April 2003

In a previous entry I mentioned how I was going to wander through West Civ’s free CSS Level 2 course. A fabulous idea, for sure. Of course, I never actually got to do it. But I figured I’d go ahead and try to set up the latest Exploit Boston! layout myself. No problem, right? I can read. I can type. Occassionally I can slap a few brain cells together. I’m a lucky fool. Matt is completely rescuing the CSS design. He deserves a raise! ;)

Today at work I disclosed to the guy in the cubicle next to me that I have a Sanyo mobile phone. I think he’s the second person at work (Nokia) who I’ve told since starting this contract job a month ago. It’s ironic that I’d get a job at Nokia a few weeks after I bought my cell phone but there wasn’t a Nokia color-screen phone comparable to the Sanyo CP-4900 available with the Sprint PCS + Vision service. I got the same response from him: “You better hide that!” I have dreams of Nokia making the 6800 available with the Sprint PCS service. That would be quite excellent. It is such a sexy phone and it looks useful, too.

I probably have more to talk about than Exploit Boston! but it’s been consuming a lot of my time so that’s what I’ll talk about here. I put the site back up today with a new layout. There is a lot of tinkering left to do. But thanks to some help from Matt with CSS, Brad with Perl and Movable Type and Mike with Mac testing it finally has some of the new functionality in place. Hindsight of course tells me I should have probably just used a regular, plain Movable Type weblog template and then EB! would have been active several months ago. One day I will learn the lesson of not trying to do so much at once — especially when it’s a labor of love sort of project. One day! But I’m happy that EB! is back up and ready for contributions. I guess I need to re-connect with everyone who expressed interest to contribute. I did come around on whether or not it should be primarily an event calendar. At first I didn’t really want it to be a “weblog” — mostly because I am so tired of hearing that word. weblogweblogweblogblahblahblah But the idea of having a zillion events up on the site at all times would be really tough to maintain solo. So, it’s a weblog on the homepage that others can post to and then there’s a 3-day calendar and spotlight events. The drop-downs for browsing by week, month and category were upsetting the XHTML validation so they’ll have to wait until I figure out how to fix that (or until I ask someone for help!).

In some ways, Exploit Boston! feels like a sort of re-entry onto the Web. I’ve felt extremely disconnected from lots of the people I used to know and/or conspire with. Being able to bounce ideas off of new pals has been a lot of fun and reminds me of what my web life used to be like a long time ago.

Now if the sun would cooperate this weekend I might even crawl out of my cave!

West Civ is currently offering weekly installments of their CSS Level 2 course. I forgot to go through last week’s lesson so now I have to catch up tonight. It’s an excellent learning adventure and hey, it’s free. The catch with the free course is that the previous week’s installment disappears eventually so you have to keep up! Last week’s installment is still up but it will probably disappear soon. If you want to go at your own pace you can buy the course for $24.99. I’m just a hobby HTML and CSS tinkerer so it’s nice to know there are great resources like this available to expand my tinkering knowledge.

Use every chance you’ve been given
she replied after several days
It’s no good to be perfect
you know so well things are easy to tell
There is one thing I know
it goes like this
It’s that when I lose my sleep it’s you I miss - “You Know So Well”

Mike clued me in to 20 year-old Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche. Wow. Truly outstanding lyrics and music. The release of his U.S. debut “Faces Down” came out September 2002 and this year he’s been touring around the United States. I have a feeling I probably missed my chance seeing him in Boston though there’s no info on his website indicating past tour dates. He’s been touring with Nada Surf and will be in Omaha on May 24th so I might try to coordinate my next trip home that weekend, too. If you like Elliott Smith you’ll probably like him, though Sondre sounds (to me — based on limited Elliott Smith knowledge) a lot less mopey and more sentimental and clever. Check out his website to listen to little snippets of each song and then buy it!

While working on Exploit Boston! I’ve received several emails from people interested in tips regarding how to use Movable Type as an event calendar. Brad and I have talked about writing some sort of document that describes how Exploit Boston! is set up. Since EB! is still a work in progress, that’s probably a few weeks away. I’ve stumbled across a few websites that are already up and running that focus on a particular city or neighborhood and are also using a weblog publishing tool to produce city-based content. There are probably a lot more out there than I’m aware of so I’m interested in hearing from people who either run a site like Exploit Boston! for their city or neighborhood or know someone else who has such a site. Posting the info in the comments of this entry or in an email would be great! The websites I’m searching for ideally mix weblog style publishing of original content and event listings focused on a particular city or neighborhood. I will share the list both here and on Exploit Boston!.

Exploit Boston! was on slow percolation for a while waiting for the new design. That didn’t all quite go down like we had expected so this week I decided to work on updating the site myself and not worry about having the entire look be perfect all at once. So, for the next few weeks the website (www.ExploitBoston.com) is going to be undergoing various tweaks and enhancements on a very regular basis. I usually work on it in the mid to very, very late evening. So, if you check out the site after 8pm EST you’ll probably want to refresh your browser a few times. Brad, Nicholas and Mike have been an enormous help contributing new functionality and HTML/CSS tips.

I sent Chris Pirillo a few speaker ideas for his Gnomedex 3.0 conference/geekfest but the only “big names” I could think of were all guys except one (Molly Holzschlag). It’s 2003. There has to be at least a handful of women (or more!) who have significant name recognition that should be invited to speak at this event. Who are they?

Today has been a reasonably productive sort of day. I got a lot of work done for the Rock   Roll Library including posting a new job on RRL’s VolunteerMatch.com page. Do you live in the Boston area with three hours per week to contribute as the membership coordinator? This person will be responsible for sending out membership packets to new members and will also respond to membership related emails that come through the website. And on a related note, the Rock   Roll Library has a charter membership program running right now for rock and roll fans who want to become an integral part of an internationally recognized music force. I’ve been conspiring with RRL since around January and it’s been a lot of fun.

There’s a new photo album up with photos from my trip home to Nebraska few weeks ago. Now is probably a good time to get outside for the first time today while the sun is still out.

I love seeing shows at Club Passim. One thing, it’s smoke free. My eyeballs really appreciate the absense of smoke. It’s also fun to be at a venue that’s been around since the 50s (at this particular location since the 60s) where all sorts of people got their start including Joan Baez. Meghan Toohey (pop/rock singer songwriter) from The So & So’s performed a special show last night accompanied by her new band’s bass player. (I wish I could remember his name. Their website isn’t up beyond the homepage.) I was expecting an acoustic solo show but apparently she doesn’t like to do solo shows and her acoustic guitar is not in good shape. She brought a sampler to add drums to most of the songs. At times the added drums seemed to overpower a few of the songs; but overall, it was a great show and unique for the venue. I bought the band’s new EP when they performed at Boston’s First Night but they won’t have additional CDs for sale until they get more money for printing. Maybe a patron program, similiar to what Jane Siberry uses to help fund her independent albums, could help them out. They deserve to be heard!

The So & So’s have several shows coming up including a performance at another favorite club, The Lizard Lounge, on Friday, April 11th.