I like my new supernaut so much that I just want to write stuff here. It’s like Twitter on Blog. Shall continue on those bottles of wine. (#drunkwhileblogging)
Category Archives: computers
More or less done … all over but the screaming o…
Status
More or less done … all over but the screaming of editing the database by hand. (sure to find horridness though…)
A bit less of a Mess
Aside
Slight progression. Post formats work (as an aside, I am an aside). Different footers for single post pages. Discovering the horrible tension between ‘child theme’ and writing ugly hacks to cripple the parent.
Shall go and do proper work now.
A bit of a Mess, (continued)
Aside
… supernaut has been one-columnised. Most of the index page is done. Older stuff is broken (Oh! Images, why do you hate me?). Things have been lost/misplaced/sorted into piles for later use or discarding. Looking forward to hand-grepping the database.
(This is trying to be an aside but breaks things … Trying to use supernaut differently.)
A bit of a Mess, Really …
I was planning on slowly flopping supernaut over to a newer look … well, mostly the same old look but wrapped around WordPress’ default theme, so I could a) take advantage of all the fun new things like post formats, b) deal with some irritations of having slung supernaut through two or three platforms (WordPress, MovableType, and I think something else), and the general cruft of 8 years blogging and z) just because …
Slowly became quick because supernaut got hacked again. Not looking at you, DreamHost, too hard, but it’s getting kind of irritating lately. It’s probably not the very old theme supernaut is running on which is responsible for this, but having looked through the logs, gah! Keine ahnung!
So I swapped over to the new theme early. Severely unfinished. Much mess everywhere. Embarrassment? Yes! It’s going to take a long time before it looks all proper, like.
And this post was written using the Aside new post format. More of a Status really.
Fuck it, I’ve got six opened bottles of wine by me feet and a … what am I doing sitting all alone in the darkness in Alte Kantine Wedding?
New Computer Logic Board!
Oh indeed it’s going mental around here with overuse of the word, ‘New’.
A couple of weeks ago my nearly-four-year-old laptop went completely black when I dragged an image to be edited. Panic! High blood pressure! Gnashing of teeth! Somehow it decided to restart after half a day, and I of course began my usual assault on the internet to find out wtf was that wtf.
“macbookpro4,1 black screen” gave some pretty definitive answers, and as soon as I checked I had the dreaded NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT graphics card, I was pretty sure I was staring “ugly immediate future” in the mouth.
One large Mac shop nearby Technische Universität was distinctly unhelpful (unlike last year when my top case gave out), and said my laptop wasn’t covered as I had a blaaaahblllaaaa … (won’t dwell on the minutia). So I resorted to running the fan on high which seemed to be the only solution for temporarily deferring inevitable logic board death while I a) tried to get through a stack of work and b) alternately pondered what to do or whined.
Being not one who likes to lose an argument when the price of doing so is about half that of a new laptop, I searched for precedents. Excitement, yes. Found them and called Apple just as my screen gave out again and on the very last day of the four-year period Apple would cover replacement for free, and received a definitive, “Yes, my supervisor says you’re covered.”
All of which found me on Tuesday in BetterWorx, really hoping that previous definitive wouldn’t be graced by a conditional. And I’ve seldom been so happy to see my laptop fall apart when tested as I was when they ran the graphics test and it threw back the NVIDIA failure.
More agonising as I was informed I might not make the deadline and …
Friday arrived and so did my laptop, ahead of the deadline by a scant 8 hours. And!
New 500gb hard drive installed (been sitting on my shelf since before the floods in Thailand doubled the price). Wonky latch also fixed!
I spent last night doing a completely fresh install (ten hours of trawling through all my forgotten system tweaks that suddenly and glaringly weren’t there), and now hoping nothing more goes askew (could do with a new battery some time), and I get at least the rest of the year out of this poor, clobbered thing (pulled an enormous dustball out from under the command key when I noticed the backlight was a little askew).
(This is a thank you also to everyone at BetterWorx.)
Reading (2nd Time): Charles Stross — Rule 34
The first time I read Charles Stross’ Rule 34, I wasn’t writing about why I read certain books. So, taking a break from the recent binge of non-fiction before I plunged into the next cycle, I returned to some favourites, or rather some science-fiction I haven’t read three or four times.
I read Charles Stross because he is intelligent, bitingly witty, and one of the only science-fiction writers who manages to write about (very-) near-futurism without either sounding like a Boy’s Own tech blog or being embarrassingly out of date upon publication (both fates have simultaneously befallen two other writers I used to enjoy hugely, and are now departed from my reading list).
Along with Iain (M. or otherwise) Banks, and China Miéville, I have his upcoming books firmly in my reading list, partly because of the above, and also because all three of them take the subordinate place of women in society seriously and consciously write to address this. Charles also has one of my favourite blogs.
As for Rule 34, yes, definitely worth the second read, though I’m still slightly confused by the implications of the ending — which is to say, I’ll probably read it again just to grasp this better.
charles stross – rule 34thingswithbits updates itself
I’ve never been so taken by my design website, in respect to design having been thrown into a free template, and in respect to its purpose. On Friday evening, having just finished something or other, I thought perhaps I could just throw it into the template I use for francesdath.info, and had an idea I could use various images of various websites and so on as background.
Some enjoyable coding working out how to link the full-screen background image gallery code into WordPress using custom fields met with disappointment when I discovered the design idea in my head looked fairly crap in a browser.
Not one to shy away from excessive minimalism, I kept cutting things back until I was left with a large swathe of white and a single list on the far left. When I did the redesign for supernaut, (I forget when, I think early 2005 in Taipei), I was slightly afraid of the emptiness I’d uncovered. It was as if I’d taken a rococo edifice and levelled it until only the masonry remained. It’s an approach I tend to apply to choreographing also; I’m partial to an evening of killing one’s babies, it’s just the aftermath that makes me anxious.
So, thingswithbits.info has become perhaps an un-website, I feel slightly embarrassed to say. It’s intentionally empty, though without being a placeholder.
Now with three main websites, there is still a gap. I’ve been doing more photography in the last two years since getting a very good small camera, and yet this doesn’t fit into any of the sites. It may be that thingswithbits has to die so that it can be more inclusive. For now though, it’s at least a site of mine I no longer feel is the unmentionable one (which is good, considering it’s my work).
danielschlusser.com
Some time in Vienna last year, Daniel Schlusser came to visit and we made some trial rehearsals with ropes and Theraband bondage. Over the course of the last year, besides theatre, we talked about a website, and a couple of weeks ago, (with delay caused by lead paint) it sprung miraculously, fully-formed, to life.
In-between there was much coding and designing, learning of typography and how to edit and create typefaces, little reworkings, bigger reworkings … Daniel spent the previous six weeks of so sorting images, text, and other things, and the site went from being this familiar thing I’d looked at for so long into what it was intended to be — his. So, I’m very happy to for Daniel’s site to be alive.
You can find him at danielschlusser.com.
danielschlusser.com – home
danielschlusser.com – productions page
danielschlusser.com – life is a dream
danielschlusser.com – daniel himself
danielschlusser.com – news
danielschlusser.com – 404Was it something I said? (or, supernaut blocked in China)
I noticed a few weeks ago that traffic from China was low — single digits low instead of being in the top three countries for visitors. Even then I was fairly certain the cause. Today I was again reminded of this anomaly, so sent a message to a 广州人 who replied almost immediately, “yes, blocked on my end”.
A pity, really. I liked that supernaut was read in China, that all my writings on living there, on culture, politics, artists, dancers, places had some small (tiny) return.
Anyway, here’s a picture of a grass mud horse.
草泥马 cao ni ma