Occasionally when talking to people who aren’t as anally-obsessive about the net as I am, or whose angle is almost entirely corporate, I realise that there are things that no civilian will ever get about web page design. The 5k award is one of those things. The concept is simple and elegant – to design a page, complete in execution, concept and design, in which everything (HTML, graphics, scripts) must not amount to more than 5k. And the prize? 5000 (5k) cents. $50.
Did Tom have a nice friday night at Popstarz? No Tom did not have a nice friday night at Popstarz. Last you lot heard of Max was that he had stood me up two nights running shortly after we had agreed to be ‘friends’. He had demanded that we see each other regularly as friends because ‘he really didn’t want to lose me’ (or something like that). So after these two events he swore blind that he would contact me in the following week and we would go out for a drink. I, understandably, didn’t believe him. And how right I was – three weeks passed, I get all cheerful and functioning again, and then I wander into Popstarz last night to see him in marathon kissing sessions with his new boyfriend. When he registers I am there he bounces over to me and is all cheerful, as if it would be an astonishingly weird thing if I was freaked out by seeing him with someone else, and as if it was perfectly normal to ignore someone for a month and screw them around. So then I had two hours of bumping into the happy couple in various rooms of the club and feeling like dirt – which (as I am sure you can imagine) was fun. This morning I feel as if I spent the evening being kicked in the head and stomach.
A brief site update before bed. Microlith’s tiny little weblog is now up and running, the random Bomb quotes are functioning effectively, and the Dice Man choice-making machinery is picking up speed. “But what is Microlith?”, I hear you ask. Well, I have added the explanatory section to the site, and that will tell you everything you need to know. I’ll do my best to get the rest of the site up and running as soon as possible.
I honestly believe that there is nothing in the world that is too sensitive or awful a subject to be made a joke out of. Humour is built upon transgressive statements, but it is also built upon a common understanding of what the person who makes the joke actually believes. People are very negative these days about “political correctness” – but it was never about not making ‘offensive’ jokes about sensitive subjects, but about not saying offensive things and meaning them. Here’s a good example of something unbelievably funny from the Onion (for those of you who aren’t easily offended): Why Do All These Homosexuals…
I think I have finally reconciled myself to the fact that I am not going to be going to SXSW. I still feel that I might at any moment change my mind, but basically I think I must face the facts that I just can’t afford it. Now I have to work out what to do instead.
After what seems to be an absolute age, Shauna’s flaunt.net is finally broadcasting again. There was a time in the middle of last year when I visited her site almost everyday – she is one of the few people I know who have managed to generate a site developed completely from themselves, their interests and personalities, without seeming self-indulgent or dull.
She runs a couple of other sites as well. I had a piece on one of them a while back – ember.org is a site where people talk about their first experience of love, whether happy or … otherwise … It’s on a bit of hiatus at the moment, but there is still a years worth of oozing human experience to wander through.
Liz and I went to see The Talented Mr Ripley. It was a strange film in many ways – the pacing seemed really off, the film overlong and many of the characters acted in a rather implausible fashion. A while ago people were talking Oscar nominations, but it would really be an injustice if it got any. Having said that, Matt Damon acted superbly and Jude Law just oozed charisma. I guess one of my particular weirdnesses with the film was that it was about this gay guy called Tom who kills lots of people. Which is like me, apart from the killing bit.
I have fixed the Javascript error that people were getting when they tried to use the Dreamweaver generated rollovers – I had to replace them completely with a piece of tried-and-true code. Unfortunately in the process I made it easy enough to follow dead internal links that I haven’t built yet. Keep saying to yourself, “It’s not shoddy, It’s a collaborative experience in the process of web design”. Of course it would be much quicker if I didn’t have to work all day at timeout.com.
Everyone is talking about the redesign, and the site isn’t even finished yet. I’m really quite embarrassed. Hit a bit of a wall today when I stared at it for three quarters of an hour trying to work out what it is lacking. Can’t decide….
I make people happy!
Now here’s a (relatively) orginal use of new technologies. The Visual Thesaurus really illustrates what all those books about deconstruction and poststructuralist philosophy were on about when they talked about language as a system of differences, with meaning endlessly deferred. It reminds me a little of this program called “The Brain” that was some kind of online fad a few years ago (although this site actually has a point).
WEB DEVELOPMENT BLOG UPDATE:
I am aware of the errors that the page is throwing up at the moment, and I am aware that there is very little past the front page. All this is being worked on as we speak. In the meantime, let’s pretend that this is a really interesting learning experience for those of you who have just started building sites, and follow me through the process day by day. Now won’t that be fun?