February 2001 Archives
"It's really, really easy to fall in love online," says Mannix, who now writes an agony aunt column for the Soulmates website. "Someone telling you their hopes and dreams, that's very compelling. Imagination fills in all the gaps. Even those of us who know how writing works and should be more cynical seem to fall in love all the more readily. The one thing I tell people (in my column) over and over again is do not fall in love until they meet."
I've been on line since '93 and this has never happened to me. I think I'm too busy building sites. I also naturally weary of 'new' people.
Peter asks :just out of curiosity, can everyone who reads this mail me and tell me why you do? So I told him his stuff is strangely compelling and it reminds me of Dublin.
I also wish I could let go like that, sometimes.
Got Swish. Seems to be the Flash tool for klutzes such as myself.
Ultrashock. Utralongwait. Worth it. Download .fla's to see how the hard stuff is done.
I don't know what it is about Flash that I can't get the hang of it. I've now tried numerous times to pick it up, but I lose interest quickly (I find it incredibly time consuming and tedious) and I also forget EVERYTHING I learn, instantly. A few months ago I had so little work to do at my previous job, I got underway with some tutorials. Yesterday I played with the programme again and found out I had remembered nothing. Ayway, I ended up dumping some background music in gavinfriday.com using a tiny flash file. I would like to impress the, ahem, client with an animated intro - anyone got suggestions of what I could do that isn't too complicated and doesn't involve technomusic and swirling globes, i.e. is faithful to the style of the site?
Australian wines doing well: "Language is an element. Many people would far rather ask for an Australian wine than reel off a complicated chateau name." Well, that's a load of toss. I just think they taste better. (Check those image captions, by the way.)
I could do with a laugh. Send me something funny.
I've removed Blogvoices because it was slowing down the site in the evenings (when America wakes up). Something else is coming. It's not exactly home grown, but it WILL be Dutch. ~vandenb is using it already.
(Warning, drama queen post) When I signed up for life I remember them mentioning 'golden future', 'happiness ever after', 'fluffy white clouds', 'peking duck every day'... they never said anything about the friggin' heartache.
I woke up this morning and the first thing I did, was I walked over to the cd player and played this song. It has absolutely no relevance to my life, but I wanted to hear it anyway. I don't have the Gene Pitney or Cindy Lauper version, mine's off the Star for one nightCD.
Matt goes back to work. Congrats!
To take my mind off something that's bugging me, I decided to make my Dutch blog a little bit more... Dutch. In case you're wondering, the tag line, 'achter de dijken' means 'behind the dikes'. Beyond the polder, behind the dikes. Get it?
Urgh. I feel sick in every possible way.
Finally got The Million Dollar Hotel on video, Wim Wender's film of Bono and Nicholas Klein's script. It got some really bad reviews around the world but I have to admit I really enjoyed it, and even if he didn't like the end product, Mel Gibson's quite good in it. I just can't stand Tom Tom's grating voice. For the rest it was lovely, moving little flick, well worth renting. It's that spurned lovers thing that gets me every time.
I just spent about 6 hours tweaking a cgi 'guestbook' script only to find out that the feature I got it for (dividing itself up in separate pages), which was highlighted on its 'feature' page hasn't been implemented yet. Judging from the 'history' file, it won't ever be implemented either. Last date on it was January 2000.
Fortunately, the most beautiful things in the world come free.
orbyn.com: the internet is shit. But these Valentine cards aren't. My favourite of all the 'anti'-Valentines so far: "Shut Your Hole".
There is no end to this financial stress I've been experiencing. Having just sorted things with Dreamhost I come home to find a letter from this insurance company. In Jan 2000 I changed an insurance I had with them (dutch: van ziekenfonds naar particulier). It now turns out the old insurance was never cancelled. I probably should have noticed a lot sooner, but I'm a complete idiot when it comes to money, bills, all that crap.
So I continued paying for the old insurance for a YEAR or more. I found out and cancelled last week, expecting my money back. No. They sent me a 3000 guilder fine for being wrongly insured. (1200 dollars...). What is this? Is the universe out to get me?
Could someone with a brain lend me it, please? Mine seems to have gone walkabout.
I'm considering taking a break from the web. I'm not sure I can, since I work on it at least 8 hours a day, but it would be nice not to be on it in my spare time. The last two days I've watched telly and have started on a book after a few months absence from reading. I'm reading Caitlin Thomas's 'double drink story' - 'my life with Dylan Thomas'. It's another life.
I'm sick of the sight of html. Looking forward to March 9. When my company merges. Hopefully the start of something new.
Oh. my. god. Well, thanks Dreamhost for causing - almost - a nervous breakdown. I woke up at 4 am, trembling. Got my e-mail.
They now say they've made a mistake and have refunded me the entire amount of money they charged to my credit card. I can start breathing again. Fingers crossed they don't change their mind again.
Yesterday was a season in hell.
Chickenhead spawns a sister site: The Comedy Lab.
the post that was here is gone
because it shouldn't have been posted in a public place
ask me for it if I asked you to read it, please
A whole lot of something. Matt redesigns. Scary... no left hand top corner nothing!
[ UPDATE : BILL WAS CANCELLED THANKS BE TO JAYSUS ]
I just got a 1250 dollar bill from Dreamhost. I'm dead.
... now if only I could set up that Amazon micropayment thingy, I'd ask people at U2log.com to donate a dollar. But I can't, bugger, bugger, bugger, bollocky, bum.
This is what I need to do: 1. Pay Dreamhost somehow. 2. Then move out to a host that allows me more bandwidth. k10k.net went to Media Temple. I could also upgrade my pair.com account to a 129$ a month 'high volume' account and move there. Anyone have any other suggestions?
Dutch newspaper NRC reports on weblogging and mentions Metafilter, Zeldman, the Bloggies.. etc. Will translate for people tomorrow. Must. sleep. now.
...just realised, it doesn't mention any Dutch weblogs. A brilliant piece of reporting.
Marilyn Manson in the latest Hot Press: 'Do I have a romantic bone in my body? Yeah, it's between my legs.'
Confused. I took the gender test months ago. I was a man. I took it again last week, I was still a man. I took it again today.... I'm suddenly a woman, without doubt.
This is depressing.
[update 10pm, have fixed many of the errors but not all.]
Half a million visitors to U2log.com... we started July 19, 2000. It's the 'most succesful' site I've ever worked on, and it started as a laugh.
spreading.
myself.
thin.
Click here.
Or... click here!
(why oh why don't ANY of these services reach beyond the borders of the USA?)
Brent Gustafson (Assembler.org) archives his own work.
Meanwhile Lance expresses a thought I've been nurturing for the last year or so. Only he does it better. Or more verbal. Or just longer: And I thought, 'Nothing. It isn't about anything. It's about itself, I guess. It's about life, the point is to live, and not to regret, and not to worry about what comes next, and not to depend on rewards you'll never get, and to treat others like you want to be treated because it's better that way. Life. And you live it, and you sit on mountainsides, and you watch the water glitter and the hawks soar and the grass moving under the bright blue sky. And that's it.'
I think I'm tired of things in general.
Fatal flaw in first paragraph. The girls ARE interested, sir.
Gizza job. I can do that! All you gotta do is walk in a straight line! I can walk straight! Gowan, gizza job! Remember Yosser? 'I'm Yosser Hughes... gizza job?' We quoted it for years. In fact some of us still do. I'm watching the '1982' episode of BBC's 'I love the 80s'. I'd forgotten the Yosser character was from the black comedy television series called Boys from the Blackstuff
I think what it was back then, why we loved it so much, was because we ALL wanted to headbutt someone like Yosser did. Like we wanted to be Alex Higgins (... a drunk genius, a brilliant madman.. I don't think we actually wanted to be a snooker player)
I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!
( Amy Lowell (1874-1925) - To a Friend)
[ via potw ]
Alex Massie's site look so damn good. Except for the cute girl 'n' kitten, not into that. But that overlapping reactangly look is something I wanted for vodb.com (I like rectangles and squares... check U2log.com).
Dutch post - or the dickhead that calls himself a postman - lost one of my packages. In fact, he lost the packages of the entire area. Why do Dutch post hire people who can't read, can't spell, can't do their job? I'm sorry if you can't read and can't spell, but please don't touch my mail.
UPC have sent me new details of my account. The password they've given me doesn't work. If you call them they'll say something like 'we don't support Eudora'. Well, you don't need to support me using Eudora, I'm quite capable of using it, thank you - just fix your own settings!
We are surrounded by incompetence.
I went to the park, wrapped up warm, to take pictures. When I stopped to shoot an image of bird prints in the snow, I found out I'd forgotten the memory card. This doesn't seem to be my lucky week.
A picture from my balcony will have to do. The wire netting was put in by the previous owners. I don't know if it was to keep the cat in, or cats out. I'm keeping them out anyway. Miaow.
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U2log.com traffic last month consumed 34.3 GB bandwidth. They haven't charged me. But will starting this month. Oh dear. Killed by our own success. I don't want to leave Dreamhost, they're excellent... but I may be forced to move to Media Temple, k10k's hosts who seem to be cheaper and offer more space and bandwidth. However... I can't pay for set up costs any time soon. Hell, I can't even make rent this month.
I knew Mikel was going to do Montreal Stories, but L.A. Stories by Joshua Fouts is news to me. Good news.
I'm trying to get Amsterdam Stories (now with groovy 'citystories' button... ) ready this weekend.
I was invited to a party tonight. My colleague lives on a houseboat on the river Amstel. It's not too far away from where I live. I wasn't really in the mood for a party (I hardly ever am, am not a party girl at all) but decided to go anyway. Show my company I'm a team player, etc. (I'm not a team player at all). So I was on my bike about 45 minutes ago, and found out it was still snowing. It had been snowing a lot all day. Sleet. The roads were slippery.
It took me a while to find the spot in the dark and with the sleet hurting my eyes. I looked at the boats. Most were dark. I looked at the signs... it appeared the boat I needed was behind two others. I would have to climb over them.
I got up the little stairs and walkways, slipping on my runners. I grabbed the railings and went on over the first boat. At the end of the first walkway, I had to get on my knees not to fall. The snow soaked my trousers.
I found myself shivering on the edge of the first boat, and looked down. I'm afraid of heights, I don't see well in the dark, the boats were huge and I'm quite short. My hands stuck to the railings, it was freezing.
The second row of boats were smaller. It would be a climb, or a jump down. There were no steps, no ladders. How on earth was I going to do that? Someone would have to catch my fall. I called out. 'Hallo? Hallo?' No answer. The river was dark and I was scared. 'Screw this,' I thought, biting my lip and fighting the urge to cry. I crawled my way back to my bike, cursing myself and the weather.
So now I'm back home, I put some food in the microwave and I'll make some tea to get warm again.
I'm a giver-upper. I'll be annoyed with myself for being a wimp, and will end up resenting the invitation and ultimately myself.
What am I going to tell my colleagues?
I would have called it Remote Update Weblog Script or something.
Matt writes: Behind the Website
I woke up at 3.30 am this morning, the iBook still buzzing by my side, having fallen asleep after hours of reading people's comments, thoughts, sense and nonsense, and for a split second I was convinced I'd dreamt it all, and Pyra was still Team Pyra. I guess that says something about how a vibe can affect people's lives. It is, as jack alluded to, a lot like your favourite band splitting up. When I read his and Meg's posts, I'm almost convinced it is not good business to both work on and emotionally invest in something if you want to stay sane. Almost convinced.
So... this one friend I have wants to start on his old plan to set up dublinstories.com... only to find out that my other friend owns that domain and wants to do something else with it ( a community blog ). Which is annoying and perhaps a bit funny. It's a small web.
I started this thing July 1999. Never spent a moment in it. Never tried to develop it. It's ugly, I don't like it. But it now has 278 members and seems to be running along quite nicely. I bet #izzard that I started on irc.webmaster.com in... um... 96? 97? is still going too. Checks... yes, it is.
By the way, I'm changing my pay off to 'Blogging for the Netherlands'. Europe. Pah.
I walk along the street of sorrow
the boulevard of broken dreams
where gigolo and gigolette
can take a kiss without regret
so they forget their broken dreams
- Marianne Faithful
[ Salon link via Lukelog with whom I seem to have a lot of music interest in common ]
Every discussion seems to have its incredible wankers. 'Code your own. Shrug', 'Good code is more interesting than people'. 'They didn't mention ME enough'. You'd want to grab them by the bollix and twist real hard.
Suggestion: perhaps some of us who've come to know the ins and outs of Blogger through using it often, can help out by answering other users questions on the forum? I know a lot of people already do.
New Glassdog. The floaty menu remains.
Well, bugger me, that's put a frown on my face for the rest of the day. Fuck the tool, what about the people? Anyway, I'll do the mental equivalent of burning a candle.
One but not the same. Different. Not dead. Ev explains what's happened at Pyra. Good luck to everyone, Meg, Matt, Pb and Jack, thanks for creating a great service but most of all a great vibe and taking us all along for the ride.
And Ev... keep on keeping on.
I've always been a sore loser.
