cdcstudios.com | portfolio v8.1 » Seattle

IE7 1 Moofx/Scriptaculous 0

Chris — Thu, 25 May 2006 08:13:55 +0000

So as I’ve been tinkering with IE7 beta and seeing how well it works (wow ma! Just like 2004!!!) I was shocked, saddened, dismayed to see it rendering both a few scriptaculous pages I’m working on as well as all of my moofx plugins with shiny spiffy doubled text.

From what I have been able to gather via diligent research (googling alot) is that when the slide/accordion/fade effects trigger IE 7 (and sometimes 6) are doubling the text. Supposedly a quick and dirty fix (hack) is to simply set a background color for the element being affected however a. that’s a bit difficult when working with faux column based sites and b. not very elegant of a solution.

Obviously this is one of those situations where either Microsoft’s bug team will go “oh hey we screwed up, sorry about that” since IE7 is still a “beta” product or else as usual and as we all expect from them, we develop a workaround and spend a few more years decrying the crap that Redmond ships. I’m betting on the latter but the hopeful part of me sees a little hope for IE being fixed.

As soon as I can come up with a clean workaround that doesn’t interfere with faux columns I’ll post updated versions of all 3 moofx plugins. I might even take the opportunity to polish up the options panel versions and maybe even release the “all-in-one multiplug” version.

Until I get that done though I head up to Seattle for Folklife and some excellent hippylike fun in the sun. Oh and in other news, Wednesday morning Zoe and I got to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time!!! The Midwife said Zoe’s about 12 weeks along and we can expect a baby around December 3rd. Woohoo!

Only 2 months left until we get the first ultrasound (and expect me to post it here as soon as I get my hands on it.

Anyhow have a great weekend and catch ya on the flipside!

Cleartype sucks Nice post title eh? Well it’s how I really feel...
Moopost After writing quite a few moo.fx plugins over the last...
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Network Neutrality (or sports team economics hits the net)

Chris — Tue, 23 May 2006 16:27:29 +0000

So I’ve been following the Network Neutrality debate pretty closely hoping that for once Congress could/would manage to look at technology in a way that didn’t involve buying into whatever weird logic (RIAA suing customers) the corporations brought to the debate. I’m happy to report that so far the government appears to be siding with the consumers. For those of you not familiar (all 2 of you) with the current Network Neutrality debate it basically goes like this: The bandwidth providers want to charge certain bandwidth users extra money if they use a lot of bandwidth or bandwidth of a certain type.

What it really boils down to is the fact that much like the RIAA or MPAA instead of joining WITH the companies using this bandwidth to offer amazing new technology and applications is the Telco’s want to get continually paid for upgrades they’d already planned to do that will make their backbones cheaper in the longrun.

For those of you in the Pacific Northwest you’re familiar with this business model thanks to Starbucks founder Howard Shultz. Shultz demanded that Seattle taxpayers pay for a new arena for the Sonics or he’d move the team. Apparently the sports team economics of “taxpayer money subsidizes my massively profitable business so I can then charge taxpayers more for tickets” is now being examined by the Telcos.

Why should Comcast or Verizon spend money to increase their profitability when they can just have the consumers pay for the upgrades?

On the one hand the corporate arguments do make a little bit of sense: Some internet companies are using massive amounts of bandwidth (YouTube, Google Video etc) but they are free to consumers. However with a closer look we see that with Telcos being able to make companies pay to use bandwidth free sites like those mentioned above will likely go to a pay model and we’re suddenly right back where we were in the late 90′s.

This debate has brought together the far right and far left in totally new ways as well as given us the great bizarre quotes from PR hacks in the industry; like the Verizon Exec who implied that by charging high bandwidth users more money that small “garage” developers would have a greater ability to create that killer app. So a garage developer could make a “killer app” like basecamp or sidejobtrack that gets a massive amount of traffic and pay for it how exactly? With great traffic comes great bandwidth responsibility.

Get off it Telcos. If you don’t like your own business model get out of the business. Don’t shift your inability to want to part with a buck to consumers (i.e. anyone who pays you for your service) it is not our job to subsidize you. Corporations don’t deserve welfare (amtrak, airlines and subsidized farmers this includes you as well). Don’t let Congress allow the FCC to drop the ball on communications regulating yet again.

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Candlelight Vigil for Capitol Hill Tragedy

Chris — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 11:22:19 +0000

Zoe and I arrived at around 6:30 and started lighting candles. Shortly after we started lighting candles some more people showed up and everyone was friendly and compassionate (as usual for the scene). Also many of the reporters wanted to talk to us and we all took a turn talking. One thing we all said in common was that the Seattle rave scene is about community and being brothers and sisters to each other (komo news aired a very tiny clip of me saying just that actually). Anytime they (they being the two reporters most eagerly trying to spin this into “DRUGS!”) asked questions regarding drug use in the scene, we answered some people do but are usually quickly removed from the party by security. This wasn’t about raves, ravers or drugs. It was some psycho with too many guns.

All in all the vigil went great until around 11, neighbors bought a pizza for us, brought a case of water and blankets over for those of us that arrived early enough to get rained on. The media got a great example of the love and respect we all have for each other and saw that we’re friendly normal people.

Tragically at 11 people started showing up putting beer and liquor bottles next to the candles and being loud and acting more like they were at a party then being there to show support for their lost friends and to come together in this incredibly sad event.

The 8 people I came down there with and I all felt the vibe go from a showing love positive sort of time to a point where after neighbors asked us to turn down the music, cries of “fuck them we lost friends” from some of the people who arrived later.

Considering how nice the neighbors had been and that they’re a very closeknit neighborhood who knew everyone that lived in that house the lack of respect from some of the people that showed up was heartbreaking. I grew up in the Portland scene and in the short time I’ve been in Seattle, I’ve grown to really love our scene. Seeing these people acting like idiots hurt me, my friends and didn’t show the best support for the senseless loss of some great people.

I’m not sure how people got the idea the vigil was going to be at the Spot but for those that showed up with us to mourn and rejoice the way those lives lost touched us you’re awesome.There a couple of photos posted via flickr from someone in the neighborhood who came out to show support along with all us you can find here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukeallen/

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Seven people shot dead in Capitol Hill shooting NorthwestTekno – Seven people shot dead in Capitol Hill shooting...
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Seven people shot dead in Capitol Hill shooting

Chris — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 00:46:49 +0000

NorthwestTekno – Seven people shot dead in Capitol Hill shooting

Some good people and at least 2 people that Zoe and I knew have been killed at an afterparty in Seattle. I’d advise avoiding what channels like Fox News are reporting since as usual it’s a heavy distortion of events. From what has been gathered from people actually there some psycho guy (ala high school shooting) went to an afterparty and shot the place up killing 7 (including himself) and wounding 2-3 others.

Zoe and I will be heading down to the scene to leave flowers and light some candles. If you are or know anyone in the rave scene give them a call and tell them how you feel about them and make sure they’re ok.

Peace.

Candlelight Vigil for Capitol Hill Tragedy Zoe and I arrived at around 6:30 and started lighting...
Help the families of those lost in Capitol Hill Over at Chickenhedlives.com are photos as well as a link...
Mitch Mitchell original drummer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience dead at 62 Mitch Mitchell, the last surviving member of legendary 1960s band...

Party down time!

Chris — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 00:19:44 +0000

All righty all you Seattlite party hounds. There’s a party tonight happening down at Chop Suey in honor of Ms. Tamara Weikel (djtamara) turning 30 years old. Those of you who know me know that I always speak highly of Tamara’s musical abilities and being all around righteous ~~babe~~ person should hop in your cars, cabs, carts or rollerblades and skedaddle down to Chop Suey at 9pm.

According to Sam Mickens in “The Stranger” (free Seattle weekly):

“SeattleÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s own OG DJ Tamara has already, at the near dawn of her third decade, enjoyed an artistic career of astonishing volume and ridiculous diversity. A voraciously busy club DJ, multimedia artist, improvising musician, and lots of other shiz, Tamara has devoted her young life to an insanely passionate embrace of performance and composition in a far-flung swath of modes and settings. Apropos to the hostessÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s free-range artistic involvements, this nightÃ¢â‚¬â€a massive party in celebration of the DJÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s 30th birthdayÃ¢â‚¬â€features modern soul, performance art, mashup DJs, electronic producers, free improvisers, and probably too much more to properly list. Co-headliner Reggie Watts has, like Tamara, managed a musical career that veers from the most pop-wielding, sweaty R&B to all stripes of experimental and improvised music.”

All in all seeing Tamara as well as Reggie Watts, Jacob London, KRNL.Panic, DJ Freddy King of Pants and the Degenerate Art Ensemble is going to be the event of the year if not the millenium so far (hyperbole is my strong suit).

Live(ish) photos from Tamara’s Party So these photos will soon be in a group run...
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Phototrip to Gasworks Park

Chris — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 05:41:46 +0000

Zoe and I spent a nice Sunday afternoon taking some shots down at one of my favorite places in Seattle: Gasworks Park. A nice picnic lunch and a well charged camera were packed and down we headed. When we got there we unpacked our lunch ate comfortably (ok it was really cold…stupid groundhog) and then started snapping pics of whatever caught our eye.

There’s a few extra pics from my original trip to Gasworks a couple of years ago but all in all we had a great day just enjoying the sunny weather and exploring a great old industrial park. If you’re in the Seattle area check it out.

Happy President’s Day weekend :D

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It’s nearly spring and time for some migratory action

Chris — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 22:46:21 +0000

So in honor of my move to Everett, my engagement to the greatest girl in the world and all other happy occasions I’ve decided to migrate this site away from the evil beasties at 1and1 (it was a good run guys but your control panel is a nasty behemoth of inefficiency and bad organization). I don’t expect to encounter too many problems but there may be an outage or two while I try and find my “absolute path’s I changed in the wordpress config to make everything work right on 1and1″ commentlist note. If that turns up (lost during the move) then I should be able to have everything working in no time flat. If for some reason I can’t I get to have the new site up a day or two while I hunt for changes in the umpteen trillion files and fix them. Yay!

This really reinforces the notion that keeping a online set of changes neatly organized is something I need to spend more time working on. Of course this is something I should have done but as they say hindsight is 20/20 and foresight is occasionally (in my case) horribly myopic.

Oh well add that to my list of belated new year’s resolutions.

In honor of my engagement here’s a promo code you can all use if you decide to sign up over at Dreamhost.

promocode: cdczoe

Enjoy and have some fun with a great host with a decent sense of humor, I’m off to spend the weekend spending more time with Zoe, eating some Sushi, going to Gasworks Park in Seattle and then checking out the Cascades drumcorps camp.

IE7 1 Moofx/Scriptaculous 0 So as I’ve been tinkering with IE7 beta and seeing...
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Moving time again

Chris — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 09:07:14 +0000

Well it’s only been 4 months or so since I moved but I think it is time to take the next step and to live somewhere that I can push myself a bit harder. So I’m in all liklihood moving to Seattle. I had toyed with the idea of moving to Portland but the design opportunities and shorter distance to my girlfriend will make things much happier on me. I hadn’t written about the girl much on here which I should probably try and rectify now.
Last summer my brain was in a bad place (literally no less). Right after I had my surgery to fix that I met a wonderful girl and got to know her a bit. After knowing each other a few months we ended up getting together. Hands down one of the best girlfriends I’ve ever had. Being this far away from her isn’t something I want and the opportunities avilable in Seattle plus closeness to volunteer with the Cascades is something really important to me. She makes me feel good about life and myself in ways I had forgotten.
Anyhow expect a long delay in any posts here while I prepare myself to move.

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Tamara Weikel’s tamaraweikel.com launched

Chris — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 08:48:53 +0000

After a few delays I’ve finally gotten the site finished. Tamara is a good friend and great person who does what she can to make sure the world is a better place. Not an easy person to label just a good quality humanist that is well worth knowing. Residing in Seattle, Tamara first came to my attention when she was on tour with Ani Difranco. Enjoying her unique dj’ing style I visited her website and selected her as a dj of the month for the now defunct cdcrecords. I also signed up for her newsletter which quickly showed just what a noble person she is. Earlier this year while in Seattle we went out to coffee and discussed making her a site with blog that was less about the persona of djtamara and more about Tamara Weikel. If you read the title you’ll see just what a varied person she is. But enough gushing about Tamara onto the info about the site creation.

It was a pleasure designing a site that she was happy with and that allowed her to be able to update the site regardless of where she is. Using the newest version of WordPress a variety of plugins and my trusty Powerbook I created this site to let her easily post to her blog as well as link to her favorite places. Integration with Falbum (as is also used here) keeps her photography right where you can see it best. I also added in a rather extensive links list using Nandini Doreswamy’s excellent Multilayered Fudge. In addition to that there’s also a mixed install of Sifr running, both a wordpress plugin version called Fancytitles and also a traditional Sifr installation. The photograph used in the header was a photo I took in Vancouver, British Columbia.
I’m quite happy with this site and am quite happy to have made the site for Tamara.

Give it a look and if you like the xhtml/css goodness let me know.

Tamaraweikel.com

Happy Holidays to you Tamara!

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On the Road. Drumcorps tour 2005

Chris — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:09:38 +0000

Well the first week of Seattle Cascades All Days are in the can and in that time the kids have done about as much work as you can possibly cram into 8 days. While they’ve dealt with rainouts and injuries (as the picture illustrates) we’re all hungry for success this year. It always surprises me that everyone always seems to work harder today than they ever have before. Ah the magical infinite energy of youth lol.

So far I personally have driven from beautiful rustic Mt. Angel, (which is home to the best Octoberfest in the country) up to Seattle and back in one day while picking up the souvie truck and switching vans. Also have done quite a few hospital runs in addition to driving all over the place collecting last minute props and supplies to ready the corps for the big tour. Only 2 days remain before we start out on the road. Next stop will be a quick one two punch to the northern California cities of Stockton and San Jose. After that some relaxing fun in the sun in Ashland Oregon and then back to our home stomping ground of the Pacific Northwest.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the art of the show performed for a big audience since the interaction between members and the audience always seems to result in a massive upswing in the confidence and performance energy. Nothing sounds quite as sweet as the screams of happy corps fans (note: the unhappy screams are usually due to unforseen circumstances like earthquakes and the walking dead; The walking dead thankfully are a very rare occurence) Also looking forward to seeing how we’re going to stack up against the competition since we already know we’re winners, for some reason DCI likes to tell us whether or not we’re right about it ;)

My brain has been overwhelmed a bit with new ideas for designs and much photographic goodness. When I have a chance I’ll be putting up a wallpaper based on the drumline and maybe brassline shortly thereafter. Regardless of all of that it’s been great fun so far and I’m looking forward to writing more as internet time becomes available.

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