It’s been so long.
The amount of time it’s been since I’ve last published is, above all things, depressing.
The reason I haven’t been posting is more out of concerns of a detrimentation in my style and quality of writing than anything else. I’m guessing personal business just doesn’t cut it that much. My friend Jeremy Wilken once commented that mixing the entente of lives as both a web designer and, well, a human, resulted in a less-than-potent drink which doesn’t even have alcohol in. How dull.
Today, I shall be heeding his words.
I have been working on my friend Lara’s blog, and, strangely enough, paying for its existence. I have no idea why, except it seems to make her happy and results in me being able to kiss her.
Administrating, designing and constantly maintaining it has made me notice how little I’ve taken care of mine. The design hasn’t evolved or fixed, there are 404s dotted around everywhere like a six year old’s chicken pox.
Alas, what is one to do?
Most of the post database will be deleted. The remaining articles—the most popular, obviously—will be rewritten in a more appropriate voice and, probably, retitled.
The new design will also be instated, along with all the missing and unfinished pages. It shall be done as soon as I stick the rather undelightful WordPress stuff into it.
I’m aiming to get this done by the end of this month, when I get my new laptop. Exciting!
I’ll drop in the updates soon.
# miaow! I feel good!
A trip to the Hype Machine led me to a brilliant song which made me want to post again.
The Jam – That’s Entertainment.mp3
The first thing my dad learnt to play on that ridiculous guitar of his was this song, and I’ve loved it ever since. I spent a while watching Stranger Than Fiction the other day, and it made a guest appearance there. More interesting than the film, probably.
Anyway, I was forced into sitting through a dinner with Joanna’s family. Her father made a joke about Jamaican Crunch Pie. I died a little inside. It’s essentially me with a worse sense of humour and money. Help.
Maya’s off to Austria on a band trip, which I’m annoyed about, although we did take a trip to Covent Garden and found the most awesome T-shirt with the slogan “The Cat Knows All”. I fell in love with it, but it was £18. Hmph. It’s a pity, seeing as I did finally meet up with her (after half the people who walked into Hyde Park thought we were an adorable couple.) Irritation.
I had my last Drama lesson ever, thank god. I hate actors. Hiding their emotions. Pfft.
See you guys.
Add a Little Style: Dieu et Mon Droit!
The Internet, ever since its birth, has been the one medium which simply cannot be censored completely. Thousands, millions of inter-connected points, all communicating with each other as an array of information rushes around the globe like a bad rounders player. And that lack of censorship, that needlework of amazement comes with a few consequences. Read the rest of this post »
You’re Going Soft, Mate!
Shabbot Shalom, motherfuckers!
~ The “Hebrew Hammer”
Today we forced little Safiyyah to watch our favourite bits from the films Natan & I love. I don’t have an exhaustive list, but they include the bit in the Hebrew Hammer where he walks into a Nazi bar, the “Yeah, motherfucker!” from Hot Fuzz and the Queen scene (heehee!) from Shaun of the Dead. Yay for Apple’s video-enabled iPods!
Joanna just came back—tired & sad, might I add—from work experience and is currently complaining about how depressed she is. She went to TfL’s offices and dug around newspapers for hints of The Times being pissed off at Boris. How brilliant.
Have The Most Embarrassing Death Of Your Life
Online gaming culture has been stereotypical…ized (hopefully) as an elitist world full of scumbags, condescending low-lives and people who really need a girlfriend.
They’re right. There’s no denying it. I, as a cynic, will further propagate it as the black hole where human nature rears its ugly what-would-be-called-head and spews all over your shoulder.
But I, as a gamer, hesitate to say that it’s not all that bad. You can actually have fun in a game, amazingly.
And today I had fun. Lots of fun.
Time To Go—Please?
Well, I spent ~9 hours with Joanna last night. That was pretty damn fun, although she made me stay at Maya’s surprise party for about 2 hours more than I really was keen to be. Ah well, I got hugs!
My arm smelt of dog slightly, as the massive sheep-like thing Maya tries to pass off as a dog (but probably requires a license anyway) licked it eagerly. I feel sorry for her friend Danielle, who must’ve eaten cat meat (EVIL) beforehand or something as it kept coming back to her. Joys.
Today I’ve been bored out of existence as I tried to combat Windows’ MBR (Master Boot Record) as a reinstallation of Vista destroyed my lovely XP partition which I hid away to boot into when I had a dash of nostalgia or wanted to play games. Well, that’s all gone now, including my Call of Duty profile. Pity—I miss my silenced MP5. Read the rest of this post »
Add a Little Style: Opacity Without Affecting Text
Opacity is something we just can’t get right. We’ve tried everything from the rather unusable attempt at filtering transparent PNGs in bunch of modular scripts used to make IE6 act like IE7—because we’d rather like to be able to use
background-repeaton those images—to the ancientfilterCSS property which doesn’t work well either seeing as it disables ClearType on the filtered text and also reduces the opacity of text inside.I’ve always wondered about this. Translucent text annoyed me to no end, as did watching my beautiful anti-aliased text being swallowed into the dark ages of computing. It’s horrible, terrible!
Many web designers have succumbed to this rageI bought a stress ball.Well, there is a nice way forwards.
You’ve Been Baptized With Pruning Shears
- Jewish (adj.)
- 1. baptisé au secateur (lit. baptized with pruning sheers)
We stole Mark’s copy of Merde – The French You Weren’t Taught At School today. Some of the definitions are hilarious. You’ll never guess what ballet bleu really means…
We’re having our end-of-year exams. They’ve been mixed so far. We had a random Citizenship one. The last question went something like this:
- Which of these was not a dictator?
-
- Tony Blair
- Josef Stalin
- Adolf Hitler
- Benito Mussolini
And the answer is
21!Our History one was terrifying. Not only are they designed for about half an hour more than the time limit but we had our time reduced. Creeps. And we were examined by PE teachers. Lovely!
I’ve just learnt that Maya cancelled on me for the fourth time in a row. I mean what the fuck? Is it something about me that’s incredibly unattractive? No, no yeses or I’ll be murderous. I did actually have something decent to write but that blew it off, so have a good day, people.
“Are You a Goth Or Something?”
Well I’m not, ’case you’re wondering.
I had a French exam which was fairly easy—mostly things along the lines of “Match the correct letter to the response”. How dumb do they think I am? Don’t you dare say “very.”
It’s been hot, I have a splitting headache and I’m about to step outside for a nice lie-down with my iPod. I recently ripped the 2,000 tracks I found on Natan’s old 5th generation one. I ended up deleting vast swathes of it so I ended up with only getting 800 or so, and half of that is bloody System Of A Down. I have five Muse albums now. I don’t even like Muse that much, but I do have a favourite song.
03 Muse - Time Is Running Out.m4a
Lovely.
Maya’s given me lots and lots of cuddles for ditching me, whilst I was yelling at sir to not tell his awful joke. We were doing work on the process of translation, except it became the process of asking the teacher after the second paragraph because we all got unfairly confused. Bastardry!
I’m off to hide and maybe listen to California (I will put that up—even though I didn’t ever watch The O.C., I do know the theme tune is amazing.)
Spill Your Heart Out. Nobody Really Cares
She’s off doing the Duke of Edinburgh award—something which, in all honesty, you’d be a fool to do—so I’m all alone till about three today. Joy.
I’ve been getting obsessed with the design here; so much so I’ve taken to adding header images for my posts. I know you didn’t notice nor care, but still, I like it. I’ll tell you how you can for any slug-based blog (we’re using WordPress here) another time, but for now I’m going to enjoy my freedom whilst blasting off the faces of unknown Arabs mercilessly with a submachine gun. Yes, I didn’t delete this time. I’m getting too predictable.
My contact lens package came today, so I’m good for another three months—not that it ever works like that, seeing as I have the awful tendency to let them disappear under my eyelid, which is irritating, let me tell you. I rather like them, but don’t think my girlfriend particularly likes looking into my eyes and seeing the blue ring of death.
I’m going to eat a ridiculously oversized burger now. valete.
