07 April 2005 Thursday

First Post

Posterity post for ferrydustversion2.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec rutrum est eu mauris. In volutpat blandit felis. Suspendisse eget pede. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Quisque sed arcu. Aenean purus nulla, condimentum ac, pretium at, commodo sit amet, turpis. Aenean lacus. Ut in justo. Ut viverra dui vel ante. Duis imperdiet porttitor mi. Maecenas at lectus eu justo porta tempus. Cras fermentum ligula non purus. Duis id orci non magna rutrum bibendum. Mauris tincidunt, massa in rhoncus consectetuer, lectus dui ornare enim, ut egestas ipsum purus id urna. Vestibulum volutpat porttitor metus. Donec congue vehicula ante.

05 April 2005 Tuesday

You know, I think humans could’ve used tails just fine.
uses of a tail: hanging on things, carrying things, balancing. those are all things that an extra limb would be useful for.. and a tail would suit just fine. even a tail like a cat—can’t quite hang on things or lift things, but still splendid for balance, fun to chase or chew or fan under people’s noses.
it could’ve worked.

Post prompted by the situation in which i leaned over the edge of my bed (6 feet high) to reach down and retrieve my cellphone headset on the table about 3-4 feet down. i am certain that having a tail would have made me feel far more secure in that situa

08 March 2005 Tuesday

1haiku

1haiku.com is up..

after about a year of knowing how i wanted it to look, and having tried sort-of-successfully but unsatisfiedly to get it the way i wanted, i finally revisited it a few days ago and redid the whole thing..
same intended design, but redid the html and css and put it into Textpattern this time. i’d initially tried it with Wordpress, because i needed two key features: user self-registration and random articles. ultimately, a self-registration mod (thanks Manfre :)) was developed for Textpattern and i twisted a few things and managed to get the random feature i’d wanted.

so, it’s up and working and i’m already really pleasantly surprised by the poems coming in; some are thoroughly entertaining, some are intriguing—but i wouldn’t have gotten to see any of them if this site wasn’t there for me to ask people to post to, neh?

so.. i don’t need to be up til 4am tonight; i’m going to bed..
come daylight, it’ll be time for me to get back to doing all the important things that actually really need doing. but i really needed to get this done, for myself.

goodnight

02 March 2005 Wednesday

11111

As of March 1, 2005, it seems there’ve been 11111 visitors to ferrydust.com since November 2004. None of that is particularly special, but I did happen to open the site right then and the number looked kinda cool :) So, for posterity:

30 November 2004 Tuesday

Textpattern Resources

Slight renovations… most notably a signficiant paint job and shiny new head ornament. Not a moment too soon… looking back on it, I’m extra-impressed that the Textpattern community seems to have embraced the site, even as it looked as it did…. *shrug* then again, maybe people won’t like the site now that it’s all…. blue.

if a styleswitcher were built in, this would not be a problem.

should be moving to textpattern.org soon..
i’m really glad it’s seeming to serve its purpose.

And the additional people who have begun collaborating on it… that’s almost definitely the best part for me. Creating great projects, cooperatively. :)

17 November 2004 Wednesday

Fwd: Seven Idiots of 2004

[Amusing forwarded email received today. Original source unknown.]

Number One Idiot of 2004

I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter into the emergency room right away.

Here’s your sign, lady. Wear it with pride.

14 November 2004 Sunday

Churchill H.S. Wins Football Regionals

For the first time in ten years, I hear, Churchill high school‘s football team has won regionals. that’s quite impressive. i don’t suppose they’re rioting about, like UMD would do… but i’m sure they’ll find their own brand of celebration. :) thanks for news Victor (the one and only).

13 November 2004 Saturday

current desktop screenshots; bblean

As intended, here be the screenshots… bblean is the shell, ‘joeblade’ is the name of the skin (i don’t remember where i picked it up.. but it’s one of three-four that i especially like.. i’m rather comfortable with this one though.) (be warned.. the three of these open up full-size (the first three are 1600×1200))

screenshot of my current desktop (panel alpha).

As I’d said, there are four available ‘desktop screens’ with bblean… i’m pretty sure this is a unix design.. so both the screenshots here are taken in the same ‘session’, but different panels/desktops.

i do like the transparencies that are optioned all over bblean’s menus… the menus could have a few additional options built in, such as ‘sort by date’ and such.. but i tend to use the ‘command line’ plugin that’s up in the top left corner. it’s not really a command line, but will respond to shortcuts that i plan in a text document. so i have ‘qq’ goes to my folder of ‘quick launch’ icons, and ‘winamp’ opens winamp, and ‘video’ opens my folder of videos… etc.—it’s a really long text document at this point.

screenshot of panel beta (one of four) of my current desktop

i depend on the system resource display up in top left to gauge when my system is memory leaking or some app is hogging anything… if so, i call up task manager and hard-kill. that IP address is incorrect, but i never notice it anymore. my aim/chat utility generally goes up in the top right (i fluctuate between miranda and gaim and original aim (i do run my msn accunt on the former two, but hard-uninstall (can’t do it through normal add/remove programs option) msn messenger from my computer every time i install windows—i abhor programs that open when i don’t tell tell them to, attach themselves to other programs (outlook) despite my objections, and run background processes with no reasonable way to shut them off. this is also why i’ve killed itunes from my machine (twice) and will not be quick to bring it back)).

what else… i run a destop wallpaper rotator.. usually changes every minute (or whatever setting i set).. lately i’ve just kept this wallpaper up though. i don’t know where i got it.

screenshot of last year’s pre-bblean desktop

i wanted to show you a screenshot of my desktop pre-bblean. i relied heavily on icons..i don’t really miss them anymore in terms of navigation and productivity, but they were pretty and novel. that screenshot is a year old, though.. at one point, i was running two instances of the icon dock… one vertically on the left and one on the bottom (different icons in each, of course).. and that was pretty functional and pretty pretty, but the truth is that all these docks and stuff are add-ons, and every add-on is just one more thing to use resources and one more thing to crash. without the docks, i came to rely pretty heavily on no less than three rows of the little icons in my ‘quicktask’ bar. and i lived on the addressbar (which worked like a browser addressbar, so i could call up webpages and also any folder on my computer).. so all of that was good.

the final count on this registry scan was 406 problems

when i found that old screenshot, i also came across a screenshot i’d taken of one of my registry scans… so here it is…illustration of my relationship with my computer..sometimes ;) my computer and i mostly get along, actually. i think if i just had tons more space and tons tons more processing power (and good non-leaky, non-obnoxious applications) then the world would be a far more splendid place.

and that’s that.

11 November 2004 Thursday

Investigate the Vote

support Investigate the Vote: Because we haven’t completely given up yet, have we?

f the south and red vs blue population map

received via email:

this is harsh: ‘Fuck the South’—a rant
more than else, i’ll be interested to hear the direct rebuttal… which i’m sure will come.

this is cool: ‘Red vs. Blue’—a map of population centers

*edit:
Lxxxx: “That’s really cool. It goes to show that smart, enlightened people tend to herd together…..someone should do a study on that.”