.: I'm working, children.

    And eating an apple.  

    I'm in the process of setting up Ill-Literati.org/.com to be where all the cool stuff is going to be. I'm setting it up with WordPress MU (which has been giving me problems, but I think all on my end).

    There will be Comics.

    There will be The Dude.  Whether he knows it yet or not.

    There will be Gantor. Whether she knows it or not.

    There will be others.

    I'm still in the process of setting it up, and I'm leaving for Florida in about 36 hours, so my time will be a little limited until I get back.

    This is a tasty apple.

.: In answer to Joe's question in his comment to the Snowball On My Desk post, yes I will be podcasting.  But not in a traditional manner, though a traditional podcast isn't out of the question.  What the fuck does that mean?

    Stay tuned. 

Later,

AB 

.:A while back, I found a great looking microphone on the internet.  I was looking for a mic for a couple of projects that I had in mind.  Something that could be used to record a number of people at once with good sound quality.  I didn't care at the time if it looked like crap.  I just wanted something very functional. 

[image:23:l]  This is what I found. The Snowball by Blue Microphones.  Not only was this thing in my low and amateurish price range (retails for about $99, you can find them a little cheaper), but it was USB plug and play and looked just fucking cool.  I pondered the purchase for a few weeks, reading reviews of the mic here and there.  Most were fairly positive, especially for use by amateurs and others just starting out.  Most of the negative reviews were by people who seemed to be looking for very high end equipment at a very low cost, or by people who seemed to have problems with mic not accepting the firmware upgrade (that link is straight to the file), or other hardware problems.  But even most of those people had sent it back for replacement and got it pretty quickly with few problems.  Some of the negatives also involved using the mic with linux systems (which concerned me, because I use linux in my day to day home projects).

    I took the hit and ordered the mic.

    It came quickly, like most Amazon purchases.  I opened the box and found a nice solid mic, a stand and a USB cable.  It took literally less than a minute to affix the mic to the stand and plug it in.  

    About the mic:  It's solid, round and heavier than I expected.  It's a little larger than a baseball, and while I would never hurl this particular mic at someone's head, it gives the impression that it would hold up better in the impact than someone's skull would.  It's got a simple three-position switch on the back for different uses.  Position 1 is for recording something directly in front of the mic (unidirectional), position 2 is also unidirectional , but with a -10db PAD to reduce "the output of the mic for use with loud sound sources that could cause distortion of the signal", and position 3 is for omnidirectional use, picking up everything around the mic. 

    About the stand: Metal collapsible tripod base.  Not as sturdy as it looks, but a little sturdier than it feels, if you follow my meaning.  When you adjust the height, it kind of wobbles, and the lock doesn't feel as secure as I'd like, though it seems to hold up okay, especially under the weight of the mic.

    Together: They have this retro look and feel that I really like.   

    I plugged it into my linux machine, and found it didn't work.

    Some research online (under the duress of wanting it to work and not having slept, said research was a little sloppy), got me to at least record something.  But it was very low, slow and not very pleasing at the moment.  I fucked around for a little while longer, found the high gain patch and tried to install that (the patch is not linked on the website, I eventually found it on a blog or forum - I can't remember, at the time I was mildly pissed and deprived of sleep, and tried to install it.

    No dice.  It's an exe file, and it wouldn't install the firmware under WINE.  At that point I gave up for the opportunity to sleep and finish a very long week of working and not getting much sleep after that day due to insomnia and Easter. 

    This morning, I came home from work and brought the mic upstairs where my brother has his variety of laptops, all running Windows.  I plugged the mic in, and ran the firmware patch without a problem.  It didn't occur to me to test the mic before patching it, I was just dead set on doing it.  I installed Audacity on the lappy and started to record, fucking with the switch and software settings to get a varied mix of results.

    It works.  And it works well. I made some recordings and exported them to mp3's and they sounded okay to me.  Especially for what I have in mind.  

    I haven't tried it on the linux machine with the new firmware yet.  But I'm in no rush today.  It works great in Windows, and most of what I'll be doing with it I'll be doing with the laptop anyway (it's portable and easily managable).  

    So overall, I have to say that I am thrilled with this mic.  It's a great addition to my long-term plans, fairly low cost for pretty damn good quality.  I may one day invest in better and more expensive eqiupment if things really take off with this, but at the moment, I can't see the need. 

     Blue Microphone has a bunch of other microphones in varied designs, all with the same retro feel and style.  

    Again, if you have bought or plan to buy this mic, and want the high gain firmware patch, remember that you can't actually see the link anywhere on the site.  I linked it above, but to repeat myself and give you the actual address, the firmware patch can be found here: 

http://www.bluemic.com/update/snowball/SnowballHighGain.exe.

    Happy podcasting, home studio recording or whatever the fuck it is you do.

AB 

.: I have a lot of things to talk about today.  Most of them will be short.  I'll start with the theme I've been working on.

     Ill-Literati 1.0 is nearly done.  You can check it out here but keep in mind a few things:

1. This is my first theme done from scratch (or from Kubrick, which is what most WordPress themes are based on).  So if it bears an uncanny resemblance to the current theme on this site, it's because I wrote it like that. I like the format of this site, but it was a couple of themes that I mashed together to make this one.  I did peek at some of the code from this site to do certain things I didn't know how to do (like setting up span classes to get the icons in the meta info below the post title, and setting up the calendar to have them boxes around the dates).
2. It's designed to be used by anybody, which is why there is no fancy graphic for the title of the page, or for the navigation links.  Those can be added or modified by the end user.
3. It's not done. Officially, I suppose it should be called version 0.9 or some such shit, but what can you do? 
4. I know it's very, very simple as far as design and color.  There was no point in going nuts on a theme for my first.  And it's best viewed at 1024 x 768 or larger.  There will be a smaller version for smaller resolutions, and possibly a scalable version using % rather than px for design layout. 

    I'll be finishing it up tonight for it's official 1.0 release.  Very little clean up to do, but there is some.

    I have some nifty ideas for new themes, now that I think I have the hang of it.  Ranging from simple, to quixotic.   I may be able to get a couple banged out before I come of the night shift.  Until then…

AB 

.: I've been coding php for two nights straight.  It's been sloppy and I keep making very silly, very simple mistakes.  So I'm taking the next few hours off, going to do some work (whatever I find around the office to keep busy with, anyway) and think about going to New Jersey to see my family for Easter. 

    I've been designing the ill-literati theme using Kubrick as a base, but doing most of it from scratch.  I finished the CSS last night, finally tweaked the header out as far as layout goes and now I'm working on the sidebars.  That's what's been confudding me out here.

    Fuck. I think I just figured it out.  But I'm not going to play with it now. I'm burned out, man. 

    What I want to do is have two sets of side bars.  One for post (blog) pages that has two columns, and one for page pages that only has one, so that the page content can be wider but the main sidebar links and categories remain.  And I've been losing my mind.

    But I've done it before, for the footer on this site. 

    I was trying to set it up as an include on the page template.  But maybe I can just do it the way I did the ones for the footer.  I'll play with it tomorrow/tonight when I come back into work, unless things pick up.

    I'm off to drink more coffee.

AB 

.: Yes, and after only two weeks!  Or has it been three?

    Check out the new Jedi Jesus here.  Comments welcome.

AB 

.: I have had a new brainstorm.  

    This usually means trouble and change.  It usually does.  Yep.

    I have registered the domains ill-literati.com and ill-literati.org.  Why have I done this?  

    I have plans, children.  Plans upon plans and things like that. I will be setting up an installation of wordpress mu (pronounced em-you and stands for 'multi-user') which can be accessed through ill-literati.org or ill-literati.com.

    Why have I done this?  

    Because most of my time is spent trying to figure out how to do many things on a single installation of wordpress, which usually just means I wind up installing a fresh wordpress inside of ill-literates.  With one installation of wordpress mu, I can make things so much easier for everybody, especially myself.  Each comic can have it's own space fairly easily.  Each other author on the site can have their own space.  This means The Dude, Brandonicus (where are you Brandonicus), Gantor and countless others (by countless, I mean I haven't counted them, I'm not thinking of adding so many users that I can't count them).  Everybody can have their own list of links, categories etc. and do with their space as they please.  The new theme for Ill-Literates will be an option, but not a forced one.  Each user can use their own theme if they so choose. 

    The domain Ill-Literates.com will for a time, remain my main blog, and then become something else, either pointing to ill-literati, or perhaps a general catch-all or anthology of posts, comics and fiction (the latter being the ideal).

    I will have to import The Dude's & Brandonicus' posts to their individual blogs, and ask them what they want them to be called (or just have them set them up and then import the posts after). 

    I'm jazzed.

    Seriously, jazzed.  

.: The second thing I'm working on actually has me really pissed off at the moment.

    I had this brilliant idea, and someone else is doing it. Granted, the people doing it already are probably much better at it than I, but they're charging for it. 

    I'm gonna give it away.

    More on that soon.

.: Also, Jedi Jesus 4 is penciled.  I keep forgetting to bring my good inking pen with me to work, so I'll ink and color tomorrow night (or tonight, actually) and post it Friday night.  The first arc, A Star is Born, will probably run 8 parts.  There may be a break before the next arc, depending on how long it takes me to actually plan it out.  I want to do the next arc with a plan, to avoid some of the problems that I've had with the first.

    I'm jazzed.

AB 

.: I just want to say that if you're working nights, Netflix is fucking awesome.

     I signed up for the Netflix free trial a week ago.  Early Thursday morning, to be exact.  I signed up, and selected about twenty movies to start my queue.  Friday afternoon, I got the first three movies from my queue.  Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (because I hadn't seen it yet, and wondered if it was any good), Battlestar Galactica: Razor (so I could watch the extended styled version) and Shoot 'em Up (because it looked like fun).

    I actually enjoyed all three movies.  Especially Shoot 'em Up.  Which was exactly as advertised.  Clive Owen as a carrot munching bad ass, who is trying to save a baby and killing dozens of would be baby killers on the way with the help of a lactating hooker.

    But the saving grace of the Netflix for me at this time, is the ability to watch streaming movies from the comfort of work. The other night, I watched most of the first season of Dead Like Me (it seemed to have been missing some episodes, I'll try that one again) and the following Night, the first Season of the new Dr. Who (yes, I work long shifts).  The choices for instant viewing are pretty limited, when compared to what they have to send you in the mail, but it's still more than enough to keep me occupied while I await the turnover of my movies. 

    I sent back the first three movies, they were received the next day and yesterday my new flicks were sent out, and I should probably have them today for tonight's work shift.  If they don't come today, I always have tomorrow and tonight I'll just watch season 2 of Dead Like Me.

     Note: I won't be watching movies here EVERY night.  That takes away time from writing, working on the website and doing new comics, but as an occasional mind-waster or break from those activities, it's a nice option to have. 

AB

.: Almost 6 am.

    Almost time for the masses to join me here at work.  It was quiet last night, and that was a good thing.  I got next to no sleep yesterday, due to a number of events, only one of which can easily be remedied.

    On the way home, down the thruway at 75mph, I noticed that the left rear tire was disintegrating as I drove.  It was as if Boba Fett himself had mistaken me for Han Solo, and chose to ignore Darth Vader's command about disintegrations.  

    Leave it to me to throw a Star Wars reference in here.

    So I went and got new rear tires for the Beast (which is a BSG ref), and had them put the semi-good tire on the spare which had been previously shot before I took the car.  Then I went home and tried to sleep.

    The phone would not stop ringing.  First the house phone, then my cell phone.  Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.  It was obvious that someone was really trying to get a hold of me, and as I lurched out of bed, I swore under my breath that it had better be for a good reason.

    It wasn't good.  But it was valid.  

    And I wish it wasn't.

    A good friend's father died.  Gantor was trying to get a hold of me to break the news.  Gantor is a very firm believer in supporting folk at times like these, and she's right to believe it.  I called another mutual friend who was at the hospital with my friend.  They were going out to her sisters, and I spoke with her briefly on the phone and said I was sorry.

    Which I shouldn't have said.  I should have said "That sucks", Gantor said. And she's right, and I knew it before she said it, knew it before I said it, though it didn't stop me from saying it.

    How many times will she hear someone say "I'm sorry," over the next few days.

    A lot.

    But at the same time, I was sorry.  Sorry because it does suck.  And no amount of belief in a "better place" or belief that we do go on in some way can take away the heartache of losing a loved one.  I know this.  And so do most of you.

    It sucks.

    I didn't get much sleep after.  I'm going home today and crashing hard and long, so that I can be sure to get less sleep after today so that I can be there if my friend needs me.

    Because, it sucks.

AB

at the job and waiting to leave 

.: I started working nights tonight.

[thumb:6:l]    It's a mixed bag, the night shift at KOSCO.  I've done myself the dirty by volunteering for it and besides, who else would have done it if not me? I suppose I really am the only one who can do it at this point, so at least by volunteering I can fool myself into thinking that I'm the only one to blame.  The down side is (aside from the hours) that I'm still doing my regular job as install manager, which means that I should stay each day after the sun comes up to call the customers who need my expertise at squeezing them into my schedule.

    The perks are numerous though.  I get to work alone most of the night, which means I can can bang my paperwork out quickly, get some other things done around the office and still find some time to do things that I have to do that don't involve KOSCO.  I should be able to get more writing done, more comics done and more internets working done. 

    There are more hours in the workweek this shift as well (at least the way I'm doing it) and the overtime (during which I can get writing done, remember) will go a long way towards not having to work as much overtime this summer when I want the time off to spend with my kid and make cheap trips down to North Carolina.

    Of course, there are still the customers calling in at night, which is irritating, but I suppose that's why I'm here.  At least it's March and April while I do this.  Fewer customers call in overnight during these months.  

    I'm also eating my food backwards.  Not in the South Park sense of shoving food up my ass and shitting from my mouth.  Damn, grow up you fuckers.  Now I have dinner shortly after waking up.  My afternoon snack right before leaving the house.  Veg. snack #1 shortly after arriving.  Cup-O-Soup and Sammich around 2-2:30.  Veg. snack #2 around 5 or so.  Grapefruit around 7-8 am and then cereal when I get home and bed a couple hours later.

    Does it matter what order I eat in?

    I doubt it.  

.: I have booked my flight and rented a car for my trip to Florida at the end of the month. I will see Gantor and my girls before April.  Nice.

    Nice.

.: And you should really check out the Dude's latest post dealing with Elliot Spitzer.  It's things like this that make me really, really glad to call the Dude among my top friends. 

Okay.

AB

around 5am at the job.

.: Chef and I went out and picked up a new router today.  I kept dropping out while I was playing with some options for the next version on the site.

    With luck, you'll never hear me bitch about this again.

AB 

.: Did I sneak away last night?  

    I suppose in a way I did.  And for that, I apologize, if necessary, to anyone who may have been looking for me after that.  But the bar was not really on my agenda for the night, and especially for not as long as I wound up staying.  I went there to meet up with my friends for a couple, stayed a couple too long after they left, and wound up buying drinks for people as Shaft's loanshark. 

    Shaft, you owe me twenty bucks, don't forget.

    But Snapper Magee's was really where it was at last night, at least for me, and if Gantor had been in NY and out with me at Snapper's, we probably would have closed the bar and stumbled home around 6am.  There was a DJ -which for me usually means that I'd rather be elsewheres, but this was DJ Tony X-Mas, who according to a bulletin from bartender Ellis, would be "spinning a mix of punk, rockabilly, soul, old school metal and rock & roll".

    Thank you DJ Tony X-Mas.  I didn't hear much else but soul and R&B (and that's pre 1975 R&B, none of that modern shit), and it was blissful.  I think that a great time was had by all, and I would have to say to everyone who commented on the large, billy-bearded, drunk bastard, buying drinks for girls for Shaft's ability to sing along with the Supremes and Wilson Pickett…  Thanks, and if you really want to see something, let's do this again when Gantor is back in NY. 

.: I start nights this week at the soul-sucker what is my job.  While socially limiting, I think it's just what I need right now.  Between work and home life dilemmas, my time and ability to write has been hampered with the dirty socks.  With luck, this will be a quiet March and April, and the long overnight hours should serve well for me to actually get some serious writing done, and even get paid for it.

    Hoorah for me.

    So Mondays, I'll be available for lunch, if anyone wants to treat an old dog to new tricks.  

.: Doing some web-work today.  Change is imminent. Did I spell that right?

AB

from Deep13 

.: Jedi Jesus #3 is up at the comics.  Also some Gary Coleman themed Bad Napkin Art.

Share and Enjoy.

AB 

.: As I write this, I'm waiting for Gantor to call me back. 

    It turns out that Pip has been cutting out of school.  She's missed thirteen days in I don't know how many possible days of school.  Maybe just since she's been in Florida. Which is enough.  

    I talked to her on the phone for a little bit. I was very calm about the whole thing, though I warned her that we weren't done talking about it.  I knew that she had already been yelled at by Gantor and her boyfriend.  I knew that her aunts and grandmother and older cousins would probably give their stern lectures (and probably yell) as well. 

    Did I want to yell at the kid?

    A little. But it's been my experience that yelling doesn't really get you very far (not that being calm will do you much better, I don't have much experience with that).  I let her know that I was upset, and disappointed, and that her lying about things will make it harder for people to believe her when things do happen that need to be addressed.  And that I was disappointed.  I said it more than once, but didn't beat it into her.

    I really don't know how to handle it.  I hardly went to school at her age myself.  And I regret that.  I told her that I was sorry that I had missed out on as much as I did during those years, but I also see where she's coming from.

    Part of the problem, she tells me, is that she gets picked on a lot.   I know from being picked on.  I was a fat, weird kid who didn't like all of the things that everybody else liked.  I wasn't popular.  

    Not much has changed, now that I think about it.  

    Except my attitude towards things like that.  I stopped caring what other people thought and just went about my own life the way I felt I should.  It wasn't easy.  I was even a bully for a period of time, though I don't think it suited me.  But how do you explain that way of thinking to a twelve year old girl?  Being twelve has got to be hard enough, and to be a girl on top of that has got to be a little harder when it's all about the cliques and the popularity and the boys…

    Damn them boys.

    My short answer to her (promising again that we weren't done discussing this…

    "What do you do when they pick on you?"

    "Nothing," she says.

    "Well," say I, "next time, ask them if they don't have anything better to do.  Then call them douchebag monkey-fuckers."

    I really said that.  That was part of my advice.  It made her giggle, and I half-heartedly took it back, "Well, if you don't feel comfortable calling them that, I guess you don't have to."

    It's times like these that I really have some serious issues about being 1,500 miles away from my daughter.  It's worse than the time I made her cry with my "we're not feeding all of your friends, your mom and I work hard to keep food in the house and there in the yard is the jar of peanut butter I told you before not to bring outside… Hey! Look at me when I'm talking to you."  And then she turned around, and she was crying, lower lip trembling and it took all of my self control to not take back the lecture and give her a hug.  

    "Do you think I like making you cry?" I asked sternly, hoping she didn't.  She didn't (or at least didn't let me know if she did).  

    And she's gotten in trouble with me on other occasions.  And there was never any yelling (though sometimes, exasperated shouting), and there were little repeat offenses of the larger issues.  But that was when I could look her in the eye, and sense that she sensed my disappointment in her behavior, and I could sense her real disappointment that she had somehow let me down, and would try to not do such things in the future.  

    I don't have that same feeling over the phone.  I can't see my little one's face, and she can't see mine.  So I have no idea how effective my talk with her was, which is why I had to tell her it's not over.  I'll bring it up again next time, when she's not as gun-shy about the possibility of getting yelled at, and when I get down to Florida, I'll sit her down and tell her again, adding whatever I need to to adjust for the interim.  

    I guess I'm really just trying to say that long-distance dadding sucks. 

    Advice and comments welcome. 

.: Having said that.  New Bad Napkin Art over at the comics.  I've bored you with my life, you may at least get a chuckle.  

.: l major projects involving the Ill-Literates is on hold for at least a few days.  

While I've been slaving over hot monkey brain (you get points if you ID the reference), apparently the kind folk at WordPress have been toiling on the next release, which is WordPress 2.5.  There may be some issues and the like, so I figure I'll wait until it's released and then check out the theme and plugins on the test site before writing the php on that bad boy. Gives me more time to tinker with the css at the very least.

More on this coming soon.

That is all.

AB

from deep13

.: Spent a nice chunk of the night working on glitches.

    Finally figured out the problem with the TTFTItles plugin.  By figured out, I mean I saved myself some time (after wasting much) and fully reading the plugin's page and the comments until I found someone with a problem similar to mine and voila.  One short trip into mySql (yes SleepJunky, mySq) and I fixed it.  I would have fixed it days ago had I just fucking done that in the first place.  So now that I have the pretty titles back, I'd like to point out the new logo for the site.  Nice?  It's okay.  I can do better but it's quick, easy and attractive. 

    Thing is, I really like that blue on black logo.  But it don't quite jive with the link color (which was some shade of red-ish).  So I changed the link color to a blue that matches the logo, but I don't really care for that either. 

     I don't fucking know.  I'll figure out some sort of color scheme sooner or later.

.: The Dude has now completed a new post, which had gotten me thinking about how I want to present the site.  I'd like to give the Dude his own blog, and call it 'Dead Air'.  I even came up with a graphic for the blog header.  

    So this is the tentative Plan for Ill-Literates 3.0…

• A separate blog for The Dude, as well as the separate blog I has for meself.
• Ill-Literati becomes a multi-user blog for the trusted ill-literati who either don't post often (like dear Brandonicus) as well as people I would like to see do an occasional blog on the ill-literates site.  With potential to give them their own separate blog if warranted (like if Brandonicus starts posting movie reviews more often.
• This would possibly mean pushing my blog off of the front page of the site, and using that precious web space for feeds from the rest of the site (similar to what you see at aint it cool news). 
• Web Calendar up soon.  I keep saying that.  Maybe forums too, if I can find people to use it.  We don't get any traffic that comments on posts, so I'll have to think that over.
• Ill-Literacy must return. It just fucking must.  Because it was kinda cool.  (That was our webzine thing, which kinda went to sleep and didn't wake up).
• And the Comics.

.: Speaking of Comics… Jedi Jesus 003 isn't ready yet (rough pencil and dialog still), but the newest and oldest comic is now up.  That's the Bad Napkin Art, which was a staple of the old livingininfamy.com site I once had. So check it out and let me know what you think. 

.: What did I say about focus?  That's okay this time, AngryBob… this post is an update of what's up.

.: Have off tomorrow.  Will probably spend a chunk of that time working on the new theme, which is about ready for being re-written to clean it up.  Hope to be able to test it by Friday next, and release it shortly after.  It'll be the core theme of the site (and will look pretty much the same as it does now).  Everything on the site will follow along that theme, with the possible exception of Ill-Literacy.

    I don't know what to do with that.

AB

down in deep13

.: I lack focus.

    This is no surprise to me, and probably not to anyone else who has spent more than fifteen minutes with me.  But every so often, something gives me a little smack on my bearded cheek to remind me of this.  Today, it's Raisin Bran.  

    My dear friend SleepJunky has recently written a post on the subject (well, the post wasn't so much about the raisin bran but read it for yourself, I linked it), not of substantial length or anything.  Not an essay, but a blog post.  And this post (like most of her posts) is pretty much what one should expect from a blog post about the pop culture of life in America in 2008 (this is a compliment, by the way.  Reading that sentence over, I thought it could be taken that way, but I won't change it, because I think that SleepJunky will see it as such).

    And they make me a little jealous, because she can do something I seem to have forgotten to even try to do, and that's write a short post about something that's focused enough to be considered a 'piece' of sorts.  And (still complimenting) it's about a focused event in the day of SleepJunky.  Whether it's about her father and the Raisin Bran, or holding her friends car–as well as her own shoe–together with duct tape, she manages to write a few paragraphs on a subject and stick to it. 

    I ramble.  And bounce.  To the point that I even devised for myself (without realizing what I was really doing) a symbol to mark the random switch-up from one topic to another in my posts. 

.:If you see the 'dot-colon' at the begining of this paragraph, you should know that I've changed gears.   But not really at this time.  I was just demonstrating my point.

So that's a new goal for AngryBob for March.  A post a day that isn't a rambling mess of coulda woulda shoulda.  A short period of time in which I will remain focused on something long enough to say something substantial, rather than just making excuses for why the new Jedi Jesus strip isn't finished and why I haven't released the ill-literates WordPress theme yet.

.:Jedi Jesus should be done by wednesday.

.:Ill-Literates theme friday, if I have the time to pound a little more code to clean it up.

.:Shit.  I did it again.

AB

from the cushy venus flytrap called 'The Job'