Brand new, just for you. I have been working on this redesign for longer than I care to mention (most of that time being me fiddling with the portfolio section.

The new design is intended to be very clean, and very easy to redesign, as it is completely controlled via CSS. Long explanation short, Cascading Style Sheets are a way to “style” HTML from a central point, and you can control a LOT of stuff, including font size, line spacing, block positioning, colors, overlapping, nerd nerd, nerd nerd nerd, nerd. In any case, to give you an idea of the “power of CSS”, I suggest you take a look at CSS Zen Garden, which is a showcase of a single HTML page, but with different style sheets submitted by different people. Each stylesheet radically redesigns the HTML, but keeps the content the same.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the new design, and let me know what you think!

wow. it’s been 4 years (as of a couple of days ago) of thelocust.org. just thought i’d drop that little note.

So my CapitalOne VISA card kept getting declined in the past couple of days (I don’t use it often, you see). The first thing that failed was an Internet purchase — so I thought maybe it was a faulty cart or something, but then I tried using it at a brick-and-mortar joint — no luck there, either! Go home, called CapitalOne, and they asked me if I had attempted charging $800 and $500 worth of stuff from Nordstrom’s Direct. I’m not a Nordstrom’s kind of guy, and Kelly doesn’t use this card, so I’d have to say that I certainly didn’t try to charge that sort of stuff.

The cool thing was that the charges never actually posted to my account — they were only authorized, and then CapitalOne blocked the actual charges, and locked my account. So, maybe all those commercials with the pirates and barbarians and such actually are somewhat true. It didn’t take but 10 minutes to get my account closed and a new one opened, but it will take 7-10 business days for me to get a new card. Ah well, I’m just happy I didn’t have to go through all the business of disputing charges and such.

…i apologize to you, Led Zeppelin. i had forgotten the rock that you brought by not listening to you in some time.

Just listen to the rhythm seciton on “Celebration Day” and tell me that John Bonham wasn’t the greatest rock drummer of his day and John Paul Jones the greatest rock bassist of his day — perhaps only matched by Keith Moon and John Entwistle from the Who.

I have made a short film entitled “the transformation of the dirtiest of hippies”. you may view it, if you’d like:

Smaller (181k)

Bigger (681k)

enjoy.

…so, the other day I decided to whip my MP3 collection back into shape with a better organization and naming convention, and to put good ID3 (v1 and v2) tags into them. The organization/naming convention I chose is as follows:

Artist/

 Album/

  Artist – Album – Track# – Title.mp3

Various Artists/Compilation/Soundtrack albums pose a different problem, so this file-level naming convention is a bit different:

Album – Track # – Artist – Title.mp3

I think that works out well. Any ideas?

I haven’t posted in terribly too long, but it’s been the holiday season, and I’ve been busy with family and work and some freelance stuff, and of course flying RC sailplanes! I just recented discovered slope soaring, and have had a blast the last two weekends down at the Frankfort slope.

I’m going to get a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 40 gig MP3 player for Christmas, and I’m psyched! My nearly 4 year obsession with portable jukeboxery come to fruition!

Things coming up include my and Kelly’s Christmas Day Oasis at our house, and Gary returns from Japan for a short while, and I think I’ll HOPEFULLY be launching the newly redesigned thelocust.org soon. Don’t hold your breath, please.

Well, we’re back from vacation (as of late Saturday night), and all is well! I must give propers where propers are due, so big thanks to Aunt Cindy, Uncle John and Uncle Joe for being great hosts in Roanoke, Chuck and Danielle for putting us up in Baltimore, and Patience for putting us up on extremely short notice in Cape Cod! Also, I can’t recommend the house-sitting services of Hunter enough! Dude mowed our lawn! Awesome.

I’ll be posting our travelogues here soon — so keep an eye out. Sorry we didn’t have a day-by-day travelogue, but the Internet connections were suspect or non-existant in many places, and more often than not, I was really tired!

Finally, I’ve uploaded the remaining 4 or 5 days worth of photos into the Noreastah Gallery. Check ‘em out. If you’d like to jump to a gallery quickly, here are the links:

Friday, September 19th 2003
(Louisville, KY to Roanoke, VA)

Saturday, September 20th 2003
(Roanoke, VA)

Monday, September 22nd 2003
(Baltimore, MD to Cooperstown, NY)

Tuesday, September 23rd 2003 (Cooperstown, NY to Cape Cod, MA)

Wednesday, September 24th (Cape Cod, MA to Burlington, VT, with stops in Plymouth and Boston)

Thursday, September 25th 2003 (Burlington, VT to Utica, NY)

Friday, September 26th 2003 (Utica, NY to Cleveland, OH, with a stop at Niagara Falls)
Saturday, September 27th 2003
(Cleveland, OH to Louisville, KY, with a stop in Dayton)

hey all! just wanted to give you a heads up on where we’ve been for the last couple of days. well, we stayed with patience in cape cod on tuesday, then went to plymouth and then boston, through concord, new hampshire, and then eventually up to burlington vermont on wednesday, then kelly’s car decided it need to have it’s engine checked, so we sat around for about 5 hours in burlington, then went and got some ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s in Stowe, Vermont, and then we headed over the beautiful Vermont mountains and into New York state on Thursday! So, here it is Friday, and we’re headed to Niagara Falls and onto Cleveland! We’ll probably be home late Saturday or early Sunday.

I must give a big shout out to all the folks who put us up on the first legs of our trips — especially Patience, on account of her inviting us on really short notice!

The internet connections ’round these parts haven’t been so great, so you’ll have to wait for more pictures and such… but they have been taken, and full accounts of our travels will be forthcoming.

BTW, i’ve just posted day four’s gallery, which in layman’s terms is monday from roanoke, VA to baltimore, MD. We didn’t take any photos on Sunday. While you’re at it, check out all the Noreastah galleries.

…but you can check out the Noreastah’ Gallery! Currently only Friday and Saturday — more coming. I’d do it now, but I’m currently stealing bandwidth from some unfortunate soul with an open wireless access point. Thanks anonymous rube! Off to Cooperstown this AM! Then up to Patience’s pad in Yarmouth Port, MA. Wooo! All is well.