No time, no time

Once upon a long-ago, I had much more time for designs, redesigns, and weblogs. Four years ago, I was a fairly “tertiary” creative worker: employed by a post-production house, serving the advertising industry, in a struggling Southeast Asian economy. Clients were few and far between, and the work came in spurts: little bursts of frenzied, all-day-and-night action, separated by days, even weeks, of office inactivity where I sat around, watching TV, having long lunches, and messing around with new websites. There was time enough “between projects” to do all that.

These days, however, I often find myself muttering, “No time, no time.” There’s a busy busy day job now to deal with, packed with things to do, an overflow of activity compared to my days of interproject idling. Practically gone are the huge swaths of time for free creative tinkering and writing and linking and making five new random CSS designs per day. Nowadays, my still incomplete personal pet projects can take weeks or months to get off the ground.

I mention this because I was previously thinking of relaunching Simplesight.net as a full blown web services site, with design, graphics, hosting, articles, code samples, and other goodies. But lately I’ve realized that running an operation like that would probably take up the rest of my waking hours outside of the office. And then some. Just maintaining two existing clients (old design clients from Manila) takes enough effort. I’ve considered going entrepreneurial, taking it down the self-employed road, but that’s not something I’m ready for.

Right now I need to scale back on things, reprioritize that to-do list, and remember that sometimes, evenings and weekends cannot be devoted wholly to a sideline. Simplesight.net is still my “business” front, but I’m keeping it small and flat for now; so I’ll still take projects, but not in such volume that I can’t also take walks. There’s a cat to feed, a Bible to read, and people to talk to, and before the day I push up the daisies let it not be said I didn’t stop to smell the roses.

(Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the clichés.)

Kind of Funny

I was just downstairs in Starbucks, and they were playing a lovely remake of Tears for Fears’ Mad World. Apparently what I heard was a 2003 acoustic version by Michael Andrews, performed by Gary Jules. Very nice; I don’t remember having heard such a hauntingly proficient remake since Tori Amos did Smells Like Teen Spirit and Angie. Ah, those angsty freshman days.

(Yes, I know this entry is a bizarrely out-of-character post for me, the person who only listens to music from before the 19th Century and has a special abhorrence for the 80s, but this struck a chord somehow. Okay, okay, I stop now. Me freaking self out.)

Fun Long Weekend

What a delightful long weekend. Amy came to DC, and we visited the 2004 Folklife Festival, watched Happy Harry Potter, helped make sandwiches for the homeless after communion at church, got thoroughly drenched in record-setting thunderstorms, browsed the shops at Union Station, watched fireworks on the National Mall, drank pressed apple cider among dispensationalist hippie Christians at the Twelve Tribes’ “Rekindling The Fire” cultural event, hiked around Teddy Roosevelt Island, and got a nice big cat book.

Blessed with love and joy and rest, undeserved yet richly given. God has been good.

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th! Amy and I braved the threat of rain and thronging crowds on the National Mall to catch DC’s 9:10pm fireworks display, and we were not disappointed. Security was quick and hassle-free, and despite thousands of people, there was plenty of space to sit on the grass near the Vietnam War Memorial and watch the show.

Note the Washington Monument at lower left in the first photo; it’s barely visible through thick clouds of smoke. (Photos taken with a Palm Zire 71.)

Fireworks photo

Crowds watching fireworks

Also a Happy “Real” Independence Day to the Philippines, which was granted freedom from Japanese tyranny and American colonial rule on this same day in 1945.

Sunset of the Photolog

I’ve come to a decision about my photolog. You’ve probably noticed that there is no longer a “BPBP” thumbnail in the sidebar. It’s simply been too much trouble in terms of templating and maintenance to handle two separate weblogs for journaling and photography. So, effective immediately, “BPBP” is no more.

Anyway, I walked home from work a couple of days ago. It was a beautiful day: clear and breezy, birds singing, people playing softball on the National Mall as runners jogged by. I walked by the Capitol and Union Station on my way to the local grocery to get a can of Senate Bean Soup, and snapped a few photos with my Zire 71:

… And yup, that’s how it’ll work from now on. I’ve imported all the photolog data into my main archives, freely intermingled with other entries as part of a single integrated weblog experience. Images have been resized to fit, and links have been corrected. Now the photos will have comments and context, and I don’t have to worry about maintaining two sets of templates. It’s all about consolidation these days. I count Antipixel and Andy Budd among my sources of inspiration for this move.

Oh, and the Senate Bean Soup was excellent.

IE Again

Have you noticed my sidebar link stream lately? Are you getting the message? Do you know what to do?

IE-users, I don’t hate you, but thus far, Internet Explorer has held back the rest of the web, and the effects of its flaws have snowballed in recent days. There has never been a more opportune time to switch to a web browsing client with better security, more frequently useful updates, closer compliance to web standards, and a non-monopolistic outlook on the web and its users. I know a lot of you are “used to IE,” and that switching takes time and effort. It’ll take a day or two to acclimatize to a new browser, but once you’re done, you’ll be free of many hidden security traps and limp standards support, and it’ll be a brighter, clearer path ahead, for you and for the rest of the web.

(Oh, while you’re at it, you should also dump Outlook Express, delete Windows, and install a stable Linux distro. Or buy a Mac. Simple, right?)

Also see MeFi.

Cassini Over the Rings

Cassini’s closeup pictures from Saturn Orbit Insertion are coming in: here’s the full story from Spaceflight Now. The craft travels too fast for its cameras to get pretty closeups of the individual particles and fragments of rock, dust, and ice that compose the rings, but the closeups are gorgeous nonetheless, showing regular, wavelike variations in ring density and thickness from gravitational interaction with Saturn’s moons.

The Cassini staff, like the staff on their sister mission, the Mars Exploration Rovers, have been absolutely awesome about releasing raw mission images direct to the public as they arrive from the spacecraft. Probably the easiest way to get at the most recent Cassini imagery without struggling with their search form is to go through the Browse Latest Raw Images page. Right now it’s mostly unprocessed ring closeups.

In the media, corny “Lord of the Rings” references continue to fly fast and loose.

(Also on MeFi.)

Cassini in Orbit

Just heard a whoop from my NASA TV stream — scientists and engineers celebrating. Cassini is now in Saturnian orbit! They’ve received the craft’s high gain “phone home” signal to confirm its good health, and by morning we should start seeing the first cool photos. Whoo.

Full story on SpaceflightNow.