It recently came to my attention that there's a little more than two months till my birthday (that would be May 2nd), and many of you no doubt are scrambling to get me a gift, what with only 65 shopping days left. In an effort to be more accomodating to my beloved readership (both of you!), I've made my Amazon.com Wish List conveniently available for your perusal. No, please, no need to thank me.
February 2004 Archives
Those who know, do. Those who don't, probably will very soon.
For those of you who care (and as a reminder to myself), here's my schedule for Spring 2004.
This is an audience participation entry, folks. I have a couple of questions, and was wondering if you could leave some insight in the comments.
- What is your system (or lack thereof) of staying organized? In particular, I'm interested in how you remember appointments and maintain "To Do" lists.
- Why do you use your current system? Is there anything that you think you'd like to change to make more effective?
- Do you use your computer or an electronic device to keep organized? How so?
Yes, these are fairly directed questions, and yes, I do have something up my sleeve. That's all I'll say for now.
I've got my CD player looping "Journey to the Line."
I woke up at 3:30 this morning. I lay in bed, staring at the red digits of my alarm clock, my mind completely blank. I knew trying to fall asleep again would be a pointless effort, so it wasn't long before I'd turned on the computer and surfed over to CIA World Factbook to memorize former Soviet republics.
The regional College Bowl tournament I'm competing in today wasn't what woke me up—or at least, I'd like to think it wasn't. It certainly wasn't the first thing on my mind. Nonetheless, it lurked in the back of my mind all day as it had for over two months, but now it was nearer, more tangible…almost menacing.
Journey to the Line is almost a soundtrack as I type this. Check-in for the tournament is in fifteen minutes, and I can already feel the tension starting to swell inside me. It's appropriate that I'm listening to music—College Bowl seems to trigger many of the same instincts that I had while running track, and listening to music was part of my pre-race ritual. People have different ways of getting into "the zone"— mine was to zone out. The right music separates me from my environment, leaving me alone with my thoughts, helping me to focus on the race and not the nervousness I feel inside.
I don't know where the nervousness is from. It's not so much worry as it is excitement and anticipation. The reaction is very physical: I can feel the spot right above my stomach tingle, my fingers are cold. It even triggers old habits from track: I roll my neck from side to side and keep feeling the urge to loosen up my muscles.
All my thoughts go back to the moment. In track it was the start: closing my eyes, waiting for the gun, the sudden rush of adrenaline, the onslaught of instinct—push, push, push, drive, drive, drive—focusing on the thrill of the moment. For College Bowl, it's almost ethereal: words, clues, and hunches drift around me like threads in an impenetrable fog. Then I recognize a form, an answer, and even before my brain registers what's going on, I feel an electricity racedown my arm, through my hand, to my thumb. The buzzer sounds, I have a moment to collect those threads together into something coherent. It's as if the all the mistakes, triumphs, and practice from the past two months all coalesce into one pure moment focused on the buzzer. I must wield it with speed and accuracy. But first, I must learn to hold it in stillness.
I cannot believe I just quoted Crouching Tiger.
As you've probably noticed, the Flash thingy up there now has a new streaming audio player that I whipped up last night. There have been a number of things I've wanted to toy with in Flash, especially in terms of good motion design principles and Actionscript, and that little project gave me the opportunity to do so.
Needless to say, it's still a work in progress—in fact, launching it right now is probably too premature. A lot of functionality isn't there yet, so I'll be adding features as time allows. For those of you who are gonna go ahead and tinker with it, here are a few of the caveats:
- Currently, only the first two songs work. All songs are up—knock yourself out.
- There's a pause at the beginning of the first song. If you don't hear anything right away, wait a few seconds.
- The streams should start fairly quickly. If you're on a dial-up modem, I'm very interested in knowing how quickly. Leave a comment to let me know.
- The list of songs available is not a playlist. Once a song finishes, it'll just loop. This is intentional. If someone's in the mood for some soothing Miles Davis, I don't want them to suddenly be surprised by hardcore dance.
- There's no stop button yet. In the meantime, clicking on any other song in the list will stop the current song. Stop button added!
Feel free to leave feedback, criticism, and playlist requests in the comments.
I just found something beautiful: a previously unknown coupon for a free pint of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, nestled between essays from 10th grade and chemistry quizzes from 2001.
So I just noticed my Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer had some modifications…
That's real cute, guys.
To the person who insists that the black PT Cruiser looks like a hearst (and who I don't think reads this site, but still):
Having seen one today, I must concede that you are correct.
The redesign of my company's site is finally live, after several months of development for the template and about a month of content transfer. If you've never visited the site before, it won't be too hard to tell the difference, as I haven't moved many sections over to the new design yet. I want to write up more about what exactly went into it, but I don't have time right now. Suffice it to say, the site:
- Is mostly compliant with XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0 compliant
- Is more accessible to users with disabilities (although there's always room for improvement)
- has much more streamlined code, with page weight cut by as much as 75% in places
More about that later. By the way, the whole caffeine thing is over, too.
