web design

It has come to pass that my friend Todd has seen fit to mock me in the comments section of my last post for my lack of new content. He is lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on one’s personal taste) to have caught me in a particularly sarcastic mood.  I might even call it a particularly snark-castic mood, but that would just be too fucking precious.  Anyway, the following is very likely going to sound much more surly than usual for me; rest assured that I mean it to be tongue-in-cheek.  I’m feeling a little Denis Learyish.

That’s correct, Todd, I haven’t posted in awhile - and my, aren’t you a keen observer of detail.  Wanna know why? Here’s why - I’ve been busting my ass building this site for the theatre company I’m in.  Don’t want to click through? Fine, here’s a couple of screenshots:

Not exactly a slapdash half-hour-with-FrontPage kind of a job.  Put it this way: in the last month alone, I’ve spent enough time building and administrating that site to fulfill my Theatre Neo volunteer hours requirements for the next three years.  That is, if we were allowed to carry over extra hours to the succeeding year, which we’re not.  But it doesn’t matter, because as long as I’m running the website I’ll never have to wonder if I’ve done enough volunteer hours.

So then Todd informs me that I’ve been “tagged in a meme,” and to find out the meaning of this memeing I need to visit his site.  Deciding to play along for the moment, I click over to his blog post and find the answer to be as follows (grammatical corrections are mine, and included for no good reason):

1. Link back to the person who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking [to] them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’sbloggers’ blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

As I said in a comment to Todd’s post: oh, jaysus.

First of all - and I don’t fault Todd for not knowing this - here’s the thing about me: I don’t follow memes.  I start memes. I am the natural source from which memes flow; that’s why I call them MEmes. If somebody else came up with it, then by definition it is not a meme - it is a THEMe.

To be completely honest, I’m usually not even aware of it when I start a meme.  I never set out with the purpose of producing the latest Thing on the Web You Have To See, the internet-touchstone-du jour, the virtual face that launched a thousand forwarded emails. I don’t wake up in the morning going, “Let’s see… I think I’ll have some breakfast, feed the dogs, shower, and set the zeitgeist aflame.”  It just happens.  Such is the nature of being mightily influential.

That aside, I find this so-called meme’s question thoroughly mediocre. Six “unspectacular” quirks? It’s such a mediocre question that it specifically calls for mediocre answers!  And not just one, but SIX of them.  Well, be careful what you wish for.  After two or three of anyone’s unspectacular quirks, it’s a sure bet that the rest of the list is going to get more and more unspectacular.

One or two spectacular quirks - now that would at least be worth forwarding to your MySpace friends.  Who cares if you prefer crushed ice to ice cubes or whatever - I want to read about your quirkiest, weirdest foibles.  Like, say, if you perpetually emit static electricity, no matter where you are.  Or how you have one toenail that grows four times faster than normal.  Or perhaps, how you smashed your genitalia between two handheld freeweights while doing standing flys, and now the brand “Everlast” is permanently embossed on your penis.  You know, that kind of thing.

I know it’s the internet, but holy shit, people - aim at least a little higher.  So, I’m sorry, Todd. I won’t be tagging six other bloggers and perpetuating this chain-letter posting thing.  Whatever, call me Ebenezer.  I’m taking a principled stand for the cause of better content.  Demand more from your internet questionnaires! …Or, don’t. Seriously, do whatever you like. I like to agitate for a better internet, but, you know, that’s just me.

Excerpted from The State of the Web - Summer 2008, a clever commentary in illustration form by web designer Matthew Inman:

If you don’t get all of the web-geeky references in the picture, you’re not alone (anyone want to fill me in on what the “Rick/Never gonna give you up, etc.” thing is?). I’ll own up to my penchant for Facebook, but I have been cutting way back on the SuperPoking.

The “Opera Idol” video set me to thinking about the transcendent power of music. When I’m asked what kind of music I like, I say something like, “Good music, composed and performed with skill and passion.” This answer might seem vague or flippant, so I always follow it with an explanation of how I relate to music… and it goes something like this:

Good music moves people. It cuts through listeners’ preconceptions of musical genres, styles, eras and so forth and compels them to stop and listen. We all love music and all have our own tastes, which is as it should be. I just get a unique thrill out of seeing when art (here, music) gives people a taste of something they didn’t expect, and they find out that they like it. I love it even more when it happens to me - which it does, regularly. As a result of this phenomenon, my music collection now ranges from Josquin to Ludacris, and increasingly many points in between. BUT - there’s always more good music out there.

It was with that in mind that I recently made a profile on the music/social networking site Last.fm. I’d considered Pandora.com too, but I had problems making sense of the Pandora interface. I figured if Last.fm was good enough for my brother it was good enough for me, since he knows at least as much about music as I do and way, way more about tech/the web. At this moment he is the only occupant of the “Friends” section of my Last.fm profile, where his avatar sits next to a link that says with seeming disdain, “See all 1 friends.”

Any other Last.fm users reading this? Care to give my brother some company in the “Friends” box, and help wipe the smirk off that link’s face? Also, any opinions on whether or not I should I put a nifty Last.fm playlist widget (pictured at right) in this blog’s sidebar? Note it would not automatically play when you load this page (you click on the play button or a track title) - I hate pages that play music at me without asking, so I would never do that to you.

Hopefully you’ll notice that I’ve done some sprucing up here at the HoC&B. Specifically, I’d like to direct your attention to the new About page. Inspirational credit is due to Lorelle VanFossen, whose post hit me like a cattle prod.

I’ve tried to include both user-friendliness and a bit of “zazz” with the column of pretty feed buttons in the sidebar. If you haven’t yet learned about feeds, I recommend doing so - there are plenty of simple and helpful explanations available. I find feeds to be extremely convenient (and, of course, tasty). I also opened the HoC&B up to social bookmarking sites, hence the little row of buttons at the bottom of this page… although I must admit that what happened to Evolving Trends has me a little paranoid.

As before, any constructive feedback about the About page or anything else on the blog is welcomed. In fact, I might even welcome destructive feedback - it could give me something to mock. Hey, you never know where good content might come from.

My Binary Blue period turned out to be but a brief dalliance. Look around and you shall see that I have settled on the Tarski theme, augmented by a little caffeine in the header image. So, yes - I believe I am just about done mucking about with theme customization, which means I’ll have to focus on actually writing. Well, fancy that.