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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FFXI, Foo

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Well, there goes THAT little streak of post. I’ll try to do better, blah blah, yadda yadda, you’ve heard it before and frankly I bet you’re as tired of hearing it as I am of saying it. My GOAL is to post daily (barring life interfering), but like any other goal, it’s something that you have to work at and don’t always succeed in hitting.

So why haven’t I posted since I got back into town? Something profound and rewarding? Tragic and horrible? Nope and nope. Mostly it’s just been getting back into a routine with my life. I got in at midnight on Sunday, which means I was in bed by 1am, and then up at 8 for my chiropractor appointment. Did various errands (got diagnosed with Lyme Disease at my physical, so I’m on an antibiotic for the next month, which I needed to go pick up), and got some shopping done.
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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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Last Day

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This is the last day of my October residency. My study plan has been approved, and at this point I really just need to go to my last two meetings.. I’ll be gone by tonight, not back until April 9.

It’s been a long few weeks (three, to be exact). While it has been a fun, enriching time on this visit (between seeing my friends again, UberCon, and the school residency), at this point, I’m ready to sleep in my own bed, snuggled up with my wife (whom I miss very, VERY much). I’ve had quite a few sympathies sent my way the past few days, once people found out it had been so long since I’d seen my so recently-married wife. (Most start really missing their own SO’s after only a week, so they’re generally pretty impressed that I haven’t gone starkers yet. Little do they know that I’m just better at hiding it!)

I’m really looking forward to this study. For those too lazy to read back a few posts, I’m studying mysticism in the Baha’i Faith, with brief comparisons of other forms of mysticism, such as the Kaballah, Gnosticism, and Sufism. I think this will be a really enriching, interesting study to do, both on a personal and on an intellectual level. Of course, I’ve also added an additional component that is not directly linked (but in my opinion in some ways is): creativity and spirituality, in an attempt to revitalize my own creative energies, something that I feel has been lacking lately. This loss of creative impulses is exemplified by a regression I’ve had lately of overanalyzing EVERYTHING, giving reason and rationale even to emotions and sentiments. I worked really damn hard to get that under control, so it’s kind of disappointing that I’ve regressed into it so much.

Time for lunch. I promise to try and post tomorrow as well, but I’m thinking Sunday will probably be a dead day, since I’ll be in transit for a good chunk of it.

Sundry Esoterica

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This is really only a semi-post. It’s just random stuff that I thought was cool or interesting, and probably won’t be for anyone else.

– I finished my study plan a full day early, and have already gotten it okayed… we’re going to photocopy it tomorrow and submit it, at which point I’ll be done and on my way. I’m pretty damn pleased about that.

– The pictures I took at UberCon have been put up in the UberCon web gallery. In the week since they were posted, one of the pictures I took has become one of the most viewed images in the gallery (viewed ~1400 times when I last checked). Not unsurprisingly, it was a picture of a cute girl in a costume.
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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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