avalonstar:distortion

For those of you who haven’t heard or have been living under the proverbial rock, Revyver released its first “application” about three weeks ago. And yes, only now am I getting around to writing about Django Plugables. I put application in quotes mainly because it’s more of a utility than a social network application¹.

So here it is, “The story of Django Plugables” or “How I built something in 5 days.”

Day 1: Find what’s pissing me off

This story starts with a problem. Every story has to start out with a problem, right? “Boy ...

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If you’ve read (and hopefully got a giggle out of) my browser manifesto, you would have seen that I truly consider this to be a great time to be a designer. And after seeing the awesome commentary of the last entry, I wanted to pose a question that i hope spawns some more discussion.

If you could have one HTML5/CSS3 property or attribute added into every modern browser today, what would it be?

Usually at this point I’d make an excuse to post two things, but I’ll play it clean and only state one. The ...

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My good friend Croftie posted this this morning (links to individual tweets are in the footnotes):

Ever had a client take your design, “rework it” and send it back to you so you can do the rest of the site their way? How did you handle it?¹ I don’t want to be someone’s pixel prostitute. If they want to push my pixels around, they can do it themselves, after I’m done.² My job is to give them the best possible solution I can come up with. They don’t have to use it if ...

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While I attempt to write one or two more update posts (one on the recent Revyver release, Django Plugables, and one on the state of Revyver), I thought I’d pose a question that has been in the back of my mind for quite a while.

When you reformat or reinstall your operating system, does the way you use it change?

What I mean by that is quite simple, but I think I can best explain it by answering it. It seems like every time I reinstall OS X, it’s never for a concrete reason that would say ...

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You’re probably going, “what in the hell is going on?”

Well, when you see the four of us update at the exact same time (especially Dan ;P), you know there’s something coming. Sidebar Creative—the little dream that one Skype call turned into a reality turned one this past January. One year of a lot of talking, a lot of laughing, a lot of thinking and a lot of creating.

Working with Dan, Steve and Jon has not only been tremendously fun, but quite the learning experience as well. So have we proved that you could take ...

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Work has started and is continuing on what I’m labeling 25.1. Yes I’m treating this as an app, but more on that later. ;) Part of 25.1 involves Google Maps, which like jQuery is something that would usually lead to me wanting to decapitate myself. Thankfully, Google helped and sample code is the shit.

But first, a little history. Like Jeff, I’ve been going on a geocoding spree. I’ve made it a habit to accurately geocode all of my Flickr photos and then bring them to Django using django-syncr. Unfortunately, django-syncr isn’t working ...

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Usually, I’d write a post related to adding one year onto my age and stuff like that. Twenty-five. Well, now I don’t have to pay the underage fee to rent a car anymore! And my insurance should go down right? RIGHT?

Anyway, I’m sure those posts were boring to everybody else but me, so here’s something completely different:

extract () {
    if [ -f $1 ] ; then
        case $1 in
            *.tar.bz2)  tar xjf $1      ;;
            *.tar.gz)   tar xzf $1      ;;
            *.bz2)      bunzip2 $1      ;;
            *.rar)      rar x $1        ;;
            *.gz)       gunzip $1       ;;
            *.tar)      tar xf $1       ;;
            *.tbz2)     tar xjf $1      ;;
            *.tgz ...

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My fellow designers, developers and general web aficionados; we are embarking on an incredible journey, one that in the future will be looked at as a necessary step towards the growth of our industry as a whole. We are seeing new strides in design, new experiments in bringing rich interactivity to our world and new minds joining the fight on a daily basis. It is truly a wonderful time to be working in this industry and it’s only going to get better.

Two-thousand, four-hundred and ten (2410) days ago, Internet Explorer 6 was placed into our collective lap ...

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It’s been 7 years, 5 months and 23 days. Never have I felt so drained after preparing a website for this domain before, but this really brings light to the phrase, “you get what you put in.” I’ve had long hiatuses before. However, none have seemed as long or drawn out as this one, and with this post and this new design I am proud to put an end to it. So, let’s start at the top shall we? I’m sure you’d like to know a little more about the 25th version of Avalonstar ...

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I’m sitting near B10 in Seattle/Tacoma International, starting my recovery from one hell of a trip. If you don’t follow my pseudo-miniblog, you’ll probably be wondering how we popped up in King County. For the last 72 hours, Jen and I have been on a non-stop, point-to-point, apartment search. Yes, that means that Team Revyver is moving to the Emerald City.

The prospect of moving to the Seattle Area has been floating for a few months. Before then, Seattle had never crossed my mind. However, ever since I had a particular conversation with Mr. Newsvine ...

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Today Jen and I had the chance to visit the Sony Metreon in San Francisco for a Square-Enix event that was announced a few weeks ago, celebrating 20 years since the release of the first Final Fantasy for the NES. It turned out to be more of an event to get your money than an event to celebrate the legacy of Final Fantasy, but as blind fans, we had to at least see what the “crystal hooha” was all about. Below is a retelling of today’s story. (I would have had this up earlier, but my battery died ...

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A lot has been going on with respect to Revyver lately. A lot of rearranging, a little designing here and there, an event or two, and quite a bit of programming.

In fact, (I guess you can call this a pseudo-official announcement), I released my first application under the Revyver brand which goes by the name of Wii SportsStar. If you’ve been following me on Twitter or got a shot of my Flickr stream lately, I’ve been slowly pushing the buzz train with the project, mainly because there are a few features that need to be implemented ...

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I rearranged my desk tonight—and actually—it’s not something I do rarely.

Whenever I find myself cleaning, I start to rearrange things. I seem to do that to relieve stress. The cleaning, not the rearranging. If say, Django’s kicking my ass, I’ll go ahead and do the dishes and wipe down the counter, maybe even vacuum to get the nerves down. It’s relieving in an odd way. Well, I have a hard time not thinking about things, especially if said thing is troubling me. Things like, the rent being due, but not having any ...

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The subject of relevance has been floating in my mind for the past few weeks, off and on. Why? I’m not too sure, other than to attribute the thoughts to the overall reasoning for wanting to wipe this slate clean in the first place. As everybody who blogs knows, the blog is based on a descending chronological structure. New posts come in, old posts go down and fall into the back of the blog’s memory. Archives allow you to access the past, to do anything from compare the difference in writing styles to find that article on ...

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Work is love made visible. And if you can’t work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of the people who work with joy.

~ Kahlil Gibran

It’s funny sometimes. I look back at my education, and I wonder if spending four years in college studying entrepreneurship was the right thing to do. Do I regret it? Nah. But I would certainly say at this stage that I’m not a normal entrepreneur, if you’d call me that ...

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It’s almost nauseating how many frameworks and blogging engines onecan choose today. Everything from Ruby on Rails, to SimpleLog and Mephisto, to CakePHP, Expression Engine, the growing Habari Project and even good ‘ol WordPress. All of these contenders (and the loads of others that I haven’t mentioned) have their appealing values, I had reasons, albeit small in most cases against using them. Note that I’ll be intentionally making general assumptions—each tool has their rightful place in different projects, just not in this “exploratory” one.

It wasn’t until I exchanged a few emails with Jeff ...

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As one of the last to sound-off on this awesome conference, I’ll try not to bore you with some of the details. What I am going to do is commit grand theft entry on my friend DKR and take a look at the conference from (hopefully) a different set of lenses.

For this conference goer, the trip to Austin and back spanned 17 days and over 2,500 driven miles. Even though I’d probably never drive halfway across the country ever again, what I found and experienced in Austin has once again changed my outlook for the ...

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In the next few days, as I find myself back in the environment I call home, I’ll be able to fill you in on my experiences at this year’s SXSWi. (Although, I’m sure all of you have already had your fill of SXSW related posts.) But let’s talk bowling for a little bit, shall we? To make a potentially long story short—this year’s event was more than Jen and I could ever hoped for. In case you want the long version, keep reading.

As with all things that require planning, the real test ...

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At the moment I’m in the middle of the first phase of my road trip to Austin; spending some time with my sister who’s on spring break (yes, I know February just ended) and my parents. So I’ve had a chance to take a breather and prepare for the 1,300 mile trip ahead of me. It’s surprising just how unproductive one can be when sitting on a comfortable couch. Since my mind will be occupied with enough serious subjects by the time I get there, I wanted to just sit back, relax and write ...

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Wednesday the 21st marked my fourth year with Jenni. Four years of being together, a little over than three living together—we’re practically married except for the church and the cake parts. So, to celebrate we took a trip to Uno’s Chicago Grill in Antioch (which happens to be the only Uno’s in the Bay Area because the other two were closed down due to the owner not paying his taxes for 15 years). I first took her to dinner there when she visited me in April of 2003, so it seemed appropriate. That and we ...

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I’m excited and honored to announce to all of you the start of something that I’ve personally been extremely anxious to do in recent memory. Ever since last year’s SXSW, there were a lot of ideas being thrown around and a feeling of empowerment. Unfortunately, ideas born that way usually stay as ideas. I’m happy to say this is not the case.

So along with Steve Smith, Jonathan Snook and Dan Rubin, I present Sidebar Creative.

Many of you know how excited I get when it comes to the beginnings of journeys and such. God ...

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This is the story of a guy. An absent-minded guy, who happens to accidentally combine Mountain Dew and apple juice. Don’t need to go any further on that one.’, ‘I remember putting a half-finished cup of apple juice in the fridge last night. About five minutes ago, I took the cup out, thinking it was a cup of Mountain Dew that I thought I had put in the fridge last night and proceeded to pour Mountain Dew into it. I only remembered it being apple juice after I tasted it. It wasn’t bad actually, not that I ...

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8:39 PM

I tried mobile blogging this, but unfortunately my lovely Samsung A900 doesn’t like blogging. I’m unfortunately stuck in Corpus Christi at the moment, on what was supposed to be an hour trip to Houston. From the looks of it, we weren’t able to get to Houston because of a raging storm. Actually, the passenger next to me lives 5 miles from George Bush International, and his wife had a different opinion on the weather, or lack of opinion when he called her. However, I know I did see something out my window - well ...

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Dead Happy. Dead Tired. Dead… something else that I forgot.

(I’m writing this on 5 Coronas and 1 Heineken, so forgive me.)

This conference has been unnecessarily grateful and unnecessarily nice with rooms that have been unnecessarily big. All in all, at the end of day 1, I admit that I’ve been a bit spoiled for my first speaking engagement. Not just me, but all of the speakers have been treated extremely well. Sort of sets the tone, I guess. ;)

Just to summarize, the Jam Session has been an awesome, intimate event and has allowed me to ...

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So my Dad and I were talking at WalMart the other night:

Dad: So how do you like your new job? Me: It’s great Dad, it’s really fun. Dad: So what does your company do again?

* Insert semi-blank look.

Me: You know that thing that Steffi uses called LiveJournal? Dad: Yeah. Me: Well, the company makes a competitive product, which is WordPress.

* Insert nervous smile.

Dad: Oh okay.

Ever experience this? Well, I’m sure in one way or another, a family member (whom isn’t very fluent in our industry) has asked you the question of ...

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(or _The Making of bryanveloso.com_)

“Boxes. Yeah, I’ll do boxes,” I said to myself yesterday. About fifteen minutes later, I had finished. Well, let me give you some background first. A lot of you know that I finally acquired my name after almost having it slip away from me at the hands of domain squatters. Needless to say, I was freakishly excited when I got it. However, all of that freakish excitement faded away after I sat down to think about what I’d do with it. So I thought, well, what do other people do ...

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SXSW in March was my first web conference, ever. So for those of you who have been, you could see my expectations coming into my second conference experience with the smaller WebVisions event - which was proudly curated by Brad Smith of Hot Pepper Studios with the help of tens of others. The short of it is, even with some mix-ups, it definitely rivaled SXSW as one of my favorites (doesn’t say much). The long story will follow.

Day 0

It seems like every time I take Southwest to go anywhere, I’m always racing against time in order ...

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About a month ago, after the Facebook fiasco, I said that I had a few things up my sleeve. Well, this is one of them. Actually, it was the only thing I managed to finish by my self-imposed July 1st deadline. So, Revyver (re•vy•ver) is the name of my new company — but it’s not just a design company, nor will it be just a design company.

Revyver stands for many things as it is derived from the word “revive”. The revival of my entrepreneurial spirit (caused by the events of late) and the will to revive ...

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Archive.org did something right for once. It kept images of logos I did from Version 12 (ChaoticSoul) of Avalonstar, so I decided the world see something that I used to be able to do. Back in 2002, I was really big on making logos, so much so that I made 5 of those that you’ll see below in one day. (Man, I miss those days when inspiration really ran free.) I believed the streak came to an end when I finally decided on using the Phoenix logo for Avalonstar. Ever since then, I haven’t designed any ...

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Since Friday, June 2nd, I’ve been working on an awesome project with the great team at Flock. What started as a trip to go visit my good friend Will Pate turned into the opportunity of a lifetime. I had the chance to take a creative role in how Flock, who are trying to revolutionize the way youth browse the web, presented themselves. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity. However, it wasn’t all sweet. By taking the project of providing them with an effective redesign to accompany their new beta product, I threw a gigantic rock ...

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As I begin writing I can remember sitting in my “Career Capstone” class at Johnson & Wales about 13 months prior to today. Ahhh.. dreadful, boring memories.

For those of you who don’t know what a capstone class is; it is the additional cherry on top of the cake that college shoved down your mouth for the past four years. It’s supposed to be the culmination of everything you’ve learned, and in this particular case, it served the purpose of getting you ready for your career. Now, one concept that was constantly shoved into our brains was ...

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I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time, and it’s sort of a weird situation that’s causing me to write this.

Let me start off by saying that one of my good friends from Rhode Island was recently “dooced” (if I may use the word), before she even began her summer internship. I’m left with this feeling of anger after reading her thoughts about it, but yet, it’s an o-so-familiar story that so many people have been through. We’ve been told about this over and over again to not post personal ...

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Although I was really trying to keep myself from doing meme’s, the one that Jeff Croft (but apparently Dan Rubin beat him to it) tagged me with provided me with a bit of a challenge. For one, it has been a while since I’ve thought so far back, and two, doing so would offer me some time to reminisce. However, unlike Jeff’s answers, I’ll be presenting mine backwards, as I’m sure you’d like to discover more about the 13-year-old Bryan than the 22-year-old Bryan.

Where was I ten years ago?

Ten years ago ...

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As sort of a sequel to my “Rules for Instant Messaging” comes the next most likely candidate, commenting. It’s interesting because the comment in our world is like gold in any other. A person’s opinion is invaluable, but as with gold, there are some that are the genuine artifact and others that are as valuable as pyrite.

But if I did have to make only one rule for commenting, it’d be this. (And I have Mr. Snook here to agree with me.)

1. Commenting’s fun! If you’re not doing it yet, do it already! Contribute ...

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It’s about 7:30 PM, and I can finally say that I feel relaxed for the first time today, first time this week for that matter. I have the windows open and can hear the cars fly by. It’s a feeling I don’t get too often while I’m alone.

Usually my relaxing moments come when Jen’s with me and we’re watching an episode of Lost or playing a board game. But since she’s at school for another two hours, I can only fend for myself.

I had a hard time working today ...

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For years I’ve kept my screen name in the open as I’ve been willing to help people when they were in need of some attentionadvice. But years of instant messaging can take a toll as such, I’ve developed a few pet peeves. So to warn you before you incur the wrath of: o_O, here are a few “rules” to keep in mind. Granted, rules are meant to be broken and I find myself breaking some myself at times. But calling them guidelines just doesn’t do them enough justice.

• Never, ever, start a conversation with ...

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Bryan: o_o; Christ. Paul: Did veloso drink again? Bryan: I just standardized the markup in all 199 posts. o_o; It took a day. But hey! It’s done! Paul: Whoa. That sounds really geeky.

Now before you go around saying that I know how to waste my time, let me tell you that this was a very important step, as the Aries Project beings today.

It may seem like a stupid thing to do. But take it from me; you don’t want to be going back to posts you don’t necessarily care about, stripping unwanted and unused ...

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So remember that book I’d never write? Looks like we were all wrong, even me. I was wrong. I wrote a book! So let me give you the synopsis (and background story) of the new book by Bryan Veloso, “CSS by Kittens”.

The idea for this book came to me when used my smallest kitten, Naida, as a stand for my PowerBook. Then I thought to myself, what would it be like if one of my kittens designed a website using CSS? Now come on, they’re my cats, so they better know their CSS. So I sat ...

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…although I wish it was. Or do I?

Maybe not. It’s not the old “hi my name is Bryan and this is what I did today” sort of thing. Actually, I would have loved to just sit down and write about how I’m in Minnesota in twelve-degree weather. But, it’s not that simple anymore. I can’t just sit down for a few minutes and just pump out a post, not that I’d want to. I have to think about what I want to say, how I’m going to say it, if it’s ...

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Bryan: So I saw this next piece of domination software that Google released yesterday. “Pack of bovine with mad cow disease” I think it’s called.

* In comes Paul Stamatiou. Since he was the first guy to comment on the last play, he’s been cast in this one. The following lines aren’t by him and probably contains things he’d never say.

Paul: Pack of rabid mice is more like it. Look at the website.

* Paul then hands Bryan a sheet of paper.

Bryan: Look at this. Essential, Simple, Customizable and Up to Date. Up to date ...

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Time: 11:10 PM Just got to Best Buy, looks like 30 people beat us here, which isn’t that bad considering the pictures I had seen earlier on Kotaku. So Jen and I brought my Powerbooks, videos, blankets and pillows. I thought it was a little nuts bringing extra stuff. Obviously, I’m not an experienced “wait outside for shit the day it comes out” person. There were people complete with food, sleeping bags, lounge chairs, etc. Looks like the first people got here about 3 hours ago, and some of them definitely don’t look like gamers ...

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Dear AOL,

Next time you hijack my buddy list with your bots, I’m coming to Virginia and cutting you down.

Love from your friend, Bryan Veloso

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Bryan: Hi Google, how are you today? Google: Fine Bryan, nice of you to come by our campus, have you tried our meal of the day? Bryan: Nope, actually, I was interested in trying out that new stat software you guys released, since I’m a stats whore and all.

* Bryan then sports his Measure Map and Mint tattoos. Google gets jealous.

Google: Oh, you mean Analytics? Sure!

* Google picks up a sea urchin and places it in Bryan’s hands.

Google: Here you go. Just place this on the top of your website, wait 12 hours and we ...

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I have a confession to make.

I can’t write blog posts this short.

I have no idea why but I feel the need that if I’m going to post something, it has to be longer than 4 lines in my WordPress edit box. I think at first it was because if I didn’t do that, my design would break. And if you’ve been with me for some time, you know how I get when my design breaks.

Anyway, now since I have 600 readers who I don’t want annoyed at me, I wouldn’t ...

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I’m all about collaborative effort, and if there is anything I can do to not only help myself but help others, I’ll be glad to put forth the work in order to do so.

Let’s start, today’s topic is “reach.” No, we’re not talking about getting food from the top shelves of cupboards or that weird brand of toothbrush either. More than a post, this is more of an open-ended question as to how one’s site reaches the masses. Additionally, I want to take a look at what one can do to extend ...

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I love my readers, and you should love yours. Treat them with respect, courtesy and dignity. Without them, it doesn’t matter how loud you are, they’re the ones that listen. My readers are my support. They are the people who inspire me, keep me writing; the people who make me want to do this day in and day out. My readers are my best friends and the harshest of critics.

Feel lucky, because you have the job of making your readers’ time worthwhile. Think of it, they’re taking the time out of their day to see ...

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I can’t tell you how long I’ve been battling browser compatibility bugs, but it wasn’t until one of my first clients stressed that his site needed to work in IE6 and NN4 when I truly opened my eyes to this dark side of our world. I’m sitting here laughing at myself because it took me a few all-nighters to find the non-existent documentation on how this thing called the box model was messed up. Thanks for that, Steve. I wasted 2 days of my life on just fixing browser bugs.

But what doesn’t kill ...

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The more readers you have extends the volume of your voice. The louder and more trusted you are the more it extends the reach of your ideals.

Just like Full Metal Alchemist has the rule of equivalent exchange, our blogosphere has a few rules of it’s own. This I believe, is one of them. Although it seems obvious, many people don’t realize how true this is. It is one of the few things I have learned over the past few months.

Let’s take a drastic example shall we?

Dave Shea is loud. Doug Bowman is loud ...

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So Bryan goes on his merry way. With everything going on in the blogosphere as of late (Derek and his footer fetish (which for some reason is a “new” thing), Blog networks up the ass (or “we make money off your brain schemes”), etc.) I choose to defer my thoughts to others. Why? Not because I’m ignorant, because I think there are others who do a much better job wasting their time and sounding better talking about these issues than I am. Besides, I’m trying my best not to fill that reblog category. It’s the one ...

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I don’t know what it is about me and Benzinger but it seems like we get into the weirdest conversations about the “good ‘ol days.” Then again, I like to reminisce about those days and see how far I’ve come. That whole “knowing your past before creating your future,” kind of thing. So this was the first time this happened:

Brian: do you remember anything resembling… xist, xotech, xpired, xposure, xposed, etc back in the day? Me: Um… Brian: like.. a few years back, maybe 4 or 5. Brian: well, my brother said he remembers you from ...

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Face it people, don’t waste your time on Monster or any of its clones anymore (it’s full of spam anyway).

I think back to my days in one of the most boring classes ever, career planning. Not only was it a dread to go to, what could you learn there that you didn’t already know? In Johnson & Wales at least, there were three of these classes, all requiring the same assignments to be turned in: a resume, a cover letter, and job search results. Sure there were variations depending on what major you were in or ...

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As much as I’d like to say I’m a fanatic of forward-thinking, I am a lover of history. This story in particular focuses on the history of the sites I visit, and why I seemed to get the short end of the stick.

In freshman year of college, I got infected by my first virus and oddly it corrupted all my CSS and JPG files. So pretty much any site I had designed from 2000 to 2002 was gone. Sure I still had the code, but it wasn’t the same without the images. Fast forward to ...

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Today I ate a scrumptious buffet lunch at this place where my family used to go all the time, then got tired of. Well, the food wasn’t that great. But I got the best fortune cookie, an empty bag that was supposed to contain a fortune cookie. No, this is not a joke, that bag isn’t open and all the air is still inside it. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when I got it, since everybody else grabbed for the cookies and I was left with the bag. That’s what I get for ...

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Ahhh, nothing like tea to keep you going in the morning. So let’s start with thi… hmm? (Insert “Charlie Brown” style adult voice.) Yeah, that’s my new mug. What? Yep, it has the Media Temple logo on it. When did I get it? Oh yeah! That’s what I was going to write about. Well folks, I found them, and today on Avalonstar—the reprise to the “mailbox mystery.”

Two days ago, I had made another 85-mile trip to Los Angeles to visit Jenni. After eating, getting my first model in a long time, and spending money ...

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Get your horses again it’s time to get back on the track, we got another one chasin’ us! First, I’d like to thank James Archer for the nice words and I would just like to say that it has been a dream to get on that site, and now it’s happened. Now that I got that out of my system, I’d like to focus on something that was said in his review tonight:

As is often the case, the code isn’t semantically/structurally perfect, but I’m beginning to wonder if my standards are ...

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Well kiddies, our story has taken a drastic turn. As you can see, there is no more story, the “powers that be” have contacted me to take the post off the front page. I have also taken all links to (mt) off that post, just to prevent the ease of clickage. Not wanting to get into a confrontation with a business partner, I complied. All in all, it was a very harmless conversation, and don’t worry, they didn’t threaten to do anything. No guns, no knives, no viruses. I do respect the professionalism that the team posesses ...

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Our story begins on a sunny Thursday afternoon while I was looking around Media Temple’s website, interested in their new hosting plans. Everybody and their dog either hosts with Dreamhost or (mt), so I thought,

“Why not? Maybe they’re worth the price, and I’ve used them before at one point.”

Besides, I was starting to feel bad leeching off my friend who had faithfully be paying for our little venture’s hosting. I had some time on my hands that day, so I started to dig around the site. Eventually, I came upon their contact page ...

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