So I hacked together a basic working menu while I waited for shit to render out for my 3d Modeling class. The site still looks ugly as shit due to the disgusting ads at the top, but until we can afford a different hosting solution, it is what it is. Regardless, Hope to actually post a bit more often. I may even start linking to my flickr account to show off some of my work. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll just use Jenn’s so I can keep my shit private for now. Regardless. Say welcome back to some information folks, ’cause it’s coming.

By-the-by: Huge congrats to my sister and tony on the marriage! Awesome wedding and you guys rock. We love you both dearly. Alright. I’m out. Peace.

btw: If you noticed that the page doesn’t validate now, it is not my fault. GoDaddy’s free service adds extra markup to close out tags so they can throw their junk into the top frame. Why they need to screw with my stuff, I have no idea, but they do. I’ll try to hack a fix for it.

It’s live, but it’s crippled. We now have ads at the top, which sucks, but whatever. It’s free hosting that comes with the domain name. Hopefully in the next few months we can switch it back over to real hosting. Also, the menu is kind of broken right now, so please be patient while I either A) fix it or B) redo the entire site. The latter is probably more likely to happen since I’ve spent the last 3 hours getting the site back up and the last hour using diff to compare what files are doing things differently and have found nothing, thus far. Frustrating. Anyhow. The site is live and will stay that way so sweetness and keep an eye out for some cool art stuff going on.

But unfortunately it’s over. The site is going offline in a few days. I may just take it down myself. We just don’t have the extra money to keep it going. We’re hoping to at least be able to salvage the domain name, but we’re not even sure about that right now. Hosting it ourselves would be fine, but that costs half of what it would cost me to get it hosted normally, so what would be the benefit. It’s still expensive - not really expensive in the idea of it, but more it’s expensive to our situation. So thanks to everyone who’s supported the site. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed. Thanks to everyone who’s paid attention. And thanks to everyone who’s listened. I may try to find a dyndns domain and transfer it over to that, but I don’t know yet. I’ll be pulling the site down on Thursday and I’ll let anyone know about whether or not I’m moving it somewhere else or not. It definitely blows, but… can’t really do a thing about it. Thanks again.

Ok. So I’m not publishing my new site publicly. If you want to see it, ask. I use an alias, for reasons I’ll keep to myself and the new site isn’t exploding right now anyways, so whatever. I haven’t had much time to dedicate to it, so it’s rather lackluster right now. Hopefully time will get better.

Ok. On top of that, this site will be going down… soon. After my car gets fixed, at that time we’ll determine if we can keep running this site. If not, it sucks but hey. It was a fun run and nice while it lasted. If we can, then GREAT! But we’ll still be having some downtime because we’ll be transferring servers.

Finally, I find it pathetic that Ron Paul supporters were given the nix today. Whatever. Screw you McBama! I’m not voting for either of you bastards now! I’ll do a write in at this point, especially since my vote wont count anyways. We live in Husseins home state, so we know it’s going to him. Ron Paul 2008! Join the Revolution!

John Neumann supports Ron Paul

I’ve decided that I’m going to be taking down most of my sites not including this one. The reason. I don’t get what I need to get done done. I find myself starting a project, but instead of completing the project I find technologies that work for the project well, implement them into the scenario, do two things with the real project and drop it. I’ll never touch it again. I’ve got 4 sites - not including the sub-domain on here - that I host from my own server, and I will continue to host them, but I will not be doing much with them. I’ll use them for emails and the such, but really they’re a waste of my time. Example:

I implemented an entire CRM system for myself. I had client lists, phone numbers, etc. I did all the legwork to get it going and it was sweet. It was accessible from the web through an ssl connection with lots of bells and whistles. Annnnd I never did anything with it. No calls, no ads, no flyers, nothing. I had it all setup, but never did anything with it because I’d gotten bored with the project and then other things came along that took priority.

Example 2:

I setup a project management system for myself to help keep myself on task with the things I needed to do with the projects that I was doing. I researched out a plethora of software ultimately deciding on something that was (no shocker here) open source. I used it for… 1 project. A single project. That was it. Now I also transferred my server during this time and I also had to rebuild it from scratch so I did have to put it back on there, but I had the backups, the databases and everything so there was no reason I couldn’t use it again. But I didn’t. The lure of learning the new software was over after I’d figured it out and done my own updates to it and that was that.

So I’ll be using several services to get my work together and keep things centralized from this point forward. They will all be hosted somewhere else that way I can’t decide to get my hands into the nitty gritty backends like I usually do. This will help me out with keeping on task significantly. I have been debating over whether to use tumblr or wordpress with comicpress for my comic strip, artwork and other senseless rants, ramblings and technobabble. I love wordpress and I love the way it works. Almost every site I have worked on in the last year I have included wordpress in, because it makes updates so simple and basic it’s ridiculous. But that’s almost why I don’t want to use it. I love tinkering with wordpress. Figuring out it’s nuances and fixing them, or tailoring it to fix my needs. This site runs on a modified - although only slightly - version of wordpress. Tumblr seems like it’s just click and go. I’ve got a few choices here and there about what I wanna do with it, but overall it’s the way it is. While that seems like a drawback, for me it almost isn’t because then I can’t tinker. It is what it is and that’s it. Nothing more nothing less. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I’d appreciate someone else’s opinion on the matter.

So I’ve been watching this social-networking site brightkite for quite some time now. It’s really a neat idea being able to check in and out while seeing what others around you are doing. It’s also confusing. Sometimes it feels as though you’re required to use too many different pieces of technology to do something simple, like check-in (a feature that lets you tell everyone where you’re at in the world). I had to post from my phone that I was at home, rather than my computer. Odd. Regardless, I think it’s really a sweet little thing. You’re posts are actually notes, and have about the same character limit that Twitter does (140 I believe) so it forces you to keep your goings-on short and sweet. Well, I waited for about a month or two to get my invite to the beta - I didn’t jump on the bandwagon right away - but now I have 3 invites for anyone to use. Soooo… I’m going to keep one in reserve for someone who may or may not use it, so that leaves me with 2 invites left. If anyone would like one, please let me know and I’ll throw you an invite - family and friends get first priority. It’s definitely a cool little tool and I’m hoping to get to use it to it’s fullest extent.

BTW, I also have an up-and-coming art project I’ve been working on for about a month now. If you’d like to be privy to it, contact me. It is very hush-hush and it’s not for children as there is some egregiously foul language that is NOT for the faint of heart. It also deals with certain elements that need to be handled in a rather… tip-toe fashion? Regardless, any interested contact me. Cheers!

So we got here to AZ last night. Wheeee… The drive wasn’t too bad, but sleep was quite deprived so some of us got cranky. And then DJ got a coke bath at Denny’s so that definitely set a different tone as well - although it worked out well and was funny in the end. Anywho. We’re headed to the Grand Canyon in a bit and then it’s off to Vegas! We’re staying at the Tropicana tonight and then Treasure Island tomorrow and the next few days! Tomorrow is the birthday of yours truly so it’ll be sweet to spend the entire thing in Vegas instead of just part of it. We can’t post twitter or flickr updates until we get data services back on our phones, so we’ll be posting a load of updates at once, once we get there. I know it’s not the same, but then at least we still capture the moment and the such. Oh and that picture of me with the wrapper on my head while entertaining proved disastrous. I had a huge red welt on my forehead from it. Stupid Big Red. Alrighty then. Gotta get movin’! Laters!

Ok so we’re leaving for vacation. The site has been updated and upgraded. We’ll be posting to twitter about where we’re at and what we’re doing throughout our trip and we’ll be posting photos as well to flickr. All the info is found in the sidebar now so it should be easy to keep up with us. If you don’t know what flickr or twitter is… Google is your friend. =) Have a good one and be safe!

Over the next week or so I’ll be upgrading this site to a… “better” version. As such, there will be some minimal downtime so please be patient while the site is down. The site will also be moved to a new host in the next few months, but as that is not a big deal at this point, disregard it until further. Thanks for the understanding.

I got my brand new 15″ Macbook Pro today! It was very exciting. I threw a few programs on there, messed around with the terminal for a bit, installed fink (which lets some software be apt-gettable!) and a few more niceties. So I’m very excited. I configured the firewall a bit as well. Now i just need to get a full copy of vim(I know vim from the command line is there, but I’d like the x11 interface) on here with textmate and netbeans and I’ll be good. Now to just figure out what the best editor is for all around programming and get all the widgets I can to load up my desktop! Gotta go! Gaming time!