I think I told some of you (around the office) that I was doing some pro-bono work for the Gorilla Organization for a run they were thinking of doing in San Francisco. Well, the date's been set, the route's been mapped, and my design's gone live. Ladies and gents, I present to you, The Great Gorilla Run! Oh *hair's* yes.
Coming June 10th to San Francisco. You should totally sign up for it. C'mon, running around Golden Gate Park on a (foggy) Sunday morning in June, dressed up as a gorilla, raising money for a truly incredible organization - how could you possibly not want to? See, you can't come up with a reason why not. Now go on with your bad self, read up on all the deets and sign up!
Over the weekend I helped launch my friend Marla's newly redesigned photography website. I've helped her in the past, back in the day doing production work on it, and the last time around templatizing the entire thing for her in XSSI so that with nominal effort on her part she could add new photos, and not have to create "new pages" per se, but rather have a template that knew about some variables, and her pages would "do the right thing.
Somewhere around the beginning of this year she asked if I'd help with a new design direction she wanted to go in - larger photos, improved navigation, and a thumbnail gallery that would show all of the other photos in the given section that one is in. Naturally I agreed (I've known Marla for almost twelve years, from back in the HotWired days, and have helped out with her family's site and her Mom's movie reviews' site and actually did a contract for her Dad's surgery practice, and she did a photo shoot for me when I was naive enough to think I could get a cookbook deal without having a TV show...). The one thing I'd forgotten however (even though I was the one who set it up) was that the site is, while dynamic by way of the XSSI, not running off of a database (because of where it's hosted). So it pleased me to no end to figure out how to write schmancy functions to pass XSSI variables into custom JavaScript to generate the gallery, and have it be aware as to where one was in the list of photos for a gallery to show the correct twelve-up view to accompany the main photo, and to have cookies setting and unsetting to remember if the subnavigation should remain open or not depending on user behavior. [/tiny bit of bragging ;)]
In any case, you should totally check out her site - her photographs are absolutely amazing; the way she looks at things and can capture them on film is unlike anything I've seen before. (Oh, and she also does beautiful wedding photography, if you're looking...)
What are five things you're good at?
Submitted by HapaLove.
I wrote a post that sort of answers this qotd last April:
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (on the 383)
When I got back to the City on Friday night I headed to North Beach for dinner and a drink. Sitting in Tosca over a glass of bourbon, I looked up above the bar to see the discolored patch of wood where years ago there was a little sign that said "Whatever you are, be a good one.". Here are some of the things I've been:
Book sorter in a library (twice, actually - once when I was around 7, making 25 cents a week alphabetizing newly returned books and returning the due by cards into the little recipe card box. My first two purchases with my first job: an engineer's cap, and a 45 of Blondie's "The Tide is High". The other time was at 18 in college as work study, and how someone actually thought that alphabetizing and re-stacking books could take up 16 hours a week is beyond me. It typically took a half hour tops, and even after going through the stacks and re-organizing all the books that had been put in the wrong place, it still wasn't anywhere close to 16 hours. Suffice it to say, that job didn't last long.)
Newspaper delivery boy (11 - 13, on foot, on one of the less desirable routes in town, where on one occasion, rather than paying the $4 due for the past two unpaid weeks, the owners of the house set two of their dogs on me.)
Editorial cartoonist (first time at around 12, a cartoon of Reagan and Gorbachev as little kids in a classroom, the teacher's head as a globe, the two of them throwing paper-airplane-missiles at each other, the teacher saying "Now boys...". Very primitive, but it did wind up on the editorial page of the local paper. Second time was when I was in my mid-20s, doing a weekly cartoon for an early political website.)
Various and sundry restaurant jobs (13 - 21, 23 - 24, 32, 34 - 35. I started working as a dishwasher at the not-quite-legal age of 13 after I'd had enough of trying to outrun dogs and the neighborhood thugs on my paper route. Providing you didn't lose an arm in the dishwasher or break more than the acceptable amount of plates, the guy who ran the kitchen would slowly start having you do nominal prep work - clean and cook off 50 pounds of potatoes, peel and cut said 50 pounds of cooked potatoes, peel carrots, cut carrots, that kind of thing. If you still had all your fingers and not too many burns, you graduated up. By 14 I was on breakfasts, grill first (a slightly retarded monkey can handle a grill at breakfast), then eggs (but it takes a special kind of wizardry to pull off eggs during a busy breakfast). By 16 I was backup line cook on dinners, and by 18 I was running dinner operations until I left for grad school at 21 (and somewhere in there I was working in a pizzeria as well). When I came back from grad school I did a year and change as a line cook before moving to San Francisco. To brush up on my technique I did a 3 month pro-bono stint in a French place in Tiburon when I was 32, and I tended and managed a bar in North Beach while I tried to develop my own software last year.)
Magazine contributor (35, writing a few pieces for a new magazine that isn't on the newsstands anymore)
Various and sundry internet jobs (24 - present, including but not limited to: design assistant, sysadmin, production monkey, production specialist, associate producer, producer, director of this-that-and-the-other-thing, jack-of-all-trades, high-paid consultant, founder, volunteer, job seeker)
I'm guessing the sign in Tosca was less about what you do and more about who you are.
I stopped by Caffe Macaroni tonight to say hi to Mario and get all the updates for his calendar, and he treated me to dinner. And ohmyfuckinggod - Napolitano octopus and potato soup, and a seafood risotto that kicked so much ass. No, seriously.
Mario, ftw!
I'm all for philosophical discussions as to why there should be more than a two-party system and all, but if this dude fucks things up by 3% again, it'll be unforgivable.
Who or what do you really love?
...and I just want to say one thing:
... so I could be at Glastonbury in 2004 to see the Orbital live...
To watch tonight: my brother on TV! He was cast to be on an episode of Forensic Files on CourtTV.
Audio: Share a song that fits the moment you're living right now.
Inspired by cherè.
I'm not sure if this really "fits the moment [I'm] living right now", but it's what I woke up with in my head:
Not a bad soundtrack to have coursing through one's head on an overcast Wednesday morning. Makes me think back to the first time I heard this, back when I was living in Wales working on my dissertation...
