the time rapidly approaches wherein my bachelorhood will find it's end. as i've mentioned before, the planning process is progressing, and gathering in force. my lovely bride-to-be, being in med school, has (however tentatively) handed over the reigns of this process to yours truly (and her mother), so i'm going to be hip deep in it for a while. my other projects will have to take an increasingly distant back-seat to the three big uber-projects that i have to undertake–1) planning the wedding (obviously), 2) planning the honeymoon, and 3) finding a place for us to live.

if any of you here in the 'ville have lines on a good, relatively cheap DJ who'll do a wedding reception without prattling on incessantly and trying to be funny, let me know about 'em.

a sub-project that's moving closer to completion is the website i'm designing to house relevant information and meaningful stuff–something to kind of mark the occasion for us and provide all the answers for the curious. i'm trying to do it without going off the deep-end of cheesiness, though i imagine that with a sentimental site of this nature it's probably almost impossible to avoid. nevertheless, the main point is to have fun creating something honoring our relationship. it's still far from complete, but i've posted some mockups, and i thought you might enjoy them.

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

those are real low-quality JPEGs to save on bandwidth–the actual site won't look so blurry.

comments on the design are welcomed.

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this'll just be a quick entry to point out a couple things…

1) in light of the "IE gets blowed up real good" bug apparently triggered by the recent bipolar revamp, i've unflipped the switch and gone back to the crappy frames version. if anyone knows why a little CSSP/DHTML might be causing IE to hack up a lung, i implore you to please come forward. for testing purposes, the XHTML valid revamp version is still available.

**update**: well, it looks like i've nearly licked the kick'sploding IE thing. apparently, i didn't do too much testing in IE 6 during initial development, probably thinking that IE5 and 6 rendered more similarly than they do. i still need to do a little layout clean-up work (especially on 1.5) for IE6, but otherwise things appear solid once again.

the culprit? stupid proprietary DOM stuff in IE. document.body.clientHeight was causing IE6 to puke, so i just amped up my browser detect, and called document.documentElement.clientHeight for IE6 only. seems to have done the trick.

those of you IE6'ers out there, please pound on one or all of these (jh - b15 - sp - org) and let me know if you're still seeing crashes. i'd be much obliged. ** end update**

2) in other news, the "latest images" functionality of the gallery scripts is coming along nicely, though it seems with each new feature i complete, i think of five more things that could make them even better. what this means is that, eventually, i'm pretty much going to have to do a ground-up rewrite of the scripts. yippee.

in honor of the new functionality (as partially implemented) check out the pictures i took over this past weekend, when i went home to p'town to visit the fam and see my sis and my awesome little niece. be sure to check out the rasnake/old_homestead gallery, as there are several kick ass shots of stuff in and around my parents house. (sometimes, i actually think i'm a good photographer)

anyway, hit that link quick, as it's only good for 10 days–one of the limitations of the latest images feature (as it stands now) is that the number of days images are counted as new is set globally. i'm planning on adding a bit where you can specify a date, a range of dates, or your own number of days for which to show images. should be fun.

**update 12/21/2004** more fixin's have been added to the gallery scripts, adding some of the stuff i mentioned above, and that gallery link above now targets a specific date (rather than xx days ago). still no UI for all the new gizmos, but i'll get to that soon-ish.** end update**

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first off, before i get into the boring bipolar related stuff, let me point you in the direction of ghost town studio, the most recent issue of which features an article and images i put together. it's a very interesting little news piece about the Sears/Kmart merger.

in other news, and to the matter at hand, i've just discovered (inadvertently, i might add) that that annoying little firefox bug where scrollable DIV elements, or rather, DIV elements with their overflow properties set to allow scrolling, wouldn't scroll with a mousewheel (or equivalent widget). the scrollbars would work fine, of course, but it would be heresy to knowingly release something that refuses to work with the one really major improvement in HID design to come along in the last 10 years.

anyway, that nasty little bugger is fixed, at least in the latest trunk builds of firefox, and so should be fixed forthwith in the upcoming minor point releases of firefox 1.x of course, if you go to download the stock ff1.0 today, you'll still get the non-scrolly divs, but in a few weeks or a month's time, it'll all be history.

so, i told you that to tell you this: sometime soon, tonight, tomorrow, sometime this weekend, or maybe even next week, i'm going to flip the switch* on those "major improvements" i talked about way back when. so now's definitely the time to go back to that post and knock the crap out of those pages to see if they fall apart too badly. MC Seth-yo did some extensive cross-browser testing, and aside from some completely understandable though thankfully infrequent failings, the designs really held up pretty well. (of course, that may be selective memory talking, and when i go back to look at those screenshots he did, if they're still up, i may be in for a shock or something.) anyway, soon these changes will go live, the world will rejoice, and you, if you're really really annoyed by not being able to scroll with Mr. Mousewheel, should be encouraged to get thyself to mozilla.org's firefox ftp download area and download a copy of the latest trunk build. right now, the latest trunk still reports as being 0.9.1+, so be warned. latest trunk builds can be squirrelly, not as stable as the normal release builds.

also, i'll very very shortly (tonight) be installed an MT plugin to close old comments (we've been getting bombarded by comment spam for a while, but i've been to lazy to install additional protections on top of MT-Blacklist), so if you've been itching to comment on a post from 3 years ago, you better get on it.

**UPDATE**: the switch has officially been flipped, f'real.

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Clinton's DLC sent out a message today about a "reform insurgency." and have to say i agree with them on pretty much every point.

and jennifer, in her comments on the post-election post (which i'm still pushing to get people to read and comment on, 'cause talk=good), mentioned two other worthy organizations we should investigate and invest our time & money in.

Democracy for America
Black Box Voting

but my number one recommendation to get yourself politically involved, even in a tertiary disconnected sort of way, is to donate to and join the ACLU today! To become a card-carrying member requires only a $20 donation, but please feel free to donate as much as your little pocketbook can stand.

and now, back to our regularly scheduled silence.

oh yeah, and by the way, i turned 31 on monday, so thanks alot for the birthday present America… was there a gift receipt in the box? it's a lovely president, i'm sure, but i might want to exchange it for something else.

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don't forget to go vote!

forgive me for committing an internet faux-pax by directly linking another's image. but y'know, i paid for it, so i might as well.

don't forget to check the comment thread on the last post, it's quite enjoyable.

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needless to say, i've been more depressed today than any day in the last ten years. i'm flabbergasted, completely dumbfounded. everything i thought i knew leading up to this, has been thrown to the ground and stomped on.

ok, hold on. yes, i expected it to be close. yes, i expected the unwashed masses to vote against equal rights. i even expected, on some level, for Mongiardo to lose, though i was hopeful 'til the end (not that i agree with his social conservatism, but he'd've been better than that old coot who won). i expected these things, but i also expected the throngs of liberal voters we were promised, and i expected the reports of skewed poll numbers leading up to the election to have been more accurate. i expected more people to have woken the fuck up during the last four years and to have seen the horror this administration has wrought. i expected quite a bit, and i was sorely disappointed.

as andrew sullivan pointed out, it wasn't the war on terror that was the pivotal issue of the campaign, it was the fear of homosexuals. it was "moral values" that drove the conservative voters to the polls, and it was precisely those "moral values" that Kerry and the other Democratic candidates hadn't campaigned to win.

and the thing that gets me is, how can you claim superior "moral values" when you're preaching discrimination, hatred, misunderstanding, ignorance, denying families the right to exist, stealing money from our children and grand-children (and now, most likely, our great-grandchildren), sending our youth to die for a war based on lies and faulty information, and the economic subjugation of the "lower" classes by the already wealthy? how are those "moral values?"

as you might've read in my last post, that email discussion with my dad, those aren't anything like the "moral values" i was raised to believe in. i was raised to believe that if you treat others with love and respect, that you'll build a better world. unfortunately the policies of those in power operate on a completely different tack. and even worse, the party in power has managed to befuddle the masses to the point where they actually believe they are supporting their values and ideals.

what we need now is to not give up. don't give ground. i dont' know if we need to go as far as Rich Malley suggests, but we certainly need to keep the screws tightening.

more importantly than that, we need to truly educate ourselves and become the shining font of education and information in order to re-establish our reality-based community (sic)
and spread truth.

as i said to my co-worker earlier today, we certainly can't be expected to be imminently knowledgeable about every issue, but we can certainly pick a topic or two to be "experts" on. find something that interests you, study it, learn it inside & out, and anytime you get an opportunity to talk to someone who's uneducated or misinformed about that subject, don't hesitate to shower them with the facts. don't hedge, don't qualify, don't apologize or state your "opinion"—assault them with facts. know both sides of the issue, know what the results of different policies would be, and make sure they understand when they're supporting the wrong ones.

form a network of knowledgeable friends. find out what your buddies know, where their areas of "expertise" lie. when you get in a conversation with someone who's talking wrongly about something your buddy knows inside & out, give him or her a call, or suggest that the person you're talking to seek that person out. or get their email address, and have your buddy contact them. somehow close the gap of knowledge and education.

it is imminently possible to eradicate the republican standard operating procedures of misinformation and miseducation, it's imminently possible to take back the "high ground" on morality and family values, but we can only do it if we can educate ourselves first, and present our personal knowledge in ways that can't be misconstrued. don't leave room for doubt, don't leave room for interpretation. cite fact.

we can take this country back, but we will have to work for it.

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i keep having these ideas to enhance different things around here, and i've always got a thousand projects running around in my head, begging to be let out, so sometimes i get a little caught up in them… some might say obsessive about them.

the first thing i want to point out (and the thing that kind of triggered the whole landslide of enhancements i'm going to tell you about in a minute) is that, in my galleries i've added a directory for images taken with my phonecam. the directory is called, appropriately enough, "phonecam".

this is all the result of, after having fought with it for a while, i've finally managed to get a cable and software to sync my phone to my PC (since Sprint refuses to supply such things in order to make you more likely to buy their PCS Vision services). anyway, i finally got it working, so i'm attempting to be dilligent about taking at least one photo with it every day. now, i'm not promising i'll get a new photo uploaded every day, but i should at least be able to take five seconds to take a picture every day. i've debated creating a sub-folder within the phonecam gallery to house the shot-a-day pics, where i could pick just the best photo from the days with multiples, but i've decided not to do it for the moment. if anyone wants to weigh in, input would be welcomed… i'm not a good decision-maker.

so, anyway, the ability to upload phonecam images brought a couple of gallery script bugs to light, so i spent some time fixing those. fixing those bugs reminded me of some of the little enhancements i wanted to make, and the enhancements reminded me of entirely new functionalities i wanted to add. so, a couple weeks later, i've got the bugs fixed, the enhancements done, and the new functionality added. all while streamlining the code so that i've got a single code-base that works for the bipolar galleries as well as brian's joycamproject.

the bugs were boring, and inconsequential. one of the enhancements was simply adding a pagination function to the gallery pages so that you can now navigate directly to a page, instead of having to click "next" or "prev" to go through all the pages in sequence. nothing really groundbreaking, but a very useful enhancement. the other major enhancement was adding a "fit image to screen" link, so that if the image is larger than your screen resolution, you can force it to resize to fit within your screen dimensions—cool.

the new functionality is much more fun, though really nothing quite groundbreaking either. i noticed on heather champ's site that she's got a "send as ecard" link… well… i thought that was a cool idea. so, a little searching online, a little download of open-source code (phpPowerCards), some judicious yet extensive re-writing of that code, and voilá— x:13design postcards are born. basically, you can just browse the galleries, view an image, and if you want to send a postcard, just click the aptly named "send postcard" link down there on the bottom left.

i haven't taken the time to add any anti-abuse code to the script yet, as for one: i'm not quite sure how, and two: i'm running out of free time at work to do it… but, if anyone has any specific ideas as to an easy to implement anti-abuse bit of PHP code, please let me know. also, if anyone gets spams sent by this script (i'm not anticipating it, but it's possible) then please let me know ASAP, and accept my most sincere apologies.

anyway, get thyself to the gallery and check it out again, like it was the first time.

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i fully intend to write a longer post soon, as i've had one brewing for a while, but no time to actually sit down and write it. 'til then, how's about this:

i finally got the Lucifigous Prick online store up and running this past thursday night, and, as simple as it may be, i'm pretty damned pleased for it to finally be in operation.

also, for another shameless plug of a commercial project, i'm getting my first poetry book re-printed by a professional printer, and i hope to have those available in the next 3 or 4 weeks (i should be getting a proof copy on monday or tuesday). so again, i'm really excited about this as well.

coffeemonk.com hasn't been updated in a dog's age, but it looks like i might have to move that up on the timetable a little bit (most recent project schedule had coffeemonk.com being updated some time in the next 100 years or so).

ok. enough with the gross commercialism.

Go Buy Something! (ok, now that's really enough)

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to say that my blogging habits have become rather poor would be something of an understatement, i'd imagine. nevertheless, i'm still around, things are still happening, to me, just not enough discrete interesting things that i've a fount of fun events to pepper you with.

also, i realize it's a bit late in the day to be "announcing" this, but i figure that anyone who reads bipolar and is interested in my band already knows the website (which also suffers from lack-of-update-itis) so will already be informed about tonight's show.

we'll be at the rud tonight with Chumley and Tipping the Lion which is basically Chumley, just playing free-form improv rock stuff. should certainly be interesting.

the really fun thing is that i've been fighting a cold for a few days, i'm tired, i'm sick, and i may have a slight fever as well. needless to say, i'm going home to take a nap before the show tonight. at least for 45 to an hour, if i can get it.

wish us luck, and get on out to the Rud if ya can.

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i know that just about every post i write lately seems to center around politics. i guess it's inevitable, since we're in an election year and currently under the rule of the most authoritarian regime this country's ever seen. for someone who said he was going to be a uniter and a champion of the people, he sure seems to have rustled up a massive hornets nest of independents and political apathists (myself included) all now dead-set against him and his party.

see, before "Dubya" charged into power–with the assist from his brother's administration in Florida, and the slam dunk by the Supreme Court–i was largely a non-partisan liberal socialist whose only agenda was that the big people should help the little people, and the large corporations should not be allowed to hurt the little people or wield any type of power over the government or its citizens. for the most part i didn't care about politics, and i was of the firm opinion that my one voice didn't count for much of anything. i didn't bother to vote, or even to learn about the candidates or delve into the issues of the day. i knew from a philosophical standpoint what type of society i wanted, and i knew that the pursuit of *my goals* in the context of this society full of idiots and greedy bastards would be a futile endeavor. so i contented myself with the idea that i could do things better, but without the responsibility (in the face of certain defeat) to attempt to actually attempt to do so.

all this changed when bush was running for president. for the first time, i felt compelled to do a little research and go to the polls to exercise my civic duty. see my post from Nov. 2000 and the two emails linked to from that post it is interesting going back to the stuff written nearly four years ago, especially the passionate political stuff and seeing what and how i was talking about the issues when i was really *just* seriously delving into them. it's also gratifying to note that i still hold the same opinions to this day, pretty much point for point, issue for issue.

i certainly railed against the Democratic party as being too centrist and in the pockets of the large corps. and lobbyists. that's one thing i've been rather pleased to have seen change with the candidates for this year's Democratic nomination–they are more liberal (except Lieberman) and there are at least a couple candidates who are non-career politicians and beholden to no industry or special interest groups (Clark & Sharpton, though Edwards & Dean may meet the latter qualification). and they are all passionately talking about the issues that matter, in no uncertain terms, and making plans that can make a difference.

now, i'm pleased to say that i'd be proud to count my voice among the supporters of most of the potential Democratic nominees, all of whom (except Lieberman, Sharpton, and Kucinich) i think would make great presidents. having studied the issues, the candidates, and their positions and qualifications, i proudly say that i whole-heartedly throw my lot in with Gen. Wesley Clark. He's got all the qualifications one could hope for in a Presidential candidate, his positions on the issues coincide with mine on many levels, and usually moreso than the positions of the other candidates. but don't just take my words at face value, see how he stacks up (in my mind), and take an opportunity to get yourself an education while you're at it.

as a side note, of all the people who said they'd enjoy filling out one of the blank score sheets, not a one has actually done so. there's still time, if you want to put yourself through the paces and weigh in. '04 ScoreSheet

now, i was originally going to write this post in response to President Bush's first stump speech of the 2004 election campaign (A.K.A. the State of the Union address). in lieu of that, i'll just mention that i thought it was a huge pile of crap, pandering to his conservative constituents while taking direct adolescent stabs at those who disagree with his opinions and policies (a "uniter" indeed). but rather than attempting to debunk the speech myself and recreate the wheel, i figured i'd let those more qualified point out the more obvious flaws, misleading statements, and outright lies in the State of the Union Speech.
i'll also refrain from doing anything other than mentioning the inappropriate and inapplicable moral and religious grandstanding.

finally, i've been pleased to see Wes Clark (though i strongly support separation of church & state, and am loathe to see anyone in or seeking public office touting their religion, especially touting it over someone else's) answering the long-standing and wholly inaccurate Republican idea that liberals are amoral atheistic people (this is me greatly summarizing the point). it really is time that we liberals stand up and point out that the religions we grew up with preached tolerance, brotherly-love, self-sacrifice, and the obligation of the strong to protect and/or help the weak. It was Jesus who said "Love your neighbor as yourself"(Matt 5:43-8; Lev 19:17-18; Matt. 19:18-19; Matt 22:37-40), "as you do unto the least of these my brethren, so also you do unto me" (Matt 25:40), who healed the leprous though they were outcasts, and who instructed the Apostles to go out and preach his word to the Gentiles though they were considered unclean and less than human. In favoring the rich and powerful over those not so fortunate, and in castigating and denigrating those whose race, gender, or sexual orientation differ, the Republican party takes this country in a direction entirely opposite that which was set forth by the very figure from whom they claim to draw all their inspiration and guidance.

ok, so i meant to save that whole religion thing for another post. oh well. extra fuel for the fire, i guess.

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