It was brought to my attention the site navigation bar was broken when viewed with Internet Explorer [I use Firefox, it looked fine there...].  I tracked down the tags that I had neglected to close in the code and it should be working fine now.  Sorry.  I suck.

The quiet of post-holiday madness has now passed at the office and it’s ‘business-as-usual’. My body is killing me; everything from my hips to my wrists ache from either constant movement [scurrying about the building fixing or assessing things] or long coding sessions. Management has officially dropped the edict that they want a new website, as they currently HATE the design & structure of the current site [Linky-linky]. So, I get to work from the ground up on a new design, framework, and all the associated web-applications required for it. I’m both excited and overwhelmed. Meanwhile, we are also expecting the installation of the new electronic marquis for the front of the building at the end of February, and yours truly has to do all the content for that [That will actually be a bit of fun, as it's strictly graphic design and I fully intend to hide things in the pictures for my own amusement]. So, it goes without saying that I’m a might bit tired.

On the non-boringless-boring, I’m-a-big-dork-front, I discovered that Ned’s Atomic Dustbin released a brand new single in ’06 and I have acquired it and am re-living the 90′s quite contently. I’ve also rekindled my love affair with modern Icelandic music, specifically anything by Biggi [Birgir Hilmarsson]. With my new iPod, and long sessions at the terminal, I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy listening to music again [and my office is so far away from everything else, I can listen as loudly as I like...] This makes basey a happy little Puffin. This is also helping me build the tracklist for the first of my long-intended podcast which I expect to post by the end of the weekend.

All of this is exceeding had to really concentrate on as I am two weeks away from my five-ish day venture to Sarasota to visit L [Whom I have not seen since Dec. 27 and will be gone until mid-March]. So yeah, time is both flying past me in some aspects and crawling at an agonizing pace in other ways. Less mundane posts to follow soon…

Technorati Tags: website, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Icelandic music, Biggi, Birgir Hilmarsson

Placebo: Slave to the Wage [ 3:47 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

My poor blog is rusting away here in the wild of the blogosphere lately. I’ve had so much going on lately between the new job [I've been here almost amonth now] and parenting and relationships, I’m just too damn tired [and frankly sick of sitting in front of a terminal] to blog like I should.

Things are starting to become more routine at the office; less fires to put out. It’s a bit lonely, I have to admit. There are only about 14 full-time employees at the Hobby Center and everyone keeps busy, so I go hours without seeing another face somedays [If only I could get the phone to stop ringing now]. And to boot, my office, while huge, is in the back corner of the building, so no one really walks PAST. But I like the quiet. I learn new things every day, and get the feeling that I am about to be given the task of compeltely rewriting the website, which could be fun [And I have being toying with the idea of being all "web 2.0” and coding it using a goodly amount of AJAX, which I have wanted to learn anyway].

L has been an absolute blessing over the past month; being support during all my frustration, self doubt and long hours at the office. She and are have continued decorating the house, though we’re paused at the moment as she left to work in North Carolina for 27 days. I miss her already.

Other irons in the fires right now that once again I can’t discuss until the moment is right. Hopefully I’ll get around to updating some of the other content of this page soon. But right now, I require lunch.

Technorati Tags: new job, tired, Hobby Center, web 2.0, AJAX

Bloggers of the world, it’s time you acknowledged your forefathers! Let us all raise our glasses high and acknowledge the Blog-father, Doogie Howser, M.D.

Ok, In truth this has precious little to do with Doogie Howser, where ever our little [I suppose he's not so little anymore] protégé may be right now. But rather more to do with a mental connection spawned off of a new piece of software I am testing using right now called Dark Room.

I’ve been obsessed with increased efficiency in my creative/productive endeavors lately. Everything from a minimal but useful selection of tools hiding in my heads-up display for Yahoo’s Widget Engine to tabbed command line interfaces. These tools keep me organized and quickly informed. They keep my desktop clean, too. They don’t however do much to keep me distraction free. My RSS Aggregator tends to flash something new at me every thirty minutes or so. Same with my mail indicator. And then there is the temptation of the time murderer that is the Web. For all my increased productivity and information access, I was continually multi-tasking, to the detriment of the things that wanted my focus, like a blog entry.

Well, via one of my usual news feeds came a post regarding a piece of software for the Mac called WriteRoom, specifically designed for “Distraction Free Writing.” I flashed with jealousy and moved on with whatever it was I had been doing before I saw this. About 3 days later, the same news feed presented me with a link to DarkRoom; a WriteRoom clone for Windows [Written simply cause the programmer liked the idea, but had to use a PC.]

I downloaded the app, sat down, and fired it up for the first time. One second later, my screen was black, sans a blinking cursor at the top of the screen. It’s slightly jarring, honestly. No menus, no toolbars, just big, black empty space [Even more empty space on my Widescreen]. But once you start writing it’s true beauty shines. The complete quiet away from all my tools and gadgets allows me to focus on pure content.

Heavy multi-tasking is a requirement of my job and a talent I use to my advantage. I tend to require [and largely enjoy] real-time processing of near-continuous data streams from varied sources. Despite this, having the ability to background “it all” and focus my energies on just one thing when I need/want to is already proving to be a true tool to my creativity that I’d rather not do without.

Technorati Tags: Dark Room, efficiency, Distractions, Text Editor