Longbored Surfer - Blog

G2 20120807

2012-08-07T17:04:16Z

As I barely just talked about, I've created another G2 music mix for Mary, because it's been a while since I last created one (despite having posted about the prior mix earlier today). She doesn't yet know about this mix, yet here I am posting about it. Let's just hope she doesn't read her feeds before I present it to her later today. There's no theme to the music for this G2, just that it's enjoyable. Before I get into the details about the artwork, which always feels like just as much work as finding all the songs (if not more), let's get to that song list:

01	I Won't Give Up	Jason Mraz	4:00
02	Count On Me	Bruno Mars	3:17
03	Whole Love	Wilco	3:50
04	Everyday	Fiona Apple	2:19
05	Blue Spotted Tail	Fleet Foxes	3:05
06	Easier Tonight	Matt Wertz	3:31
07	King And Lionheart	Of Monsters And Men	4:34
08	Your Song	Ellie Goulding	3:10
09	The Party	Regina Spektor	2:25
10	Vanilla Twilight	Owl City	3:52
11	Somebody To Love	Queen	4:56
12	Rumour Has It	Adele	3:41
13	Silver Self	Maps & Atlases	6:31
14	If You See Me	The Black Keys	2:49
15	All Day Today	Hospitality	3:14
16	Shiver Shiver	Walk the Moon	3:53
17	In Your Light	Gotye	4:39
18	Whatever It Is	Zac Brown Band	3:28
19	Not Fooling Around	Butterfly Boucher	3:53
20	Us Against The World	Coldplay	4:00
21	Love Somebody	Maroon 5	3:50

I don't have much to say (to you) about the music on this album. I'm particularly pleased with a couple songs, but I'll leave it to you to guess. I don't listen to the radio very much, so there could be some overlap in what is on the radio and on here. I know I have a Gotye song, but it's not the song you all know (with a great fan-made video), and an Adele song (isn't every song of hers on the radio?), and plenty of other potential hits. Really, the music is for Maria. Some of it has a meaning, and some of it is just enjoyable. (P.S. You should stay away from Amazon's MP3 Store. It's so cheap, it'll give you no excuse to not buy too much music.) Now, on to the artwork:

The shortened version I use for the album artwork on the MP3s

The full-size image, which I printed (at 300 dpi) for the CD jewel case.

A whole variety of thoughts on this artwork:

First off, this artwork was obviously inspired by one of my favorite video games of all time, Super Mario Bros. I actually started the artwork with just our little family (limiting height to 16 pixels), but when it came time to put all the pieces in place, I thought it'd be fun to put them in the Mushroom Kingdom. I didn't trace anything, but certainly used some screen shots to help guide my drawing. The scale doesn't match the game (nor does the scale match between the people and game elements), but…
The color palette is limited to the original NES color palette. It's actually a fairly extensive palette. To make it easier to use just these colors, I used a handy color palette.
I made the front cover artwork (and the base of the back cover) at a 1:1 scale. This little picture you see right here is the whole artwork at the original size. I just zoomed in while drawing. I had to scale them up to larger sizes for display and printing.
In order to make pixel art at at 1:1 ratio, I used the brilliant application called Pixen (for OS X). Pixel art obviously isn't my strong-suit, but I've been inspired by Shaun Inman (who made the incredible game The Last Rocket for iOS), and to a lesser extent, Neven Mrgan's art in The Incident (for iOS and OS X as well). I admit I completely love Shaun Inman's style and work. I've talked about him too much, but his work inspires me too much to pretend otherwise.
For ease on the back artwork, I didn't limit myself to just using Pixen. I created this little base graphic in Pixen, but then scaled it up to full-size to add the track listing.
The typeface is 04b03, which was perfect for my needs, and fit really well with the look/feel. Pixen doesn't support type, but I could have recreated all of it by hand to have things perfectly line up. Although I obviously spent a bunch of time working on this, I wasn't going to be THAT anal. This time.
Lastly, I brought back the G2 moniker for the mixes. I went way from it for two mixes, but I can't deny what these are - mixes all created in what I see as the second generation of my relationship with Maria.

Back artwork, near full-size.

Maria, I love you, and hope you enjoy the mix. I'm not sure when I'll stop making mixes for you, but they're just one way I show you I love you.

(G2) 20111012

2012-08-07T14:39:48Z

I'm obviously really delayed in making this entry, but the following entry will show why I needed to finally make it. Much like some prior G2 mixes I made for Mary which were focused on a particular decade of music (60's, 70's, and 80's), this mix was focused on just the 1950's. To get things started, here's the track listing (based on the Billboard Top 30-100 of each year):

01	All Shook Up	Elvis Presley	1:58
02	Rock Around the Clock	Bill Haley & His Comets	2:10
03	Rockin' Robin	Bobby Day	2:36
04	Yakety Yak	The Coasters	1:53
05	Rag Mop	The Ames Brothers	2:39
06	Rebel Rouser	Duane Eddy	2:26
07	Only You (And You Alone)	The Platters	2:37
08	Blueberry Hill	Fats Domino	2:24
09	You Send Me	Sam Cooke	2:43
10	Sea of Love	Phil Phillips	2:23
11	I Get Ideas	Tony Martin	2:40
12	What a Difference a Day Makes	Dinah Washington	2:29
13	I Only Have Eyes For You	The Flamingos	3:25
14	Sam's Song	Bing Crosby & Gary Crosby	2:53
15	Memories Are Made Of This	Dean Martin	2:17
16	Take a Message to Mary	The Everly Brothers	2:28
17	Send for Me	Nat "King" Cole	2:32
18	Sh Boom	Crew Cuts	2:46
19	Come Go With Me	The Del-Vikings	2:39
20	Mr. Sandman	The Chordettes	2:23
21	Why Do Fools Fall In Love	Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers	2:21
22	That's Why (I Love You So)	Jackie Wilson	2:06
23	So Fine	Fiestas	2:24
24	Mr. Lee	The Bobbettes	2:13
25	If I Knew You Were Comin	Eileen Barton	2:36
26	(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window	Patti Page	2:27
27	Eh Cumpari	Julius La Rosa	2:29
28	Kiss Of Fire	Georgia Gibbs	2:29
29	Splish Splash	Bobby Darin	2:13
30	Sea Cruise	Frankie Ford	2:44
31	Day-O (Banana Boat)	Harry Belafonte	3:05

Because I made this now so long ago (let's just pretend that 10 months ago is a long time, okay?), I don't remember much about the design process of the artwork. Here are a few notes about it at this point:

I know I wanted something that would feel like the 50's, and from my own notes, it was inspired by this Columbia record envelope.
I wanted to make it feel like it was done in a multi-step printing, and the alignment was just slightly off between the different colors. I'm not super familiar with that process, so I'm sure I messed up… but I don't really care.
I love that songs from this time period are so short, mainly because it means I could fit more songs on the mix (which still fits on an 80 minute CD (even though I don't really remember the last time I bought an actual CD)).
Listening to all of the Billboard Top Hits of the 1950's was interesting in demonstrating how much of a game-changer Elvis was. Before him, everything felt like semi-sappy ballads, in the style of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. It was reminiscint of preparing for G2 20081225, with the 60's and The Beatles. My mother has never been a fan of Elvis, so I inherited a little disrespect for him. Nothing could have changed my opinion more than making this mix. Elvis, my hat is off to you (we'll just pretend he didn't steal the style from anybody else). Because of that overwhelming impression, I felt I needed to give him a place of honor at the beginning of the album. I'm particularly impressed with the "her lips are like a volcano when it's hot" part of the song, since he really fits "cano 'en it's" into a single beat… and actually freakin' works. Really, very impressive.
Rag Mop is a song my father always butchered when I was growing up. When your hair was a mess, he'd throw down "R-A-G-G-M-O-P-P RAGMOP… RAGMOP!" on you.
You Send Me - I love the simplicity of this song, and Sam Cooke's pure voice and lyrics (which can be said for What a Difference a Day Makes. I can't dedicate a song to Maria more than this one.
Sea of Love - Phil Philips (not Phillip Phillips, mind you) - I love the base harmony line, so indicative of this time period (and the obvious intro of Why Do Fools Fall in Love, though you might think more of Mr. Sandman as the perfect symbol of 50's music).

I'm sure I could make comments on each and every song on the album, but I'll leave it now to you for your enjoyment. Maria, as always, I love you, and hope you enjoy(ed) this mix.

Samuel

2011-12-16T02:31:07Z

I haven't blogged about him, and don't really plan to, but here's a fun photo of him.

He's just as awesome and cute as he looks.

20110214

2011-06-18T03:20:44Z

I've been quiet on my blog. I blame Twitter. I'm not sure I've ever waited four months to finally tell everybody about a new mix for Mary. This time I did it accidentally (I'll explain). Much like the other mixes I made for Mary, I wanted to share with each of you. Maybe you'll find a song or two you enjoy. I gave it to her on Valentine's Day this year, and managed to surprise her yet again with a mix. It took a lot of effort on my part to not let her see it (at the time our computer was in the most public place possible, which provided very little warning that she'd walk around the corner and see me working on it). Before I get into the details about the artwork, I'll give you the track list:

01	Forever	Chris Brown	4:38
02	Single Ladies	Pomplamoose	2:54
03	Howlin' for You	The Black Keys	3:10
04	Can You Tell	Ra Ra Riot	2:40
05	The Man Who Can't Be Moved	The Script	3:59
06	Mountain And The Sea	Ingrid Michaelson	3:34
07	January Hymn	The Decemberists	3:11
08	Sail Away	Sister Hazel	5:50
09	Galveston	House Of Heroes	3:41
10	The Motions (Acoustic)	Dashboard Confessional	3:55
11	We Will Become Silhouettes	The Shins	2:59
12	Awake My Soul	Mumford & Sons	4:13
13	Ice Cream	Jake Shimabukuro	4:02
14	How Six Songs Collide	Norwegian Recycling	5:51
15	Paperweight	Schuyler Fisk and Joshua Radin	3:20
16	Fallin' For You	Colbie Caillat	3:35
17	The Light	Sara Bareilles	4:23
18	I'm Your Man	Michael Buble	4:56
19	I'll Be There	Sun Kil Moon	2:20
20	Danny's Song	Loggins & Messina	4:15
21	Itchin' For You	Trailer Bride	2:20

I generally don't offer much info about why I've selected the songs, but this time I'll say that my first song on this mix was song number seven (though I can't really explain why it inspired the mix).

As for the album artwork, its obvious that the main source of inspiration for it was from this illustration. Despite my efforts, I've been completely unable to find where it's originally from. I've tried everything I can think of (which means, looking through my web history, using any reverse image lookup services, and googling “birds on a wire” until my eyes ~~bled~~ got bored) and I haven't been able to find it again on the internet. I really wanted to (re)find the original before I posted this, but got bored of looking, and (consequently) forgot to post this mix. Obviously the image is a scan of a book (since you can faintly see the words on the back side of the page), but I'm not sure which site posted the scanned image. I'd love to know where it's from so I can give proper credit. Any help would be appreciated.

I wanted the whole album to appear old and hand-drawn. I meticulously re-drew every re-used element from the original artwork, so I could have it nice and crisp at a larger size. I'm sure a professional illustrator would laugh at my pen-tool skills, but I'm pleased I can get the job done., and obviously used them on the back. I loved the idea of the lone pair of birds on the front. Are they love birds? I have no clue (and honestly I doubt it), but we'll pretend they are. The old paper mask I applied is from Bittbox and the typeface is the versatile Wendy LP.

The single largest change in this album was the dropping of the “G2” from the title, like all the other mixes I've posted. Why stop? I felt it was time to move on (and because most other people were confused by the G2 to begin with). The mix is for my wonderful wife. I love her, and hope this meager musical menagerie helps to show that.

Horror Vacui 2's Mimeoverse Easter Egg

2010-12-21T05:14:11Z

Shaun Inman (an immensely brilliant person, who I have nothing to do with (besides buying everything he makes)) posted a quick recap of his latest creation - Noises Entertainment System / NoiseES for iPhone and iPod Touch (iTunes Link). He tells us that in Horror Vacui 2 (iTunes Link) there is an Easter Egg for Mimeoverse (his unreleased, awesome-looking side-scrolling game). I couldn't find any help on Google as to what the Easter Egg might be, so took a couple minutes to figure it out myself. If you'd like to do it yourself, the secret lies in the source code of the Horror Vacui 2 mini site. You'll need to decode that base64 png mentioned in the code.secret javascript… or just look at the image I created (with some help from this decoder):

Just go into the options of Horror Vacui 2, and select the options in that order. For you non-graphical people, when in the options, tap the small playing board, large playing board, flip draw style, roulette draw style, small playing board, flip draw style (or 2, 1, 4, 3, 2, 4). You'll be graced with four playing styles of Jaunt, Fortress, and King (sorry, all you fans of Under). Anyway, just thought I could share. Enjoy!

E-Book Tools

2010-11-17T16:14:46Z

I've been contemplating some form of an E-Book Reader for a number of months. I go back and forth between a Nook and a Kindle (though I suppose I could consider a Sony Digital Reader as well (Amazon Link)). I've had an iPhone for years and although I love it, I'm completely convinced that nobody should read a book on a backlight device. If you've tried, I can only imagine you've had a similar experience to mine - it sucks, and your eyes get tired (especially considering I do most of my book-reading in bed). E Ink is the way to go (which both the Kindle and Nook (the black and white one) have).

No matter what the device is, however, I have complaints with DRM (the way they don't let you copy your digital books to other devices you own). Much like music, and how I listen to it on any number of devices, or places, I don't want to be limited to where I can read or reference digital books (I won't go into the discussion about how physical books are irreplaceable). With that in mind, I wanted to find a way to remove the copy-protection from the books I buy. If I buy it on Barnes & Noble, I'd like to reference it on my iPhone, or maybe on a Kindle (which I don't own). Or, if I buy it on Amazon, I'd like to read it on a Nook or my phone. You get the point. To that end, I found a couple invaluable resources for doing doing just that, and wanted to pass them along.

I♥Cabbages is obviously interested in (and immensely skilled at) reverse engineering, specifically the copy protection around digital books.
Darkreverser's blog is the treasure trove for the tools needed to remove the DRM from the books you buy. Obviously not adept at blogging, he opts to post updates to the tools in the comments, so read there for the newest tools (here, as of this writing).
The tools you download are GUI Python scripts, which you'll run on your desktop. You'll probably need some extra tools installed to be able to do that:
- Mac users need to download a copy of Xcode
- Windows users, they recommend ActiveState's Active Python Version 2.X (32 bit).
Calibre is the best (free) way to convert your books from one format to another. It has far more features than I understand, but it's easy enough to figure out the basics.

I've already bought books from both stores, and these handy tools have allowed me the freedom to read them where I choose. Now, I can buy where the price is better, and read wherever I choose. Don't mistake this blog post or my intentions. Don't steal books. My interest in removing copy protection is to let me read where I choose, not to let others read what I choose.

P.S. I promise not to post something immensely geeky to my blog tomorrow… but you should subscribe to my Links feed as well.

P.P.S. Have you played Minecraft yet? It's immensely pointless and addicting. Don't miss out on Minepedia to answer your questions, and Brown & Bloom to help things look better.

T-SQL ASCII Text Art Generator

2010-11-16T18:59:19Z

I've made a (practically completely useless) T-SQL ASCII Text Art Generator. Despite my affection for all things Apple, during the day people pay me to be a Microsoft/Windows geek - specifically a T-SQL and Microsoft's SQL Server (and Reporting/Intelligence Services) geek. I needed a little brush-up on loops, and went overboard to make this thing. If you feed in the right stuff, you'll end up with useless things like this:

88""Yb 888888 8888b.  88""Yb  dP"Yb
88__dP 88__    8I  Yb 88__dP dP   Yb
88"""  88""    8I  dY 88"Yb  Yb   dP
88     888888 8888Y"  88  Yb  YbodP

I've made the code available for your useless purposes (and I offer no waranty or support for this stuff). You can see the clean version here and the more easily editable version here. I've licensed the code under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike. Copy, distribute, transmit, adapt the work, so long as you give me credit for the original, and if you distribute this (or a variation) that you have a similar license. I have no clue how well it'll work in MySQL, but I'm sure somebody can find out. No matter what, enjoy.

The Limbo Chant - Reinvented

2010-11-12T15:31:24Z

Yesterday my daughters were doing the limbo, but were using the slightly misunderstood line of, “How low, candy ho!” They pretty much have no clue what the saying is supposed to be.

Useless Fliers

2010-09-21T05:01:48Z

I found great humor in Josh Millard's Useless Fliers. I immediately copied his idea, and made several of my own fliers/flyers, and posted them at work. My only problem was that I didn't want anybody to know it was me. Here we are now, months later and I still don't think anybody truly figured it out (though some were pretty close). Either way, it doesn't matter, since I've stopped. Despite that, I wanted to share my creations with you people reading the internet. Print one of these things out. Cut where appropriate. Post it. Enjoy the results. As with other creations, I'd love to hear about your own. Some of my favorite (of my own creations) are:

Free Pieces of Pi
Free Peaces on Paper
Take Only the Star Wars References (not the Iranian government references)

You can see the full listing of fliers, and download your copies to print out here. Several of them came about as inspired by McSweeney's Lists (a continual source of enlightenment). Happy posting!

First Day of School

2010-08-25T03:19:00Z

All grown up and ready to start school.

All reports indicate it was a fabulous day, and she's excited to go again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day (and onward for 13 to 17+ years). Good luck kid.

Tile we Meet Again

2010-07-29T15:02:43Z

The other day, Cabel Sasser (@cabel) (of Panic, fireworks displaying, and snack hunting), tweeted about some tile work uncovered in a building undergoing renovations (I'd love to know the building's name). Five days later, he tweeted again showing the unfortunate destruction of that same tile work. I thought it'd be a shame if that tile didn't get more attention/rememberance, and spent the time to digitize it.

Here is the base hexagonal pattern, and a modification using Panic's (and their awesometastic FTP application Transmit's) colors:

Additionally, I've gone and created a full-sized desktop picture (perfectly fits my 27" iMac).

Download: my original Fireworks PNGs. The file has both the main, hexagonal pattern, and the side square pattern. If you create your own versions, I'd love to hear about them.

G2 20100319

2010-03-16T16:12:51Z

I hate 80's Music, or at least that's what I thought, and what I've offended countless people by saying in the past. If you're a regular reader of my ramblings, you're familiar with my G2 series of mixes I make for Maria. Among the various mixes, I've tackled the 60's and 70's on their own mix, with the latter being one of the current kings of the hill as a double disc album. So, it's with a humble heart that I apologize to all of those people who I have offended with this mistaken odious proclamation. I'm sorry, I just wasn't giving the 80's enough credit, and the statement was too broad. I just hate Tears for Fears, The Cure, and that general style of 80's New Wave (as well as some of the overly synthesized or strong-beat) music. Now that I've probably offended the same fans of the 80's all over again, let's get on with this mix. When I originally came up with a tentative song list for this album, it contained enough music to fill more than 3 CD's - a new record, and one that I couldn't convince myself to make. I've never had a great connection with 80's music. For the most part, during that decade my parents were listening to other music, or my siblings weren't listening to this music until the end of the decade. We were busy playing outside. I have very few memories associated with the original release of most of these songs, and consequently I have very little affinity for it. For you fans of 80's music that are still reading (and everyone else, as well), I should make it clear that what I set out to make isn't a "Best Of" mix for the 80's. You'll read through the track list, and say “You picked that song by them? Oh, you clearly could have picked a better one!” I know there is better music out there, but in general I was aiming for a mix that says emphatically, “Maria, I love you.” With that in mind (and knowing there will be a few exceptions to that rule), let's get on to the track listing:

Disc 1
01	Mony Mony	Billy Idol	5:01
02	Invisible Touch	Genesis	3:28
03	Never Gonna Give You Up	Rick Astley	3:32
04	Walking On Sunshine	Katrina & The Waves	3:36
05	Always On My Mind	Pet Shop Boys	4:01
06	Please Don't Go	K C & The Sunshine Band	3:50
07	Just The Two Of Us	Grover Washington Jr. feat. Bill Withers	3:57
08	Kokomo	The Beach Boys	3:38
09	An American Dream	The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band	3:36
10	Biggest Part Of Me	Ambrosia	5:27
11	Longer	Dan Fogelberg	3:15
12	No More Lonely Nights	Paul McCartney	4:53
13	Somebody's Baby	Jackson Browne	4:23
14	Any Day Now	Ronnie Milsap	3:42
15	Personally	Karla Bonoff	3:39
16	You Are	Lionel Richie	4:07
17	I Just Called To Say I Love You	Stevie Wonder	4:22
18	Girl You Know It's True	Milli Vanilli	3:57
19	Break My Stride	Matthew Wilder	3:00
20	How Will I Know	Whitney Houston	4:37
Disc 2
01	Tainted Love	Soft Cell	2:40
02	La Bamba	Los Lobos	2:52
03	Love Is In Control (Finger On The Trigger)	Donna Summer	4:19
04	Don't You Want Me	The Human League	3:57
05	The Promise	When In Rome	3:40
06	I'm Your Man	Wham	4:06
07	Stuck With You	Huey Lewis And The News	4:27
08	I Can Dream About You	Dan Hartman	3:38
09	Steal Away	Robbie Dupree	3:30
10	The Sweetest Taboo	Sade	4:39
11	The Lady In Red	Chris De Burgh	4:18
12	Sea Of Love	The Honeydrippers	3:04
13	Crying	Don McLean	3:43
14	Can't Stay Away From You	Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine	3:59
15	Eternal Flame	The Bangles	3:58
16	The Way You Make Me Feel	Michael Jackson	4:58
17	She Drives Me Crazy	Fine Young Cannibals	3:36
18	You Make My Dreams	Daryl Hall And John Oates	3:11
19	Simply Irresistible	Robert Palmer	4:15
20	You Can't Hurry Love	Phil Collins	2:53
21	Bust A Move	Young MC	4:24

Both discs are unusually full, at 1:19:57 each (without any gaps between songs). That's just 3 seconds to spare on an 80 minute CD. As usual, some of this is just really sappy, and you may not love the songs, and may not like what I've picked… but you didn't make the mix - I did. Put your mix where your mouth is.

I don't have much to say about the artwork this time around. I aimed for a generic 80's style, but it's not one that I'm very good at. No gradients (causing/using stripes instead), bold colors, simple hand-drawn illustrations. In general, I had a t-shirt in mind when making the cover, and a certain destination in mind as well. I am, in no way, saying the great typeface of Futura is 80's-ish, but it worked well for my purposes.

As usual, I hope you enjoy some aspect of it, or that it inspires you, in some way, to make your own mix, and continue to attach memories to the plethora of good music out there.

Movable Type 5

2010-01-27T06:52:52Z

Movable Type 5 came out recently. I know you care. In reality, you probably didn't notice, but I figure that I'm as qualified as anybody else to give a review of the CMS which powers my site. From my limited experience, here are the key changes or additions to Movable Type 5:

Sites
Revision History
Dashboard

I'll set out right now what type of site I personally host - I am a one author, multi-blog content sharing, action streaming, stat-tracking, lessn-shortening, non-asset managing, non-user registering, funky content incorporating site. I'm writing about me. I know what a handful of other people do/use on their installations of Movable Type - because they've told me, I've figured it out, or, I built their site. If you're into this sort of thing, or have any interest - read on. Otherwise, I feel no offense at you going on to the next item in your feed reader. I'll soon return to some long overdue pictures of my kids in the next post and I won't talk about our car accident (very much). I promise.

Movable Type 5 threw a giant wrench in my site. I'm not kidding. The largest issue was the implementation of sites in MT5. Let's take a look at how things worked before:

My site (like others) houses multiple blogs. Previously one of those blogs acted like the website's home. Any multi-blog pages you created, or any non-blog content you wanted to host (like a portfolio, or contact page), technically belonged to a blog (either one, it didn't matter). Previously that was the only way to do it, so things worked out just fine. Let's look at the new style:

The new setup requires that each blog belong to a website (which is technically (if you peek at the database) another blog). Additionally the website and each blog has a theme and a style (think of the theme as the layout, and the style as the coloring). MT then really wants you to host your blogs in a sub-directory of the website, for its own anal-retentive purposes. Well since your blog just got moved to a sub-directory, and all of your extra content got moved there as well. Additionally, the website doesn't automatically pull/compile from the blogs that belong to it (which I think is stupid), so you'll need to adjust your templates to utilize the blog_id parameter.

“Well, what about the publish path?” Good question, but that path is relative to the path of the blog. If you're a one-blog site, maybe you'll still be lucky enough to just use the root of your site (I wasn't).

Any pages that are multi-blog or general site pages should probably be moved off the blog and onto the site. While you're at it, it might be good to have your site and blogs look similar-ish so you don't confuse any visitors - “How come this blog looks nothing like the home page of the site that's hosting it?” Similar-ish.

With all the changes, you'll be glad to have the next overdue implementation - revision history. MT5 brings in a full revision history for any page-related content; both templates and entries are impacted. This is a fabulous feature and came in very handy during my upgrade. With the added bonus of being able to make change notes for each revision you can easily go back and see what changed without hunting through the code.

Prior to the upgrade, I was using a modified version of Jim Ramsey's beautiful template set - Mid-Century. The template set didn't work with MT5 for whatever reason, and I was okay with changing. Unfortunately when you change template sets it likes to ~~delete~~ archive all your old templates. Thankfully this revision history was there, and I could easily go back and see my old templates, so I could steal all the code I needed.

The organization of the content is a little different than what I was used to. MT4's dashboard and navigation was all based on menus that ran along the top. I've used WordPress, but can hardly act like I've spent more than 10 minutes clicking around trying to figure out how to use it (I didn't care for it, but I imagine it has its benefits). Some people seem to be incensed at MT5's dashboard and its similarities to WordPress. Due to my lack of remembering or caring if it looks the same, I can neither confirm nor deny those claims; I can confirm my own opinion that it's a little weird, and less helpful than the previous auto-dropdown menu style was. You now need an extra click to potentially get to the content/setting you want. That's too bad.

I admit it – I have quite a few customizations that most people probably don't notice or care about. I spent way too much time fixing my site. With the changed template set, a new theme/style (which still needs lots of love/adaptation before I can actually like it), shifting the charts to their own blog, fixing my action stream (which isn't included, nor officially functional with MT5 (but thanks to a kind Japanese user has been modified to work)), getting my entries to appear across my whole site, getting my analytics/stats tracking working, getting my shortened urls working (if you visit the site, you'll see a little # that is an automatically shortened url to this entry) again, rebuilding my custom pages with the new theme/style, finally ditching my previous home-brewed site search in favor of MT's built in search (which I discovered sucks)… with all of those changes/updates as well as a handful of other small things - it was a painful couple of days. I think I'm glad I did it, since there are still several features I'd like to implement, but it was one of the most painful upgrades I've gone through. Luckily it was my own site, so I didn't have the added pressure of a client justifiably panicked that their site was down/unavailable/fuglified. I know there has to be a better way to do full upgrades of your CMS to a newer/better version.

My upgrade advice? 4.33 worked very well as-is (and so did 3.x). I honestly don't know if I see the full benefit of MT5 yet. They might claim it rebuilds faster, or has better template tags, or cooler specs on the rotary girder… but it doesn't really seem like it's worth all the work I put into it. Stay with what you're using unless you want to do a complete site overhaul; that would be a perfect time to implement MT5.

Messing with My Head

2009-12-09T16:54:13Z

Considering our recent event, I don't think it's abnormal to have something on my mind. I still have yet to find out any information about the other party involved. I imagine that information is shortly forthcoming as it has been now 2 weeks (!) since it happened.

What I've decided is this: my life will never be the same again. I don't foresee taking another road trip or driving on a freeway with questionable (or no) center dividers without thinking about it. I can guarantee I'll be a more cautious driver, and far more defensive. I know Cecilia is changed as well, as she has now taken to commenting on other drivers and how they should be more careful. She's 5, and shouldn't be thinking about that sort of thing. Becky talks about it, but 2 year-olds are far less aware of the world around them (thankfully, in this case).

I wish I could stop mentally replaying it over and over and over and over and over again. Thankfully the replays are diminishing, and obviously it's a form of coping that my mind needs to do. Numerous details are as clear today as they were when it happened. Some things are a bit clearer:

I love Maria… a lot. One of the worst parts of the day was when we got separated to go to the hospital. It felt like an eternity until I got to hear her voice again, and see her. How very uncool to even contemplate a life without her.
Just because I had endured the scariest experience of my life, doesn't mean anybody else had. It was completely weird to go back to work or interact with others. I'd still be in the midst of coping with it, and everyone else is acting like it's just another day - because it was just another day. I couldn't stop thinking about the accident, and nobody else even knew it happened - or if they did, it felt like they didn't fully grasp its breadth. I still space out in the middle of the day thinking about it.

What am I supposed to learn from this? Why were so fortunate in the whole event (relatively speaking)? What should we do about a car? We're on our third rental, and should be getting a check any day now to help buy a new car. I hate shopping for cars, and certainly don't feel like I can afford a new one with the recent home purchase. More of a financial pinch is just what we need these days… not.

*sigh* I know this whole thing is old news for you, but it's not for us. Who knows when it will be – maybe not for a while.

Thankful to be Alive

2009-11-27T06:37:21Z

Among countless other things, today I'm thankful my family and I are alive. A little before 11 AM yesterday morning (11/25/09), while traveling from southern California to the Salt Lake valley, a car coming from the opposite direction came across the median, spun, clipped the semi/tractor-tailor we were about to pass, and unfortunately slammed directly into the front of our vehicle. Despite bumps, bruises, sore necks, seatbelt and airbag burns, some damaged luggage, and a car whose future doesn't look very bright… we're okay, home, and thankful to be alive. We have so much for which to be thankful. I must publicly state how thankful I am to our Heavenly Father for how well things turned out.

Considering I had the cruise control set at 75 mph, slammed on the brakes (slowing us to an unknown speed), hit the other car (which was traveling in the opposite direction), sat and watched firefighters and paramedics use two sets of Jaws of Life on the other car (to remove the top of the car, and a chunk of the back (to extract the driver, as well as the passenger who was somehow partially wedged into the trunk)), then watched them get airlifted by helicopter (which landed right in the middle of the freeway (which was awesome))… considering all this, and we essentially walked away (after a couple ambulance rides to a trauma center to be all checked out)… there is unquestionably a higher being who was watching out for us.

Unlike the previous accident, I didn't want any pictures of this one. I don't need or want any help in remembering how things looked. I don't want to see my battered car, or be reminded of just how helpless I felt as the provider and protector of my family. I don't want to be reminded of the unkind thoughts or feelings I had toward the other driver. We survived and fared very well considering all things.

Unfortunately I know very little about the man and woman in the other car. I know they were far more injured than we were – indicated by both the helicopter and further news I got about them. I hope and pray for their speedy and complete recovery, as well as for their family as they deal with this event.

My gratitude is not limited towards Him, but also to

Our family and friends – for all the support – we truly are blessed to have you all
All the emergency and medical personnel who assisted us (especially those who took care of my wife and children) – I couldn't have asked for better
Honda – for engineering such incredibly safe automobiles
Graco – for protecting such precious cargo – my two beautiful daughters
(on a lighter note) Burger King – for the delicious breakfast which helped me keep my energy and strength until I ate lunch/dinner at 8 PM (or something like that)
(on a musical note) Jack Johnson – for providing the soundtrack during the accident

I am thankful to be alive. I don't know what He has in store for me/us, but obviously he has something planned. Here's to another year of life, and a lifetime of productive and grateful days.