Month: February 2001

the domain name

This whole “gohlkusmaximus” domain name thing is really motivating me to post.

I actually told a couple people about the site today. I also realized that I have a bias against serif fonts. Betcha didn’t notice. [Note: that only makes sense in the context of this site’s first design.]

On the travel front, I may drive out to Berkeley from Minneapolis with Amber sometime soon. 2043 miles, 37 hours, according to Yahoo! Maps. The trip, should we choose to embark, promises to be fun and romantic.

now I have news

Okay, NOW I have news.

Today was the day the domain name went into effect. I’m up there for the world to see. Not that I’ve told anyone yet.

I love of Montreal

of Montreal logo

I love the band Of Montreal. Not only are they great musicians, and excellent songwriters, but they [have been known to] frequent their band’s discussion board. That is truly awe-inspiring and should be a model for… everyone.

Their [former] label Kindercore is [was] really great, too. Talented bands and free shipping!

* * *

I really have to get in the habit of doing this at least weekly.

Nothing in the way of news that’s really interesting. I went on an eBay buying spree, and plan to get away to a warm-weather location SOON!

wow!

Advertisements. I’ve been fascinated with them practically since birth. My current attitude towards advertising, one of simultaneous love and hate, is one you might expect from a liberal, somewhat anti-consumerist web designer.

Chickenhead banner ad. Parodies of ads, if done well, I love. And publications that deconstruct and use the mechanisms of advertising for social change? Adbusters: See for yourself.

this entry looks cool in NS 4.7 (but it might not validate)

By request: So you want a website? There are tons of ways to get started. Resources include everything from free server space on GeoCities and numerous others, with pre-coded templates (useful for beginners — little to no HTML!), to WebReference and WDVL and c|net’s Builder.com, to… well, you get the point.

As most people probably did (?), I started learning HTML by simply looking at existing code and mimicking it; and then learned by doing, by example, by asking, and using various reference materials like the ones above (though, for the record, I only used GeoCities for the space, and that was long before Yahoo! bought them out). [I can hardly believe that link is still good. – gohlkus, 2/21/07 … and again 8/4/10!]

* * *

From the former news section: I took a few days off of gohlkusmaximus. I needed to—I was obsessed for about 3 days with simply getting it to a point I felt okay about uploading.

I actually told someone about this site—hi, Matthew—who asked for the aforementioned HTML reference links.

Back to work—I’m redesigning a rather popular on-line application (the Recreation Compass) right now—I think it’s turning out pretty well. I’ll post a link when it’s available, and it’ll probably end up in the portfolio.

Anyone know what the laws are on using work that belongs to an employer (present or otherwise) in your portfolio? Most people do it, so I assume it’s okay, but it’s worth checking. Contact me if you know for sure.

Know what else? Netscape 4.72 for Windows sucks. [Ed. To be fair, so do many other earlier and later versions of Netscape and IE. In fact, all browsers suck. There. I’ve said it.] I had to put line breaks before all my <p> tags to get the default paragraph style to work. Seems that, for some reason, if you butt a </p> right up next to a <p> (as I do when I’m handcoding and it’s not for work), it makes the text size of the second paragraph 75% of the size of the previous paragraph’s text, not of the default text size. This translates to “bad.”

This is an example of the “diminishing returns” effect…

…if you have an old version of Netscape…

I’M SHRINKING!

The above 3 paragraphs look much more dramatic in Netscape 4.something.

Whew, much better. If you don’t know HTML, sorry about that little rant. It makes me feel better to get it out.

The Big Launch

This is it—the first day of the rest of my anti-blog. The Big Launch.

The truth is that this so-called “anti-blog” is a completely designed-and-produced-by-hand weblog with a catchy name (on the order of antihero, Anti-Counter, etc.). Read the rationale behind it.

Incidentally, this blog is an Aquarius.

And I’d forgotten completely about this kind of stuff.

a cautionary tale

I fell on the ice today walking from the $17/mo “Blue Lot” to the DNR building. The building I fell in front of is rumored to be owned by the 3M Corporation, but may be currently for sale to the county (who plans to office cops there, I am told). The results:

  • 5 nasty cuts and one blood blister on my hands, including two on the tips of my touch-typist’s (now “ouch-typist’s”) fingers.
  • A sore shoulder, and wounded pride.
  • An hour and a half of nearly fruitless phone calling (and being forwarded, of course). I gave up in disgust when the 10th person I talked to gave me someone else’s number to call in her office. I still have a couple leads.
  • Extra driving to an after-hours clinic in St. Paul during a stressful snowstorm.
  • A tetanus shot in the already sore shoulder.
  • Most importantly, something to put in this spot on the website.

My advice, based on today’s events: Don’t slip on the ice, but if you do, make sure you’re wearing your gloves.

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