emlocke

Category: Blogging & Internet

  • Hands On

    I’ve been a pretty cranky blogger of late. I feel like I’m craving something but I don’t know what it is. A little Hypertect Transfer Protocol angst. Hence, the new color scheme on a daily basis and zero new content. You don’t need words, you can read my mind in the irregular appearance of these pages. It’s blue, it’s white, it’s purple, but it’s never quite right. It’s old, it’s new, but then I remember why I ditched an old template in the first place and wonder why I bothered with a new one that looks so unevolved. It’s my own code creation, but the borders don’t match up, or it’s someone else’s and I can’t look at the page without feeling like I’m reading a stranger’s blog.

    And while I do believe in the words above all else, I think that both graphic and technical design are paramount to the blogsphere. The colors and shapes that frame content on the web are another facet of every site’s identity. Books are printed and bound, blogs are coded and published. Aesthetics are part of the genre.

    I go through phases of frantic design research, flipping through blog rings for ideas, tweaking color schemes, Googling for a website that will “walk me through CSS template with small words and big print so a kindergardener could build the damn thing” or “this is what I want my blog to look like. CLICK. GENERATE.” And then I put something together that I feel moderately proud of and leave it alone for a month. But the need to polish the design itself and my own web design abilities is never quelled, and with each fit of fine-tuning (which always becomes an all out over haul), the pressure I put on myself to be every part of this blog grows stronger. I am the writer. Before I was a blogger, I was a writer, that’s what got me here in the first place. But now I want to be the designer, the coder, the art director and the technician, and I want to do it all on my own. I won’t settle for anything less and that makes it hard to fill my own shoes.

    I’ve always been frustrated with painting. Brushes won’t respect my authority. I don’t trust my own hand between my mind’s eye and the canvas. Now, hanging my head before the design and code windows in Dreamweaver, I am fighting the tactile instinct even though I know it’s impossible to reach through the computer screen and nudge each element into place, column widths and pixel borders aside, like a graphic collage of code. I want to be hands on!

  • Wordsmithette

    In class on Monday, we talked about the Harvard concordance to the works of Shakespeare, which counts and catalogues all the words so you can see how frequently certain words are used in certain plays and in what context. The internet must make a resource like this a lot more fun to use.

    I knew there had to be a recreational concordance tool out there somewhere, so language lovers like me could enter a URL or copy/paste text and count words and draw thoughtful conclusions. There is, and it’s called Turbo Lingo. How appropriate. So I plugged in the URL for my August 2005 archive page, and the results were…pretty inconclusive. In the month of August, I wrote the word beauty four times, the word universe twice, and crush-of-the-minute once. I also used my own name once. And, ‘chocolate.’

  • Internet Junkies Need Stuff Like This

    There’s First Love, and There’s Emily Love.

  • Stubborn is a Fiery Red

    For the girl who is often metaphysically frustrated to the point of grouchiness because her favorite color, purple, is a contrasting complement to her least favorite color, yellow, ColourLovers is a consuming, addictive thing.

    I can’t believe there are so many other people in the world who give such serious thought to color palettes in web design, packaging and advertising, fashion etc, and then go and define schemes with evocative or amusing titles and build this library online – all for entertainment’s sake, of course. Or for OCD color loving satisfaction. Probably the most dangerous element of this site is the access to other color lover’s websites, which distract me with visual stimulation and new inspiration (and by inspiration I mean a challenge to continue forcing myself to attempt new designs with characteristically high expectations and stubbornness.)

    This site is so intensely colorful that it actually runs a little slow, but it may be the only thing that ever turns me on to yellow.

  • I Bring It Upon Myself

    I think I’m doing myself a favor by keeping some favorite websites on the down low. The last thing I need are parents who are not only super-fluent (superfluously so) in every one of the many grammatical, pronunciation and stylistic quirks in the English language, but can also communicate their ways through its substratosphere of pop culture references and lingo. It is for my own sanity that I keep Urban Dictionary my own little vocabulary secret.

    Then the New York Times blows my cover. Tom Cruise jives on Oprah’s couch, inspiring a new way to say “lost your mind,” “took some crazy pills,” or “gone off the deep end” and my dad reads about it. He also learns about “jump the shark” and he and my mom practice using their new hip phrases by referencing every favorite TV show I’ve ever had; Felicity, Gilmore Girls, even Dr. Quinn. They can name the precise moment when each one jumped the shark, usually when the inevitable couple-to-be gets together and the whole series has lost the plot.

    Go ahead, parents, use “lost the plot” in a sentence!

  • iPledge

    In honor of Peter Jennings, who scored 100% on his American citizenship exam, reported for a 12-hour marathon on September 11th, 2001, and carried a miniature copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket, so can you. Little white earbuds are the new stars & stripes lapel pin.

  • I Get Hits for Things I’ve Never Seen

    This is getting ridiculous. An estimated 90% of the search hits here are people looking for images of a certain display of atmospheric magnetism in the night sky, which shall go unnamed here for fear of attracting even more irrelevant searchers. What do they think when they realize that the one time I wrote about the aur*ra b*realis, it was more than a year ago, and the whole point of the mention was that I wanted to see them, not that I ever actually did, nor have I seen them since!

    Let’s just see who’s interested in, “Wouldn’t it have been cool to see the aurora australis,” otherwise known as the southern lights, “while I was living in New Zealand?”

    But the snail’s pace crawl of my hit counter leads me to believe that the general public may be interested in some new content. For instance, Rachel McAdams has yet another movie coming out – a psychological horror story; could she be the new Diane Lane? And, did you hear about the space shuttle that NASA launched without any use of perl programming or any flight plan competition from American Airlines? Yes, the launch was successful, as was the after party, where Green Day and Jesse McCartney performed right on the launch pad.

    I spent way too much time hotlinking that last paragraph, but I think I owe myself a prank on the internet.

  • Talk About Breakfast in Bed

    I am humiliated that I have stooped to this level to post something, but I will go through with it because the results of this quiz are so very, very true.

    Your Sexual Lucky Charm: Pink Hearts

    You’re a true romantic who prefers sweet whispers to whips and chains
    Foreplay for you boils down to “I love you” and a bottle of red
    You won’t give it up for anyone, just the prince or princess of your dreams.
    What’s Your Sexual Lucky Charm?

  • In Your Facebook

    it only took a semester and a half for someone at thefacebook.com to realize that all those seven sister colleges are ivy league siblings, but the day has finally come – mount holyoke is ranked socially prestigious and listed on the facebook. of course, rachel clues me in about twenty-five minutes before holly and i leave to go camping for the weekend. my profile creation will have to wait until i return from flashlights to kilobytes.

    quote of the day: “i know i’m not seeing things as they are, i’m seeing things as i am.” – laurel lee

  • An iPod That’s Free

    i too was a free ipod skeptic, but always the bargain shopper and product analyst, i spent all day reading online magazine articles and browsing other blogger’s experiences and testimonials and when i saw the new york times offer, i couldn’t turn down the chance to increase my word power and my awareness of international current events for $2.90 a week. who doesn’t think it’s hot to read the paper in bed? but how much hotter would it be to read the paper while jamming on my pink ipod mini?

    the deal is, i registered for the intellectually stimulating new york times subscription. now, i need five ever-loving friends with a credit card and a good heart to sign up for their own offer. there’s the times, of course. (apparently, my referees can’t use the nyt subscription b/c i already did, which is lame since the vast majority of my friends consider reading the newspaper anyway!) there’s blockbuster online, which gives you six weeks (a free two-week trial plus a one-month subscription before you cancel) of non-stop movie rentals shipped right to your door three at a time (plus two in-store rentals a month) for $19.99. there’s infone, which gives you five directory assistance calls to use if you need movie tickets, a nation-wide directory, and a lot of other stuff. you can use your free calls or not and you don’t have to cancel when you’re done, but you won’t get charged unless you call more than five times. there’s also realRhapsody, which is a lot like the iTunes service (including the random capitalization mid-brandname). for $1, you get a month-long subscription and five free cd burns, and you can cancel online.

    if you’re interested in different offers, visit rateipodoffers.com to read user ratings. some can be cancelled online, some you have to cancel over the phone, but who doesn’t love a little telemarketer brawling every now and then? it will build your persuasive skills and teach you to stand up for yourself. different offers show up at different times of the day, so if would consider registering for a particular one, let me know and i’ll keep an eye out and send you the link when it’s available.

    at first, i just wanted the free ipod. at this point, i’m so into it that half the fun will be winning the ipod. i’m on a mission! i can’t wait to tell the story. and to listen to all my favorite music while i’m in london next semester, since there’s no practical way to export all my cd’s. so visit my personal referral link and help a girl out! i’ll do something nice for you, too.

    quote of the day: “so let go, let go, jump in, oh well, what are you waiting for? it’s all right, ’cause there’s beauty in the breakdown” – frou frou