I’m taking away the giant crab to announce that I’m set for cross-country travel in the next few weeks. Tomorrow I’m heading with my dad to the Grand Canyon, where we will meet up with other extended family members and hike around for a while. After I get back from that, I’m heading up to Funlumbus, Ohio, to (ostensibly) look for gainful employment as well as housing. Maybe I’ll post pictures.
so, obviously, I’m torturing you all with another ugly redesign. aside from having more junk on the front page, now ANYONE can post a new link in the linker. also, I’ll be writing bits which allow for removal of dead links. yayyyy!
the first iteration is complete. if anyone has a mac, you can check it out: radio.shatterbloom widget<p> I’m not sure if I’m satisfied with it or not. It does what I want it to do, and looks pretty enough…. blahfdskhh<p> EDIT: it has come to my attention that the zip file isn’t working. whatever, I can’t use ftp to put the widget because it’s technically a folder, but OSX treats it like a file, so I zipped it with the default utility, which somehow doesn’t work. I hate computers. Email me and I’ll send you the widget.
Be prepared for a post which has no real overall purpose or meaning, but basically consists of me babbling into the void. Anyway, things are happily going along here. Last Saturday I went to Lincoln for the day; hung out with many people, including, but not limited to, Ben, Gil, Tyler, Henry, and Poobs. I also converted my cash/Traveller’s Cheques into REAL MONEY. I took a bit of a hit in the ol’ conversion ratio, but I decided that I didn’t care anymore. There has recently been a new (1.11) patch for Diablo2, which adds more new content (new bosses, plus a new uber charm). I installed the game and played for a bit, but then quit because it’s no fun playing by oneself. Although I am a bit sad, because the character name “Cindergorilla” for a fire sorceress was classic. <p> OK, I lied. Here’s the real reason for this post. While I was still in Japan I started trying to make a Dashboard widget; one that will connect to the internet radio station of me good buddy Soulman. Now, using the RealPlayer plugin and CSS and whatnot is not a big problem. There was one weird issue that I couldn’t resolve, but right now I don’t feel like trolling messageboards looking to see if anyone else has had the same problem (although I’m sure they have). My issue is making a pretty graphic to go with the widget. After taking a gander at a few tutorials, I came up with some test images. Most of the Dashboard widgets try to simulate glassy, reflective surfaces, and I made two different designs to try to emulate the popular look. Design One and Design Two. These are works in progress, so feel free to leave comments. The white area at the bottom will be for the player controls; yes, it’s mostly just wasted space. Anyway, tell me, which style looks better?
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I’m back in good ol’ Hastings, Nebraska, hanging out with the folks. The trip back was fairly average: I couldn’t sleep at all, and basically sat in a trance because my contorted body was too cramped to move. Plus, I almost drained the battery of my iPod in one go. I went from Hikone to Tokyo to St. Paul to Detroit to Omaha, which in total spanned about 20 hours. Plus, I didn’t get mugged and have all my money stolen! Hardcore, eh?
So far it's been pretty good to be back in N. America; hard to believe that I was gone for a year. Also, got to see off Matt before he hit Utsunomiya to take my place. Today I totally ate some great food, and I will eat more great food tomorrow.
Hah, as an aside: Sam and I bought a Nintendo 64 on Monday, and we totally played a bunch of Mario Kart 64. It was excellent.
