Two years
It’s been two years since arriving in Rome. I don’t have a lot to say about that, but I thought I should acknowledge it in some way—so that’s that. Also, I wanted to share this, or keep it for myself, or something like that.
Title: I Miss Getting Lost Date: 06/28/07 I miss getting lost. I miss blending in. I miss being suspicious. I miss being a drifter with a camera in a strange town. I miss walking tough in a bad neighborhood, changing my gait and clutching my fist, becoming John Wayne for three blocks. I miss getting away with it. I miss sneaking in. I miss the infinite possibilities of Penn Station, the notion of picking up and using instinct, inspiration and a new pair of New Balance sneakers as a compass. I miss just making it. I miss being on top, and all the illusions that accompany it. I miss you, the crowd of bodies jostling for number one, the human race, the vantage enjoyed only by the vertical bi-ped, waiting in line for a ham sandwich, a bank check, a new passport. I miss feeling nervous and guilty about cops, confident their x-ray eyes could see in my pants pocket. Oh, the things I miss.
A message posted by a guy with Lou Gehrig’s disease named Patrick O’Brien for a foundation of the same name.
31st of May ‘10
Mon 12:55
learning
inspiration
a Navy man
The best part about my job is the people I meet. There is one older man in particular I feel compelled to write about. After spending just a few days in his company, I felt that this is the kind of person I want to be when I grow up. I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt this way before, even when I was much younger. I may have wanted a particular achievement or trait of someone I looked up to, but never in such an all-encompassing way.
I’m not very good at guessing ages, but he must have been in in his mid-to-late 60s. He was tall, but I could tell that he was even taller in his youth by the way his back curved into a slight hunch in his shoulders. He moved at a regular pace—never slow, but with purpose. You got the feeling that he knew exactly what he was doing at all times.
When he spoke, it was difficult not to listen. He had a pleasant voice, that rolled and rumbled from within him, the way it does with older people—just enough to suggest his age, but otherwise having all the power and energy of someone much younger. He was clear and articulate, and as confident in his spoken word as in his action, which served him well as an interpreter. Before he left, I told him that I admired him very much and hoped to be like him one day, though I couldn’t explain why at the moment. I don’t think I’ve ever been as honest and revealing before, but I could trust that he would understand. He explained that he was a Navy man. As the captain of a ship in the middle of the ocean, he had nobody to rely on but himself and God. He served for 19 years, and recalled them as the best years of his life. Without a hint of pride, he said that some of those who had served with him named their sons after him, and that it was a feeling he could not explain. If I had met this man sooner, I just might have joined the Navy.
That was about the only conversation I had with him. He thanked me for approaching him, which he must have taken as a compliment, and he greeted me at the end of the evening with a hug and a kiss on either cheek the way Italians do. He reminded me of my grandfather, a gentleman in every sense of the word.
26th of Nov ‘09
Thu 22:14
learning
Work & Play
In a little under two weeks, what began as ‘research’ for my next big project at work turned into this. I began testing layouts for a new website to be made for the organization I’m volunteering at, and I’m not sure at what point exactly I stopped sleeping and shaving. It definitely wasn’t on my list of things to do, and I actually thought I was done with the web for a while. Regardless, it’s here now, hopefully unchanged for a long long time. I’ve learned a lot in the process, and I’ll get to that in later posts, but for now I just want to share some of the resources I’ve used. I want to make it clear that much of this is all new for me, and the result you see here is thanks to a ton of people answering questions, posting guides, and otherwise holding my hand the entire way.
First, the basic structure that sparked my interest in the first place, is found at Typogridphy. The code and css is free, written by an eighteen year-old from the UK. His mark-up is so clean and clear, that even I could understand enough to alter it to my needs. A feature that really intrigued me about Typogridphy, that I wasn’t able to resolve in the end for this site, was ‘creating vertical rhythm.’ Basically it means trying to achieve a baseline whereby everything on the page aligns. I ended up giving up on that after the first week, because I just couldn’t get the math to work. If I knew a week ago what I know now, I think I could’ve done it, but at this point I’m over it. It’s a goal to consider for the upcoming site though, so if only for that, I’ve validated my time spent on this. For myself anyway, my boss has no idea. Even though I ended up changing a lot of the css, I wanted to give credit where it was due. Also the guy is eighteen. I was probably buying flowers for a girl or some shit like that at eighteen.
The rest of my html questions were answered by visiting the World Wide Web Consortium, which reminds me of this, but is unrelated. With just the W3C site alone, you can teach yourself how to build a site in html and css.
Then, I use ExpressionEngine to manage my content. EE lets me set everything up at once, and I don’t really have to think about code again until I pull some stunt like this and redesign everything. Actually, even if I did do a redesign, I wouldn’t have to touch anything EE-specific if I really didn’t want to. Basically it bridges a lot of gaps between design and functionality, and everyone loves bridges. There are a lot of great things said by others who’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid™, so I won’t say any more on that.
Other sites I found helpful were Web Design+ (same guy of Typogridphy), Blind Text Generator, and Textism. Of course, I looked at a lot of different page sources to study how real developers were structuring their code, and achieving certain effects. I looked a lot at Subtraction.com actually, and the article written by the nice man who actually coded it.
So, with this new website, I really just hope to use it as a space to share things, and eventually last as an archive. I planned the column on the left to hold all of my own photography, writing, or whatever. The right column will hold anything I’ve found and don’t want to forget, whatever the reason. We’ll see how things go, but I’m pretty hopeful that I can keep up with something like this at a relaxed rate, now that I’ve spent the time properly building up the structure to support it. Like I’ve mentioned before, I really had to teach myself a lot through this process, and I know there are a lot of mistakes. I appreciate any criticism and suggestions, and I hope to finally get some sleep now.