it pains me to say this, but i hate disney! eisner…

it pains me to say this, but i hate disney! eisner, get the fuck out! you’ve turned the beloved bastion of imagination into a cauldron of marketing mayhem and evil politically correct spew. those 2 dvds i mentioned below? they’re not only shrink wrapped, but also taped on all 3 sides of the case.




no, putting that annoying tape on one side won’t do it. i guess people stealing dvds through shrink wrap and just one taped side of the case must be a real problem. so just in case they managed to inconspicuously slice through the shrink wrap and open the case just enough AND pop the dvd off the spindle-lock from hell, future dvd burglars would be foiled by the brilliant disney scheme of adding tape to every single side of the dvd case! and you know what else they do to ‘disney dvds’? they make you sit through about 5 min of previews to the little mermaid 2 and other crappy straight to video money making schemes bred out of a lack of creativity. the little mermaid 2 – return to the sea?! come on! of course, i’m brilliant and fast forwarded through the previews, but you know there are thousands of nitwits who can barely work the dvd player, let alone fast forward through the previews just to get to the menu. fuck you eisner! fuck you and your 48 hour dvd and your short sighted dismissal of the biggest pool of talent disney’s seen since walt’s death, pixar. damn, i’m bitter.

as i said the other day, cindy gives the best gift…

as i said the other day, cindy gives the best gifts. b/c i was sick, she gave me part of my anniversary gift early – finding nemo and the three caballeros on dvd. if you’ve never seen the three caballeros, i suggest you see it. it is, alongside fantasia, one of disney’s most creative animated movies. apparently, it was the first movie to combine animation and live action. there’s no real plot per se, just random animated stories tied together by donald duck’s horny nature (the theme is latin america in all its stereotyped glory, and the beautiful latin ladies that inhabit its beaches).

my friend brian has spent the last several weeks bringing me up to speed on building flash sites. i revamped the back end of prefablab’s site last week to make it load more efficiently, and just learned how to add the loading progress indicator. apparently the way it works is different now that we’ve moved to flash mx 2004, so everything i was told didn’t actually work and we (brian) had to figure it out from scratch. it turns out, though, that barely anyone will ever see the progress bar b/c most of the site is pretty small in size and doesn’t take a long time to load.

prefablab

recuperate, or Segway?

i’m supposed to be in bed right now b/c lo and behold i’ve developed pneumonia. but that didn’t stop me from PICKING UP THE SEGWAY today!!!!! this thing is by far and away the coolest thing ever. it’s actually kind of like skiing – knees bent, relaxed, lean into the turns, any number of mom jokes will fit here…. also fun is the being on the receiving end of numerous gawks and exclamations: ‘that is so cool!’ ‘did you see that?’ ‘oh my..’. of course, every item has its detractors, and i also heard numerous laughs and ‘that’s so stupid’ and ‘what a dork’ comments. i think it was the helmet that drew the dork comments. but who’s the one on the segway, huh?! the people making those comments seemed to be the stupid undergrad frat boys who are jacking up their pickup trucks and busy trying to get their hats to look frayed and worn in. dumbass punks. you know these things go pretty quick – 12.5 mph may sound pretty slow on paper, but let me tell you – when you’re basically moving that fast while standing up straight, one fall will send you flying – and if you land on your head you’re kind of fucked. so, with that said, i’ll be riding this baby around for the next 16 days to publicize the segway on UT’s campus. i’m gonna really have a hard time parting w/ this thing on march10.

pictures of me doing my everydaythings on seggie will start posting tomorrow.

oh yeah – learn how to regain your virginity. only master web surfers can find good stuff like this.

ok, i didn’t jinx the segway thing cause I’M GETTI…

ok, i didn’t jinx the segway thing cause I’M GETTING THE SEGWAY thing!!! woohoo!!!! i just got an email today from Segway HT America, and i’m getting my segway tuesday at 5p!! friggin awesome! i’m the coolest cat on the block! unfortunately, i hear it’s supposed to rain all week, so riding the segway may be a bit of a pain.

on another note, today would mark my seven – that’s right 7 – year anniversary to my girlfriend. seven years is a long time you may say. i would reply that you are right. we met second semester of our freshman year at Emory, and excluding some bumps along the ride for time off (hey, we were young and needed some space), things are pretty darn good right about now. it sucks that we’re both in school and in the middle of hectic schedules right now, so we’re putting off celebrating till spring break when we go to NY. her birthday is tomorrow (lucky me – valentine/hallmark day, anniversary, birthday – all within 1.5 wks) so we’ll celebrate that tonite. i got her birthday present yesterday, but i can’t say what it is yet lest she read this and find out early, but i really hope she likes it. i’m pretty sure she will. my gifts to her can’t hold a candle to her gifts, though – she is the queen of gift giving. i’ve never received better gifts than the ones she gets me. fleece bathrobe w/ a big fat superman insignia embroidered on the back is all i have to say – now that’s a girl you don’t want to let go.

as i’ve said many times, the schick quattro shaver…

as i’ve said many times, the schick quattro shaver is ridiculous. 4 fucking blades? come on! “the new schick quattro! we’ll shave you right to the skull so you don’t need to worry about stubble ever again! 5’oclock shadow? psshh! the sun will shine right through your jawbone!”

finally, someone agrees with me about this.

i’m probably going to jinx this by writing about i…

i’m probably going to jinx this by writing about it before anything is set in stone, but I’M GETTING A SEGWAY! back in september, an article ran in the Daily Texan about the Segway scooter, and how Segway HT America was going to open a store in Austin, and was going to give Segways to about a dozen UT students for a few wks – free publicity for them, fun toy for students. notice i say toy – i think segways can be amazing vehicles in cities to reduce traffic congestion and pollution, but basically just cities. additionally, the price has to come waaaay down to even be feasible – right now it costs almost the same as a cheap car. that’s crazy. anyway, there was no contact info in the article, so i tracked them down and called a bunch of times, and then emailed them a big ol’ email why i should be one of the students given a segway. first of all, i’m a gadget geek. second of all, i’m in the architecture school, which is the first building to greet you when walking onto the west mall, one of the main entrances to campus. third, i live about a 15 minute walk away from school, and either walk, ride my bike, or take the bus to school. my route is to either go down Speedway and then cut through campus, or go down Guadalupe and then up the west mall. both routes are highly trafficked (the spelling is correct, i checked) and would therefore give Segway all the publicity they want. fourth, i work crazy hours at school, so they can count on the Segway being locked up outside the school’s front door all day, for the entire university to see. i’ll go to school at 9a and leave anywhere from 4p to 4a. the average time would have to be around 9-10p, though. anyway, i’m an ideal candidate for riding this thing around. unfortunately, they never called.

until today. i was on the phone w/ my girlfriend when a houston area code blinked on call waiting. i let it go to voicemail b/c i had no idea who it was, and i was on the phone. man, what a surprise when i listened to the message: “hi, this is _____ from Segway HT America. you are the coolest person ever, and we want you to ride a segway around for free! we’ll even throw in some bikini models b/c you’re friggin awesome! call us back at 713-555-1234.” well, what – a – surprise! so i called _____ back, and he made sure i was still interested – though i told him i couldn’t accept the bikini models b/c i have a girlfriend who i love dearly, and who would surely take issue w/ the additional ladies, lovely as they may be. he told me he’d give her a segway too if i could have the models ride w/ me – it’s an image thing they’re trying to push: people riding segways will pick up hot models easily. they figure w/ a pitch like that, all the rich kids at the university will snatch up segways. i already snagged myself a hot girlfriend, but hey, i’m just helping to sell their product, so i agreed. He said he’d give her a few models, too.

anyway, to sum it all up, _____ from Segway HT America is going to call me back tomorrow to go over some final details, and i may be riding a segway by this weekend! i’ll be the coolest cat in town, baby! yeah!!

buy your very own segway scooter!

it’s been a long time since the last update. i’m a…

it’s been a long time since the last update. i’m an irresponsible prick.

ok, updates on the past month and a half will have to wait for another time as i’m already enveloped in this semester’s work. i’m really enjoying classes, but i need to rant on my current studio project.

we started w/ a very simple project: draw a canonical house, a house as a child (an American child) would draw it. peaked roof, front door, a window or two, a chimney. fine. now make that house, in a matter of 4 frames, transform it into something else. not something else entirely, but show the structure changing in some way, and you can only focus on one type of transformation. a wall rotates as if on hinges, or the house breakes apart as if it were sliced into pieces of bread, or it rises on stilts, etc. fine. now do another one w/ a completely different transformation. fine. now take those two, and set them up in a matrix – one transformation along the x-axis, and the other along the y-axis. now fill in the remaining nine boxes with combinations of the 2 transformations, resulting in one doubly transformed house in the lower right corner. still fine, that was kind of cool.

now, develop a system of proportions, like the Ancient Greek rule of the Golden Rectangle which supposedly informed the design of the Parthenon. derive a plan for the canonical house (developed earlier), as well as 2 elevations and a section. while developing my system of proportions, i realized 3 things:

1. i wish i knew math a whole lot better, b/c it’s absolutely incredible to see the beauty inherent in mathematical relationships.

2. i likely am not understanding the concept of this system to the extent i need to. regardless, i forge ahead, developing a system based on a circle w/ a radius of rad-2. it’s beautiful, but what i realize while developing this system is:

3. systems of proportions tend not so much to be methods for deriving forms from mathematics and ‘nature’ as justification for creating those forms in the first place. hmmm, a window would go nicely here – but it must fit there logically. oh look! a 90 degree angle w/ this line here will fall roughly in the vicinity of where i want the window to be! well, if the math shows a relationship, no matter how obscure, well then, it must be fate. Pure and beautiful, and deemed fit by God Almighty, for His laws in their essential form are mathematics, and mathematics can be found in Nature, and all is incredible. Yay Natural Philosphy and Neo-classicism! whoop-dee-friggin doo.