hamilton.likes.to.draw...

so a while ago curtis and i were talking and he said he'd do whatever it took to get me back on the web again. and i said he should design me a new look for my webpage. because, you see, curtis is a designer of high quality, and i am a coder of high quality, and together we make higher quality websites than we could make apart. BUT CURTIS NEVER KEPT HIS END OF THE BARGAIN!! "here i am back on the net", i says to curtis, "and still i have no curtis treatment". but finally he relented and made me a nice looking skin, which, if you go to my homepage, you can switch to. it's nice and purdy, and i coded up a little thing that sets a cookie on your system so that you can pick what skin you surf my... one page in.

but more importantly, i am now moving and shaking on the web again. i am back in the saddle. the skinning script honestly isn't that hard, but it's something i've always wanted to do with my site. hey, if you hate the way my site looks, and think you can do better, feel free to make your own skin for my site. i will more than likely add it into the sidebar, cuz what do i care if my site looks bad in your skin? i'll just surf in mine. :) of course, that will be YOUR mentality as well, and thus we ALL win. my layout is pretty simple, and you can feel free to use images and move anything wherever you want to. just understand that if you leave the entry headers without a background image, they will change colors on mouseover. other than that, have a ball.

also, i just discovered that my forum is online here, so i think i'll be trying to get some more work done on that script. cuz who doesn't love a forum.

have any of you art people ever used a program called paint.NET? it's an open source (meaning free to use) update to the classic windows paint. which means it's BETTER than paint, but still not as good as photoshop. altho, having said that, if you're an artist on a budget, and you have issues with piracy, than this just might be the program for you. i've never really liked the gimp. i usually don't cotton to things that try to be anti corporate. linux was fine in my book, until i happened upon the HORDES of retards determined to undermine intelligent conversation with terms like microsuck or M$. i can get along fine without your semantic merry go round.

anyways, paint.NET is a nice little program with many of the tools required for standard photo manipulation and most art production. it's not amazing, but if you need to do a little something, it's worth your time to check out.

i mentioned tom waits to curtis and he sent me an album of his called rain dogs, and i just can't stop listening to it. i love it. can't get enough of the guy. i would highly suggest anyone give a listen to the song "clap hands" by tom waits. also i was watching conan tonight and there was a chick that i thought was michelle branch at first, but it became obvious after a few seconds it was her. it's a girl named Kt Tunstall, and i really REALLY dug the song that she played. she used a lot of layering software like uh... what's his face... howie day uses on his madrigals dvd. anyways. i really liked her, and i can't wait to find a video of her performance on conan, cuz it was pretty sweet.

so yeah. i hate getting told by someone they'll set up an interview, and then never getting a call back. that sucks. cuz then i stop pursuing other stuff, especially if i got a good vibe off of it. and then i'm just sitting, waiting by the phone, cuz i don't have a cell phone, kids. it's a land line. so if i don't wanna miss a call, i have to sit at home and not hang out with my friends, and generally be miserable. so if you said you'd call me, i'd appreciate you being prompt about it.

just saw this on doitalone's lj. and i have to respond.

Think back 10 years, how old were you?

i was 14 years old. i was a shy little kid, about to make the biggest change in my life. before i was fourteen i was very shy and introverted, i had never cursed, and the worst thing i ever did was steal a pack of baseball cards. i had very few friends, and i was convinced that i would be a comic book artist when i grew up. when i was fourteen, i got in my first musical play, and it changed my whole outlook on life. i wasn't shy anymore, and i found out i had more friends than i knew i had.

If you ran into yourself at that age, what would younger you say?

my younger self would be dumb founded that i didn't graduate high school, much less that i never went to college. he would say that he couldn't believe i lived at my parents' house as long as i did, and he couldn't fathom why i stopped drawing as much. he would probably be ashamed of me. he would hate the music i listen to. but he would be amazed that i play guitar, so much so that he would probably give up violin right then and there and pick up guitar instead.

What would you say back?

i would tell him to finish school, no matter the cost. at least high school. i would tell him to commit to finishing what he starts. i would tell him to NOT WALK AWAY FROM THAT GIRL. i would tell him to speak up sooner to her, as well, and to not bother chasing girls that are already taken. i would tell him that other people's opinions don't matter as long as he's happy with himself, but if he's unhappy with himself, to change. i would tell him not to spend so much time chasing pipe dreams, and that real money and happiness comes from picking something and becoming it. do one thing well and all the rest will come as it needs to. i would tell him to do whatever it took to get out of chaska. i would tell him to never turn left across a medianed intersection that doesn't have a light. i would tell him to keep those caricature jobs as long as possible. i would tell him that once he found a job, he could do well and enjoy, to do whatever he could within his power to keep it. i would tell him lots of little things that i've learned over time.

i made a lot of mistakes in 10 years, but i also made a lot of good moves. i got mired in a couple holes, and found my way out of other ones. i'm not sure whether my life is better now or not. but it's farther along, and i'm sure there are some words of wisdom i could have used back then, but who knows if i would've heeded them. i was a pretty cocky sumbitch back then.

so brian was in town this weekend. brian is about the coolest guy ever, so it was really nice to see him around. so him and me and mary went to olive r twists. it used to be our hang out all the time, but then they removed their 10 cent wing special, so we don't really go as much. we ordered wings and beer and it was generally pretty good. but see, when we got there, the waitress was like, i'm gonna be leaving soon. she also mentioned that we should leave our tip for the other girl, but me being a total jackass, i forget this part. so when we're about to leave, brian says i should go get the check, so i go get her, and i'm like "Hey if you want a tip, go get our check."

now see... in hind sight, that looks REALLY awful. but see what i meant was "if you want to get the tip and not her, we're ready to go now." cuz i had forgotten that she actually wanted the other girl to get the tip.

... sigh. anyways. it was annoying, and i felt awful. altho i have a job interview on monday for time market. i really want to work there, cuz it's totally a cool place, and it's like... two minutes down the road.

also, i got some recording time in on my new song, if you want to hear a throwaway sample track, you can go into where the other song was. if you know, don't tell. if you don't, ask me. it's too fast, and has an extra verse on the guitar track, but other than that, it's not too bad of a sample. we didn't end up playing epic, but we weren't ready anyways. we did watch smallville tho. me and tre watch smallville every week. and this time karl was in with his little brother too. and i made a really great jab at him. something about holding a grudge, and him being an injun. it was awesome. and before you get too offended, we are a multiracial house, and we throw around good racial jokes like spaghetti. so there.

oh yeah, before i forget, Bryan O'Malley (destroyerzooey) has a new book about to come out. if you're not on the Scott Pilgrim train, come aboard, cuz this is an amazing story. there hasn't been a single person i've shown it to that hasn't gone on to suggest it to someone else. i've been highly anticipating this book for a while. bryan has put in some rather brilliant foreshadowing elements that you just don't see a lot in comics. if you like good stories, and crazy action, and hilarious dialogue, then the scott pilgrim saga is for you.

hey, guess what this blog probably isn't going to be. an artsy little drawing blog. i might talk about lots of boring crap like code. and you won't like it. and sometimes i'll talk about how boring my life is. and you won't like it. HAHAHAHA! hamilton is the winner.

... we all lose.

so some people decided that i REQUIRED the triple color script again. so there it is. HAVE A BALL! i also streamlined the javascript and css that runs this site, and i added some css hacks that questionstar got me on today. she had a little problem with a new design she was working on, but we straightened it all out, and hopefully she'll have something new up soon. that will be awesome. i don't think she's updated her site in years :D if you don't know aysha's work, you need to go hit up her deviantart account and check out some amazing art.

also, i'm going to bed now. i'm sick of waking up at noon.

so curtis, my gracious host, brought to my attention that not everyone has a livejournal account, and not everyone wants to get one. silly me. he also mentioned that livejournal has this thing that allows people to comment on posts if they have what is known as an OpenID. I had never heard of this concept. I'm just always logged into lj, i never really bothered looking at the login options for commenting. So apparently OpenID is this new thing that allows all the different weblogs, and websites with logins, to recognize you as you (or at least, that's the idea). but apparently adoption has been somewhat sparse so far. there are many ways that you can allow people to sign in to your journal (many of the open source journals appear to be adopting), but not many ways to set up a server, that is a way to identify yourself to these logins by using your own website.

after much poking around on the internet, i found a nice little php implementation, although it comes with no docs. so i added a nice little installation guide to it, and you can now find it right here. again, this is just the server script. you set this in your webserver and gerry some html in your homepage, and now you can login to livejournal as www.yoursite.com. i hope this helps some people out. i will now list my journey in discovering this little script.

OpenID.net

Taral's LJ

Gentoo-Wiki

The original server script, without my input

i still PREFER maxthon. i just like it in so many ways. but on the house computer, which is really karl's computer and the one i use most now, there are a bunch of restrictions on ie's security set. it didn't take much time to learn that those restrictions made surfing a pain, and that firefox had no such restrictions. so i quickly learned all about the best firefox extensions, and now it's what i use. i'm not entirely sure what browser i'll use when i get my own computer again.

but the point is, mainly if you write good css, the two browsers will render pages the same. there are only a few things that differ. not that one is better necessarily. just some differences. for one thing IE does not recognize a div with auto margins, and firefox will not center a div in a container that has text-align:center; so you have to use both techniques.

but the most notorious difference, and you can make an argument for both ways, is that firefox considers the border as exterior to the width of a container, and IE considers it interior. what does this mean? if i have a 1 pixel border, it really doesn't mean anything, but if i make that border 3 pixels, suddenly i've got a six pixel swing in the two browsers. that's a lot, actually. so if i have two boxes that are floated to opposite sides, and they have 5 pixels space between them, firefox will render them fine, but IE will push the boxes together and render one beneath the other. i could add 6 pixels to the width, but then firefox would have a huge gap. it's annoying. i've grown to love both browsers, and possibly when IE7 comes out, all our problems will be over. but for now, it's not so much that one is better than the other, it's just that they're both different in the most annoying ways.

why am i talking about browsers and stylesheets again? because i just made a nice little design on my homepage. it just reads in my livejournal feed for now, but at least there's something in there again. and oh yeah, have fun rolling over those headers. :)

so i wrote a new song this weekend. i wrote it in one day. i'm very proud of it. it used to be that when i wrote music they were all horrible unrequited love songs. but this is a hopeful love song. it's weird. i never thought about it before, but almost all my songs are very depressing. but this one isn't. it's very fun to play and very melodic. and me and daniel worked on some harmonies today. we're going to be storming the epic cafe this thursday. so if you're in the tucson area, be sure to stop by some time... around... uh... ... ok we haven't exactly set a time. but it's going to be awesome. and i'm right down the street anyways. so you can just stop in and ask when.

HAHAHA NO ONE READS THIS WHO LIVES NEAR ME!!

anyways. we'll be there for open mic night, and we'll probably all play songs. it should be groovy. i haven't gotten the chance to record my new song yet. tre just got back from phoenix, so we'll probably go in and record tomorrow. also, tre and i recorded a fun version of my lazily song, so if you want to hear that, just email me, and i'll send you a link to it. also, danny's girl bekah is like a ROCKET SCIENTIST and she brought over this program called matlab to work on some homework. and it's the simplest freakin program ever. so i'm coding it in javascript and i'm gonna save some people about a 100 bucks. it's gonna be awesome. face it matlab, you just aren't all that.

so i don't have aol. so of course, you'll follow along, and understand that i was surprised tonight, when trillian told me that my habycl aim account "got mail". how could my instant messenger account get mail? well apparently aol has finally wised up and realized that anyone should be able to get aol mail if they can use the instant messenger service. it's part and partial of the whole gig. so i have signed up, and can now be sent email at habycl@aol.com. some people change their screen names all the time. some people change emails weekly. i'll admit, i've gotten new email addresses along the way, but i've had the habycl screen name for well on 9 or 10 years now.

many people ask me what it means. or rather, most people don't care to ask, but i bet they wonder. since the people who DO ask are always so full of wonder. well it is the first two letters of each of my names. HAmilton BYrne CLine. seemed simple enough at the time, and i have always been determined to NOT put numbers in anything that identifies me. it's bad enough that i have to put them in my passwords. of course, for about the past 3 or 4 years, i have been going by the name bronkula on a lot of things, and i believe i registered the aim name bronkula, but i've just never bothered to move over to it. i think i also have hamdiggy.

it turns out i HADN'T registered the bronkula screen name. but now i have. yes that's right, this post is in positive flux. and so is my current web presence.

whatever. more importantly, daniel and i stayed up til like 6 am chatting about ridiculous philosophical stuff. i did NOT do any of my needed applicationing. which means not only am i not employed, my sister is bound to be pissed at me. most distressing.

"killing in the name of" is a great rage against the machine song. that is, it's great to rock out to. also, danny has no taste in music. seriously. awful.

so daniel, who is not to be confused with danny, brings a friend home tonight. i know that she was not his girlfriend, because his girlfriend is in new mexico. this has no implications for him, only how my own conduct should be. i may be a notorious flirt, but i'm not gonna hit on a guy's girl right in front of him. i have too much respect for my friends, and fear of pain, to do that. did i mention that i'm a huge flirt? i am. i used to do it subconciously until one day someone pointed out to me that what i was doing was flirting, and now i SOMETIMES still do it subconciously. that is to say, now i do it conciously more often.

regardless, she was not his girlfriend, and she was quite good looking, so i go into instant flirt mode. not because i expect anything from it. far from it. i just love flirting. it's awesome, harmless, and usually the other party will reciprocate. also, i believe her name was hilary. i don't remember this because it was told to me. i am awful with names and have a horrible short term memory anyways. i remember this because danny, not to be confused with daniel, repeated her name after our introductions. i don't know how her name is spelled, because i didn't take the time to have her spell it out for me. it could have one or two l's. or perhaps three y's. who knows. not me. whatever.

so danny goes away immediately, and then me, daniel and hilary talk for a while. i believe candy canes might have been eaten somewhere along the way. but at some point i realized that in the middle of her shirt was a stain. it wasn't noticeable on first glance, but suddenly i realized that i was staring at it, and that i had probably been staring at it for a couple seconds. this stain was directly between her breasts. right there. smack dab.

i don't know how many of you know what it's like to feel like a jackass, but trust me when i say it's one of the most personally degrading moments of my life. how can you excuse that? you can't? "i swear, i was staring at the stain not your boobs" IT DOESN'T WORK! and needless to say, once i noticed the stain, my eyes were drawn to it like a magnet for the rest of the night. every couple minutes my eyes would suddenly latch onto a unique spot on her shirt. "hey look, a spot!" YOU CAN'T IMAGINE HOW FRUSTATING THIS WAS!

anyways. i think she might be an arsonist, but who knows, that's a story for another day. i need to go to bed tonight so i can do applications tomorrow. stay frosty, kids.