hi. uh… my name's matt. you might remember me from such hits as "posts on a semi-regular basis," or "lies, lies, and more lies." needless to say, considering the time of year, quite a bit has happened since my last post. i'm not going to try to go into it all in one post, but here's a summary, in the form of an ordered list:

1. visited nathan in bloomington over a weekend
2. followed, almost as i predicted, the fun the Courier-Journal was having with Ernie Fletcher's stupid transition team choices, and his lies about them not being lined up for jobs. he hadn't even been sworn into office yet, and already his making questionable choices and getting reamed for it by the liberal media.
3. got to meet sara's new niece Emma Rose
4. got a new cell-phone, but had to wait a week for it to work, because of the whole number-portability thing
5. went home for thanksgiving and finally got to meet my new niece Emma Ruth
6. made some modifications to the MP3 of the moment thing… anyone notice? — for a while, i was uploading the mp3 directly from WinAmp to the server, and the magic script gnomes were providing a link to it for you to download. i scrapped that in favor of…
7. more modifications to replace the previous modifications — now, if you see the little "listen (x)" link after the MP3 name, (on my side anyway), you can "tune in" to my bipolar radio stream.
8. even more modifications that basically entailed me taking the javascript that was driving the MP3otM thing, and converting it all to PHP. — oh yeah, and, it doesn't show up at all if it's been more than 30 minutes since we last listened to anything.
9. finally managed to get around to buying christmas presents, spent way too much, but found some cool stuff.

sara's working on her 1st semester finals this week, so i've been trying to keep her sane. i'm just looking forward to the rest of the month, at least until she starts her 2nd semester. it'll be nice to be able to hang out with her without her worrying about a test or having to study 90% of the time.

i'm looking forward to this next week as well. christmas with the fam is always an enjoyable time, even if i'm somewhat of a anti-social hermit while i'm there. i've been getting better over the years, we'll see what happens this time.

btw. winamp5 has been officially released.

considering the recent discussions of Mr. Bungle and Mike Patton in the comments, i thought i'd point out this little tidbit that my co-worker pointed out to me earlier today. about the middle of the page there, they get a quote from Mike Patton stating that Mr. Bungle is pretty much over. for those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Bungle, i'll explain this revelation simply: This totally sucks. Mr. Bungle kicked ass. I am sad.

to continue the discussion of the movabletype thing, i managed to wrangle together some RSS 2.0 feeds yesterday, including a combined feed with my & brian's blogs haphazardly thrown together. in fact, here's some links (i'll be adding buttons to the main page somewhere for each theme in a bit): bipolar RSS :: brian's RSS :: matt's RSS

i'm still thinking of how to fix the permalinks to point to the new archives and yet still work properly. if anyone has ideas, knows how i might accomplish this in MT or with php/mysql or even javascript, throw those ideas this way. basically i need a way to *know* what old blogger post ID equates to which new MT post ID. i have some ideas, but i'm open for suggestions.

i also spent an hour or so last night converting the lucifigous prick news and news archives pages over to using movabletype. which has provided us with the Lucifigous Prick RSS feed

by the way, for those of you who have no idea what i'm talking about with all this RSS business, RSS is a document description language based on XML that is used to facilitate "syndication" of content. in other words, instead of someone simply linking to the site, they can can pull down the latest updates and display them (or excerpts from them) directly on their site. or, if you're using an "aggregator" you can pull down several RSS feeds and have them combined into your own personal internet newspaper (of sorts).

goodness, that went a little longer than it was supposed to. more another time.

so, if you've not noticed, things have changed around here… ever so slightly. (as seems to be the case quite often when things actually have changed quite drastically. i'll mark that up to my own poor planning and ability to… "improvise").

but yes, we've moved now totally (i was already on it for a couple days, but hadn't posted yet) over to the movabletype content engine. initially, you won't be able to tell much difference, but as time goes on, i'll add in more of the whiz-bang features that movabletype has opened up for us. (post searches, categorization, RSS syndication, anyone, hello, is this thing on?)

i still have some work to do on the archive links at the bottom of each side (the monthly archives for the past !!! THREE YEARS !!! goodness, has it been that long), and i'll have to try to come up with something to make sure that all those old "permalinks" that are floating around out there are still "perma". and i'm really afraid that that is going to be quite a bitch to accomplish. but, i'll probably just have to do it a month at a time and not try to do it all in one night.

nevertheless, the bulk of the work is done, so, sit back and enjoy what you will probably not even notice.

p.s. movabletype unfortunately carries no guarantee to magically increase or improve my posting habits. hopefully i'll just magically start getting 28 hour days instead of this 24 hour crap i've been having to deal with all my life.

if you can see this post, our move to the new server is complete and life can soon return to normal. and yes, you can stop holding your breath now.

wow, i think this is the first time i've been able to see this site in nearly a week. apparently, our gracious web hosts have been in the midst of a massive undertaking involving moving into a new storefront. it was so nice that they sent out word and let everyone know that this was going to happen beforehand. i'm so glad that i knew exactly what was going on.

well anyway, after this recent spate of problems (which turn out to have been a "good thing," except for the whole loss of service issue), i've decided to switch hosts once again. on the positive side, the new hosting arrangement will afford me the opportunity to set up as many damned websites as i please for a single monthly fee. now, let's just hope the new shit is reliable. it certainly looks like they've got their act together, so, my hopes are up.

i thought i'd jump on here real quick while i had the opportunity, just in case the site stays up for more than 10 minutes this time. the changeover to the new host should happen in the next day or so…

well, i'm finally closing in on the end of my Paris journals, so, maybe i'll get back to some regular posts before too long. as it is, i've been happily almost totally pre-occupied. things in my life have taken a dramatic turn for the better in the last three weeks or so, with the exception of my car continuing its decent into dilapidation.

i wanted to mention a couple things, so i'll just take this opportunity between Paris entries.

Sneakemail – this is a pretty cool little online tool. You can essentially create "proxy" email addresses whenever you have to give an address to sign up for something or log into something on the web. It'll allow you to track (if you get spam from these proxies) exactly who the bastards were that gave out your address. Plus, the added bonus is, if you do start getting spam to one of these proxies, you can just shut it off and not get any mail from it again, thus keeping your real email address safe(r) from spam.

i added a nifty little item at the bottom of my (most recent) blog entry. (it's also now on my portable webcam page as well.) basically, anytime i'm listening to WinAmp at home or at work, it'll update with the current track that i'm listening to. Plus, the song listed will link to WinAmp's "Now Playing" minibrowser page so that you can see a pretty comprehensive list of information about that artist/album (assuming WinAmp knows what the hell i'm playing). Now we just gotta get Lucifigous Prick, Old Man, and Green Formica Table listed with Muze.

and finally, here are a couple bookmarklets i've created for my own personal use. just drag them up into your "favorites" or "bookmarks" bar, or right click and there should be an option that says something like "add to favorites" or "add to bookmarks" or "bookmark this page" or some such nonsense.

Lookup
Resize 800×600
JS Console

The Dictionary.com one i've listed here before, but thought i'd post it again since i've been using the hell out of it since i made it. It's damned useful.
Those other two are ones i use fairly frequently while doing development work… they're extremely simple, but also extremely useful. The Resize one does just what it says, resizes the browser window to 800×600. The JS Console on only works in Netscape browsers or derivatives (Mozilla, etc.)… if you develop in these browsers and code JavaScript, you'll already know what it does. In fact, i think this one may well be the least complex bookmarklet in existence. If anyone knows of a less complex bookmarklet (that actually does something, mind you), please let me know, i'd be intrigued to see it.

anyway, there ya go.

our web host is currently having some problems, so many of the sites they host are shutting down. if you've attempted to visit puffin-a-go-go or lucifigousprick.com and gotten a "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message, now you know why.

hopefully it'll all be sorted out soon, and hopefully bipolar will be able to weather this particular storm for a while longer.

now, back to your regularly scheduled weekend.

well, i've been back from France for about four days now, but i've been so busy trying to play catch-up in my "real" life and my "work" life that i've not had time to write a new post. i've finally gotten a moment to breathe tonight, though, so here we are.

France was awesome. i think i've said this like 200 times in the last four days. i loved it, thoroughly, but, i'm not going to get into it too much right now, because my ultimate plan is to transcribe my journal entries here for you guys to read/ignore.

i also took 11 rolls of film with me, and finished off every one of them. hopefully, i'll be getting the pictures back this weekend or early next week, and i'll work them up using my handy-dandy developed-for-lucifigousprick.com photo gallery scripts.

there's also a plan in the works to collaborate with jason (who i met in deauville) on a site just to commemorate my sister's wedding.

needless to say, when i was leaving Paris on the last day of my trip, the only thing that i could think of was that i didn't want to leave. i am so enamored with Paris that i want to get back there as soon as i can. hell, i've even entertained the possibility of moving there, which for me is a huge/strange thing. i also love louisville, and, until seeing Paris, i couldn't have imagined any place i'd rather live than here. but, with the slight scent of change on the winds the way it's been in the past few months, it seems that this thought of moving isn't as absurd as it would've seemed even a year ago. (i know i've just opened myself up to about 6 months of "so, when're you moving up here" from nathan, but that can't be helped.)

there's also this feeling in my life right now… that i'm on the verge of something, awaiting something. i can't quite pinpoint it, but the feeling is there… something is happening, or will happen. hopefully, it'll all be good, whatever it is. but it's put me in this state where i'm just thinking that i have *got* to get my shit together. maybe i'm just headed into one of my manic cycles, i dunno.

expect journal entries shortly. like, maybe as soon as tomorrow, if you're lucky.

well, what a helluva week.

i feel like i've just been running around crazy the whole time, accomplishing very little besides running around crazy.

in preparation for the show, the band had our normal practice on Sunday night, an extra practice on Monday night, normal practice on Tuesday night, then, of course, the show on Wednesday.

right now i'm trying to remember what i did last night. i stayed late at work (since i was three hours late going in), had dinner, read a comic or two, wrote yesterday's post, uh… talked on the phone for some lengthy amount of time… and i guess that was it.

tonight… more of the same. except tonight is Friday. this means that tonight is drinky-drink & hangout night at the bar. i missed last week's session because i ended up falling asleep around 10:30pm and sleeping 'til 10:30am on Saturday. This week i'm going to actually go out.

now, since nothing else exciting has been going on this week, and certainly not since yesterday's post, i'll leave you with this little blogger's cliche–the search strings.

August's winners:

i'm getting my ass boyfriend back showing myself off to everybody
pee in my butt
child-birthing photos

(that last one's not all that strange, i suppose, but i had to include one that leads to one of my posts. yeah, you see where i'm going with that comment.)

well, i'm off to visit with Mr. Beam, y'all have a good weekend.

well, i did get the car back. and it does now stop without making any noises. if anyone's ever wondered what the price of silence is, i can easily tell them that it's about $1,400.00. bleh.

hm. i think i'm going to do the unthinkable… follow up two really long and (arguably) interesting posts with a really short lame one.

in case anyone was wondering… those permalinks (the little "PL" in the author line following each post) are now working again. apparently, i did something when converting this site to PHP (yes, that long ago) that broke the permalinks. well, they're working again. so, grab some PL's and link your happy asses off.

er something.

speaking of PL's, (only, backwards) Lucifigous Prick (have i told you this already?) has another show lined up this coming week, with none other than the inimitable Old Man (featuring the illustrious puffin), and the irreplaceable Green Formica Table (who i've mentioned previously). go to http://www.lucifigousprick.com/ for more info on the show. flyers and the like will be up on the site as soon as i can grab a spare 15 minutes to whip together some downloadable versions of the designs.

again, i say bleh. it's been that kind of week.