Matt Lyon

Thanks to my photographic memory, I was able to notice that two different doctors had two different charts “mapping” the back of what was supposed to be my eyes had what appeared to be wildly different data (afaict they were presented the same).

So I hunted down an optemologist and paid to get a professionals’ opinion. Which was: I’m far from an excellent candidate for LASIK, my corneas are way too thin.

I suggest other people do the same. These are your eyes we’re talking about here.

it just ain’t gonna happen. not unless the web dies too.

the closest thing on earth you’ll find to a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

photoshop is one of those rare and absolutely amazing tools whose limits of capabilities rarely stop inside the bounds of your imagination.

I’ve been using photoshop for well over a decade at this point and I still find myself discovering new things I can do with it.

I just wish that they’d cut back on the marketing feature bloat that has plagued the past two releases.

Greg Storey says it all

Then again, I’m a voracious reader, and I spend a lot of time on airplanes.

But it’s not ready for public consumption. Not yet.

I’ve learned a lot, and am now going to write my version of a site publishing system, that will be open source.

Trust me on this.

Most of it is a psychological thing.

Really.

There are generally so many people running that unless you’re really a straggler, you’ll probably never be in any real danger.

Of course, it’s still an adrenaline rush, and you get to say, “I ran with the bulls” and reminisce about your participation in the San Fermines…

OK, maybe not.

I’ve replaced my avatar here with a photo of me wearing the new glasses (also attached), taken with my hew Holga camera (another one of my ‘things’).

I got them from 39dollarglasses and recommend them. Free shipping if you go through this coupon

I paid extra for the Anti-glare reflection, but consider that well worth it. All in all, not bad for $65, especially considering my last pair of wireframes set me back $400 or so.

Circadiana

I have always worn wireframes, so getting a plastic “buddy holly” style pair will be quite a departure for me. They’re supposed to arrive within a week or two.

After spending a few weeks around people with impossibly straight necks, even if they’re taller than me (I’m 6’4” and use that as an excuse for my slouching), and I start thinking, wow.

I think I will start doing yoga, when I can afford to go.

Gee, I hate people, and then wonder why I’m lonely.

Yeah, life is good.

when Apple stops giving me good reasons to upgrade.

Seriously, Panther is one of the nicest operating systems, ever, and Tiger looks to king that.

So, I happen to be friends with the couple that runs a local camera store. I was one of their first customers when they opened 8 years ago, and they bought the first painting I ever sold.

I was talking to them the other day, and offhandedly mentioned the Lomo/Holga stuff, and he replied, “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to carry their stuff for some time, I’ll look into it.”

So they’ve gotten setup as a wholesaler for Lomo stuff, and are offering me 10% above wholesale on any of the lomo stuff I want. Awesome!

I am very deeply introverted. Sometimes, I set aside days where I don’t talk at all, not even to myself or my cat.

Part of the problem is that I find a lot of people boring and/or tedious, and have gotten progressively worse in even listening to other people’s small talk, or even their roundabout ways of passing on important information:

Person A: So, I gotta tell you, you remember yadda yadda?
Me: Yeah, what about it?
Person A: Well, I was blah blah blah blah blah blah
Me: And?
Person A: So, it just so happened that blah blah blah blah blah
Me: Aaand?
Person A: You see, with the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Me: AAAAANNNND?
Person A: So I called so-and-so, and blah blah blah blah blah
Me (Highly irritated at this point): I’m sorry, but what’s your point?
Person A: Oh! Um, well, I have this case of canned cat food that I don’t need, and thought your cat might appreciate it!

Sadly, this is how most of my conversations go. You can imagine what it does for my small talk.

I have no problem with the actual running part. Even when I haven’t run for over a year, I can still go out and run three miles, no problem. Yes, I know I’m lucky to have such a great cardiovascular system.

It’s everything that surrounds it I have problems with.

The main problem I have is that after I’ve been running for a few weeks, I get shin splints. These suck. I’ve tried everything that’s been recommended to me: new shoes, better engineered socks, stretching, changing my running technique, but nothing seems to help.

Every time I get shin splints, I have to take at least a week or two off from running, and by that point, I’ve got motivation problems.

When I first started experimenting with the web in 1995, we had notepad. And perl. I took it upon myself to learn a bit of each. Three years later, when the web started really taking off, I found I had better things to do than keep track of the moster table nests you had to use in those days to make a page work, and full-blown CMSs weren’t really viable, so you tended to update an entire site manually.

What a pain in the ass.

All of you who are dealing with templates for CMSs and CSS for the first are so friggin lucky. Really. You have no idea.

If I were to offer one piece of advice, it would be this: Get a good text editor. I have a Mac, and I use TextMate ... it does ‘folding’, syntax highlighting for both CSS and HTML, and has some neat auto-complete features to help automate the tedious bits.

“Be Prepared”

If you’re seriously going to take a stab at this, you need to realize two things if you want to succeed:

1) Your fledgling business will consume all of your available time until it can sustain itself.
2) You’ll need enough money set aside to live on during #1, because it will probably be a while before you can really afford to pay yourself.

Of course, there are exceptions, but don’t count on being one.

That said, being your own boss rules.

Good luck.