For over a week after the official fest concluded, I have tarried at the residence of Yanthor and Anya. During this time, I have done much relaxing, much sleeping, much reading; I played many a game of Super Smash Brothers Melee with Yanthor, Humblik, and various others, and took occasional trips around the town on Serenity. At one point, Yanthor and I made a trip to Best Buy, where he purchased a copy of Kohan 2, and I splurged on the Lamb album "Best Kept Secrets 1996-2004", which also included a bonus DVD filled with their music videos.
I have been reading through the fantasy novel Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey at a rapid pace (for me, anyway). The paperback has been in my possession since June, but it remained untouched in my "absolutely must read" bedside queue since then.
Last week, during my stay here, I finally got around to reading the first page. This led to the second page, followed by the third. Minutes turned to hours, hours turned to days, and my mind became absorbed into the life of Phédre nó Delaney, Servant of Namaah, bearer of the mark of Kushiel. I'm now on page 578 (of 901).
Suffice it to say that the recommendations I received regarding this book were not misplaced. It is excellent, beautifully written fantasy. Not for the timid or easily offended, however. I have no doubt that I will finish the entire trilogy.
...
I contemplate how much longer to linger here, and where to head next. My theoretical idea was that I might see grandpa in Illinois, and then bouncing in Oklahoma before returning westward...
There. I just sent an email to bouncing.
I guess the other thing I'll need to do is check on grandpa. When I talked to him a couple weeks ago before departing, and mentioned the possibility of stopping by to visit him.. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to be hesitant about it. I don't want to go there if he's going to feel like having me around is a burden. Maybe I'll call and try to get a better feel for how things are going before deciding on a course of action.
I'm also feeling like I'd like to spend some time on this trip going someplace that's completely apart and away from any of my "destinations". Just for the hell of it. Part of the idea of this trip was to get away from the "Point A to Point B to Point C to Point D" mindset, and just have some time and space to chill, explore, and let things fall as they may. Maybe I'll detour up to the Dakotas or something. Maybe.
I've still barely begun to contemplate the fabled "west coast" leg of my journey, but that can wait til later. :)
...
Between typing parts of this, I helped Yanthor configure his router, we got into an interesting discussion about economics and philosophy, and now we're about to watch some Farscape. And so it goes.
Mon Oct 11 22:21:37 CDT 2004
music: Sarah Fimm - Shadows and Dust
A moment ago, as I flipped through a few of last month's Scribbling Walls, I again recognized the truth: I am a madman. There is no other possible explanation.
Now that we're clear about that, let's get on to the issue at hand. Since the beginning of the fest, I've been contemplating what I want the nature of "my web site" to be in the future. Jaeger has enabled cgi scripting on Ivavova, and yesterday, I discovered that it's working on Hydrogen again too. So in theory at least, the possibilities are almost limitless.
At this point, I'm not yet ready to put anything of substance on bitscape.org. This for two reasons:
Blah blah blah.
As all 2 of my avid followers aready know, since the beginning of September, all my new content has pretty much consisted of static html pages. Initially, this was due to necessity; it was the only means available at the time. But as I went along, I actually started having a great deal of fun with it. Each day could be a completely new page design, a new color scheme, a new thing to try with css.
Also, I've found that the "different layout every day" is also more fun (for me) to look back through. I can recall each day, not only through the words, but the colors and design. Recognition of my uniqe feelings and memories from that moment are much easier to grasp. It's more interesting. So why not keep it up?
The downsides to doing it this way are obvious. Lack of a consistent interface and navigational controls. No RSS feed. Little or no interactive user feedback features. Beyond that, constructing new page designs for each day requires significant time and effort, and since I'm not always running in madman mode, it may not be something I'll always want to do.
On the other hand, I don't want to go back to aquarium.pl. It and its relatives (devel_crap.pl anyone?) are now effectively relics of times past.
At this point, I'm almost inclined to say that if I'm going to type html snippets into a box, it would just be easier and simpler to use livejournal. Thus, my recent announcement that future updates would be going there.
But sometimes, on days like today, I still like to make completely custom pages.
I've contemplated creating a database-backed system in which each day's entry would allow the entire page to be completely unique (or very nearly so), and also feature niceties such as an RSS feed, user accounts, comments, visibility controls, etc. But honestly, I know it probably won't be happening for a while.
So for now, here's the deal:
Anyone who wants to write public comments or replies, either use the recently restored content solutions thingee on the ivanova index page (I've decided to leave that around for a while, possibly with some minor tweaks), or sign up for a livejournal account. They're free now, and don't even require an existing member to sponsor you anymore, as was the case a couple years ago. It's as easy as any online account signup process, and actually has some really cool features.
The wonders of network effects.
Anyway, I don't know what I'm saying anymore. I think I'll do something else for a while now.