Since my last 2 posts, I got into a new gig which, among other things, has me in the company of very sociable webby types. My last gig also had me in the company of webby types but it was different... The best way I can describe it is that the former could recreate the web from scratch as it stands today with some improvements, where the latter understands the social deficiencies of the current web, and can envision and design a new human web that everyone would embrace and love like a freshly minted puppy. Put another way, I heard Twitter entioned maybe 3 times over my 4 year stint at Intava, and it is pervasive like Ale in London at Ratio.

I was encouraged today to go search out Ratio's twittersphere, which I did, and this was interesting but not because I like following anything in particular. I realized that I was encouraged to look into twitter, and to start getting acclimated. Put another way, my business is now twitter and social media, and I was tipped off that it would be in my best interest to be aware. To me, this brings up an interesting question. Does social prowess and popularity mean more to my wallet than it has in the past? Of course social ability is important to success, always has been, but I would argue that social aptitude has in the past been more of a requirement to people that are selling something; be it their business or other people's business. It has not been paramount to the producers and artists of the world, who are defined principally by their output. I count myself among the latter, but I find myself stepping in the direction of the former. My new direction has catalyzed realization that this means the landscape is changing; and I'm on the fence as to if this benefits me.

I have worked hard on my loner mystique, and I am not sure where that fits into the Social Media Lunchroom. I am fascinated by what's happening with HCI (human computer interaction) and the SocialWeb may very well be a significant prerequisite for the Singularity, but now that it is in my face demanding my participation, I am confronted with a question. Can I still carry on as a loner and be mysterious? I think this is still a valid facet of human behavior, and it is simply not an available template in the modern social infused web. The options are more or less private, (I'm top secret, ignore me) or public (information on tap, from a nuclear powered firehose). I want a way to participate, but I want to tease. How can I be a loner these days? Is the Mysterious loner a forgotten cultural relic? Hmm.

I have been hearing about hulu here and there online, mostly on boards relating to flash video. But It took Alec Baldwin in all his smarmy hilarious glory to finally pull me over to the site. See, I am a flash platform developer, which means I have had to defend flash as being more than a 'glorified animated gif' creator for the past 5 years. Yes, someone did say that in my presence, proving once and for all there is someone on earth with less foresight than an eggplant. I am tickled, therefore, to see flash at the heart of yet another massively-likely-to-succeed web deployment of video content. The fact that I can now watch robocop, for free, on my 3 year old macbook, online, (with decent video quality) while writing this entry...well it just rocks. With youtube, it was fairly clear that flash had arrived as a major mainstream technology. Now hulu is poised to cement it. go flash!

Hello! for any of you looking for the wedding RSVP section, please follow this link. Two more months! Almost there!

I'm hearing things. With my newfound powers of webtastic ability, I'm hearing the secret code of the world of web development. I'm privy man. I know stuff. Well, sort of. In the process of creating my website I had to reacquaint myself with best web practice and web design in general. I also had an opportunity to learn a few new things and finally get a grip on dynamic web development. So now I'm hearing all this stuff about AJAX this and AJAX that. It seems that AJAX is the new hot button in web development. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, and essentially the coolness is that you can develop applications for the web that look and feel like desktop applications. Check out netvibes for an example of AJAX in action.

Since you don't have to refresh the page, stuff just runs smoother and better. I however have a small beef with this. First of all, it relies totally and completely on client side scripting. Javascript can many times be disabled for security reasons, and in general, the whole thing just seems like a backward step in universal accessibility.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the functionality offered by AJAX applications. The dependence on JavaScript just makes me a little uneasy. I really like the idea of a system that does all of the work server side, then just spits out html for the appropriate user agent.

That aside, I rilly rilly want to start playing with AJAX :). It's, like, way sexy and stuff. I've been putting off actually learning JavaScript for lack of a reason to apply it. I've never been too interested in client sniffing or fancy graphical tricks, so JavaScript just sorta sat there; like this big thick juicy book oozing with gooey DOM-ness. Now, I think I have a reason to start messing with client side scripting, but I still think it's a bell or a whistle or both.

I haven't even tried this yet, but I got so excited at the very idea that I had to post a link about it.

Don't Panic.

I'm sitting here at home and I decided I wanted to make a blog entry. I had to think for a minute about something to actually blog about, and quel supris, I came up with more than 1 entry could cover.

The first subject, that which is most prevalent on my mind, is that of employment. In my search for part time employment while in school, I'm running headlong into what I have decided to call the 'Seattle Station Freelance Situation'. Employers that are in the business of creative technology are far more interested in hiring freelancers for 2 months, than hiring part time or full time people for many projects. This is a standard here. I wonder if this is just 'The Way It Is' everywhere, but that requires research which I don't have the time to do currently.

If I were to put myself in the shoes of an employer, this would make sense in the respect that fresh people means fresh ideas all the time. You would avoid the burnt out designer. You would get a totally fresh look on every project. You would have a lower overhead. You, the employer, gets a good deal. But, man, wheres the freakin love? The employers were/are artists themselves, they should know better than anyone that the best work for a lot of artists comes out of a continuing relationship with thier patron/employer.

As a commercial artist you need to understand what your art director/patron wants when they ask for it, and as would stand to reason, you will get better results if you know each other better. I happen to know for a fact, my old boss had certain styles that he would be more receptive to. How would I know that, unless I worked for him for a while?

My point is, this fixation on temporary skilled work in Seattle is unfortunate. I know it's a result of economic factors outside of anyone's control. I wonder though, if the employers and art directors like this situation, or if thier hands are tied.

The second entry...will come later

I wasn't entirely happy with the archive navigation page, so I tweaked the code a little. Now the archive page not only lists the months that have entries, but ALSO...drum roll.......(cymbal crash)..lists the number of entries, and the titles of those entries in that month. This was a suggestion of the one and only synthetic vox. I say 'one and only' in reference to the fact that she is the one and only individual who comments on a regular basis ;). check it it's cool.

I have a three day weekend goin on this weekend, so I had some time to cuddle with my website. Judi is away for the weekend, so I needed something to keep me company. I got a fledgling archive system working. yippie!. I'm unsure on the user friendliness of it, so please, both of you readers out there, let me know what you like/don't like/find broken.

The archives are divided by month. Also, they are get-to-able from the bottom of the entry listing, and from the nav bar on top. The current month will be listed as an 'archive'. I think that's user friendly, but some people might be confused if they uh..don't know what month it is.

as a radom side note...

I met this really interesting guy at my internship on friday. Of course, I can't remember his name. He's essentially a BRAND. He's a sponsored world class skier guy, and he has this thing going on called birdwhere. It's clothing and stuff. I can't really explain it all that well, just know that this guy pretty much represents what I wanted to be when I was a wannabe ski bum in high school. He's sorta like one of those untouchably cool people, like John Travolta in swordfish, or Beck.

Anyway, here's his website.

my blogs always end like a dead marker.

Valentines day is over. I made good on my boyfriend-ness. Judi is happy, all is well on that tip. My crappy serial plane assignment wrapped up today. For anyone who hasn't heard me complain about it, I'll explain what it entailed. Essentially, the goal was to create a form that expressed lightness or heaviness using a succesion of slightly changing planes. For example, this is my 'heaviness' final.

my heavy

**CENSORED!** ;o).

I didn't particularly like this experience.

** END CENSORED BIT!**

Sketchbooks were also due this week which was just another little thing that made this week a huge stressball. I'm so glad it's all done. Now I get a 3d(ay) :) weekend to do things like sleep and stuff.

i plan on working on my website a little. I still want to add archiving, because this list of blog entries is getting kinda funny. A fellow student brought up a real interesting idea which I want to explore. He said that if I had photoshop tutorials on my site he'd be stoked. This got my little brain thinking that I could totally do that and maybe even make some money. It's crazy what little things people don't know about photoshop that a simple tutorial can help. hmmm....

New page of pen sketches. One of the girls looks a little like my girlfriend...hmm..

I was 30 minutes late to school today, and I'm blaming old people.

After I got to school, I heard there was a nasty accident on I-5 and the entire system was congested, but still...I'm blaming old, flatulent, slow, temporally irresponsible people. The bus was 10 minutes late, annoying, but understandable. The bus ride was quiet and uneventful until the park and ride at Northgate. Then a LEGION of old people started slooooowwwwly getting on the bus and ever sooooo carefully counted out their change, and verrrrrryyyy thoroughly asked the bus driver for directions to the convention center. Every one...of them...did the same thing. 15 old couples averaging about 300 years old got on the bus in a brisk 15 minutes. Since I didn't have much else to do I listened to the painfully sluggish conversations: 'we're going to the garden show...what street are we on?...where is the convention center?...where's my cane??'. I understand the convention center is so HARD TO FIND at 9th and howell. You know, 2 blocks away in plain sight with about a gajillion signs pointing at it.

after a long heated discussion between myself and my-sql, entries have the number of comments associated with the link..Is that...applause I hear? it's really faint...

Next on the list of upgrades: archives. This list of entries is getting a tad longish

• **UPDATE-Archives are indeed in 'da hizzle', refer to above entry.

In case you didn't know, seattle is in the superbowl. If I was into that kinda thing, I'm sure I'd be really excited. I say things like, 'oh the super bowl is today?' or 'are the seahawks an expansion team?' and diehard seattlites either think I'm joking or shake their heads. Like, hey man, I just work here.

So instead of chips, beer, and commercials I'm working on my homework and messing with my website.

and this is my girlfriends frog toothpick holder! I thought this was so cool that I used it as a sketchbook assignment and a color journal entry.

There are also a couple of new sketches in the sketches section. One of em is rully cute.

go seahawks or something.

Okay, so there's a new major problem on the site. I tested the site on IE 4-6 for pc, safari (current), and firefox (current) for pc and mac. Of course, the one major browser I didn't test...IE for mac, has major display problems. So, anyone that is using ie for mac feel free to laugh at my misfortune. I'm sure it has something to do with crappy support for the float CSS property. I'll attend to that little annoyance asap.

ps, web dev is a pain in the ass. why do I like it so much?

• **UPDATE I've decided that I don't really care about about IE for mac :). It's not supported anymore anyway. If you still use it, um..download firefox, or use safari, you dinosaur you.

So today I told everyone I could get to via assorted electronic means to look at my website. I especially enjoyed the part where I used myspace to do something practical. That may have been the first time I have ever used myspace for something other than wasting a lot of time.

Today also provided my first feedback on the site.

I figure I'd list the things that I'm aware of on boveribit.com that I plan on getting to. That way, you know that i know that you know things could be better.

• Comments section:Link field will be invalid if there are slashes. ergo 'http://www.whatever.com' will result in an invalid error. It's not a bug, just no slashes. This needs to be adressed however.
• The blog entries don't show how many comments are associated with them. This is a planned upgrade, when I have the hrs to figure it out.**UPDATE the entries now have number of comments associated with them**
• The galleries need a lot of work. Including: rollover description, description of appropriate work on each window, visible cue if a thumbnail has been clicked, and a comments section on each image. This probably means an overhaul of the entire gallery class, so...that will take a while.
• comments section: I'd like to have a leading quote from the appropriate blog entry, and a way to quickly link to the other entries without having to go back to the home page.

That's what I know about as yet. If any of you readers find other issues, feel free to use the contact section to send me your quibbles, I'd like to know

the site's finally up !!

w00t

now i need sleep

(now I get to catch up on all the schoolwork)