On Christmas and writing my website

On Christmas

I went Christmas shopping last night. That was an experience. I haven't done that in ages, and man it feels so hypocritical. I don't like it when people buy me stuff. It's awesome when my friends drop by or call me up to do stuff. I even enjoy it when a friend treats me to a burger on the rare occasion. But when it comes to possessions, if I want it, I'll buy it. I wouldn't want any of my friends wandering around a shopping center like some sort of adventure explorer, vainly searching for that one reasonably priced object that I might actually like. Perhaps that's why I'm not a terribly big fan of doing the shopping myself.

And who are you supposed to get gifts for? Everyone? That's a lot of money and time that I don't have. Nobody? Tempting . . . . but I'm trying to adapt to social conventions. I already spit on too many of them. Some people? Who do I pick? Is this like being picked for a sports team in elementary school? I always got picked last. I guess that means no presents for me. No random object gifts to fill the overflowing corners of my apartment. I win?

Of course, if you have already gotten me a present, I'm very grateful. As long as it's cool. And lasers are always cool. Hint. Hint.

Seriously, though. Next year, I'm going for the simple solution: bread or dinner, you choose. Choose bread and I'll make you a Christmas loaf. It's a variation of the Christmas bread that my grandmother made, and its damn tasty. If you don't want the bread, you're invited to dinner. Everyone makes the dinner and a good time is had by all. That's what Christmas will be next year, bread or dinner.

On website writing

For those of you who are considering making your own website, learn from my mistakes. If you don't know how already, don't just jump into it. Use one of the millions of services to make your website for you. Find that friend who can do the work and butter them up. Import some monkey servants and get them to learn this crap. It's a lot of work and Murphy's law kicks into overdrive.

Yesterday was a pretty prime example. I had to restart the project for the third time which was exactly as motivating as it sounds. It's a short sprint forward and a rapid bungee ride back. The only thing that can be done is to pick yourself up and ask what you have learned from this experience. So far, I've learned that anyone involved in writing computer code and script must be AWESOME at "Where's Waldo". Seriously, you have to go through this stuff with a fine tooth comb. After a couple of hours of staring at lines of HTML, they start melting together in a manner that Dali would envy.

Hopefully, I'll have this thing completed by this evening. Otherwise I'm reverting to my more primal instincts and setting fire to something.

Writing a website

What started as a simple school project has become an all-consuming problem. The original assignment was to make a website. The teacher assumed that we would use something like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to do the bulk of the work. That would be the easy way. That would be the way of the rational person. That would not be my way.

So I've started learning how HTML, and CSS, and Javascript work. These are the scripting languages that make webpages so shiny today. I remember back in the days of yore when webpages were basically just a bunch of text and links that were jumbled together. None of this fancy-pantsy graphics stuff. It was brute information and long loading times. Now it's all about design, layout, menu tabs, pretty pictures, and advertisements that you can't shut up.

Such is the price of progress I suppose.

Learning this stuff is a pain. I content myself with the hope that I'm learning something that I'll be able to apply in the future. The internet is not going away, so the more comfortable I become with the parts of it, the better. It is, however, a headache and far less tempting that going out and playing in the snow.

Right, back to work.
Progress will be posted when it is achieved!