
Iconfactory has the details of their new icon creation tool, IconBuilder, posted along with a screenshot.
I am in the beginning stages of a new design for this site. new features will include more links to work I have done and a static posting of my resume. I want the site to be more photographically and graphically rich than it is now.
A very talented friend of mine, Mark Delfs, from Albany, NY where I used to live is holding a support drive to get Diammond Multimedia to build application software and an interface for its portable MP3 player, RIO , for the Mac. I already ordered a RIO, but I would love to have Mac software and connectivity for it. He also wrote an article on the subject named MP3 Wars: Blame it on Rio .
We are having our big Thanksgiving lunch at work today.
I'm wearing my brand new glasses. My first pair, and they feel good. I only have to wear them while I'm on the computer(which is very near all of the time), and I see things without any of the strain I had yesterday. Still, it's going to take a little while for me to get used to them.
Sun wins an injunction against Microsoft.(San Jose Mercury news story ) I don't know how I feel about this. If this means we will see Java move back towards being a platform independent programming language then I'm for it. I fear that Microsoft will withdraw its support of the technology, which would make the whole argument a mute point.
I can't believe how fast the weeks have been flying by recently. Seems like I blink and the week is half over.
I finished MedEvil, the Playstation game I was addicted to.
I got the new DJ Q-Bert album, Wave Twisters, and it is really good. He gets great sounds out the turntables, and samples some really strange and diverse things.
Also of note on the music front is Portishead, one of my all time favorites, and their new live album, PNYC. Really good quality live versions of a show at New York City's Roseland(where I've seen a ton of shows). They are backed by a full orchestra. If you aren't familiar, check it out.
I will update again in the early afternoon.
My diet continues. I have made my first goal, and continued three pounds past it. My second goal is still ten pounds away.