For certain, my life hasn’t been dull since last I wrote. My work has been satisfying in ways it hasn’t been for years. The skills I ply for my trade of choice have never been sharper, and as I write this I’m on a train to Boston to give them a further tune-up. The majority of my writing these days has been focused in the professional and personal realms, mostly sequestered in the walled gardens of email. And I’ve even managed to add spice to my life where relationships are concerned — slow and steady, but satisfying to a degree I’ve never known before.

I can say with no sense of sarcasm that it’s never been a better time to be me.

Of course, to make all this new Andrew version 3.3 work, some deep changes in old habits and expectations have been made. Old hobbies that were dead on the vine (like the podcast I always expected to get back to “someday”) have been pruned away. Spoiled expectations (such as my decade of 10 am start times my work day) have been brought back to the new reality — I’m an adult. Time to fuckin’ act like one.

I’m generally healthy, mostly happy, and the chance to make the most of all these newfound opportunities is there in front of me. I just have to be brave enough to take it.

The better part of this week has been a good old-fashioned bug hunt and code cleaning. Its been so long since I had my hands in one of this magnitude that I forgot how rewarding it can feel when you finally best a bug and inch that much closer to the finish line. Of course, that’s usually countered by some persitant pain in the ass bug that won’t die matter how hard you try; usually a cross browser issue. And when you still need to factor in that curmudgeon of web standards know. As IE6…ugh. Here’s hoping this will be the last big project I have to deal with that piece of shit.

I’ve certainly earned my cookie today.

Jill and I at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens last spring.

To my ever-loving girlfriend:

You deemed me “wickedly adorable”, and managed to deal with my special brand of insanity.  You managed to teach me how to smile, and gave me many chances to practice.  You might never realize just how much I grew as a person, all because you came into my life.

There were many ups and downs through the year just past, and there’s certain to be more in the years ahead.  But you managed to keep me steadfast and level headed — a level of comfort I have been missing for quite some time.  I think with you at my side, I might just be able to make it through whatever life throws at me.

Here’s to the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time.

Happy first anniversary, Jill.  I love you.

My relatively new Samsung HDTV and Playstation 3 has received some use, though certainly not to their full potential.  While I didn’t go crazy and spend way outside my budget for either piece, I sure wasn’t getting my money’s worth out of them.  Add to that the stacks of DVDs that I still haven’t watched years after getting them — taking up valuable real estate in my cluttered little apartment — and I started to get downright depressed with the situation.

You already know the solution to this problem

While watching a DVD has historically been a once in a blue moon kind of activity, you’ll find my TiVo constantly cleaned out of shows.  When everything is just a few clicks away on the remote, it’s quite easy to get sucked into watching more and more.  For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea of ripping all my DVDs onto my computer, which would not only give me easier access to the videos themselves, but would allow me to pack up the discs and shove them in the closet, right next to my CDs.

In fact, those CDs are the best example of what’s in store for this project.  Back at the beginning of the decade I was dealing with over 500 CDs.  No place to put them and I would only listen to a handful at a time.  When I started ripping my CDs onto my computer, how I dealt with music completely changed.  It honestly improved my quality of life.

With the TV, the PS3, and my iMac awash with ample storage space, I finally have the parts to try the same thing with my video collection.

Notes from the lab

While I have the hardware to try, it wasn’t until very recently that all the software needed to pull this off decided to straighten up and fly right.

Just like when I made the move from CDs to MP3s, I had to do a lot of experimenting to see what worked and what didn’t.  I tried a multitude of ripping programs, tweaking settings all the while.  In the end, I chose to go with two programs:  Roxio Toast and Handbrake.

Why two?  While Roxio is the easier one to work with, it’s set to recognize the CSS encryption the studios put on some of their discs, and won’t rip them.  Considering I paid about $20 a pop for each of those discs, that really pisses me off.  Thanks, Hollywood!  I feel so loved right now.

That’s where Handbrake comes in.  Couple it with VLC on your Mac and those CSS encrypted discs become an open book.  Its almost enough to make me choose Handbrake outright.  But while the program gives you many more options — almost too many — its user interface leaves a lot to be desired.

Considering how many discs I’m going to have to go through and how long each of them is going to take to rip, a simplified interface is key — if for no other reason than my personal sanity.

A shaky bridge gets solidified

Once you have the videos, you still need to get them from one place to another.  On the Mac to PS3 front,  this is handled by Nullriver’s MediaLink: a preference panel software that bridges the gap and exposes your computer’s file system to the PS3.

But while things worked fine with videos and podcasts I downloaded, it seemed like nothing that I ripped myself would play.  At most the video would play for a minute or two before an error screen would rear its ugly head.  I kept tweaking settings and re-ripping movies, but nothing I did seemed to make things any better

Then the MediaLink’s 1.7 update showed up.  Suddenly everything that the PS3 could play, did.  No network issues.  Everything was solid as granite.  That was my green light.

The saving graces and looking ahead

While this is no small task, it’s certainly not as large as my CD project — 500 discs versus 160, at most.  I’ll also be aided by the fact that a recently purchased MacBook has given me a second machine with enough horsepower to rip discs, and I can it with me to work so I can take care of some there.  This will speed things up considerably.

And once I’m done with all of that, I have a stack of old VHS tapes I’d like to try and import.  Lets just say the research has already begun on that front.

Viva la digital!

Usually when things go dead up here its because things have gotten too busy in the real world.  But for once, the level of inactivity on my blog was actually doing a good job of mirroring the level inactivity in my life. Considering my last words here revealed I was out looking for work, you’d think that would be a horrible, terrible fact.

The anti-search job search

In a manner of hours of going live with my updated portfolio and writing about it here, a former Lime alumnus contacted me about a job opportunity.  After a relatively quick interview I accepted a design position at WePlay, a startup focusing on social networking for youth sport leagues.  This past Monday was my first day, and so far, so good.  Certainly refreshing to be diving into a new project, that’s for sure.

To be honest, I was always confident that my search would be short once I started looking for full time employment.  But I thought I would at least have to open up craigslist at least once or twice.  Seriously, it was a no-hunt job hunt.

Catching up on my slacking

I did have some freelance work to keep myself occupied, but I also had serious amounts of down time that I used to catch up on slacking off.  I slept strange hours.  I ventured on day trips when the rest of the world was chained to their desks.  I watch many movies and caught up on a lot of gaming.  Yep, the good life to be sure.  If not for those nagging human needs of shelter and sustenance, and the need of money to pay for such tripe things.

And if pigs could fly, blah blah blah.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to readjust myself to reality.

I totally endorse the show that this clip makes fun of.  What’s more, I heard about this from the very show in question.  Keith Olbermann is good for television, I say. And humor is good for me.

One of the pictures posted on ze frank's "From 52 to 48 with Love"

Yes, it was historic.  The largest number of registered voters to cast their ballot in an election since JFK in ’60.  Historic enough that the New York Times broke out the super-sized font for the front page headline for only the 4th time in history.  It will be a moment in the history of our nation that we will tell our children and grand-children about.

Did you enjoy that?  Good, because that’s over now.

It’s time for the new administration to get to work, and for the rest of us to act like civilized adults and treat each other with respect and — dare I say, affection?  That’s why seeing things like ze frank’s From 52 to 48 With Love makes me smile.  It’s a place where of the divide send messages to everyone in photos like the one above.

Sometimes my fellow citizens make me smile for all the right reasons.

PhotoShop in Real Life

Love this ad idea that someone came up with for advertising PhotoShop in Indonesia.  Boing Boing came across the photoset on Flickr.

A truer view of this "red" and "blue" country of ours. Looks purple to me.

Two plus years to find ourselves a new leader of the free world, and I feel the whole process can be summed up into three main points and a handful of supporting links:

• Fatigue, as distilled by This. Fucking. Election.
• History, as shown in these screencaps of news site home pages (also here).
• Reality, as displayed in Mark Newman’s map above (via Daring Fireball).

It’s this last point of the electoral reality that I’m most interested in.  That map up there shows a country far more mixed than the partisan bickering we’ve watched for at least the last 16 years has indicated, even if it is a shade bluer in some parts than it was in ’04.

Should be interesting to see how the incoming administration works towards reflecting the nation they represent in their august body.  You can follow along by checking out their transition site at Change.gov.

Just 75 days until inauguration day.

Video of Obama adressing the nation as President-elect from last night.  Simply awe inspiring.  I will gladly admit that I got teary eyed multiple times as I sat and listened to it.  Seriously, is this all happening?  I didn’t fall into an episode of The West Wing, did I?

Now, finally, the waiting starts to end.  Numbers are posted on the myriad of screens and are subsequently dissected by talking heads while I sit glued in place like a child keeping lookout for Santa on Christmas Eve.  My mood is cautiously optimistic that the returns will favor my candidate, unlike the last time I performed this ritual four years ago.

As it happens, I’m not the only one feeling this way.  It was a major undercurrent to my day at the Future of Web Design conference today, with speakers and others constantly alluding to it.  Yet no one would utter names for fear of putting the jinx on them — more realistically for the sake of courtesy and good taste, but I like to let my mind wander.

Myself, I sit here cautiously optimistic — just like in 2004.  Unlike ’04, this time I had the pleasure of voting for my first choice and not the lesser of two bad choices.  Since I first heard him speak, I knew I wanted to see him at this precipice.  I may not be religious, but I have faith in this man and his abilities.  What’s more, I have faith in his potential to be a truly great President.  I can now imagine how those who voted for JFK must have felt.

Just a few more hours to hope. One way or the other, a change is coming. We’re at the end of the beginning.

Of course, its also ill timed because this Monday coming up six month anniversary with Jill, and I want to be able to enjoy that with her. Yes, my first real long-term relationship, for those keeping score. On top of that, it’s kept me from being able to work this week, which just made me feel like quite the lazy bum (along with a personal side project).

Fingers crossed that things clear up with my bit of rest this evening.

It may not seem like it, but beneath the cold, dark, eventless fallow periods around here — my golden silences, if you will — things still do stir. Ideas percolate. Events come. Memories arrive. Days go. Life leaves. Eternity follows….

Yes, I’m alive and well.

Spring cleaning led me to a scrap of paper upon which I had franticlly scribbled the name of an album and band, in which order I could not initially determine.  A Google search or two later and I was viewing the above video — “Atlas” — by math rock outfit Battles.

The visuals alone would have been enough to make the band’s name stick in my mind, but the song also managed to cut a groove into my sub-conscious.  The subsequent search for the album ”Mirrored” left me waiting for a CD from Amazon — a rare occurrence for me days, what with the plethora of online music stores.

Anyway, good things come to those who wait.  The entire album is just sick!  Avant-garde sounds pour forth from their instruments in all their complexity.  Too much.  The fact that the former drummer from Helmet is part of the mix is just the topper for me.

As Ze Frank pointed out, “Isabella Rossellini is a genius”.  I dare you to go watch some of these Green Porno shorts and not laugh, wince, and learn something.