January 2004 Archives

Yeah, I'm scrounging for material. I tried to be accurate by excluding countries where I stopped over for a couple hours at the airport, so I left out France, UK, Holland, Malawi, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. You can create your own visited country map, too. Yay!

Normally this would go in the Linkathon, but this is something special.

""For this creative hard work I bless you from my heart." Thus spake Pope John Paul II to breakdancers performing at the Vatican.

The Onion couldn't come up with this if they tried. Well, ok, they could, but still.

This is for, Nathan. No one else click on it.

So it seems to me that this whole "no-caffeine" thing is losing its sheen. While Nathan is awfully excited about it (especially when he sees me with a cup of naturally caffeine-free tea), many other people are indifferent, as it's become quite evident that we're too stubborn to lose to the other person. With that in mind, I propose that Nathan and I resolve this issue. I had many ideas about how to do this, but have narrowed them down to the three most feasible ones.

1. Raise the stakes. Specifically, I propose Nathan and I remove meat from our diet. If that goes on for a while, we'd escalate to a diet consisting solely of limp and flavorless steamed vegetables with rainwater.
2. Mutual cessation of hostilities. Nathan and I each agree to end this tragic conflict, and buy each other coffee for a week as a gesture of renewed cooperation and reconciliation.
3. Grudge match to the death. Well, I haven't totally thought this one out yet, but I know I want something that involves a steel cage, tigers, and colossal robots with laser death rays. All on Pay-Per-View.

Needless to say, after this afternoon's game I'm suddenly a Panthers fan. How exactly did I react to the debacle, you ask? With the magic of modern technology, I've attempted to recreate my reactions to the last two minutes of the 2004 AFC Championship game.

How come all the pranks and jokes about these caffeine things are going his way? What, you think I can't handle it? That I'll break or something? I can't win because Nathan was under more pressure than I was...that would be giving a football team a championship because they have a 12-0 record against soft teams. No, it doesn't work in the BCS (or so they tell us), and it certainly will not work in the CAS (Caffeine Abstention Series).

So send them my way...the pranks, the jokes, the drink of coffee before my deranged, blood-shot eyes. We'll see who laughs last.

Some people think that my devotion to fantasy football turns me into something of a mercenary fan, rooting for whoever happens to be on my team. I take issue with this baseless accusation. Granted, on any given Sunday afternoon you'll probably find me a nervous wreck in front of the TV and at NFL.com, trying to decide if I should cheer or cry after one of my defensive backs picks off my quarterback.

The playoffs, however, are a different story. I'm always slightly partial to the local favorites (Niners and Raiders), but this year they're not in the playoffs.

So who to root for? I'm always a sucker for the Nancy Kerrigan "Human Interest" Award team (this year, the Packers, with quarterback Brett Favre putting on a gutsy performance during a wild-card game days after his father's death) or the Eddie the Eagle "What are they doing here?" Award team (the Panthers). Every year, though, I consistently cheer for the Titans, whom I became an instant fan of after the "Music City Miracle". Needless to say, I was crushed when they came an agonizing yard short of a championship in that year's Super Bowl. Not surprisingly, I was writhing and whining like a baby a few moments ago when they were eliminated from the playoffs by the New England Patriots.

So now, I'm a Colts fan. I love the way Peyton Manning leads the team with confidence and maturity. I love how Marvin Harrison quietly hands the ball off to referees after touchdowns, speaking louder than the Terrell Owens and Chad Johnsons of the world with his classiness and consistently dominant performances. And I love the sheer effortless beauty that is a Manning-Harrison touchdown, which, along with a Super Bowl, will guarantee both players a place in the Hall of Fame.

And of course, I want them to pummel the Patriots for knocking off my Titans.

I was at Hoa Viet tonight with my buddy Joel. We'd slipped in only a half hour before they closed and were giving our order to the waiter. Joel ordered pho, the house specialty. After deliberating over the menu, I went with my usual roast duck over rice.

"Could we have some tea, too?" Joel asked the waiter.

"Uh huh," the man replied, scribbling down our order. He looked up at me. "Tea for two?"

I hesitated for a second, but figured the caffeine wouldn't keep me up.

"Sure."

Joel and I chatted before the waiter returned with a steel teapot, two china cups, and a plate of bean sprouts and greens to go with the pho. After Joel poured himself a cup, I poured one also, watching the hot green tea splash and swish into the white china. Steam rose quickly from the cup, carrying with it the distinct aroma of jasmine. I waited for the little bits of green tea leaf to float to the bottom before reaching for the cup.

I brought it to my nose, slowly closing my eyes and taking in the aroma. I opened my eyes quickly, frowning and putting the cup down. Something wasn't right. I looked over at the condiments tray on our table, and noted with concern that there wasn't any sugar. Oh well.

Again, I lifted the cup, this time to my mouth. I tipped it, watching the tea leaves sink to the corner, again savoring the distinct aroma. I opened my mouth, tasted the warm steam wafting inside, brought my lips just millimeters from the curved rim…

My eyes flew open. "Wait."

Joel looked at me. "What?"

"This probably has caffeine in it. I can't drink this," I said, putting the cup down. "I can't drink it."

Joel gave me a quizzical look. I started laughing, somewhat pained that I just paid for tea I can't drink, but also quite relieved that I'd caught myself at the last moment. Not to mention a little flabbergasted at how close I'd come to being Nathan's personal barista.

You came close, Nathan. But you shall not celebrate your victory over me, tonight or ever.

7:30PM Update:

Erelong, I shall set my face, aye, my very soul, spirit, and essence, in stalwart opposition to the Siren of the Arabica that does even now beckon me to near-certain defeat with her venomous airs.

Aye, I shall enter the very jaws of the beast herself, my greatest challenge thus far.

Lo, adversity hews poets of even the meanest among us.

12:25PM Update:

Tormentress: want to go out to coffee?
Tormentress: ha ha ha ha
Tormentress: you can't!
Tormentress: Sorry, I had the irresistable urge to tease you

Such is my lot in life.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

The more you avoid thinking about her, the more you do. I woke up at 4 in the morning. Sluggish, bleary-eyed, I could only think of her. But no, I must not give in. I couldn't get back to sleep.

Later, much later, I turn on the TV. "Long-term coffee consumption significantly reduces type 2 diabetes risk" the newsman says. I quickly turn the TV off. Even television knows her, knows the health benefits.

12 hours in, and it's already a struggle.

The Players: Just you and me, Nathan.

The Game: Who can go the longest without drinking a caffeinated beverage.* I don't care what classes you're taking.

The Stakes: The loser (who will be you) must purchase the winner a caffeinated beverage every day for a week. And of course the loser must deal with the consequences of his humiliating defeat.

So…are you man enough?

*UPDATE*: At 9:14PM, on January 5, 2004, one Nathan Taylor accepted the challenge. May the best man win.

*How about excepting caffeine on Sunday immediately before church services?

1/11 Update: I reverted to the non-image titles, since the FIR images weren't appearing in Opera, my browser of choice, and I wasn't in the mood to deal with it.

Warning: This will be a very boring entry to most of you.

I've implemented (to some degree) one of the doodads I was talking about in my previous entry.

I've always liked the look of Web-Graphics, especially their bold use of color and images in their section titles. I always wanted to use a similar titling technique on my site, but for each entry title.

Obviously, going into Photoshop and creating a new title every time I posted would be far more effort than it was worth, so I was quite pleased to discover the PHP's GD library, which allows for scripts that generate images on the fly.

After a couple false starts, I created a script that generates an image based on an input string, rendering the string with Franklin Gothic Book. The script also strips out extra slashes inserted by PHP.

Using Fahrner Image Replacement in title tags' style attributes, I ran into an odd bug in which only one title would display. I never quite figured out what went wrong, but worked around it with a little help from Movable Type, the blogging system i use.

I created a new template for a stylesheet, called titles.css. Inside, I added the following code:


<MTEntries lastn="10">
#<$MTEntryID$> {
background: url(gdtest.php?string=<$MTEntryTitle$>) top left no-repeat;
}
</MTEntries>
</code>


Basically, it uses each entry's unique Movable Type ID as a CSS id as well, and specifies the background image as my GD script, with the entry title as the input string. Then, in my main template, I specified each entry's id as their Movable Type ID. This worked out perfectly…mostly. As you can see two entries below this one, excessive punctuation seems to confuse the GD script. Still working on a bug fix.

There's also another intangible here: why did I choose a font as boring as Franklin Gothic Book?

So you all probably noticed that things are looking a little different around here, and that they're not quite done. This layout is still very much a WIP, so hopefully you should see more things taking shape in the next few days. Or weeks. Probably weeks.

Among other things, I still have to fix some doodads in the stylesheets, and I wanna goof around with PHP's GD library to start generating dynamic images.

Not everything is quite working yet, and I know I've broken about a half billion links and other such things. So tread carefully and wear a hard hat at all times on the premises.

Happy New Year!