Sunday, June 30, 2002
Just for those of you who're having problems with the funky java thingie in the top left corner, I've added a little link above it. This will load up a very simple animation of the applet. It doesn't do it justice at all, so try and imagine it in full 24bit colour, running at 50fps. It's really just so you know what people are talking about, and it gives you something pretty to look at :-)Steve 6:49 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, June 29, 2002
A message on behalf of MrJuggles.He's been afflicted with a very nasty virus that's hammered every email addy in his address book, and even addy's it'd grabbed from various websites So, if by chance you've recieved any (or even lots) of emails from him, he offers his sincerest apologies.
After doing a full reinstall, his system should now be clean again.
Steve 11:23 PM [+] (0) comments
So what IS the story with the octopus?
I did actually tell the story in my old blog, but that was way back before anyone read the thing, so I'll tell it again here :-)
When I first got onto the net, using an amiga believe it or not, I soon got addicted to chatting on irc. Now, most people on irc were using a program called mirc. This program includes a 'slap' function, where you highlight a person in the chatters list, click on 'slap', and it types into the room "Benway slaps Fred (or whoever) around a bit with a large trout."
Since I wasn't running mirc, but found this amusing, I decided to add a slap function to the software I was using (amirc, for those who're interested), but wanting to be a bit different, I decided not to use a trout. What would be visually more ammusing than slapping someone around the face with a big wet fish? How about an octopus? You can just imagine it... tentacles and suckers flailing. So, my slap read "Benway slaps Fred around a bit with a deranged octopus." and pretty soon it became quite infamous. Everyone knew, Benway was that guy with the octopus.
Now, when I first started writing my blog, it had a totally crappy name, 'Diary Of A Musician, Artist And Writer', or somesuch, but I figured no-one seeing that in the little 'recently updated' box at blogger would pay it any notice, what with all the funky titles that show up on there, so a new title was needed.
I was talking to arryana at this time, when she told me she'd just bought something really cool, that she knew I'd like. "What is it?" I asked. "It's a crazy purple rubber squeaky octopus." See, arry knows me so well :-) Anyways... not only did I think it was a wonderful little thing, but loved her description of it so much, I decided it'd be the perfect name for my weblog... and a short time later, arry took pics of said octopus, and I included one on the blog.
So there you are folks, in truth, I can't really take credit for the funky title at all... it's all arry's doing. *Runs and hides before she bites him*
Steve 9:28 PM [+] (0) comments
I did a spot of research last night and found a script that will remove the popups from this page... I tested it, and it works. So why are there still popups? Well, in the user agreement with tripod, it states that the user will allow them to include popups, as you might expect, and that contravening the agreement gives them the right to terminate the account without warning. Quite simply, I don't want to risk having my page closed down. How would they know? There's tracking on the popup script, so it wouldn't take much for tripod to correlate the number of page views with the number of popups shown... an automated system could easily spot a big discrepancy.
Anyway... even though I'm not going to use that script, for anyone who's interested in trying it, you can find it Here.
As an afterthought, if anyone out there knows java script, and can figure out how to make the popups display for a predetermined time, say 5 seconds, I'd be very interested in knowing how to do that. The code has a timeout variable, but I couldn't figure how to make use of it. Doing it with a timer would be great, as it wouldn't strictly break the user agreement, and would save viewers from having to close the popups themselves.
In the meantime, I'm using the free popup stopper from panicware.com that Jodene recommended in comments a couple of days back. It's completely free, and has no adware or spyware built in. The only downside is that you have to disable it to access popup comments, but since this only takes one click of the mouse, it's well worth using.
Steve 8:55 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, June 28, 2002
Due to popular demand, and with my thanks to arry for taking the pics, the octopus is now back :-)He's down there at the bottom, not because I don't love him enough to put him higher up, but so he can keep an eye on the links, and make sure they don't wander off or something. Truth is, he's a little shy just now, not being used to the neon glow and all.
Steve 11:16 PM [+] (0) comments
Today started with a bleary, sleep deprived Benway cycling into town with the intention of doing all the things he was supposed to do there yesterday. Haha, yeah right.
I was so addled, I did the job centre thing, and then decided screw the bills and bank, they could wait till Monday… or Tuesday… or...
Wandering round aimlessly, I by chance stumbled into my favourite music/video store, and then stumbled back out 15 minutes later with a copy of A.I. on DVD and David Bowie’s new album Heathen in a limited edition double CD pack.
So tell us what they’re like, I hear you ask. (Actually, I don’t, but I’m gonna tell you anyway… so there.)
A.I. rocks.
There. Wanna know more? No? Tough… I’m gonna tell you anyway…hehe.
The acting is excellent all round. Haley Joel Osment is without a doubt the best child actor I’ve ever seen, utterly stomping all over other puke/cringe inducing, too cute to live child actors I could mention, while Jude Law never ceases to impress with every new movie he makes.
The visuals are utterly stunning. It really has reached a point now where movies can do anything and convincingly too. The quality off effects over the past couple of years seem to have made a massive leap, to the point where if you can imagine a thing, they can put it on the screen and make you believe it. Can you see the strings? Heck no.
A number of reviews I read/saw about this film suggested it had something of an identity crisis, with the dark edgy feel of Stanley Kubrick’s original material struggling to make it’s presence felt through Spielberg’s cutesy treatment. I’m not convinced by this argument, as to me the whole thing seemed to hang together very well as a whole, with only the ending feeling tacked on. Maybe I’m just a miserable git and don’t like happy endings though, cynic that I am.
Bowie’s Heathen album… interesting.
After Outside and Earthling, both utterly awesome albums, he seemed to drop the ball a little with Hours, it seeming somewhat uninspired. Heathen then, comes as a pleasant return to form.
It’s an odd album though, not at all easy to pin down and know where it’s coming from… with an edgy feeling, reminiscent of his East German trilogy Low/Heroes/Lodger, but with elements of his earlier, almost cabaret style heard in Diamond Dogs and even Ziggy Stardust. The production values though are bang up to date. Definitely odd. I like it. Of course, anything odd is good in my book.
I’m not actually sure if I’ve heard the whole album yet though, as I was so tired that after watching A.I., I kept drifting in and out of sleep while the album played on repeat for a few hours.
Something I’ve noticed about the music he’s released over the past few years… he doesn’t make songs you can sing along to anymore. This isn’t a criticism as such, but I’m sure it must affect his record sales, there having been no tracks like Ashes To Ashes, Modern Love, etc that you’d find yourself humming on the way to wherever. I wonder if this is to do with what must surely be a reduced vocal range, ‘cause lets face it, at 50 something, his voice is starting to sound just a little strained. Not a criticism, just an observation. He still rocks, and as a musician, will always be my hero.
Steve 8:33 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, June 27, 2002
So here we are, the big unveiling of the new look Benway weblog. All that’s needed now is a bottle of champagne to crack open against the side.Why have I changed it, and why the move to tripod? There are several reasons.
On the purely aesthetic level, the old blog was too obviously just a modified standard tempate, albeit one that had been transformed into something very different. As a creative person though, and as someone who likes to consider himself a half way decent web designer, that simply wasn’t good enough.
Also, this new look is rather more in keeping with my character, having something of a darker, almost gothic feel to it, yet being somewhat overstated, representing my very tongue in cheek egocentricity. What it’s supposedly saying is, while I take my creative output very seriously (be that music, art, writing, websites or whatever) and do like to think it’s pretty good, I don’t take myself as a person that seriously at all, but enjoy hamming it up, exaggerating a my ego out of all proportion. Some people get it, some don’t, but hey, it’s fun.
As for the move to tripod, though there is the downside of those annoying popups, I no longer have to worry about the 100k per month limit imposed by blogger (did they actually enforce that?), or the rather too frequent server downtime. Also it makes life much easier for me, having all the images and sub-pages stored on the same server instead of scattered all over the place, not to mention the ability to use server side includes and a cgi bin (assuming I find a use for that) which is something that wasn’t available on the blogspot server, or the other web servers I was using.
Love it or hate it then, the new look Benway Weblog is here. Now if I can just think of something interesting to say….
Labels: blogging
Steve 5:17 PM [+] (0) comments
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