Author: jae

dynamic headers (logos) are now implemented! yippee!!

known bugs:

in IE, the best browser in the world, the bottom table cell background images often don’t load if they’re outside of the loaded viewing area. an IE problem, so don’t blame me.
workaround: select all.

Mozilla’s proprietary CSS transparent filter either doesn’t work, or is nowhere near as semitransparent as it should be. currently affecting the mantis’ lair skin.
workaround: i’m not bothering with this one.

fixed background on the DIV area (the main content area in the mantis’s lair skin) is absolutely fixed in Opera, meaning that it actually stays put when scrolling not just the DIV area itself, but also when scrolling the whole page.
workaround: the effect is actually pretty damn cool, so again, i’m not bothering.

still prone to fnord attacks from Illumined sources.
workaround: still trying the turkey curse. best thing is to not look at them until they become visible, then activate psionic counterdefenses.

Mozilla/Opera users can select stylesheets from the “view” menu; however, this will not set a cookie. this means that the cookie won’t load the wrapper, and the page may look all goofed up. currently only adversely affects transitions between mantis’ lair skin and non-mantis’ lair skins (i.e., going from “mars” to “space” shouldn’t have any real serious adverse effect, other than the logo not changing).
workaround: none. either accept cookies, or don’t bother with the skin selector.

development site (may be disrupted from time to time, due to the fact that i’m actually actively coding on it)

definitely let me know if you encounter other issues.

1) the development site is meat-thing.com/marsdev (WILL be VERY buggy from time to time, but should cause no harm). the new skin is called “the mantis’ lair” and really shows off the power of the wrapper system. i am pretty proud, as humble as it actually is.

2) was listening to Pink Floyd’s “Time” out in the garage just now. ye gods, how i miss the electric guitar!!! i used to jam the hell out of that tune. and “Hotel California,” and “Comfortably Numb,” and “Lights,” and all kinds other great, CLASSIC rock and roll songs. i am a very Gilmour-esque player, though nowhere near the skilled craftsman he is. but i’m usually very slow and methodical and melodically-oriented. though i have definitely been known to go on a serious Vernon Reid trip from time to time (though also not nearly as good as him) – especially live.

i need a rock band. NOW, goddammit!!

okay… SNL… tonight’s Saturday TV Funhouse cartoon was “The X-Presidents.” They’re sitting around talking and Reagan says that back in his day, they had “informative cartoons about war,” which prompts Jimmy Carter to remark, “weren’t those propaganda films?” then, we see a cartoon, which was sadly indistinguishable between an actual clip and a spoof: Bugs Bunny, humiliating some Japanese guy. the next cartoon is Grape Ape (this one obviously a spoof), humiliating a Grenadan guy . next, we see Spngebob Squarepants (voiced by Tom Kenney, no less! which means it must’ve actually been cleared with Nick – and that rocks!), trying to humiliate an Arab (who grabs bald eagles out of the air and bites their heads off, then spits out taxi cabs with “death to America” written on them, all while dancing around and acting like a doofus). Spongebob kind of gives up halfway through his lines, and says that he just doesn’t feel too good about it, then walks off, to the dismay of Reagan and Bush.

so Reagan says “not so fast! activate Code Yellow!” and throws him in a tiny cell and demands a background check and a thorough screening of his hard drive (“He’s probably got kiddie porn on there.” “But I don’t even HAVE a computer!” – *blink* a laptop appears with pics of young sponges doing awful things).

suddenly, the Power Puff girls arrive to save Spongebob. the X-Presidents kick their asses. shot of PPGs lying on the floor in a crumpled, bloody heap.

and so it goes. brilliant satire that reminds us how sad and pathetic this nation has become, and how crippled our beloved Constitution is getting.

but hey, that’s just the price for Freedom. quit whining. it’s for our own good. this is going to hurt the scum in Washington more than it’s going to hurt the World.

jesus. implementing full wrapper support on the mars s.t.s. is harder than i thought. i actually only have it down to just a couple of reallyeasy things, like making a couple extra folders and duplicating default wrappers for each style and then adding a couple more lines of code, but even after that, i still have to figure out a good way to set the extra overlapping IE content to on or off for each style.

i think should pretty much cover it. oh, shit yes… there’s an image that just isn’t coming up, too. i have looked and looked through everything that i could, but i find no errors whatsoever. the image is there, and i’m calling it just like i’m calling up every other image on the page, but nooooooo, it’s just not showing up.

when i’m through, i’ll have a system where you upload the thing (onto a server with PHP), make some content files, edit the menu links, and that’s it– a single page capable of serving up a theoretically unlimited number of content files, each with their own menu if specified. a full site on a single page! and if you know HTML and CSS, it should be painfully simple to make a skin for it.

i’ve decided that when i’m done, i think i’ll make a couple versions available. one will be a light version with just a couple skins and maybe even take out the dynamic wrappers, and offering it for download for maybe a buck or something (via PayPal, alas and alack). then making the full version available for… i dunno. dirt cheap, anyway. like five or ten bucks. also thought about maybe giving it away with the purchase of one of my crappy music CDs or something. i dunno. somehow i get the feeling that the whole thing will just be Yet Another™ exercise in painful humiliation – just one more thing for people to be rabidly disinterested in.

what do you guys think?

um, i might not update for a little while. i just got a new toy.

also, thanks to mesmer_ant, i now have Opera 7, so all my sites should be improved for Operatic performance shortly.

later on, i’m going to write an essay about penises. because there are things that just need to be said on the subject.

i doubt very many of you remember this very well, and even fewer of you caught it.

it’s mid-January, 1991. prime time. President Bush the First is on the television.

as he televises his declaration of war (without the consent of Congress, i might add), he is stifling a shit-eating grin. barely containing himself.

i’m not kidding. he was on the verge of breaking out into a full-fledged guffaw, or at least a more obvious grin.

naturally, i was a War Protester. and will always be.

so go ahead and call me a pussy, a weakling, an unAmerican piece of snivelling human waste, you John Wayne-worshiping, beer-swilling, gun-waving, loudmouthed fundamentalist conservative Republican mother fuckers out there. you’re just pissed because you, or some poor dumb fuck you know who couldn’t get into college, has to go and die, and for what? a round-the-clock, 365 day, $13,000/year job, and oil lining the pockets of your favorite multimillionaire politicians.

not that i don’t appreciate you, one way or another. military people, anyway. the rest of you G.O.P. following, NRA-member, afternoon story-watchers can go straight to fucking hell for all i care. yeah, fuck you, assholes.

wanna call me a lollipop-waving rainbow-head? i’ll shove this lollipop so far up your ass you’ll be able to tell what FLAVOR it is, you senseless fuck.

but don’t you EVER call me unpatriotic, or you’ll soon learn what it means to be stepped on.

all we are saying is give peace and diplomacy and WEAPONS INSPECTORS a chance. can somebody tell me what in the holy living FUCK could POSSIBLY be wrong with that??!

today’s spam includes:

transmothra, Larger breasts without surgery!

Transmothra Grow your penis safely and naturally!

GOLDEN Enlargement of the male member, no exercise!

U.S. To Unveil Massive New Bomb

When and if the United States does go to war, military sources say the United States is preparing a monster new weapon to be used during the first nights.

It’s called MOAB, short for “massive ordnance air burst” bomb. It is a modern, bigger version of the 15,000-pound “Daisy Cutter” used in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War and Afghanistan.

Sources say MOAB — still experimental — is a 21,000-pound bomb that will be pushed out the back of a C-130 transport and guided by satellite. Because it is not dropped by parachute, as was the old Daisy Cutter, the aircraft can let it go from far higher altitudes, making it safer for U.S. pilots.

The MOAB’s massive explosive punch, sources say, is similar to a small [fucking -Ed.] nuclear weapon.

It is intended to obliterate a command center hidden in tunnels and bunkers or a concentration of Iraqi tanks.

Whatever the target, it must be far from cities where civilians might be hurt. But one important aspect of using this type of weapon, sources say, will be psychological impact on enemy troops. It is intended to terrorize Iraqi troops, drastically reducing their desire to continue the fight.

…and you thought we were above terrorism.

cleaned up some more code. the sniffer file is gonna have to just be bloated, i guess. i did split it up, though. now the pure css stuff is in one file, and misc things like them messages at the bottom are in another. it actually makes for more code that way, but at least the server doesn’t have to run the big file twice now.

here’s why i couldn’t debloat the sniffer file: IE sucks balls.

if $browser = x,
print “background-image:url(‘top_left.gif’);”;
if $browser = y,
print “background-image:url(‘top_left.png’);”;
if $browser = z,
print “background-color:#00f;filter:alpha(opacity=50%);”;

…and then the top, the top-right, the left, the middle, the right, the bottom-left, the bottom, the bottom-right….

what i wanted to do was break it up into

$prefix + name + $ext

as in

background:url( + topleft + .gif); or .png);

but that damn IE has to have filters or some stupid hack to work like i want it to.

which doesn’t SOUND so bad, but i have to hard-code the piece/set part of the image filename either way… but if that particular cell isn’t going to have an image (just a background color with a filter), then i’ll wind up with kooky and invalid CSS.

i know there’s got to be a way, but right now the sniff_css.php file ain’t too bloated. i’ve got 18 items (1-9 ‘a’ and 1-9 ‘b’) for 6 or 7 different browser/OS configurations. every wrapper image set costs 9 more. but, there really isn’t too much need to have all those image sets just for a stupid lousy border. i could use the same ones over and over until i figure out a better way. wish i knew how to make PHP count inside of a switch’s case. i’ll figure all that shit out some other damn time.

at least i made some creepy looking vines to use for my next b/g.

slightly faster + smarter coding.

god damn it. somewhere along the line i must have gotten acclimated to this godawful Ohia weather. it’s merely 45°F out today, and i feel like running around outside in shorts with no shirt.

everyone under the sun is having sex. right now. (or at least making warm connections.)

except me. must rectify this.

…or is there just something wrong with me???

what the hell, i can wait another 6 years.

---

and in other news, my beautiful, beautiful friend Melissa is moving back home to Wisconsin in the summer to have her baby. was kinda looking forward to visiting San Diego at some point (in fact just got a monster.com lead on a webdesign/video editing job there, oddly enough (i get national job leads if they’re interesting enough to come up in my search agent)), but this’ll be really good for her. and she’ll be a LOT closer. i must road trip out to see her! it’s been YEARS now. sigh. i heart Melissa. what a wonderful human being!

shut up, i’m not in love!

i just love her is all. it ain’t no big deal.

(people been buggin’ me for YEARS about her. don’t know why, though i guess it’s pretty obvious that i adore the daylights out of her. actually, the ones who know us both (Patrick? hullo? Patrick? where are you, you drunk fuckin’ mick?) are probably right. well, i dunno. i’m a real lousy piece of shit sometimes. it’s my head. bad wiring or something. the outside ain’t too good either, of course. but what the hell, it’d never happen anyway, so i don’t worry any about it. she’s a smart girl, she’ll find SOMEbody who actually deserves her one of these days.)

the only thing that matters is that she deserves to be very, very happy.

"This is what we do for a living."

the most disturbing thing is that these people – who, let’s face it, are human beings – really honestly truly believe that they are Doing the Right Thing. that’s how mad they are in the name of religion.

zealots!

but just as bad are the Christians and Jews who want to kill all Muslims. each extremists, each a relative minority in the general public… and yet each has neighbors who think that they are simply “doing god’s will.” (as if the most powerful being in the Universe needs henchmen, for fuck’s sake!)

how in the hell people can get the idea that god wants everyone who is not a close personal friend to die horribly is beyond me and frankly ridiculous.

and then there’s the “what-ifs.” what if god really was an extremist who hates all non-zealots and wants them to perish in misery? and what if god only came in one flavor?

to me, this is all yet another really good reason not to bother with all this religion crap. it makes people insane! everyone thinks that THEY’VE got the hotline, the Red Phone to God, and that anyone who is not directly on their side is automatically wrong and should die!

no, no, no… faith in god is evil. that’s what i say!

so this morning i was doing my dream-dance… you know- twisting and turning and generally rolling about in my sleep. i wake up to the sound of “skkkkrrrrrrkkkk!!” …and it’s my knee, getting lacerated by the edge of the spiral binding on my giant drawing tablet. it was weird, it really made that noise, too. that fucker really cut me good!
the victim

the culprit

from now on, people who can’t spell to save their own fucking lives will receive a special, personal visit from me and my Iron Fist of Linguistics.

m.a.r.s. (meat actuated reality surveyor) s.t.s. (site templating system) changelog:
new skin: moon (bringing total working skins to three!)
new favicon
cleaned up a little code (not much)
subtle changes (position of “extra” messages)
wrote readme.txt
something else (i forgot)
corrected punctuation error in content.php

oh yeah… you Mozilla users (who use a superior web browser) can change the style of the page using view >> use style from the browser toolbar. nifty.

users of the ugly and inferior Infernal Explorer will have to just suck it up and wait and hope and pray that v7, when it comes out, will have addressed an awful lot of issues.

---

it’s weird how that old quiz i did is starting to appear all over the place. kinda cool. but weird.

---

also, somebody actually commented in my blog the other day. how cool is that!

---

Dear Jesus,
i promise i will try like a bastard to stop it with this fucking chocolate shit.
who in the fuck invented that goddamn Reese’s bite-size peanut butter cups, anyway?
and will you please smite them and send them to hell for me? aw, thanks.
your pal,
Spidey
p.s.- aw, what do i care? i still weigh less than 170, even after a week of eating 30 of those fuckers a day… fuckit!

it is finished.

(more or less – i only have to clean up the code a little bit and make it as xhtml-compliant as possible.)

mars s.t.s.

no seriously, you really should check this one out. it’s pretty fuckin’ cool.
(unless you’re mjb, who could probably do this sort of thing in his sleep :P )

do let me know if you spot a bug, and i’ll tell NASA in turn.

this is fucking bullshit.

i’ve been a registered Swish user for decades now, and when i went to start up Swish today, it told me i had 15 days and 44 “invocations” left. i went to get another unlock key generated. same thing: 15 days, and 43 invocations.

so i installed the newest build.

BIG MISTAKE.

now they tell me i have no right to use Swish, even as a trial. my trial period has ended.

mother.

fuckers.

it only gets better from here, people. just let me know if you need any further proof of my mad, mad skillz.

meat-thing.com/mars

changes to mars template:
second skin (selectable from top-right)
subtle blue glow on chrome in space skin
et cetera
more to come….

right now i’m working on the packaging for a new compilation CD. this time, it’s completely self-produced with no <sarcasm>”help”</sarcasm> from mp3.com. the files on the CD were encoded to mp3 format at 320kbps (that’s the highest setting; professional quality… in contrast to mp3.com’s lousy 128kbps) – no more underwatery shimmering!

the bass is devastating. i’m serious – there’s just a bit more than necessary. and the trebles are extremely crisp. a really good sounding CD (except for some slight but noticeable distortion i couldn’t get rid of on two tracks, owing to oversaturation when i actually recorded them.)

in addition, there are FIFTEEN tracks, over 70 minutes of music. almost every song i have converted to the digital domain is represented, with the only notable exceptions being “2871” and “fucking should be sacred” (the latter was a ten year old crappy mix with a scratch vocal i never got to rerecord – truly awful lyrics, too). these are all songs already released thru mp3.com, so if you already have those CDs (and don’t mind the sketchy sound quality), then don’t bother with this one.

for those who don’t know, it’s about 75% instrumental. really drawn out and repetitive, but also pretty booty-licious. mainly electronica – some darkwave, techno, etc., with a genuine grunge song from 1991 and an electric folk blues song from even earlier thrown in. you can hear all or most of ’em at mp3.com/transmothra

the package will include CD artwork, 2-sided tray liner, and a 4 page (2 page, f/b) booklet. hopefully i can squeeze in the lyrics on the four bonus tracks – older songs that actually have vocals.

the artwork so far rocks, if i do say so myself. the outside of the booklet (the cover) is retro-future minimal, emphasis on solids (blue); the inside is based on a digital collage i did last year: a grasshopper with a human skull marked “creep” across the forehead, coming out of a cave which is actually an unrecognizable color negative extreme closeup of a vagina. at least one of you has already seen and been creeped out by it.

it’s being called “they could all be robots.”

it will probably be something like $8, so start saving up.