Category Archives: Site Archives

Nadreck v4

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The site redesign is in.

I decided to buckle down and finish the site redesign tonight. As you can see, it’s about 90% functional (and if you can’t, clear your cache and reload, you’re probably using a cached stylesheet).

– Navigation is functioning.
– Layout is mostly functioning (in the gallery, I’m happy with the index page, less happy with the per-entry layout).
– I still need to make the links page (shouldn’t be hard, just haven’t done it yet).
– The search page still needs the new layout applied to it.. The comment section, too.

I’d appreciate feedback on the design, even if it’s just a “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” I’m going to try and finish up the last few things tomorrow sometime, so in theory the few things I’ve broken will be working again by the beginning of next week.

Hope you enjoy the redesign!

Ebb and Flow

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Forgive me if this post is a bit sporadic.

Barring the necessities of breathing, eating, drinking, et cetera, I have done five things in the past two days. I went to my chiropractor appointment this morning, which is one of those five things, and is the one I don’t plan to talk about further (not that it was bad, so much as that it was a non-event).

I have, in fact, been working on my schoolwork, at least a little bit each day. I’ve been reading through the Kitab-i-Aqdas, and feeling very sluggardly about my progress. We’ll see if I kick up the pace some more in the next few days. Something that is interesting about the Aqdas is that (after the introductory remarks), a great deal of the first part of the book is updates to the Laws of God declared by previous dispensations. I don’t know why, but I do find this somewhat humorous, looking back at some of the things that had been forbidden previously. Less humorous but interesting is the part where he addresses the leaders of various countries, and pretty much foretells World War I.

I’ve also been working on getting the site redesign ready for a smooth transition. If I stay on task, it should be ready by the end of the week, like I said before. Basically, what’s been keeping me is the minor variations that I have between the different sections. For instance, the visual gallery is currently set up to show 2, sometimes even 3 images across, assuming they were all posted on the same day. Also, the layout of the archives is slightly different, so I need to make sure I don’t break anything when I implement things there.
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Big Changes Coming

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Designing (or in this case, REdesigning) a website is a process, much like designing anything else. There is the brainstorming phase, then the process of fleshing out a concept you like. Once you’ve got an idea pretty squarely in your head, the process of creating a mockup, creating a one or two page mini-implementation just to see if the concept works in practice, and to refine the little things that give a site polish. Then comes the task of implementing the changes. If you’ve done your homework, then the implementation should be relatively easy. Otherwise, it becomes an arduous task.

Well, brainstorming is complete, and mockup is complete. I’m implementing the changes on my local machine first, at which point it will be a very easy, smooth, and quick transition. It might be an unrealistic expectation, but I plan to have it implemented by the end of the week.

A temporary link to a static (non-working) mockup is here.

Travel Music

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America, by Simon and Garfunkel.
Road Trippin’, by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Take Me With You, by Morphine
Sleep Alone, by Moby
Thela Hun Ginjeet, by King Crimson
Life is a Long Song, by Jethro Tull
Postcard Day, Ian Anderson
Ride Across the River, by Dire Straits
Space Oddity, by David Bowie
Five Years, by David Bowie
#34, by Dave Matthews Band
Where Do I Begin, by The Chemical Brothers
No Distance Left to Run, by Blur

Please, add your favorite “travel music” to the list. Feel free to argue some of my choices, too.

Salvete

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I received an interesting email from my friend Randy today (no, not RK). He’s apparently applying to JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching program) to teach English in rural Japan for a year, and wanted second opinions on his statement of purpose. This is a program I’ve always been intruiged by (I’d love to go to Japan for a year), so I really hope he gets the position.

Reading over his statement, it really got me thinking about what my own purpose is. It is often easy to lose track of your goals amidst the chaos and little deaths of day to day living, and sometimes you just need a swift spiritual kick to the head to get back into the swing of things.
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Head of Radios

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So, I still don’t think I’ll get to post tomorrow, but hey, I’ve got some time right now, I’ll post a second today, and balance it that way. (I could also cheat and date my post for tomorrow, but I don’t like doing that.)

I seem to be talking about music lately, and I really see no reason to stop any time soon. I’ve already at least briefly touched upon King Crimson, one of my favorite bands; what better time than now to touch upon one of my other favorite groups, Radiohead?

I’ve reached the Radiohead portion of my music collection, and am slowly progressing through it: I’m already through Amnesiac (much to my chagrin, I don’t recall listening to it… it was while I was at residency, and probably had it on in the background while talking to someone), and have just reached the end of Hail to the Thief (they are in alphabetical order by album).
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Not November

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There is this day-long limbo period between the residency and my flight home. November 1st, today, seems like a good limbo day. It is currently 58 degrees, with estimates taking us as high as 68 today, a temperature that really does not fit November. Novembers in New England are generally grey, bitterly cold affairs, with the ground sucking the heat from your every step, a blanket of insulating snow not yet on the ground.

It is hard to dislike this change, though. On this, my last day in the area for a full six months, it is beautiful, warm, and sunny, leaving a fond memory and an enticement to come back. Not that I really need that enticement: Vermont is like another, fond family member to me, neither sibling nor parent but at the same time both. While the Seattle area is treating me well, like a doting aunt, Vermont will always be Home to me. While I may live elsewhere (and I am not ready to return to Vermont to stay), there is more to a Home than where you live.
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More Music

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Residency is at a slow-point right now, while the faculty decides who is going to work with whom (results of said discussion get posted at noon). So what better time to write a blog entry?

First: Uri has managed to post every day for the past week. Go read it. Also, both Adam and Chris have posted congratulations on me hitting 100 posts. I’m definitely grateful to have readers who seem to appreciate the effort. I’m also intruiged to see what happens in the NEXT hundred posts. I still say that this site is heuristic in nature, and as such will continue to evolve in content and form. I’m already feeling the desire to write more than just what’s happening in my life, and start incorporating more diverse writing.
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100th Post!

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This is my 100th post (on this part of my site… there are another 80 images in the visual gallery and half a dozen articles in the written gallery as well). Woo! I actually feel like I’m starting to have a real quantity of content (well, I didn’t say it was thought provoking, witty, or even interesting content).

I have about 5 gigabytes of music on my laptop. 99% of it is rips of my CDs, and the other 1% is freebies downloaded off sites like MP3.com et cetera. (Take that, RIAA! Gestapo Fuckers.) It being autumn, a time I find particularly useful as a period of careful introspection and personal assessment, I’ve been going through my music collection. I’m up to “K.” K as in King Crimson, one of my all time favorite bands. My entire King Crimson collection is on my computer, which means that this particular section is going to take quite some time to complete… not that I mind, not in the least.

The listing starts with Cirkus, a delightful collection of live performances of some of their best songs. It’s broken up into new (neon heat disease) and old (fractured), and is just freakin’ cool. For those who haven’t listened to King Crimson (you poor souls), let me give you a brief summary: King Crimson started back in 1968, and released their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969. While they have certainly grown and evolved musically since then, in many ways In the Court of the Crimson King is still one of their best works. It is certainly indicative of that era of the band (they have gone through several incarnations). After releasing several more albums, and touring extensively, becoming well known as a masterful experimental group (well, well-known to musicians, anyway), they broke up. They re-formed later, in a different configuration, and continued to create excellent music that pushed boundaries as to what people were doing with music. Their style (if you could call it just one) is uniquely their own, exhibiting a diverse range of influences and originality, combined into a kind of music that by its very nature evolves every time you listen to it.
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Residency

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I’m currently listening to the official Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, which is a delightful panoply of stylistic excellent music, music that evokes mood and mentality in a fashion that many other modern works simply and utterly fail to do. This is not a posting about music, mind you (though I could easily make it so), but I wanted to mention it as a segue that represents a certain mode of thought. “Mood music” if you will.

School residency started yesterday. I felt a strange mixture of dread and elation at coming back, feeling unprepared but at the same time eager to pick up a new study. I’ve been getting a lot of compliments and congratulatory comments on my recent marriage and move across the country (something that surprised a good deal of people, and has proven to be a conversation starter since). My hair still has highlights from when it was dyed this past July, which has been the source of most of the compliments (“wow, your hair looks great” and such). I dig the positive attention, but what really does it for me is the relative familiarity I’ve achieved with the other students, a familiarity that largely remains unchanged after not seeing or hearing from any of them for a full six months. At this point, I am an “old hand” at the residency, someone that new students can come to if they want to know how things work.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing this coming semester, which is a change: past semesters have had me coming in with a pretty firm understanding of exactly what I was going to do. This time, I come with a concept and that’s about it. I want to study mysticism, the mystical counterparts to several of the mainstream religions, with a focus on mysticism in the Baha’i Faith, since I have more of a direct interest in that one in particular (I’m a Baha’i, something that I’ve mentioned at least three times before on this site… do a search for “baha’i” to see where). Of course, there is another component to this study: I find myself feeling tapped creatively, and would like to find a way to reenergize and get motivated on really USING my creative resources again. So the other component, if it were to be summed up (and I’m going to have to for the study proposal) is studying the relation between spirtuality and creativity.

And yes, I am in fact writing this blog entry partially to help codify what I’m thinking. I went to my first exploratory meeting today, and found myself rambling a bit, so I want to cut down on that. We’ve got a large group this time (largest its been in several semesters), so the exploratory meetings are a bit more full than usual, leaving time as a bit of a precious commodity.
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