December 2002

+ Monday - December 30, 2002

For Christmas, much to my surprise and delight, I recieved the Cosmos Box Set. I've been slowly watching the 13 episodes (now about a 1/3 of the way through, yesterday's quote was from Ep 3) and am amazed at how well they've held up over the last 20 years. I remember watching them when I was younger, and immediately decided I wanted to become an astronomer.

Alas, that did not happen, as I ended up choosing to persue computer science instead, however part of me is still mesmerized by space. And I guess part of the reason is because it is so...big. Just trying to imagine the enormity of space can give one headaches, but it can also be therapeutic as well. It is very easy to get wrapped up in one's own small microcosm, and forget their place in the world. When you travel outside of this small blue planet and look at it from the outside, you begin to realize how insignificant some things really are, and how much more is really out there than just the daily grind. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan wraps these types of thoughts up beautifully, in ways I don't think anyone else ever has, or really ever could. His subject isn't just about space, it's about being human.

+ Sunday - December 29, 2002

"Geometry existed before the Creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God. Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation. Geometry is God Himself."
-Johannes Kepler

+ Friday - December 27, 2002

Big update to the Roms section. I've had these new ones for a while but just got around to renaming and autotyping them all. Hopefully I can get a few more in the not so distant future to round out the collection.

+ Wednesday - December 25, 2002

Merry Christmas. Christmas was ok to me this year, I got a lot of things I wanted, some pretty cool. But I found out I can quickly kill animals just by being in their presence. I got a fish from my aunt, and I kid you not, 5 hours after she gave it to me, it died. See, this is why I ask for DVD's and video games. Synthetic material has a slightly longer lifespan than a fish.

+ Friday - December 20, 2002

Xmas is coming. That means several days w/ my HS buddies (who, unfortunatly, I do not see often enough) and LOTS of video gaming. Sometimes, I wish it could be Xmas 365 days out of the year. *sigh*

+ Tuesday - December 10, 2002

From Zeldman's site about Post-euphoric acceptance as it pertains to this site:

"We just wonder if the periodicalization of personal web space is a symptom of diminished expectations. Or the logical product of an era that leaves little time for creative play and less room for the delusion that the web or any site on it can change the world."

Well, in my case it's neither. I'm just doing what I find interesting and I try to have fun doing it, just like I've always done. That's why my sites change focus so often, and why they will all change once again someday to something totally different as well. It's more fun that way. I think the fact that it's now a "periodical" as Zeldman calls it is just dumb luck. In actuality, it's not a periodical at all. It's an FTP server with a lot of sysadmin updates. ;)

+ Monday - December 9, 2002

If you like portable video games, I highly recommend the book Electronic Plastic. Excellent book, showcasing old school LCD and LED games. Not easy to find, but the Walker currently has a few left. Unfortunately they didn't have the Grid Systems book I wanted, some dumb bastard must have grabbed it over the weekend. I guess I should have hid it when I had the chance. :(

+ Sunday - December 8, 2002

All this time and I didn't realize that my site never looked right in IE 5 on PC. As people who do a lot of CSS know, the box model on IE 5 for PC is jacked and in order to make everything happy, you need to use a CSS hack to get all of your sizes right when using padding or margins on an element (since IE puts padding/margins inside the box instead of outside like it's supposed to).

Well, for the longest time I've been using something like:

div.content {
  padding: 50px;
  height: 400px;
  voice-family: "\"}\"";
  voice-family: inherit;
  height: 300px;
}

The little "voice-family" lines are supposed to trick IE and give you the right height you want. The only issue is, it sometimes also screws up the following class as well, and isn't always an exact science. Of course I had to figure this out the hard way.

Thankfully, there's an even better box model hack, that's easier, and seems (in my tests) to work all the time:

div.content {
  padding: 50px;
  height: 400px;
  he\ight: 300px;
}

See that forward slash before the "i" in "height"? That's it, that's the hack. Just put the slash after the first letter of the property. The line w/ that slash in it is ignored by IE5, but works just fine in any other browser that gets the box model correct. There is of course one caveat, but it's a small one. The letter following the slash can't be the letters A-F, or the browser will think it's hex code, and well, you don't want it to do that. This is why it's not before the "e" in "height", and instead precedes the "i".

All in all a nice find, and you IE5/PC users should finally be seeing things the way they were meant to be seen for a change.

+ Friday - December 6, 2002

Holy shit. And I thought I had a lot of games.

Real American Heroes. Mr. Male Football Cheerleader has always been my favorite.

+ Thursday - December 5, 2002

Just got back from the mnartists.org relaunch party. The site is a project I've been on for the last couple months at the Walker. A lot has gone into it, and while it's not perfect, I think it's great since it showcases any Minnesota artists who want to show off their work.

The party itself had some performances from local artists, the weirdest being some dude who was full on naked who wanted people to paint all over his body (using his body as the canvas sorta thing). I suppose it was interesting, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of old naked dudes w/ paint up their ass crack.

Before the party, Annette and I went to the bookstore and through the galleries (she's always a good sport when it comes to this stuff, which I am thankful for). I found a ton of good books at the bookstore, which I will have to buy next week when employees get 35% off. Perhaps I should have hid that Grid Systems book...

I had never been in the galleries before, dispite living here for 4 years and working at the Walker for a few months now. I really like the perminent collection, since it had a lot of work I had heard about or had seen in books before. It's interesting to see them in real life. A lot of the other stuff however was just downright weird. Art can be fun, but sometimes a contemporary art museum can be pretty fucked up.

Annette really dug this one piece though, a video piece that showed kids, by themselves, dancing to techno beats. At first I thought it seemed kinda lame and repetative, but after a while, there was something interesting about it. Maybe it was because it reminded me of a Fatboy Slim video. Or perhaps, as Annette said, watching people dance is pretty damn funny. ;)

+ Tuesday - December 3, 2002

One of my all time favorite games (perhaps my #1 favorite), Phantasy Star is being remade for the PS2. Aparently this is just one of a number of games that Sega is remaking with updated graphics and sound from their old school counterparts.

At first I thought it sounded interesting, until I saw the pictures. Can't they just leave well enough alone? In my opinion they've really ruined the feeling of PS. And part of that feeling came from being on an 8-bit system. It's sort of like when they remake old movies. It's just never the same, and usually end up being pretty crappy.

The good news is that Sega is also releasing Phantasy Star for the Gameboy Advance. Luckly this time, the graphics will remain true to the original.

+ Monday - December 2, 2002

Holy crap. I just found out from my buddy Dave that Renard's Cheese is now selling online! I may just need to overnight some of the best cheese curds EVAR!