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“Writing and directing are for free. That part is free. You’d do that no matter what. You get paid to deal with idiots who don’t care about movies.” - Paul Thomas Anderson
“Writing, design, and programming are for free. That part is free. You’d do that no matter what. You get paid to deal with clients that don’t care about the Web.” - Jason Kottke
Magnolia is becoming a better movie every time I think about it. Did you notice the coiled rope on the roof that read “82”? Did you know that’s only one of over *100* references to the number 82 in the film? Do you know why it was called Magnolia?
I got a piece of employment spam today. It read, in part:
”[We need] a pharmacologist to work as part of an animal modeling team that is focusing on the therapeutic area of pain. Prior training and experience in measuring hyperalgesia, allodynia, analyzing rodent behavior, necropsy and surgical skills is mandatory.”
Yeah, that sounds a lot like me. I could really get into “the therapeutic area of pain”, couldn’t you?
The Web is abuzz today with the AOL buyout of Time Warner. While I’d like to say that this is just business (just American media business to boot) and won’t affect much of anyone, that’s not the case. This deal is a touchstone, a turning point. Some consequences:
- The Internet is no longer a buzzword or a toy or something regular people “don’t get”. It’s an integral part of our society. The Internet is not the punchline of Leno’s jokes anymore…well, that’s not true, as Jay likes to run things into the ground and then some….but no one is laughing.
- People will stop talking about “dot coms” and “brick and mortar” companies as if they are two separate things. Companies are companies. Business is business. The “Internet way of doing business” is an oxymoron. Having a “.com” suffix on the end of your company name will make you look foolish. As usual, it will take the large consulting companies awhile to figure this out.
- There will be no special media coverage of people buying stuff off of the Internet next holiday season. Just another place to shop.
- Right now, all the business and media stuff that’s happening applies mainly to the US. As the changes occuring in the American business arena spread to other parts of the globe (via the Internet, wouldn’t you know), American companies with huge market caps will be buying up international media & technology companies. You too will be watching 500 channels of bad interactive television.
Anyway. It’ll be fun to see how much of this is dead wrong in a year or so.
I did indeed go see Magnolia yesterday…for the bargain price of $3.00. It’s a huge movie; over three hours long and packed with good acting, engaging stories, and Tom Cruise using sexually explicit profanity. Lots to talk about afterwards as well; what have you lost and do you regret it?
Matt Groening lists his 10 favorite Simspons episodes. None of the ones he lists would be on my top 10 list.
Look Ma, I’m in a book. I received my complementary copy of Web Design Essentials in the mail yesterday. They put three of my Web design tips in the book: Creating Static Motion, Simulating HTML Text in a Graphic, and Creating a Quick 3D Text Effect. Actually, the first and last of these tips are actually more like tricks: potentially interesting, but not really fundamentally useful. The second tip is actually useful…to me at least; I use it all the time.
As for the rest of the book, I have no idea if it’s any good or not. When I get some time to read it, I’ll let you know. With designers like Amy Franceschini, Jeremy Abbett, Florian Fangohr, and Frank Kolodziej, it certainly looks promising.
Anyway, here are some scans I made of my tips as they appear in the book: [1] [2] [3] [4].
New site design over at Aberro….or as Ben likes to call it, CamWorld II. From the looks of it, could also be GlassWorld or CamDog. I like the content over there though….it’s nice to read someone getting more charged up over stuff than me.
And while I’m ranting a little, Scripting News has turned into an EditThisPage portal. EditThisPage is a great free service, but most, if not all, of the things that people are doing with it have been done better elsewhere. Of course, Scripting will remain a daily read for me because I like the rest of the content.
As I look at the new UI for Apple’s OS X, why do I get the feeling I’m looking at an over-blown
Flash or DHTML site? Did the kid from Gabocorp do this? Specifically:
- All this 3D shading, clear plastic shit drives me nuts. It works IRL…it looks seriously cheesy onscreen.
- Is there a reason for the transparent pulldowns and dialogue boxes? I do
believe there’s room for transparency in an OS, but if there’s no functionality, it could potentially be distracting. Do I need to be looking at the image underneath the pulldown menu? Shouldn’t I be focusing on the text?
- Are those “icons” at the bottom of the screen part of the wallpaper or are they functional? Spread them out a bit and your ordered little desktop starts looking like Joe’s Cool WWW Page and is equally as useless and confusing.
p.s. Love the new clear plastic tabs on Apple’s site too, by the way. It’s like iAmazon! Apple is losing some serious design cred with me, all the way around. iWannaThrowUp.
It’s difficult to convince the unconscious self that it’s a good idea to wake up at 6:30 in the morning on 3 hours sleep.
Saw The Cider House Rules the other day. Pretty good. I really like Tobey Maguire as an actor.
Metababy is closed for remodeling. I have an inkling of what Greg is going to do with v2, but will be anxious to see what actually happens. Another point of suspense: will he actually meet his deadline of January 28, 2000.
Some sites, you just don’t know what it is about them that grab you, but they just do. Sarasvati is one of those sites for me. The design is nice, the writing is even nicer, and the kicker is that the creator is still a junior in high school. I hate to play the age card here, but when I was a junior in high school, was I that talented and intelligent? I don’t think so…I mainly recall coming home from school and watching Scooby Doo reruns whilst eating Nutty Bars. Come to think of it, that pretty much describes my current existence as well.
When I saw the New Years Eiffel Tower fireworks on TV, I was immediately extremely jealous of Ariana. Normally she’s a pretty nice girl, but she just had to go rub salt in my wound about it when she got home. She writes on her Web site**:
”Jason, Paris was amazing….too bad you weren’t there, ha ha! The whole Eiffel-Tower-turned-sparkler thing was incredible, Jason. That’s too bad you weren’t there like I was. I saw the whole thing and you didn’t.”
”[I] had one of the best meals of my life. Yummo. Too bad you had to stay in America and eat suckball macaroni and cheese all week, Jason. You suck!”
**Note: certain details of these quoted passages may or may not have been modified. I make no guarantees as to the overall validity of these statements, or indeed of anything on this site. One caveat: I probably do, indeed, suck.
My abuse of free voicemail continues into its third month. Call 877.218.0260 ext.358 to leave me a message. Need a topic? A reader suggested I do an “Ask Jason” on my site…so, ask me something and I’ll eventually post the replies to all the questions I get. And remember kids, the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask. (update: the voicemail is full already. sorry.)
Local time: 12:06 am. Much ado about nothing, as predicted.
So, what I was doing when the clock stuck midnight? Recovering from an unexpected nap. Loser? Yes.
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