Monthly Archive for June, 2008

I was explaining how to use the layer mask tool in Photoshop to a friend of mine and it brought up a (repressed?) memory of when I first learned about this tool. A few moments later I was on archive.org, exploring the juvenilia of my collected web output. I’m still trying to recall when I first ever got online, and depending on whether you count AOL, BBSes, the ImagiNation network, CompuServe or various other services, the dates probably vary by a few years. The earliest dated piece of HTML I can dig up reads “Created: June 14, 1996″ however, so even by conservative estimates, I’m still aghast and how old and nerdy I am. On June 14th, 1996 however, I was quite a bit younger and a whooooooole lot nerdier. It’s difficult to explain. In fact, why should I? Ah fuck it, I already started… So here’s the thing, to my 16-year-old self, the act of coding (hand-coding, mind you) HTML was mainly a process of socio-sexual sublimation. It worked roughly as follows:

Puberty + Time – (Money + Car + Style + a Clue) = Frustration = HTML!

So anyway, here I am, sitting in my high-school bedroom at my shitty fake wood desk with the big hutch part on the top that makes efficient use of space by holding my shitty Epson ink-jet printer above my shitty 13-inch CRT screen. Did I mention that this screen is hooked up to a 386 the size of a small microwave? Because it is. Also, I am totally listening to Neil Young or maybe the Doors, or depending on whether or not I’ve been to that one record store out in Naperville yet, it’s possible I could have been into Primal Scream or Ben Folds Five already. At any rate, I’m certainly not out getting drunk/stoned/laid or anything like that (although I may end up going for coffee & gross fried chicken fingers & mozzarella sticks with some friends later on). But for the time being, I am pouring my pent-up, 16-year-old-white-suburban-nerd frustrations directly into notepad.exe, the HTML Manual of Style propped open at my side. Let’s see what I’ve cooked up:

1. The Chicago Weather page -  It’s a page that aggregates forecast data & live webcam images from various 3rd party sites, the theory being that you can just bookmark this one page and have all the data at your fingertips. At some point I actually started getting emails from various people who were using this page which was neat and inspired me to make alternate versions for New York & Los Angeles. So yeah, I was into content syndication from an early age, you could say.
2. Magic Theatre – What the hell!? Is this a blog about indie music? And did I just write an essay about how much I like “Cruel to be Kind” by Nick Lowe? I can’t decide if this makes me more of a nerd or less…
3. The RBTV Web page – OK, so this was a website that I put together for my high school AV club so I guess that settles the whole “nerd” question. One of these days, when I’m feeling even more uninhibited, I’ll have to post some of the short films I made in high-school on to YouTube. I wonder if it’s possible to digitally fix all the bad decisions I made about how long to grow out my hair and whether I should get those wussy John Lennon glasses and also if it might be possible to apply some post-processing to make it sound like my voice had actually changed by the time I was a sophomore. What, me… Bitter? Hardly!
4. An RBHS Reunion info page – Work for hire, bitches! (Note that work for hire does not necessarily imply that I got paid to do it, but simply that I was not personally invested in the content)

Ok, well that about wraps up the ancient history portion of this excavation. Next time I’ll have to show you some of the first pages that I *did* get paid for. Discussion topics for this section will include whether eventually making a living via knowledge of HTML in any way validates the years of self-imposed social exile that I subjected myself to in order to learn it and the implications of “geek chic” in the popular culture. Future sessions may cover the topic of whether I’ve made a similar Faustian bargain with regards to learning to play guitar over the past several years. Hm… if only there was some way I could combine these two pursuits.

Some of these headlines and excerpts are unintentionally (?) humorous.

So apparently hip-hop dudes in the South are all into drinking some kind of Flaming-Moe-esque, cough-syrup-based beverage called “Purple Drank” (aka sizzurp, lean, syrup, drank, barre, purple jelly, and purple stuff) these days. Not only that, but several of it’s most vocal proponents have overdosed on it. Thankfully, you can now get your drizzzzank on more safely with Drank, the “anti-energy” drink! So does this mean that Sunny D is slang for acid now? Or possibly Substance D? Also, might I suggest the following additional euphamisms for all y’all screwed-up, crunked-out slow-rollas out there:

1. UltraVyolette
2. Grimmmazz
3. Psuckin’ on Barney‘s Psweet Psychedelic Pschlong
4. The “Grape Ape Dape-Rape” Drug
5. Professor Plum, in da club, wit’ da Pimp-cup
6. The Purple Pupil Eater
7. Purple Rayne

This chart will be of great service to me at my local convenience store where only Bud & Natural Ice sell consistently enough to ensure freshness. They actually stock a wide variety of beers but many appear to occupy a purely ornamental place in their coolers. I guess I could just drink the pissy beer but really, memorizing obscure codes is way more my style. (Additional codes here).