For us, there is no spring. Just the wind that smells fresh before the storm.
Various screen shots from the MMORPG Age of Conan. Shawn and I are having a blast playing this game together!
Which witch is which? A.K.A: Web hosting, how do you pick?
Three years ago, I admit that I thought the blogging world began and ended with one of the many journal hosting sites such as Live Journal, Xanga, and Blogger. I’d look from the corner of my eye green with envy at self-hosted Word Press sites with their own snappy domain names that fit their niche. Then continued to tickity-tap-type away on my Live Journal wishing I could have just a little more control, just a little more SEO settings, and just over all, a little more everything.
Shawn and I realized in order to do that, we’d have to go on out into the big wide world of buying our own domain and choosing a name that best represented us–and we did. Great! Awesome! But after we grabbed the name we were faced with the larger dilemma most every-day ‘net users are faced with: web hosting and where to get it?
There are so many hosting sites out there. If you’re like us and only marginally ‘net savvy, choosing one can become a chore or a nightmare (depending on your understanding of website jargon and the likes.) How do you pick one that is right for you? How do find one that offers just the correct amount of services to fit your needs? Where can you find real, honest consumer reviews and reports on hosting companies and where can you read helpful advice on web hosting?
Behold. I bring you Web Hosting Rating. Not only will you find customer reviews, but you’ll find a plethora of helpful articles, such as Web hosting security, Can cheap hosting be good?, and much, much more. All targeted to guide you on your way toward choosing a web hosting service that’s just right for you.
If you’re stuck on the fence and wondering whether or not to self-host a blog because you don’t know which company to choose or why, I really recommend checking Web Hosting Rating out. Definitely a guide you don’t want to miss!
Time for a Change
As I’ve posted here before, I’ve been a conservative for a very very long time. Without going into too much fine detail my primary reasons center around less intrusive government and lower taxes. Basically, I’m the kind of conservative that doesn’t care whether you screw 6 hookers high on shrooms as long as you keep my taxes low and don’t expect me to pay for your health care.
Until recently I have considered the quest to keep government out of our lives more important than other considerations and have sided with the party most likely to do this. Each party or liberal/conservative leaning has it’s drawbacks. Conservatives are just fine as frog’s hair when it comes to proselytizing from the bench as long as fetuses are involved. Liberals would preach from the white house on pretty much every issue except drugs and abortion. I took the lesser of two evils and stayed with the party that at least pretended to be interested in keeping government small and out of my face.
Well, I believe the time has come to re-evaluate how and for whom I vote. Over the past few years I’ve watched more and more press and blogs talking about atheist rights and watched the greater community react. During my observations I’ve noted that the frequency and intensity of the attacks on atheists increasing. Members of our government are simply allowed to tell us we don’t matter… or worse, are dangerous… without fear of reprisal or even a slap on the wrist from the greater community. Our rights can openly be questioned and no one even seems to notice.
There is not a single atheist running for president that I’ve been able to find. Even the “Best-we-can-do-party,” the Libertarians, are nominating the openly religious Barr. Hell the guy even tried to ban witchcraft! And not because it’s silly, but because it’s “satanic” and his imaginary friend doesn’t like that. It has been established that the majority of Americans would rather vote for a gay scientologist than an atheist regardless of what the person’s stances were. How insane is this? And how is it that I don’t get a benefit or some sort of special parking space?
Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s time for a change. As Atheists we cannot simply keep supporting people that actually believe in mythology just because they agree with something else we like or support. How can you support a man or woman that wants to teach our children Intelligent design just to keep your taxes low? How selfish is it to ignore the fact that a man says he’s going “to do God’s work,” just because we like the healthcare package he’s pushing? How can we hold ourselves out to be better than the militant Islamists when we ignore the fact that most of our country actually believes Jonah was swallowed by a whale and that Noah fit two (or more) of all the animals in the world in a boat? Is getting 72 virgins for blowing yourself up really so crazy an idea in comparison?
So, beginning with this election, I have decided I cannot and will not support any believer of any religion regardless of their stances. The bare minimum a thinking person can ask of their candidate is that they don’t believe in some imagined grand-father or -mother in the sky. As with all such decisions, they are pretty meaningless if only followed through by one individual. However, estimates of the Atheist population of the US are somewhere around 7%-10%, making us a potentially powerful voting bloc, especially in this age of races decided by less than 2%. The more of us that use the power of the vote to encourage more rational leaders rather than the ID crowd the better off we’ll all be.
This November, I’ll be writing in my vote.
I have two words for you…
F-cking. Awesome. That’s my concise and completely accurate review of Iron Man.
We went to see the movie earlier this morning. I had been building myself up for this movie all week and had been anxiously awaiting it for the past couple months. I was in perfect position to have my hopes dashed, much like they were for the first Hulk film. It’s pretty hard for a film to live up to what a anxious movie go-er might imagine before they actually get to see the movie and usually I force myself to have lower expectations. For some reason I decided to let myself get excited about this film.
And I was not one bit disappointed. Not a single bit.
The movie had the normal phenomenal special effects. This day and age this is something that I expect from a film in this genre. That’s why I go to superhero films. I don’t go to see comic books I loved since I never read them. I go to see unreal things made real. I am honestly far more impressed with amazingly good animation effects in films like The Incredibles than am by appropriately shiny metal and wicked explosions in an action film. Iron Man was filled with plenty of good action shots of the man in the iconic metal suit doing lots of hero-ey stuff. The action wasn’t overbearing and it didn’t overwhelm the story.
The story was surprisingly good and very much so character driven. The genesis of the character has been changed to better reflect the times and still managed to keep the “war profiteer turned do-gooder” vibe that is in the genesis of the original comic. The names had that familiar comic book feel to them; short and descriptive. The hero is Stark, and so is his view of the world as a whole at the beginning. The peppy sidekick? Why Pepper, of course. Pepper Potts to be exact. Why, the name almost personifies a cute freckle-faced assistant. Just saying it makes you peppy. As a whole everything fit together as it should in these films. The production values were high and the writing punchy and surprisingly smart (especially between Pepper and Stark). The only negative I had was the butchering of the song Iron Man during the end credits. C’mon! Don’t screw with things that don’t need to be screwed with.
But this film had something special and his name is Robert Downey Jr.
Most of the superhero films these days have heroes that look like they belong in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They’re all perfect little people between the ages of 17 and 21, it seems. The recent Superman movie, though a film I enjoyed, suffered from this. Lois and Clark look like they just got their BA from some ivy-league mass-production preppy machine, not like they’re old enough to be established journalists; one of whom has won a Pulitzer. At the beginning, Downey brings his trademark sharp witted playboy to the fore, no doubt from years of practice in real life. It works marvelously. I ceased to see Downey pretending to be Stark and began to see the two as the same person.
But where Downey really shines as Stark is when the mood turns serious. Eighteen year old models don’t have weight (either physically or emotionally). When the story turns dark and you can begin to see the change come over the character, Downey’s age and lack of physical perfection lends him a sense of gravitas that the kids just haven’t been able to pull off yet. I believed he felt regret over what he’d created and how it had changed the world. This alone makes the film worth seeing. Add to this that his character wasn’t changed by some sort of magic bullet or cosmic radiation… that he *chose* to be better and to make the world a better place… and you have yourself something different and so much better than the normal super hero fare.
So my initial review stands. F-cking Awesome. Go. Now. Why aren’t you going?
The Penguin Thanks You All
Well Hey thar, interwebs! We just wanted to thank all of you that visited us yesterday on what became the busiest day at 2PhatGeeks. Between the Diggers and Stumblers and Reddit-ers, in a single day we doubled the traffic we’ve had since the site officially opened in March. As we’re both (obviously) new to this real blog thing-a-ma-bob, this is pretty big news for us.
A special shout out to the Reddit folks out there. Between some meaningful discussion about the topic at hand and some inferences that I have just never read a book before, the story was actually the number 1 in the gaming category on Reddit for a while.
Finally, I want to put out a very special thank you to the Reddit reader ColdSnickersBar that had this to offer.
And indeed I do…. waaaaaak waaak! Thanks, internet! You all made our day!
Carpentry for Geeks
I like making things.
This may sound a bit childish. After all, who doesn’t like to make something out of nothing, but with my recent experiments in construction, I find that I really enjoy working with tools and wood in my hands.
(pause for school-boy giggling)
I’ve not done anything truly complex. Everything is constructed of rectangles, no fancy curves (other than my highly inaccurate wood cutting). So far, my faux-carpentry consists of: the wood frame for our raised garden, An entertainment center and a simple CPU stand from the scrap of said entertainment center. While none of these is high art or fashion, I think they’re all stable and sturdy. In the eyes of this uber-pragmatist: that’ll do, pig.
I’ve toyed around pretty extensively with digital 3D construction and while I’ve never been an expert, I’ve found I really do like the precision of it. Every piece fits precisely together with every other piece to the pixel. Every cube is perfectly flat and perfectly cut. Every measurement is as precise as I set it to. As I began to move from the conceptual to the real, I decided to use the skills I learned in 3D work to the real world, after all, it’s the same concept, right?
Not quite. Allow me to tell you the 10 ways that real-world building differs from 3D design. Based on experience, so they must be true.
1. Straight Lines Seldom Are
Circular saws do not make straight lines, you see, if the hands that control them are not accurate. This is something you don’t have to deal with in Bryce or 3D Studio Max or any of the 4 million other 3D design software packages. When I make a cube in Bryce, it’s a perfect virtual cube; three perfect 90 degree angles at each corner. With my 1337 circular saw skillz, straight lines are almost all perfectly curved, and while my math is accurate enough that the correct angle should exist, it almost never does. Also important: you have to line up the same part of the saw at the marks you painstakingly measured each time. Which brings us to…
2. The saw actually removes a line of material as it cuts.
In reality, it takes away about a 16th of an inch each pass. I think it’s important to say this again: the saw actually takes away material from the board you’re cutting thus making it shorter. This is not an aspect of using the saw I’d seriously considered until I started putting together all th boars I’d cut for the Entertainment center. Making cubes (or any shape for that matter) takes little more than a few clicks, 4 shelves? Dupe it 4X! In the real world… well… good thing wood is flexible.
3. I suck at Measuring.
Seriously. Example: I spent quite a bit of time marking and measuring, remembering some ancient adage about “measure twice cut once.” When assembly time came, however the 4 12-inch boards above varied by as much as a eighth of an inch not counting the 16th of an inch they would be off because of the saw blade (see number 2). In 3D-Land all I have to do to make sure a cube is 28 inches high is to take the scale I’ve decided on for pixels to inches and multiply by 28… Tada! My 3rd grade math tells me my object should be 28 pixels high! I win! The ugly reality? I lose at measuring.
4. Sanding, while easier than good texturing, is considerably more time consuming.
I spent a lot of time working with textures on my 3D work, and I found it basically oiled down to finding the right texture to start with and just toying with it till I got something like I wanted. This could take a while, granted, a couple hours, but once it was found: Bam! Repeat ad nauseum. Enter sanding. Sanding basically takes rough, ugly wood (plywood in this case) and makes it pretty and smooth. It does this in a slow and tedious progress wherein you must pass a quickly vibrating object over every square inch of each board a few times… and then repeating the process for each of 5 progressively finer sandpapers. This takes approximately 400 years and is arguably the most boring process in the history of man.
5. Screws are your enemy.
They are not interested in your success. They do not want to be a part of your little construction fun and games. 3D objects don’t need to be connected, they’ll hang in space in the precise location you want them, atom-close to the object next to them, for all time. Real objects must be forced together with sharp, spiteful, objects designed by a masochist who hated carpenters. First, they pretty much won’t go into anything tougher than tissue paper if you don’t pre-drill the hole. Even then, they tend to wander along their own path, usually taking the fastest way to breaking the surface of the board your screwing into, normally in the least attractive way possible. It will either attach the wood or destroy it, and it’s largely a matter of your will versus the screw’s.
6. All plans should be considered “fluid.”
Before I began the entertainment center I modeled it completely in 3D. I knew the exact measurements of every piece. This plan lasted until all the boards we cut, at which point I began to realize the 5 things above. I went back in one night after swearing at the pieces and redrew everything on a few pieces of paper, in pencil, with measurements scribbled in the margins. These measurements were the correct ones. $2,500 computer full of bleeding edge tech=wrong, $0.15 writing implement using 5000 year old technology=right. This is a tough lesson for a geek.
7. Wood comes in many thicknesses.
And neither of the 4 foot by 8 foot boards I purchased was ½”. This fact is amazingly important to take into account with using said wood to build things. In 3D land I can make it as thin as I like. In real life I have to buy the wood as available and re-plan the item to take these realities into account. Simply pretending that the boards are “close enough” won’t cut it.
8. Wood is a solid.
May seem obvious to all upright walking mammals, but not when you’re used to 3D Design. I can pass an object slightly through another object, just to make it look good. In the real world, I have to actually cut something to make it shorter and no amount of forcing will make the wood pieces pass through one another… not even a little. Interesting note, however: seriously heavy sanding is next best thing, if you don’t mind the board being a little wavy. I tried this today. Chalk one up for the fat-man!
9. Large physical objects are large… and heavy.
If I’m building a 3D statue of Zeus made of Steel, it weighs nothing. I can move it anyway with a minor flick of my hand. Spend 5 hours cutting wood and sanding it, however, and when it comes time to start holding these objects together to fasten them and you become keenly aware of their weight. Wood is heavy! Heavy + tired hands does not = precise, even if the boards were actually cut to the proper length.
10. Clean up
In the zany an unrestrained world of 3D design, one does not end up covered in wood chips and dust. A designer will never end up with his fingertips caked in dust while texturing. He will not nearly get hit in the eye with a wood-chip, while setting the length of the wood beam he’s creating. His mouse will not accidentally almost cut through it’s own cord when setting it down just after creating something. Not so much with the real world… if you thought sanding sucked before, sweeping it up sucks much more.
But despite all of this annoyance seemingly built into carpentry, I really, honestly do like it. It’s unspeakably cool to actually use something you made every day and to know that you made it and that you cut each piece with your own hands. I’d love to do more and the CPU case is officially the first sub-structure of the some-day desk I plan on building. I still have a lot to learn, especially about finishing the projects, staining and glazing and all that, but I’m still looking forward to it.
After all, I have a plan… and a fluid one at that.
Where have all the clean themes gone?
Let me start this off by saying that I am truly, truly thankful to you brilliant web designers and CSS gurus out there who can make a word press theme seem as if it were as simple as breathing.
I can tell you how to change link behavior, change the color, put a background behind something and maybe remember how to do hover over’s on a good day, but when it comes right down to it—creating a WordPress theme that works, really works and looks good and is widget supportive and is full of awesome? I got nothing.
I’m a free user. Luckily there are a plethora of people out there that get CSS klutzes and WordPress newbies like myself and make these wonderful themes (such as the one I’m using right now. Hiya Jai!)
So don’t get me wrong when I now complain about the complete and total lack of simple, elegant design.
When I visit a blog and when I am writing my own, I want the eyes drawn to the words. I want people to see the content first. I don’t want them to pay attention to the ads, the blinking banner ads, the rotating giant ‘subscribe to my feeeeeeed or I will eat your SOULLL’…I want them reading what I have to say. I know that whether or not they’ll come back is up to me, but first impressions are hard to repeat. When it comes to a blog design, I want to see words first—glittery slide out, up, sideways and upside down menus later.
So imagine my surprise this morning as I am searching for ‘Simple and Clean,’ ‘Elegant and Simple,’ or just ‘Simple’ WordPress themes, how very little actually came up. Several sites had designs for WordPress releases in the 1’s. A few had a handful of simple layouts that went the extreme of simple (just because it’s black and white doesn’t mean it has to be entirely boring.)
It’s very difficult to find a design that can be attractive, easy on the eye, well done and pretty to look at without detracting the eye from the content. Shame on you, guys. Shame. What ever happened to simple, anyway?
Thank goodness for blogohblog.com, or as you may recognize Jai better—the creator of this very theme we are using right now on 2phatgeeks, Simple-la-Bob. Several of Jai’s themes convey a minimalistic approach with enough care and style to become something wonderful to look at even though there ‘seems’ to be not much. It’s exactly what we like—a customizable header, a neat and clear presentation with writing as the focus and a splash of color mixed in to keep the eye from getting bored. Also perfect to showcase the many pictures I like to take, share or draw.
Imagine my surprise however, in visiting Jai’s site that I notice that not only does Jai offer free templates, but give-a-ways to Premium templates. All you gotta do is blog about it and make sure you leave a track back to be entered.
This weeks design is Trueblogger, and to borrow famous person’s words, croinky, she’s a beaut. Though two columns isn’t something my husband likes it is a sweet damn theme. Jai says that it has:
1. Unique Design & Layout.
2. BBC Style News Ticker.
3. jQuery based scrollable News Section.
4. Separated Comments & Trackbacks.
5. Stylized Comments.
6. Widget Ready.
7. Fully XHTML Compliant.
8. Easily editable CSS file.
9. Web 2.0 Appeal.
So if you’re interested in getting in one some kick-assery in the theme winning department, I recommend you start blogging about it and trackback-ing now! If you’re just in for a really awesome, clean and simple free theme, you can still visit and browse what’s there to grab.
So good luck guys and gals, if you enter—and thanks Jai for making templates that rock my socks without being giant monsters of garish, overdone whosits and whatsitmabobbies which take away from my oh-so-awesome content!
Toot, toot.
Let me regale you in a tale that happened last April, 2007. It is a day that will go down in history as a day proving just want a wonderful, charming, delicate little princess I am.
I was rolling around on the bed helping Shawn clean my computer of dust while he was putting an extra fan inside the case. While I was rolling about, I must have stirred up several demons of the fiery pit also known as my stomach. I did this thing, which we as all girls and women do–a thing which most of us desperately attempt to deny we even have. That thing, which apparently, is legendary and something we ladies of high class aren’t supposed to do.
I farted.
Or as some of the blue-haired astute southern ladies I have been exposed too due to Shawn, I tooted. Or according to his grandmother, rose petals and sunshine on the backs of unicorns licking lollipops came out of my behind.
Anyway, after passing gas I decided that the best course of action was to be quick and witty.
“Memory foam,” I loudly declare, patting out tempur pedic whatsimacallit mattress. “Not only does it remember the shape of your body, it remembers your stank!”
Looking back, I realize now that perhaps that wasn’t the most intellegent thing I’ve ever come up with on the fly. Shawn wasn’t able to continue putting the computer back together after that, he was too busy laughing until he cried.
I leave you now with the delightful image of rose petals, sunshine, and unicorns coming out of my butt.
Thank you!
When we finally got this blog up and running again last week—I certainly expected it to be a long haul toward catching a few dozen readers here and there.
Who was it that saved us all from such a horrific sight?
Eve, The Junky’s Wife, my Live Journal peeps and Stumble Upon.
My Live Journal peeps who have followed me from my first blog, (which I still keep :D) at live journal. They’ve been with me since 2005, reading the meme’s, the whines, the rants, the bitches, the stories about boobs, my mother-in-law and supreme geekery.
Getting Reacquainted
It’s been a really long time since I’ve written with any sort of regularity on the internet. I used to post once or twice a week to my own blog pretty regularly for me. Back in the day I had my own Geocities domain and a blogger account. I role-played online. I wrote bad poetry and posted it up for the universe. I chatted constantly in AOL political and atheist chat rooms. I helped Mel write the back story for a play by post role-play board she ran. At one point I even ran a Yahoo! Group for free-thinkers called “Does It or Doesn’t It Exist?” I was in a web ring! Really! I was just Mr Webernets between 1996 and 2000. Hell, I even voted for Browne. I had serious ‘net street cred.
And suddenly… without warning… life intruded, as life tends to do… and the internet and I, well, we drifted apart. The magic was gone. Sure, we saw one another on a daily basis, but it was pretty much just passing glances.
And then, two things happened. First and foremost was mah wimmenz. She’s been the only one of us actually using the internet to actually talk to other humans, and it’s pretty much just her urging that’s gotten me back online. But there’s one more impetus and one she introduced me to: Stumble Upon. Stumble has brought the magic back to the internet! The great random trip through the dysfunctional world of the internet with all it’s freaks, nut-jobs and geeks has somehow finally reinvigorated the urge to, perish the thought *communicate* with my fellow internet people.
Now, then is that awkward bit where you end up sharing friends with someone you used to date and maybe… just maybe, you could hook up again. You’re just not sure what to say.
So, um… hey there, internet. Um, so… How’ve you been?
