It was a *lot* of work. He was up until the wee hours last night, getting everything just right.

I came home from work, and he came out to tell me that Invader Zim was on! So I went into his room, where he was sitting with his laptop open. “I sort of broke my computer screen,” he said, pitch-perfect in the kind of hopeful regret of a child who knows that Mommy will be able to make it better. To say I gasped audibly is putting it mildly — it was like a scream, but the air going in instead of out.

Fortunately, before I imploded into a ball of mess, dad walks in and said April Fool. At least I think that’s what he said, I was a little freaked out at the time. The kiddo, who had been restraining himself from smiling long enough, beamed with all that repressed pride and proceeded to tell me how the deed was done.

First, he found this thing on Household Hacker (wait. my kid reads household hacker? huh.) So first he made one of the screens with his new wallpaper, but he realized I hadn’t seen the new wallpaper, so he had to go on the internet and find the *old* wallpaper, and then make the background out of that. It had to look just like I’d expect his screen to look, if it was completely destroyed by (say) people playing ball in the house, or perhaps running with scissors. After all, this is what moms think is going on while they’re at work anyway, right? He worked on making it just right for some time, you know how sometimes things don’t work and you have to start again? So finally, he was satisfied with his truly devastating result, so he proceeded to remove/hide all his icons, hid the Object Dock and the taskbar, and waited for me to get home.

Since it was a belated April Fool’s, I was completely unsuspecting, and he got me. I mean, he didn’t just get me, he *got me* got me.

I’m so proud

But this is the last time, I’m (almost but not entirely) (but definitely almost) sure of it. I had been gazing longingly at my ‘compromise’ camera, the Fujifilm Finepix S100fs, which was out of production but had such shining reviews (people dumping their DSLRs!) that I was ready to pounce. The selling point was the “Super CCD” — realizing that everything from a $200 Panasonic to a $600 Nikon P&S with anywhere from 9 – 12 megapixels all share the same basic 2.3″ CCD — I just didn’t want to get another camera that squeezes more pixels into the same basic imaging sensor. Had the S100fs in my shopping cart when I happened upon this — dated *tomorrow* at this writing — and as a result found:
Fujifilm Finepix S200EXR 12MP Super CCD Digital Camera with 14.3x Optical Triple Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD

Well there you go. That’s the one. I am not ready for a DSLR (and the resulting lens addiction, and hauling all that stuff around, and spending way out of budget instead of just a little out of budget), but I am ready for this. If it’s released before my 1st payday in August, I’ll be sitting up ’till he deposit hits the bank and clicking buy. Probably.

The only thing it doesn’t seem to do is HD video, but, … well that would almost lead me back to the Canon PowerShot SX1IS 10 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 20x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom the first non-DSLR with the CMOS sensor, which might be better than a “super” CCD right? but no, no, no. I made up my mind, I totally did. Didn’t I?

Edited: no, I was right. I just read the rather painfully long Sx1IS review at DPreview and it’s no comparison. They go on at some length about how the CMOS does not make a difference — and though I know the S200EXR article is just a press release, it describes the exact sort of technology that (if properly implemented) would indeed make for a worthy not-quite-a-DSLR. And, considering the reviews of its predecessor the S100FS, I’m willing to believe.

So it’s on.

so have i mentioned that the lyricbase‘s list page & lyric display page (which is like, 99.9% of the site) are now XHTML compliant? no?

i blame dreamweaver mx 2004, for starting me down the slippery slope of validation. sure, sure, the static XHTML validates, but then you upload the page & pop a little dynamic content in it & head over to the wc3 & get smacked in the face with … with … hundreds of errors. hundreds.

so i hacked away at the picky picky picky little details, invisible to the nekkid eye, but i obsessed nonetheless. it was time to make it right. sure, the site worked as it was, but it always felt a little like driving a shiny red miata with an old pinto engine duct taped sideways in the trunk, hoping no one got close enough to smell the burnt oil. now, it feels … like a newish kia, with a genuine kia engine, still under warranty.

or something.

i live about a half mile from the fireworks, so i had to walk all the way from my apartment, past the apartment next door, up to the main street, then halfway down the block to get these pictures:

first the router stopped routing. the documentation for this internet-accessing appliance is kept … on the internet, of course. the 404 page was a big help, thanks. for weeks i resisted the simple but regressive fix, just plugging the fucking cable modem into the fucking computer, because i know me with temporary fixes, and i didn’t want to regress. i only relented because i was in charge of downloading wedding music.

so then there was the wedding.




it was easy to spot the ventura table:

later, there was a flower-throwing incident. fortunately no one was seriously injured in the resulting fracas:

in other news, i’m guessing that unmoderated comments are limited to the pay version of MT three poing fucking oh. i swear i have every box checked that says, just let people comment ferfucksake, but no. pain in the ass. gonna write my own blogware, i am. but first i better start blogging again, otherwise, what’s the point?

i shall now resume sitting here poking gingerly at the 460 emails that piled up while i was otherwise occupied &/or avoiding the internet. apologies to those waiting for me to get off my ass, i’m working on it.

we rode the four five oh to ellay. well, van nuys. same thing.

my soon-to-be-son-in-law is cooler. uh-huh. & randomly:

i have *so* many pictures. luckily there is a gallery thingy with a cool uploading interface that makes multiple thumbnails & has its own stats package & comment system.

i just had to sit & think hard to type out the code for a hyperlink.

we don’t even do war anymore, do we? war must be declared, so we have conflicts and storms and operations and peacekeeping missions and shit like that, right? much more efficient — less red tape, more killing. and it’s only human nature, killing. and i am not saying that because of the pms. even though it is a particularly virulent episode. it? i meant she.

the antichristine finds that people are less likely to piss her off when she explains her theories on the tendencies of humans to be naturally homicidal. then she smiles and mentions she likes sharp things and fire. and beer.

and cadbury’s creme eggs.

per request, an overview (just not a very good one) and one other from the memorial at the park:

one is the number of mojo jojo’s there shall be in this world, and the number of mojo jojo’s shall be one. three is right out.

when ppg villains quote the book of armaments, all’s right with the world.

i don’t have a lomo. but i have some sets of photoshop actions and a thing called a melancholytron which is a trial and will expire so i’m tryin’ to convince myself i dig the sets of photoshop actions better. it’s not working.

in order, l-r: original, photoshop actions v2

l to r: the original, and, the lomoized version:

l to r: original and the lomoized version:

i am a little confused as to which filter on some of ‘em. but then i am on aol. so you know. my mind. um.

my daughter’s roommates have gone quite insane:

but that’s okay, so has her mother:

the ability to stick stickers on our guitars is what separates us from the animals:

whatever you are here wondering what i’m not doing, i will be right back at it as soon as i finish transporting my offspring around town. it’s been a day.