SwimFinsSF

Design skills COMPLETELY LACKING

So i’ve spent way too long farting around with my site layout and so far look what I’ve come up with… NOTHING… I’ve managed to get my picture display up top back up (and added the ability to rotate these images randomly with some PHP magic I found on we web) but aside from that I have YET to come up with anything I can deal with.. I kind of like the general form of this layout but its really just one of the MT standard layouts without much variation… I’d like to find something more me… better colors… simple and clean..

Anyway.. just whining… shows everyone has their skills and i’ve got one or two but none of ’em have ANYTHING to do with makin things purdy… Ah well…

Some Semblance of Normalcy

So i’m finally trying to get my blog put back together after the great hack of 2005. I just re-installed MT for the umteenth time (this time just because there wasn’t anything left in the old blog aside from the content that I needed to preserve). They just updated MT to MT 3.2 which seems pretty decent and they added the ability to easily swap ‘themes’ from a library which is pretty damn cool.. Only problem I had with it was the install instructions which are pretty poorly written – they should go back to the step by step instructions that they had before…

Anyway… Things seem to be up and running again… If you run into any trouble let me know…

He’s BACK! :)

Well – Kevin made it back from Burning Man intact and it seems like he had a lot of fun. He’s been raving about it for days now… the deep blue skys at sunrise.. The people… the music… And seems all the pictures from everywhere bear that out.. I still haven’t decided if I’d have fun but sounds like its worth at least checking out huh? Anyway… Here are a bunch of pictures that other folks took (he didn’t take any himself that butt head :):) )

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Katrina aftermath

Watching the news this week has been absolutely surreal. We spent last weekend in Houston and flew out as people were coming into Houston to get out of the hurricane’s path but I had NO CONCEPT of what was to come. There were no real signs in Houston that anything major was going on as I flew out and I guess I kind of assumed that people were just gonna hang out in town for a bit so they didn’t get wet and in case windows blew out or water came in. Now watching what actually is going on there is breaking my heart and has me really embarrassed for trivializing the potential damage in my mind. I had no concept of just how powerful a storm a Class 4 hurricane is or how vulnerable New Orleans and the surrounding parts of Mississippi and Alabama were. I know what a magnitude 7 earthquake is vs a Magnitude 6 but I have no frame of reference for hurricanes..

This is another one of those surreal events where I feel kind of at a loss as to what to do to help.. I heard of people hanging out on a dock on the coast of Louisiana waiting for a ferry to take them to shelter and the ferry sitting idle because there was no captain for the boat – but I can’t drive a ship. There are people without power and water in their houses – but I can’t fix power-plants or pumps. There are people without access to phones to tell their loved ones they’re alive – but I can’t fix downed cell towers or phone lines.. And there are people without food, water, and basic needs.. But that I can help out with and did and it was as easy as going to the iTunes music store and clicking donate – and 100% goes to the Red Cross…

As always the american red cross is accepting donations to help and thats at least a little something that I hope can help.. not much but something – and working with the red cross in the past I know for a fact that it has a very real impact and will help people… So if anyone else wants to help, and I really hope you do, you can donate on the American Red Cross web site or even via iTunes… and for those of you who would like to give to someone other than the red cross here is a partial list of other Relief Organizations and services that you can choose from.

My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone down there and wish I could do more to help…

Burning Man ’05

So Kevin is off at Burning man until Monday… I’m jealous but unfortunately I have stuff I have to deal with here that kept me from going… Sad I know… But since I can’t go I’ve been reading all sorts of stuff about it. The Burning Man site has all SORTS of interesting stuff on it including a live webcast of the event so I can watch and see whats going on. I logged in last night and saw the man glowing in the night and random lit things go by the camera.. .Today you can see the man surrounded by a LOT of sand and people bustling by on bicycles and stuff – you can even hear the wind blowing and the music.. Matt also pointed me at a Google maps view of burning man from space. SUPER COOL…

Anyway.. had to share… go back to your business! :):)

Mail Tags

Just some geek stuff to pass along.. If any of you are using Mac OS X mail on Tiger I thought I’d pass along this cool little tool I found… A coworker passed along a link to a Mail plugin called Mail Tags which allows you to tag mail messages with things like projects, date due, and other comments. It then allows you to use spotlight to search and categorize them based on these tags.. I find this really handy because it lets you basically file and annotate mail messages…

Anyway.. Had to share… 🙂