Last night I was overcome by an urge to buy cigarettes. This is weird because I quit smoking several weeks ago and had been really good about not having them. Something inside seriously wanted one - probably the sheer bordeom of my mind numbing job. There is just something about rolling and smoking cigarettes that I cannot consistantly say no to since I was about 13. I mean I don't smoke everyday or even every week or month but when I do I can't stop and then I quit for a long time again. I have no idea what controls this cycle.

Luckily, (e:matthew) was having a similar craving but for ice-cream - so the trip to the store got me a pack of samson.

I bought a package of edamame (soybeans) at Wegmans last night. I love them so much ut I think the wegmans ones come in too much packaging. It is similar to the ways that I love the Korean lunch food at UB but I usually don't get it because it is too much styrofoam when it's to go. The irony with the wegmans one is that now they stamp the inner plastic try with the words, "earth living". I don't get it. What on earth does eating this double plastic covered, cardboard sleeve enveloped soybean treat have to do with "earth living."

I mean I could see if it maybe said "healthy living." Perhaps it is a translation error.

I got out of work to discover that (e:mathew) had cut his finger open. We needed to go to the hospital so that he could get stitches. Seeing as we were at Canisius we decided that Sister's would be an ok choice plus (e:ladycroft) and I were born there.

I was wrong it was crazy crowded and just looked run down so we left for the burbs. Now we are at Kenmore Mercy. It seems a lot nicer here, I feel bad for the people stuck in the city.

Poor (e:matthew), he ended up being the test subject for someone learning how to stitch. Three separate ego driven doctors came to show the girl "how it's done." Ironically, they all different techniques. They seriously were all such cocky pricks.

I wonder how many hundreds of dollars this will cost. I think they should pay (e:matthew). Here is a link [inlink]matthew,633[/inlink] to his journal about the visit.

The rest of the day I was at UB working on stuff with Josephine. I really like her. Although she said she is not very social I find her fun to be around. I think the VR site is finished. Now I need to just punch it through the VPN. We also began plans on the Buffalo Memory Engine which will be my next major project. Don't worry (e:strip) I will never leave you behind.

Here are some pics of (e:matthew) from yesterday at the park.

I spent the evening helping Buffalo Rising get their website up and and running so that it would be ready for the official launch on Monday. Here you can see the counter on the front page that I put up.



I also created a custom WBFO NPR RSS feed parser for the site which is based on moveable type. I am not a big fan of moveable type which is perl based. Too bad Jesse wasn't there. I just fixed everything with PHP mods. I just don't understand why everyone uses prebuilt CMS systems. Especially other programmers. There is just way too much overhead and I would rather spend my time programming than reading through the million page manual of some else's API. I seriously would go nuts working on a project like that full-time. It was so frustrating to want to make a change to the underlying system but only having access to the very surface through some sort of gui web interface. I like more direct access to my stuff.

At one point zack had to read a 104 page manual to set up an ad server. I could make one in less time than it would take to read through that manual. Maybe I should focus my time on making a CMS system.

I also fixed the search tab javascript. It was a sucessful evening that will hopefully pay for my cell phone bill which is way over my budget thanks to the million and a half fees from cingular. they promised a bill of $44.99 but the first month it came to $111.00 with setup fees and service charges. What a ripoff.

Little did I know that I would be near a dog. For some reaosn even in its mega fluffiness this dog did not make me very allergic.



Here is George and Zack working hard on a plugin.



Here is one of my student's Mike looking very tired after a 16 hour day. I tried to tell him that was the life of a programmer.

The day started out with shaving.

::DOWNLOAD MEDIA::

(e:lilho), (e:mike) and I went to fowler's and it wasn't very yummy, not to mention they were out of both chocolate icecream and rootbeer pop.





While we were sitting there eating we saw (e:drchlorine) on his way to buy cigarettes.

If you haven't seen the PBS special with Helmut Lotti, you are really missing the best in russian folk music. He is pretty freakin hot.



Luckily, he doesn't just do Russian music.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

He has a latin hits album, a pop song album and many others.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

His web site sings to you I wish I had the Helmut Lotti version of Kalinka. I think I might do a Helmut Lotti (e:radio) show.

If you don't know the Kalinka song, here is the midi version. It makes me want to play tetris. We played it at the party last night.

::DOWNLOAD MEDIA::

Ironically, I was asked to help work on the Buffalo Rising website to get it ready for it's launch this week. Nothing like more work to throw in my ridiculous schedule. I already helped with it before by helping the designer who is one of my favorite student's. At least this time I will get paid!

Today after taking a shower I looked at myself in the mirror and I really need to develop an eating addiction, lol. No more work before food.



I wanted to put this here so I would remember it. (e:buffalopundit) and I emailed back and forth a bit Buffalo rising last week. He seems like a pretty cool guy.

Paul,
I saw your posts about BRJ [inlink]paul,3832[/inlink] [inlink]paul,3835[/inlink]

I don't know who's been touting their _current_ design as being innovative and revolutionary, 'cause I haven't heard it. You're right that it's just an adaptation of a blogger template.

The design that's going to be pretty badass is the one they're working on rolling out in the next few weeks. When I saw it, I was gobsmacked at how innovative and revolutionary it is. Sure it, too, is based on existing code, but they've adapted and customized it to within an inch of its life.

I saw that you're bitter that they won BoB blog. The thing is, your site isn't a blog, per se. It's a blogging community, sort of like a localized LiveJournal. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but ArtVoice should have had one of the actual journals on your site nominated, and not the whole site itself.

My site is written only by me. It's a blog in the classic sense of the word.

BRJ is written by a team, but everything that gets written goes right up on the front page and is viewable in a linear manner. It's a group blog in the classic sense of the phrase.

Elmwood strip is more like a hosting service. You provide the software and tools (innovative as they are) to enable individuals to write their own blog/journals. I have to say that it's a bit of pain for me to navigate. Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but you should better highlight and categorize the actual journals on your site. Generally, I'll click on the "recently updated" ones, but the major part of your homepage is devoted to an "about us" recitation. I'd rather see what sort of discussions / posts are happening on the site right now, with links.

There's room enough for everybody around here, and Artvoice's best of Buffalo blogs award is just about the most meaningless thing that ever existed. I'm glad BRJ won, and I'd have been glad if you won. Because it doesn't mean anything.

Artvoice has totally squandered what could have been a pretty vital local internet presence. You say they're doing up a Mambo site. I don't like Mambo. They'll look like Altpress, which uses (I think) phpNuke. All those phpNuke content management systems look alike, and I'm not crazy about any of them. Scoop, Mambo, phpNuke - it's all the same to me.

I don't know what the mission of elmwoodstrip.com is, but mine is to try and shake Buffalo out of its complacency and try to communicate to people what's great about our region, and wake people up to what sucks and needs changing. And I throw in some car lust and TV shit on the side.

Just stick to your mission and don't worry so much about BRJ.

Keep up the good work.

Alan
//

---

MY RESPONSE

---

//
Hey Alan,
Thanks for reading that, I am sorry it was so rant-style. The designers from the new Buffalo Rising site (zack and Matt @ Schneider Digital) are former and current students of mine. I am sure they did an excellent job as they were really top notch.

I realize the artvoice awards are meaningless in name. But awards like that offer media attention that we cannot afford with our mini budget. I was just annoyed that a commercial entity won. If it had been you I would not have been bothered.

When I created (e:strip) almost three years ago I was trying to combat the dimishing sense of local community and at the same time provide an commercial free public sphere. I wanted it to be publishing tool for non-web programmers where local people could social network, exchange ideas, forge friendships and promote their local endeavors, clubs, etc. I also wanted (e:strip) to server as a sort of documentation for life in Buffalo.

While blogger and livejournal offered publishing solutions, they did not have the interjournal communication associated with (e:strip) and they did not offer new writers a dedicated local readership.

I intended to create a tool that over time depicts life in Buffalo. Unlike other blogging sites, users can add media files directly to their journals without having to pay for it or house them at some other space. We accept a multitude of publishing formats including wav, mp3, amr, swf, mid, jpg, png, gif, 3gp video. We even accept media and journal publication directly from cell phones via WAP, XHTML, or email. Users do not need any web space of their own, but if they want to publish their content somewhere else dynamically, they can use the (e:strip) api.

Because it was all word of mouth, the inital community that formed was quite close knit. My intention was to have it expand within the city but I did not want to sacrifice maintaining a commercial free. We tried a banner on elmwood, sidewalk chalk advertisement, we even had several giant parties, flyers, etc. It was pretty sucessful as last month we had our 10,000th journal entry and 6000th image uploaded but still the site is no where near as full as I would like it to be.

We used to have the homepage as you described. It may go back eventually.

//

---

HIS RESPONSE

---

//
Paul

I've been visiting your site more frequently recently. Keep up the good
work. It's really innovative.

I see you're meeting with Artvoice. I've found nothing but utter resistance
from traditional media to blogs. The News' Link section on mondays mentions
all kinds of blogs from around the country, but never a local one. Losers.

Alan

We are just slow getting to the party! Here is a video of us crossing the grand island brige. Sorry its so crappy but i'm afraid high quality mode is too big for my journal.

Can some make something gluten free for (e:matthew).

::DOWNLOAD MEDIA::

update -- there was yummy food for matthew to eat