Yearly Archives: 2006

Grr, Argh

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I’ve become increasingly unhappy with my Gallery solution. Gallery 2 is feature-rich, yes, but at the cost of being a pain in the ass to use in terms of administrative interface, and customizing it is… well, painful to say the least. All those promises of making it easier to customize than Gallery 1 haven’t really panned out, in my humble opinion. In short, I’m not happy.

So, I’ve spent snippets of free time over the past few months looking at alternatives… most of which suck just as much or more. I found one that I really liked (ZenPhoto), but discovered to my chagrin that it has absolutely NO support for multiple users, which is unfortunately a dealbreaker right now. Reading through their forums, it’s on their possible to-do, but isn’t a high priority (argh!). Razzifrazzin’ sonuva…

So the search continues. I found another lovely app (Tableau) that looks PERFECTLY suited to my needs (including multi user support, huzzah!), but it requires Ruby on Rails, which my current web host doesn’t support. I’m otherwise very happy with FutureQuest, so I’m reluctant to leave them over this, especially since there really aren’t better options right now… if or when I finally do leave FutureQuest, it’ll be because I’m co-locating my own server (probably running OS X 10.x Server, replete with my own jabber and calendar servers), which is currently decidedly outside the realm of cost feasibility.

So, I’m putting the call out: anyone know any nifty gallery solutions? I’m looking for something that is lightweight and easily customizable, but also has the features I need like multi-user support, and will run in a LAMP environment? I’m aware of the ones currently up on OpenSourceCMS already, and am unhappy with the offerings, to be honest. Frankly, it’s this frustration that I think has caused more people to move to collective gallery solutions like Flickr. I really don’t want to go that direction, though, unless there’s no other choice. Damnit, I LIKE being able to host my own stuff.

Sporadic Posts and Why

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You may have noticed that my posting schedule has once again become a fair bit more sporadic than my preferred rate, including a two week hiatus from posting on Applegeeks (need to post there today or tomorrow). There are a few reasons for this, mostly revolving around the fact that I’ve been sequestering myself in various places that aren’t exactly known for their internet accessability. I spent a week at Squam, which was excellent and I already touched upon briefly, and now I’m in Peterborough for the next few weeks, until we close it up at the end of the month. There is no internet at the house, but the bagel shop at the bottom of the hill has free wifi, so I can still do a morning (or in this case, afternoon) email check and update… for now.

You see, I’m planning on sending my laptop in to Apple… again. There is a very disconcerting and loud whine coming from it, especially when the hard drive platter is first spinning up after being turned on or awaking from sleep. NOT GOOD. Also, the keyboard makes an annoying squeak ever since they replaced it earlier in the summer. I’ll still have my desktop (which I bothered to bring down with me), so I can still get my work done, but I do think that tomorrow I’m going to trek out to the Apple Store in Salem and have them look at it again. It’s under warranty, and I really want it to be as ship-shape as possible by the time the warranty ends.

Arr. Other things (how much can I type in the 10 minutes left on the laptop battery?): Canadian Thanksgiving at Squam was delightful, and I had a great time getting to chat with my cousins (hello to any of you reading); I’ve been reading some fascinating interviews with various comic book writers, and really do think that this sounds like a great fit for several of the stories I’d like to tell (above and beyond the already existing comic characters that I’d like to revive). That’s what I think I’m going to focus on for the next week: sinking my teeth into writing some comic scripts.

Anyway, battery is dead, I will update more soon!

Working Title

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So, it’s a few weeks later. I spent a week at Squam, which was excellent, and I got a decent amount of writing and reading done. I’m looking forward to continuing the trend this coming week at Peterborough. The week wrapped up with my heading down to Providence and bringing my friend Claire up for a few days to hang out. It was really fantastic to get a chance to hang out and talk with her after spending a full week in seclusion, and she seemed to really enjoy the general vibe of Squam. She also got a chance to meet Mike and Mariah, who came up Saturday night and hung out for most of Sunday, as Mariah was shipping off to basic on Monday.

Dropped her off Monday night back in Providence, and headed back north to Vermont. I’ve spent most of the rest of the week futzing with things and doing general update errands and chores (pay bills, etc). I’m hoping to finish up the last of those on Monday, so I can head off to Peterborough by Tuesday or Wednesday. This weekend, I went down to Carver, Mass, and went to King Richard’s Faire, which is a large renaissance faire, where my friend Andrea lives and works. While we’d made plans to head down separately, apparently several of the RISD crew decided to head to that faire on the same day, and once I found that out, I chatted with Andrea who was kind enough to provide free passes for them. It also made it nice to be able to wander around and be sociable, and hopefully cross-pollinate friends a bit, as I think they’d all really get along, and Carver isn’t that far from Providence.

It’s made for some long days, and I must admit I’m pretty worn out/tired, and looking forward to going back into seclusion for a while. I did want to update people a little bit about what’s been going on. All my computer doodads are still for sale, and I’m about at the point where I’m going to list them on eBay, because due to being in the right place at the right time for a good deal, I ended up buying the new machine before actually selling the old ones. While this is good in my ability to just transfer my data over from the old machine to the new one, it does mean that I need to act quickly on selling the old stuff so I can pay the credit card bill. So, please, if you know anyone who might be interested in any of it (see last post), let me know ASAP.

And Now

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Sometimes it’s more difficult to start a post than it is to write the rest of it.  Why is it that we have so much with starting things and ending things?  Once we’re into it, we can just glide along, but the wrappers on either side, man they’re tough.

When last we visited these hallowed electrons, I was in Providence, it was morning, and we were leading into a camping trip in Maine.  Well, the trip to Maine was excellent.  I really had a great time, wandering around, building campfires, taking the kayak out, and having some really excellent conversations with people.  I kind of wish I’d been able to bring Freya with me, as since it’s an island, she would have been able to run freely without worrying about her getting into TOO much trouble.  All told, there were eight of us: Kate, Andrew, Casey, Claire, Erica, Kelly, Mary, and myself.  Damn good times.

When we got back from Maine, Erica and I broke up.  This was my decision, and for my own needs and reasons.  It’s something I’d been giving a LOT of thought about, and decided it wouldn’t make sense to drag it out further, and that it would be best to do it in person.  It’s not because of anything either of us did wrong, and whoever she dates next is going to be a damned lucky fellow, because she’s fabulous.  It was just time to end it — I need to be single for a while, to re-center myself and get into a place that works for me.  I always kind of felt like it was new-agey bullshit when I heard reasons like that, but it’s not, and I’m not sure I can explain why to those who haven’t already gone through it.  I’m working on salvaging friends out of it, including Erica.  I came to really care about the people down there, and value them as friends, so I sincerely hope this doesn’t cause any rifts or distancing (or at the very least, none that are insurmountable).

On Saturday, I went to my former roommates’ (Kate and Andy) wedding, which was an absolute blast.  I took gobs of photos (which I still need to burn to DVD, dangit), and the bride and groom looked fantastic.  The theme of the wedding was 1920s-30s, and so there were plenty of people dressed out in vintage suits that really made the whole event feel classic.  There were pleasant conversations happening all around the space, and I think everyone was really charged to have a great time.  The wedding was at 5, but festivities carried on well into the night, with the band leaving around 11, and people continuing to hang out after that.  I took off shortly after the band left, and dropped my brother off in Montpelier before heading south to the Upper Valley.  I didn’t get home until around 1-1:30, at which point I was bushed and went straight to sleep.  Sunday, I woke up and went back north to Montpelier, to help my brother pack and move his things out of the house, since he’s taken that position down in DC.  (In case you were wondering why I drove back down rather than simply crash on a couch, I forgot to bring a change of clothes and didn’t want to pack and lug boxes in a dry clean only suit.)

Since then, most of my days have been occupied with getting my affairs in order for disappearing for a while to Squam and Peterborough; paying bills, picking up sundry items, digging items I want to bring out of packed boxes, et cetera.  Other than that, I’ve been spending time with my parents and hanging out with friends, and in general trying to keep things low key.  I’m really looking forward to this time alone (that said, if you want to visit for a day or two, as long as you want it low key, I’m willing to share the space).  It feels really good to have a set direction and plan with all this: WRITE!  Build some inertia with my writing, and if things start looking positive in that general direction (writing is a fairly broad category), run with it.  If that doesn’t work out (knock wood), I already have plans on what to try next, most of which involve getting a crap job and studying my ass off in one of several subjects.  It just feels good to have a direction with all this.

I’ll wrap things up with a quick note that I am selling a plethora of technological gadgetry.  I’m selling off both monitors (19″ and 22″, prices negotiable), a spare graphics card (X700), my vaio desktop (PCV-770, upgraded), aaaand my PowerMac G5 tower.  I’m reluctant to let that last one go, but the sad reality is that I would be better served for my purposes in reducing my overall office footprint as much as I can, and I can get equivalent power out of a fully specced 24″ iMac (which I can afford if I sell all the things I listed).  I also decided this evening to additionally sell my Palm Tungsten T (yes, the original Tungsten), with cradle, for $75.  If you’re interested, let me know.

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

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It’s fairly rare that I write a post in the morning, mostly because I’m generally fairly nocturnal, and as such don’t do much of anything in the morning. That said, I’m down in Providence at the moment, and didn’t really feel like sleeping anymore, for whatever reason. So rather than wake anyone up, I crept out of the bed, showered, and am sitting in the kitchen on my computer, killing time until others wake up or arrive. The flaw, of course, is that the others are nocturnal too, and it could well be hours before they’re awake.

I don’t really have a lot to say, so I suppose this is a bit of a nothing post, but it seemed like the thing to do, and here I am. In relation to my previous post’s “secret project”, that would be that I’m now guest-blogging over at Applegeeks, writing for a new section they’ve added about Apple-related chatter. It’s not a pay gig, but it still feels really nice to be invited to do such a thing, and I definitely look forward to continuing. For now, I’m trying to do a new post each week discussing a different Mac developer as a regular thing, and probably posting other things on a more sporadic basis. Of course, I’m going to need to “write ahead” a bit to deal with the time I’m taking off to get some OTHER writing done, but that’s fine.

It’s interesting watching the change in light as the morning has progressed. The early morning light was delightful and refreshing, and then quickly became stronger, with sharply contrasted shadows on the buildings. The sky was mostly sunny with the occasional tuft of clouds, though in traditional weathergod mode, as my mood darkened, it clouded over. (I’m dealing with some bank stupidity involving an eaten ATM card at the moment, which my father is graciously helping facilitate while I’m away.) As I work to regain my composure and relax, it’s started to get sunny again.

I realize that the likelihood of my actually affecting the weather in a noticeable fashion is relatively small, but that is the nature of magic — it stems from belief, and from the conundrum that if you observe a connection between two things that plausibly shouldn’t have a connection, there is a possibility (however slight) that they are in fact actually connected somehow. The main difference between magic and science is that science covers the ones we’ve already managed to explain. And besides, it’s fun to think I’m altering the weather through my mood. It’s worth noting that the most mild and sunny winter on record for Seattle was the winter that my brother and I were both in Seattle and I was in generally good, mellow spirits.

Gah, I’d really like to go downstairs for a cup of coffee, but I wouldn’t be able to get back in the building without waking someone else up.

Connectivity

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I’ve largely finished moving out of the house in Montpelier, with my belongings (and myself) moving down to my parents’ house for the time being. This really isn’t that bad, as I get along with my parents rather well, and we’re all aware that it will be temporary, which takes a lot of the stress off (though it still remains to be seen exactly how temporary). The one major flaw with living there is that they have no broadband, and even their dialup is noisy and slow. This is through no fault of their own: they’ve kept their hardware up to date and internal lines clear. It all comes down to the fact that the phone company isn’t willing to lay new cable, nor add a station to a pre-existing box to add DSL capability further out of town. Also, the cable company continues to give a song and dance about “maybe” running cable out there “soon” (which is what they’ve been saying for 20 years), so that’s out as an option. There is wireless broadband in the area, but there are a few hills in the way of the line-of-sight needed to get there. Cellular based broadband (EVDO and the like) MAY work, assuming that our somewhat sketchy reception at the house is enough and that the towers serving it are upgraded to handle it… awful big investment for something that may not work. Basically, the choices are either pay an exorbitant amount of me getting a T1 or partial T1 installed, move, or suck it up on the 56k dialup service that is consistently lucky to hit 28.8 (which is “high enough” according to the letter of the law that the phone company will do nothing about the line noise, since it’s not seriously affecting voice communication).

So, instead I’m sitting in my car, in Hanover, listening to my iPod on my car stereo, getting some writing done and downloading a few updates and apps I wanted/needed for some projects. Normally I would be sitting out in front of Collis, but it’s too cold and rainy. Otherwise, I’d be sitting inside the Hopkins Center and using the wireless there, but that’s closed up tight for Labor Day weekend (as is the interior of Collis). But hey, my car is pretty comfy, and it’s nice being able to listen to my own music.

Tomorrow, I pack up my bags and head south to Rhode Island, where Erica and her friends are gearing up for the new school year, and planning a big camping trip up in Maine, which I will be accompanying them on. (And yes, I do consider them my friends too, but I know them through Erica and they were her friends first, so…) It should be a good time rain or shine, and it will be nice to see them all again (many of whom I haven’t seen since the spring). One of my secret projects should be coming up tomorrow as well, so hopefully I’ll have time to post about that once it’s done.

Y’know, modular apps is kind of neat in that when you update an application, you just drop the new application into the directory and it replaces the old one. That said, I do kind of miss when an updater actually modified the pre-existing app. They were smaller. I’m most of the way through an 80mb download, and that is frankly a small package compared to some. it gets frustrating killing time waiting for things to download (hey, news to companies out there: not all of us have an OC3 pipe!). But then, when else would we write all our blog posts?

Back in Dobra

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For those who are recent additions to the readership, Dobra is a tea house in Burlington, VT, just off Church Street. It’s the sort of place that serves their tea loose leaf, and their menu is book-length, filled with anecdotes about where they found this or that drink. You sit and read the book while relaxing music plays in the background, and when you’re ready, you ring a small bell, and they come and take your order. The entire experience is relaxing and meditative… and they have free wireless, so it’s a definite win. I would probably spend far more time here if I lived closer, but at this point I rarely make my way up to Burlington.

It just seemed appropriate today, for whatever reason. The meditation of thinking over a cup of fresh tea (Bai Mu Dan for those curious) is sometimes an invaluable one. There’s a lot of thinking to be done. As I’m sure many of you can attest, I’m a bit of a scattered individual. I divide my time into irrelevance between passions for games and art and the web and programming and speculative fiction and philosophy and writing and cartoons and music. Some I’ve managed to relegate to something which I enjoy passively, like music, and reading, whereas others still occupy central facets of my attention, like art of several types, and writing, and to some extent programming. All of these are things that if I dedicated myself to, I could refine my abilities and do for the rest of my life (or certainly for a while), and yet because there are so many, I’m left so scattered that I don’t really dedicate enough of myself to any of them. This is a problem, and has garnered quite a bit of thought that i’m trying to process.

Ultimately, I’m simply going to have to narrow things down a bit and focus on one or two, if only for long enough to gain a greater mastery of them than I have so far. Programming is something that frustrates me but attracts me at the same time. Every time I think I’m done with it (for a while anyway), something comes along that makes me think that maybe it’ll be different this time and that I should give it another shot (this time, it was watching the Ruby on Rails videos, which my friend Duncan showed me). There is a great deal of appeal, here: a knowledgeable programmer can effectively work in a mercenary fashion, or work for themselves, and there is in fact an element of creative “making” involved. That said, it’s the one that I’m arguably the least qualified for: my math skills, while adequate, were never all THAT stellar, and when getting into more complex stuff, my programming suffers for it. This could be overcome with diligence, but for now at least, it’s probably a sign that I should move on to other things.

So what next: I love art, I love talking about it, I love viewing it, I love participating in it, and I love making it. But in terms of many forms of traditional art, I have a great distance to go in terms of technical growth before I’d really be comfortable with it. Photography is the possible exception to this, however the kind of photography I feel I’m best at and most prefer doing is an extremely unsalable one. While this shouldn’t put me off from doing it as a career, for now at least, it does. I will likely continue to do photography in my spare time, but I do not think I’m going to actively pursue it or the mastery of it right now. I am mercenary enough, and (at the risk of sounding like I’m tooting my own horn), savvy enough that I could probably do alright doing photography as a career, it would not be the type of photography that is satisfying to me, nor what I feel I do as well as I’d like (it is this process that I would be practicing and refining) if I were to be charging someone.

The web: while there are people who are making good money as A-list bloggers, it is actually an incredibly small percentage, and I don’t feel the content that I write necessarily fits a fiscally rewarding model (especially these long rambly posts about nothing that have a light whiff of angst). But there’s more ways to make money on the web than that, like, say, doing web designs and maintenance for others. I feel that I have a fairly clear and solid design aesthetic (whether you like it or not is another matter), and once established, I could probably do it reasonably well. In fact, regardless of what else I do, I’ll probably put myself out there in this capacity, though just how much may vary. I’ve already got a rapidly growing list of projects I’m helping people with, in addition to the work I’ve done on my own site and Erica’s portfolio site. (Especially since some are still tentative, I’m not going to elaborate on these projects. In fairness, as they come to fruition, I’ll post about them.)

This all leads up to the one that I’m at least tentatively committing to working on for the next several months (and longer if it goes well): writing. What exactly this entails, I’m not precisely clear on. I know that I want to take several weeks to go into a self-imposed solitary to focus on getting somewhere with one of about a dozen ideas at this point. Some are fiction, meant for short stories, novellas, novels, and also game scripts, and comic scripts. Others are essays and reviews of games and books and music. Others still are grander ideas, where what I’m writing is samples and a proposal, and applying to magazines and papers as a columnist. All of which take time and determination and skills that range from prepared to rusty to untrained and needing attention. Why did I pick writing? Because it’s solitary, independent, and can be done anywhere with the materials at hand, all of which are things that are really important to me right now.

I feel a bit like a broken record, here. But it remains present in my thoughts, and each time I write about it, I keep hoping that by writing it out, I’ll stop dwelling on it all. Hasn’t worked yet. In the next week or so, however, I’ll (theoretically) be finished moving, which is one less block weighing on me, and closer to being able to act on my intent.

Moving, Stretched

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I’ve been back from Peterborough for a few days now, but I’m just now getting around to posting.  More on why in a moment, but first, a recap on the weekend: Thursday, I left Montpelier and headed to my parents house, where I collected Freya before proceeding down to Peterborough.  It was really great seeing my cousins again, and I know Freya had an absolute ball playing with the other dogs all weekend.  As seems to be tradition, we all packed off to the Peterborough Players on Friday night, where we saw a rather pleasant rendition of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale. Saturday was spent mostly in the annual meeting, which I think went well, especially considering how much material we had to cover.  After all that wrapped up, we joined the larger Morison clan for a barbeque up by the pond, followed by dessert at the Brick House (which I think is technically called Highland Terrace, but we’ve always called it the brick house).  These were all highly extended cousins (3rd cousins?  4th?), so I hadn’t really ever had much of an opportunity to get to know many of them, a fact I was happily able to remedy at least a little.  To any of you who might be now reading the blog: “Hi!”

Dessert at the brick house was interesting; despite the family connection to the house, this was only the second time in memory that I’ve been inside it.  It’s really quite swank, and the murals inside were spectacular.  I ended up asking one of the older generation about it, and found out that they were painted by a fellow named Otto E. Farhm, back in the 1930s.  Otto had recently immigrated to the US, and set up shop as a house painter in the Peterborough area, but had previously been trained as a painter by the Norwegian Royal Academy of Arts.  When this was discovered, he was quickly commissioned to do murals in several rooms, which have largely survived into the modern day with only a little retouching.  Really neat stuff.

Sunday was quite a bit quieter, spending most of the morning preparing for a reception to be held at the Yellow House after the interment service of great uncle Bill.  The interment itself was subdued and tasteful, his urn buried in the family plot beside his wife Abby.  I departed directly from there.  I hope everyone enjoyed the reception after, however.

Overall, it was a really good weekend, but tiring, and there was more than one occasion where I was about “people’d” out and ready to go hide in a darkened room for a while.  Maybe it’s just a passing thing, but I have found that my capacity for socialization has dwindled markedly in the past year.  Prepping myself to become a hermit, it seems like.

As for what’s kept me from posting this sooner: I’ve been in the process of packing up all my worldly belongings in order to move… somewhere.  Still not entirely sure where, yet.  For now, my belongings are going into my parents house, until I figure out where I’m going next (and how I’m going to afford such).  I started packing boxes and moving them down last week, and have continued to do so this week.  I’ve been keeping it pretty mellow, basically filling the back seat of my car each day and taking it down.  I’m going to probably need to rent a van for a day when the time comes, however, in order to move my furniture.

Of course, given my somewhat scattered nature, I let myself get distracted yesterday afternoon looking at web related foo for several projects I’m either actively or tentatively working on.  Which of course led to me deciding it was high time to actually update Critical Games to use my logo (illustration by Erica Henderson, logo implementation by Nabil Maynard), which I’ve been using on my business cards for months.  (And yes, I’m well aware of the humor over the fact that I have business cards for a business that is currently not much more than a name and an idea.)  Please, check out the new design and let me know what you think.

Real Post

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I can’t speak for anyone else on this matter. Perhaps others don’t have this issue. For me, however, I find myself often stuck in a position of desperately wanting company but simultaneously not wanting to deal with anyone. These feelings are also often accompanied by a desire to make a social rapport with someone — anyone, a friend, the waiter, random pedestrians, you name it — and having efforts to achieve that fail miserably. It’s happened to me dozens and dozens of times, and I STILL don’t know whether it’s just me perceiving a failure (your own worst critic and all), or if there really are times where I really am just completely disfunctional. As I’m sure the reader has surmised, today was one of these days. I found myself desperately trying to make a connection and kept on feeling more and more disconnected for it. And it’s no one’s fault but my own for creating a need that relies on the energy and presence of others, who may be quite busy and unable to participate even if they had the time. And of course, I’m just as guilty of shutting others out in much the same way, over the years. Things come up, or I simply don’t have the energy to devote to an in depth conversation, but the other side wants to dive in, even needs to dive in. The feeling of a real rapport with someone is addictive.

I’m sure all of this isn’t helped by the fact that I was off in my room for most of the day, since for the next week or so, I am without my laptop. There were a number of little niggling things that were making me uneasy, and then two nights ago it started making a whining noise, so I decided enough was enough, backed up my user directory, and drove it down to the Apple Store in Rockingham Park to get it serviced (still under warranty thank god). The Mac Genius there was moving about a mile a minute the entire time we were there, and it’s pretty clear he’d been that way since he got on shift. Looking at their listings on the Apple jobs site, they’re understaffed, and really should have had a second Genius on to help lighten the load (the wait time was over 2 hours when we got there… we managed to slide in during a cancelled reservation after about an hour). They’re saying 5 to 7 days, but it’s still really unfortunate timing, since I’m about to head to Peterborough for the annual meeting, and would have liked to have it for then. Still, better to have it fixed and ship-shape, I suppose.

I’ve been feeling pretty dysfunctional lately, in a really strange way. In terms of basic function, I’m doing alright, even getting up at reasonable hours (assuming I’m not going to bed at 3am, of course), exercising at least a little, eating moderately alright, and in general trying to get what I need to do done. It’s more intangible than that: I feel dysfunctional on a creative and intellectual level. I feel like I’m just repeating the same things over and over, telling and retelling the same stories and anecdotes, and not growing or deepening as an individual. I feel boring, and that I’m boring other people with my lack of growth and insights. I’m feeling mired in the present and the mundane and that it’s become the centerpiece of my conversations… rather than discussing some idea with passion and zest, I talk about how my car was broken into, and my computer needs fixing, and all this other mundane shit that doesn’t even fucking matter in anything close to a grand sense. (Well, beyond that everything and everyone matters within the cosmic consciousness.) It makes me feel like I’m wasting the time of others as well as myself, and bring nothing worth offering to the table in relationships with others who have kept that passion and honed their talents and intellect. Feh.