Linkstew

I'm not easily bothered by things, and most people who've met me can attest to this. If things aren't working right, I manage to take things in stride. No Worries.

But Adobe Pagemill gets to me. Last time I used it, I was almost shaking by the time I was done. Three times out of four, I gave up using Pagemill and edited the HTML by hand, only to have Pagemill thrash the HTML when it reloaded the page.

So if it gets to me so much, why do I use Pagemill? I personally don't, and wouldn't recommend that anyone use Pagemill for any purpose. Especially if you're making a page with frames, but that's another story.

I was using Pagemill in this case because I am doing some consulting for a Professor here at Berkeley who is attempting to create and maintain a somewhat large scale site. Which uses frames. Pagemill is NOT the right tool for this job.

Part of the problem is that Pagemill creates that illusion that making a Web Page and maintaining a Web Page is an easy thing. As it turns out, making a web page with Pagemill is somewhat trivial, but maintaining a page in Pagemill is nigh impossible, and given that most web sites are updated, this creates quite a problem when a simple change needs to be made to the entire site. Perhaps a method exists to do this in Pagemill, but it is not intuitive.

Pagemill isn't the only WYSIWYG HTML Editor I've toyed with. I've tried Claris Homepage (Which I think is gone these days), Microsoft FrontPage, Netscape Composer and numerous others. All of them seem to make the same ghastly assumption, which is that the product is being used to edit a web page, and not a web site

For some users and for some uses, this may be acceptable, but for most of the tasks on the web, people are probably setting out to create a site, with a common appearance and navigation features, along with a common layout to make it easy for users to move from page to page. These programs allow for limited forms of styles and allow for templates, but my experiences with all of these programs shows that the templates and styles are only good for making new pages which match the old pages made with the same style. Updating all the pages which used an old style to use a new style seems to be a mind boggleingly difficult task which requires quite a lot of advance planning and design. Unfortunately, no one ever reads the manuals and realizes this fact before they jump in and make their first four pages, and then when they figure out that they want to change the look of the pages, they realize they have to do it page by page, and they don't want to learn a new system of using styles and recreate the pages they've already made.

So when it comes to updating a page with one of these programs, you have to reformat the whole thing. When you do a lot of cutting and pasting and deleting and inserting in these WYSIWYG programs, the HTML gets really screwy. The program grinds the page to a pulp, like a mill would corn. After three or four iterations of the page, the HTML is so messy that even the program that created it has trouble handling it, and changing the page to look like something near isn't possible.

Despite these problems, these cheap programs continue to be popular with people, because it allows them to have their very own little spot on the web, and say to their friends "Go visit my web page at http://www.geocities.com/WhoRemembersAllThis/2356848289."

There are two notable exceptions to the above discussion, which are Macromedia Dreamweaver and Go Live's CyberStudio. Unfortunately, GoLive was bought by Adobe last fall, and so I fear the fate of that fine program. Normally, Adobe makes the best tools for the job, but for some reason, they've managed to bungle over and over their attempts at making a Web Design tool.

What I'm looking for in a Web Design tool is something that seamlessly allows me to design and use Server Side Includes to lay out my pages, which is something that I've never seen in a Web Design tool. But if someday someone designed that tool right, I would probably buy it. And then proceed to not use it, because it probably wouldn't be for Linux, and I already have a complex system set up to do updates to this page.

And I'd write the program to do all that myself, but the Market is saturated, and it wouldn't sell well, because I would write it for Linux. Though I imagine a lot of people would use it if it were well done, even if it were for Linux.

Today was a very good day.

I got my housing situation for next fall taken care of, I got my copy of The Colour of Magic in the mail, I finished my 61c work for the rest of the year, and I found an excellent English 1A section to take next fall.

The English 1A section in question will cover Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Girl Interrupted and miscellaneous poetry. I'm actually looking forward to this, while at the same time dreading English 1A in a general sense.

The Colour of Magic is, of course, the book that started it all. It's the first of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, and if it were more readily available, would be the book I would recommend anyone start with when reading the Discworld.

My room next fall is as about as choice as a room in the Units can get. It's room 612 of Deutsch Hall, which, in and of itself, probably doesn't mean that much to you. What might mean more is that it's a sixth floor room with a bay view. I think I'm going to get a QuickCam Pro and put in my window next fall to share the view. My view will be something like this.

In other news, I won a Kern Press Club award for my Critical Review of They Might Be Giants' Severe Tire Damage last Friday night. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the awards banquet because I had to go to Residential Computings spring hiring session on Saturday (See 1999-04-24).

I'm still working on my schedule for next fall, but I do still have a few days, as my Phase I of Telebears registration isn't until April 30. Right now, I know for sure that I'll be taking Math 55, Electrical Engineering 42 and 43, and English 1A Section 22 or 25. I need one more class, and I'll probably take a class that satisfies my American Cultures Requirement.

I went to Target yesterday, and I was going to buy some Star Wars legos, but they didn't have any, so I had to settle for Ninja Legos instead. They're neat, but I would have far preferred Star Wars legos. I'll buy them as soon as I see them, though. That's for sure.

I got Sunburned today. Ain't that a bitch?

It's not that bad though, not too painful. Just mildly annoying. I got sunburned while I was at the Rescomp spring hiring social. We went to a park way up in the hills of Berkeley, and it was very neat up there. Some day I'm going to have to go back up there. It's very nice, considering how close it is to such a urban area. I was amazed when I first saw it that it even existed.

I don't know quite where in Unit 1 I'll be living next fall, though I'll probably be living in Deutsch hall, maybe with a bayview. In theory, that's what I'll have, though that may not be what happens. Once I know more, I'm sure I'll say more about it.

The semester is winding down, and it's mostly over except for two projects, a few homeworks, and finals. This is a good thing. I'll be free to work on things I want to, and read some books that have been piling up on my desk. Believe me, they're piling up.

I need a digital camera or a quickcam. Maybe this summer.

In other news, Q3Test for the Mac came out today, and frankly, it kicks some serious butt. I was so impressed by this Test release that I cannae quite comprehend how awesome the final release is going to be.

I think there's going to be a lot of Quaking going on in my house this summer. I also think I'll have to build a machine exclusively to run Windows and play games next fall.

There's a lot of things I want to do this summer, eh?

Well, the summer is coming soon.

This is an article I posted to alt.music.tmbg sometime over the summer of 1998, and it has been minorly edited since then. It is an interpretation of They Might Be Giants' somewhat famous song, "Particle Man".

10/10/2001: I apologize for the presentation and tone of this interpretation. The idea that Particle Man shares many elements with Flatland should be clear despite all the opinions I tossed into the mess. Maybe some day I'll go back and revise this, but for now, tread warily.

---

So a long time ago I came up with this interp of this catchy song. It was a dark and stormy night, after I had read E. Abbots Flatland, and I was listening to Flood, when it hit me.

The short version: Particle man is based off of E. Abbots Flatland.

The Long Version:
As I don't have the book available, I'll have to summarize to the best of my memory.

First of all, the book is about perspectives and understanding. As I recall, the narrative opens with 2d beings observing a 1d being, which is mostly irrelevant for the remainder of the plot, except as a contrast against how the beings in the story thing. Then, a square in the 2d world is living his peaceful life, when a sphere from 3d world comes down to 2d world and takes the square up to the 3d world, where the scope of the square world is broadened. The square sees the possibilities, and asks the sphere to take him to the 4d world. The sphere of course, *KNOWS* there's no such thing as a 4th dimension, gets mad at the square, and chucks him back down to 2d.

In 2d, the square tries to explain to the other squares about the next dimension, but of course, every square *KNOWS* there's no such thing as a 3rd dimension, and so the squares ostracized their fellow square.

Sound like society in general? it should. This is a really great narrative for another view on society and it's interactions... and it even has a bit of 19th century theory on Dimensions.

Now then, on to the interp. The first thing to realize, is that two points can make a line, which is one dimensional. So, the minimum number of points required to create a two dimensional shape is 3, which makes a triangle. A square was used in Flatland, for some silly reason, but if you replace the square with triangles in the story, things begin to make more sense.... now then, the line by line.

"Particle man, particle man / Doing the things a particle can / What's he like? It's not important / Particle man / Is he a dot, or is he a speck? / When he's underwater does he get wet? / Or does the water get him instead? / Nobody knows, Particle man"

This entire first bit is about the 2d being observing the 1d being. the particle is the 1d being, who is going about it's own business and completely unaware of the higher dimension observing it. The individual bits are relatively self explanatory, and I'll save you all the effort of trying to understand my haphazard style of explaining things.

"Triangle man, Triangle man / Triangle man hates particle man / They have a fight, Triangle wins / Triangle man"

Triangle man is the everytriangle. This is not the triangle who was taken to the 3d realm, but is instead the other, mob minded triangles who don't think for themselves. He doesn't like anything that isn't him. He doesn't know about the 3d world, but he does know about 1d... and because 1d is not 2d, it is not as good, and 2d is about to stomp on 1d without incredibly much effort.

"Universe man, Universe man"

Is the sphere, the 3d being.

"Size of the entire universe man"

Consider a 3d being in a 2d world. A 3d being is composed of many 2d subworlds, basically. kind of abstract, but it makes sense to me... a universe is composed of many galaxies...a galaxy is 2d, a universe is 3d, for the sake of this interp.

"Usually kind to smaller man"

For the most part, this particular sphere didn't do anything mean to the 2d beings... he only grew angry when the triangle, who we haven't met yet, asks about the next dimension.

"He's got a watch with a minute hand, Millennium hand and an eon hand"

3 watch hands. 3 dimensional being. Groks intimately the meanings of the hands, or the dimensions, but doesn't grok anymore.

"When they meet it's a happy land / Powerful man, universe man"

When the hero triangle, who we still havenae met yet, is taken by the sphere to 3d land, the triangle understands and is overjoyed with his revelation.. and asks for the next dimension. As I've said, the sphere gets upset, and with his power, sends the triangle back down to 2d land.

"Person man, person man"

At last! Our hero triangle!

"Hit on the head with a frying pan"

This is *AFTER* the encounter with the sphere has taken place, and our poor hero is already back in 2d land. As far as any of his fellow triangles can tell, he musta been hit on the head pretty hard, because he is ranting and raving about some greater dimension than two... What an absurd idea! More than two dimensions?
hrmph.
And the other angle: Person mans revelation was like being smacked on the head with a frying pan. suddenly seeing everything in a new light..... a new world, with new dimensions to explore! too bad none of his friends believe him.

"Lives his life in a garbage can"

and so his friends ostracize him. If he's gonna keep making a fool out of himself, talking about this "3rd dimension", then we're not gonna associate with him. Sounds like our society, eh?

"Is he depressed or is he a mess?"

What *IS* wrong with this guy?
Why on *EARTH* is he so adamant about his silly ideas?

"Does he feel totally worthless?"

Then he begins to question himself. Is he really insane? Did that happen? IS there really a third dimension? is he as worthless as his friends have made out? He gives in to societal pressure and stops clinging to what he knows to be true, because it hurts too much.

"Who came up with person man?"

What a poor individual! So human, and yet so poor.

"Degraded man, person man"

Person's status in flatland has been significantly reduced since his rantings. He is now basically a joke to anyone in flatland.

"Triangle man, triangle man / Triangle man hates person man / They have a fight, triangle wins / Triangle man "

And then our society returns. Our mob returns, and sees this poor whimpering soul, believing in what he knew, and beats the crap outta him.

I love this place!

This is an article I posted to alt.music.tmbg sometime over the summer of 1998, and it has been minorly edited since then. It is an interpretation of They Might Be Giants' songs, "She was a Hotel Detective" and "(She was a) Hotel Detective".

---

While I normally avoid considering (She was a) Hotel Detective and She was a Hotel Detective together, the very nature of the titles forces a cross examination to see what can be gleaned from their lyrics.

The short answer to what my quest has revealed:
The songs are about TMBG's career. (She was a) Hotel Detective, in and of itself, does not convey this idea, nor does She was a Hotel Detective. But taken as a pair, (She was a) represents the TMBG of yore, which I and perhaps many of you fell in love with long before Flood was a gleam in the John's eyes, and She was a represents TMBG as they became.

Now for the long version: (I apologize for the line by line format, but I don't have time to do it any other way as I'm at work right now, writing between compilations (I'm a programmer))

(She was a) Hotel Detective
//------------------------------------
"my little Hotel Detective"
TMBG was little. Two guys, a drum machine.
They had a little following. Nothing very special.

"Why don't you check her out"

Please? They needed more fans, y'know?

"Well the bellhop is funky / The dumbwaiter's a monkey"

A drum machine? C'mon, really! what kinda instrument is *THAT* for a band?? Get real! Stop monkey'ing around with your funky toys and make REAL MUSIC!

"If there's a knock at the door, boy, forget about it,"

Could be taken to be directed at They... Forget about knocks at their door. It's never going to happen. They're never going to make it as a band.

So when someone does knock, don't get your hopes up. Just go to the door and open it.... and get the mail, or whatever it may be. It should be noted that stylistically, the songs also represent the band. (She was a) is rather bizarre and insane, as it were, just as many of their earlier songs can be classified. The deeper meanings are embedded within complex riddles which aren't worth deciphering or take 10 years and a huge hint to figure out....

She was a hotel detective
//----------------------------------

"In the all-night Laundromat / Wait one minute / I have seen her / She's a billionaire"

While They obviously have not become billionaire's, they have become significantly more well known since Flood and the like. The (ex) hotel detective goes to the all night Laundromat, so she can avoid the attention she would otherwise attract in the daytime.

"She was a hotel detective / But now she's gotten promoted / I don't think it was the money / She didn't care about expensive things / No furs or pearls or fancy cars or diamond rings"

I think this bit she be relatively self explanatory.

"But now she's better connected"

A new record company, in this particular case.

"She didn't have to change anything / Just the stencil on her window"

While They didn't change their name (Thank gods), they did change their sound, which is just important to a band, if not moreso, than their name.

"She used to be quite a lady / She drove the underworld crazy"

They, for lack of a better word, had a cult following. Only a few knew about they back in the day, and those select few loved they. They drove the cult following crazy.

"But now she goes insane in her way / When it suits her occupation"

As a more high profile band, They have to be more careful about what they do and how they do it.

"She read that motel directive / It told her she was defective"

They were defective when contrasted against the Popular bands. They were not normal, they didn't fit any mold. They still don't, mind you, but they deviate at least slightly less. They got a full... wait, that's the next line.

"I guess she found an easier way / Up the ladder and she took it"

They got a full band. It was easier that way. It was more accepted.

"Is she lonely / She's the only / Girl in this back alleyway"

Even though they deviate less, they're still deviants.
*OR*
They occasionally need to get out of the spotlight, and hide in a dark place... Not wanting to be disturbed.

"Will she shoot you / She won't have to / You're already dead"

I never bothered to figure out this line. Any takers?

On the morning of April 17th, 1999, I was awoken at 0238 by my roommate Keith saying "Benjy, a car exploded."

I've woken up to many strange things, but I didn't quite know what to make of "Benjy, a car exploded." So I responded in the only logical way: "I don't understand."

So he told me to look out the window, which I did. Since I was not entirely awake, nothing out of the ordinary registered. "I don't see anything", I told him as I searched around my desk for my inhaler.

Isn't it more Orange than normal out there?" he asked me, trying to point out the fact that a jeep was on fire about fifteen or twenty feet from our window.

I basically ignored the question while I continued to search for my inhaler. Keith must have been trying to figure out how to convey the necessary information in a simpler way. He needed to dumb down what he was trying to say. "A car blew up" was too many syllables.

So Keith opened the door and pointed out that the fire alarm was going off, which was enough to get me to leave the room. As we walked to the front gate of La Loma, I asked Keith what he was trying to tell me.

Keith shook his head and sighed, and started from the beginning. By the time we got to the front gates of La Loma, I grasped that a Jeep had blown up. That was apparently all that he actually knew, so I wasn't expected to understand any more at that point. But that was the point when I was finally awake enough to desire more information than "A jeep blew up."

To sum up the story, someone apparently set a jeep on fire outside of the door out of Building 3 of La Loma, which proceeded to blow up, forcing residents of La Loma to evacuate the all three buildings for an hour and a half, which added up to a lot of cranky residents not very fully dressed standing in a couple of poorly lit oil stained parking lots at three in the morning. I took it in stride, and occasionally cursed myself for not having thought to bring my inhaler, as rubber smoke didn't make my asthma happy.

No one was hurt, though several hundred hours of sleep were lost, and La Loma apparently wasn't damaged, Luckily it was a Friday night, so there was no school or midterms the next morning. If there had been midterms the next day, I think the people who caused the jeep to explode would have been quickly found, tarred, feathered, and then really hurt.

Another amusing point was my suitemate Michael, who managed to sleep through the whole thing, explosion and fire alarms and all.

It's Friday night, which means I've survived another week which was not unlike the one before, though this particular week was somewhat more rough on me than most tend to be.

Between having a CS project due and a psych paper, in addition to recovering from the week of hell before and dreading the upcoming 61b midterm, I haven't quite been myself lately. But now I'm almost entirely sane again, as I have only one more midterm, one more 61b project and one more 61c project due before finals, which is, all in all, a good thing for me. Though it's probably a good thing for you, too, because that means I will more likely update the site more often now that I'm a bit less busy.

I've been doing a lot of programming of late, actually. Mostly little scripts here and there to automate my life, though there are a couple of things which I've posted on my projects page. If you're a Linux person, you might want to check it out.

My last final is either on the 18th of May or the 21st of May, so either way I'll probably end up back in Bakersfield some time the weekend of the 22nd. The last couple of days here in Berkeley have been terribly hot, which only served to remind me how REALLY hot it gets in Bakersfield over the summer.

We'll see how it goes.

While listening to Assassins, Keith was playing Myth II. At one point during the dialog between John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, Booth says "Are you sure?" At exactly the same time as Booth said that, Keith asked Michael "Are you sure?"

One day I got an email from my friend Jennifer Whaley with the subject "Re: Cal Poly, eh?" which was in reply to a message I had sent her some time earlier. I read the message, replied, and then left for class. On the way to class that day, I passed a person wearing first a Cal Poly sweatshirt, and then at class I saw a person with a Cal Poly T-Shirt on.

One day Brent propositioned me about helping him with a project he wished to undertake to create a cross platform game in the style of Myth/Starcraft/Mechcommander. In other words, he wanted me to help him make a Real Time Strategy Game. Not less than two hours later, my 61C lab partner mailed me with the message "Are you a fan of real time strategy games? Would you have any interest in writing a portable and extensible real time strategy game engine?"

So I'm halfway through the gauntlet, and I've only lost one Major organ. Not bad, considering, though it should be noted I've only gotten the grades back on half of the things from the first half of hell, so things could get a lot worse very quick.

That was a poorly written paragraph. Sorry about that.

I got a job as a Residential Computing Consultant next fall, and I look forward to that a lot. It doesn't pay bad, either. I think it will be a lot of fun.

A note along the same lines mentions that I will be living in Unit 1 next fall instead of Foothill, which will be quite a big change, I think, but I look forward to it. I won't have to walk uphill as much after class, and there will be a far great opportunity for me to get to know people, and the rooms seem more spacious, I think.

I finally found the address of the Shakespeare page. It's at http://library.advanced.org/17467/, though I am probably going to move it to another server eventually, and add more content. Presently, it is very content deprived, which depresses me when I think about it. Though it does look nice.

This really has been a rambling and poorly written update. Sorry about that.

So one Thursday I got an email from Theresa, my supervisor next fall for ResComp, and as part of the discussion, she mentioned that she liked Tenchi Muyo! That night, my suitemate Ed asked me if he could borrow my Tenchi Universe tapes. It should probably be noted that I hadn't even touched my Tenchi Tapes for a couple of months, but back Tenchi comes, with two references in around 12 hours.