Going forward all of my posts, blogs, news articles, pix, etc. have been put into one place. Finally!

Previously everything was visible on the same page but now it's all in one database. No more external links, no more multiple servers. No more.

Everything can be found, viewed, and searched here: http://garyploski.com.
- posted by garyploski @ 4/25/2006 12:04:00 PM 0 comments

emma and I just returned from Festen. I was bored. The actors seemed bored on stage, the script felt forced/heavy handed/repetitive, and the directing seemed to lead the actors to into weak positions. Do I recommend it? Uh, no. I'm not being sarcastic. I was disappointed. Alas.

An "asshole" of a brother/husband as described by his wife enters and begins to freak out asking why he can't get into his father's party. He did something "wrong" a year ago, apparently he got a bit to rowdy when he drank too much. He then gropes his sister full handed on her breast and then begins grabbing her legs and she is trying to get away from him. This "asshole" of a brother then... What does he do next?! )sigh( he mellows out and is pretty tame the rest of the play. WTF?! Why did he do any of it and why is everyone okay with him being there after what he did last year? Uh... )insert blank stare(

A sister, the one that was groped, learns of her father's previous actions to a different brother and sister, twins, through a note she finds by playing 'hot/cold' - the dead sister liked this game so much that she hid her suicide letter. She reads it and is amazed at what she learns. Soon after her older brother, not the groping one, says that their father took advantage of he and his twin sister... Everyone looks amazed and keeps silent. Nobody says anything. He leaves. She then stands and... Defends him?! No. No she doesn't defend him. She knows he spoke the truth. Instead she says 'He was just being silly.' W.T.AHHHH!

The second act opens and you get something you've been waiting for... GREAT WRITING AND SERIOUS TENSION! Racism. Racism. Racism! Racism was handled magnificently. It's not often anyone will hear "monkey" said, on stage, on Broadway, etc. about someone. Then a follow up (racist) song to rub it even more. The writing in this particular scene felt like... Well, it seemed as though the writer was inspired to put it simple.

I'll wrap up my review with a snippet from the NY Times Review "Embodied by an eclectic roster of the famous and demifamous from screen, television, and stage the unhappy family of "Festen" now registers the approximate tension and testiness of vain people suffering from a collective bad-hair day." ... "And you never sense the damning connectedness of these people."
- posted by garyploski @ 4/16/2006 07:12:00 PM 0 comments

Goodbye indeed! I've moved my .com to site5.com and I couldn't be more pleased. The server response is phenomenal compared to Dreamhost. Where it would take, literally, 4-5 seconds to load the gallery page I watch the gallery load up in about 1 second. I don't know what type of server or what kind of network pipes Dreamhost has but I do know this - I'm gone!

The only hitch I ran into that was an oversight was my e-mail. I should have paid more attention. Alas I didn't and lost approximately one day worth of email. = \

On a completely different note the kitty to the right is probably the cutest kitten pic I have ever EVER seen. emma linked me on, I think, Thursday last week and I've been wanting to post it since.

I can't get over how excessively cute this fraggin kitten is. The head looks huge. The paw and tongue don't look like they belong. Its fur is so soft looking in the light. And those ears. Oh man. I need a break. Give me some code of something to ground me,,.

Speaking of code... Searching the net for templates or themes for Joomla! or WordPress yield the most standard results imaginable. Boring table like looks with different colors and header image(s). BOR-ING! Is there really nobody out there with clever designs for these HUGELY popular server based apps? Will Joomla! 1.5 change the template culture? I guess it's more digging ahead for me.

Swwwwwitching gears again...

I've been having some great ideas lately and/or I've been writing down things I'd like to do which have helped me to become much more productive. Yea to the art of writing. The funny thing, in my mind, is I've known this for years but haven't followed through lately. If 'it' is written down somewhere and is seen daily, weekly, etc. it is very likely to be done even if it's just to get it off 'the list'. I'm very happy with my list. Some things will take a long time, others may only take a few hours. = )

Continuing on topic switches. The winter was over today. Well, that's what it felt like after rehearsal. Students sitting around on the SLC lawn. A drive up to Hastings showed us similar things... People were out on the fields playing/practicing baseball or just hanging out. At 21 Marianna emma, her pop - otosan - and I had a catch on the basketball court while two guys played 1-on-1 on the other side. No, we didn't play on the field. A group of little leaguers were out there trying to play while getting yelled at by the coach because they were being lazy. Were they? From what I saw they were. That'll be a fun team to be on.

After emma ate nearly all her white chocolate bunny courtesy of her mum we zoomed a little zoom back to 11o1 where we both found something to do... Individually. I fixed/updated my e-mail and site while she edited her first children's story and read His Dark Materials (book 2).

Now I'm sitting in bed thinking about themes and stuff. Where can a good reference be found? Can one be found? Lalala. A tutorial might have to be the drink of champions for me. It'll be fun to do as long as I can make it look the see it in my head.
- posted by garyploski @ 4/16/2006 12:41:00 AM 0 comments

Joe Maller recently changed his web host and wrote up a fairly good run down of what he went through. After reading through his review I found myself considering hosts I wasn't familiar with previously. And so the hunt for a web host continues. I'm in day, I have no clue anymore.

Posted in his comments I wrote:

I’m researching hosts because I can’t handle the slow response times from Dreamhost’s servers.

I’ve found the following:
liquidweb.com
lunarpages.com
site5.com
swiftco.com

I would like to have all my sites (3 or more) in one place for the exact opposite reason you stated above. If something goes wrong I want to make one phone call, send one email, etc. to resolve any problems with the sites I’m running or helping to run.

— liquidweb.com - referred from a friend that swears by them. their prices are a on the higher side. support has responded to inquiry email within 2-5 hours.
— lunarpages.com - overall… wow. sadly they don’t fill my needs because additional sites hosted on the plan cost 2.50 each. Also, no ssh on the shared plans. = o
— site5.com - this looks like a great option, 11gb storage, 5 additional domains can be hosted on the plan at 7.77/month and it includes ssh.
— swiftco.com - this looks like a great option, 5gb storage, 10 additional domains can be hosted on the plan at 11.25/month (paying annually) and it includes ssh.

I’m down to a short list of 3 after many hours of reading and researching. In no order…

site5.com
swiftco.com
liquidweb.com

Did you do any research on site backbones? That’s my next and likely last step in this process.

Presently I’m swaying between swiftco and site5…

This is withough a doubt the most ABSOLUTE WORST part of a website. It's great to see the open market thriving but a little less thriving might be on the better side of things. Yimminy! How there are so many companies can offer web hosting and not overwhelm the market? I'm not sure.

Soon enough I hope to speak with my NC/Cisco friend - Kat - to see what she has to say about the backbones for each of the 3 hosts I'm considering.
- posted by garyploski @ 4/12/2006 08:14:00 AM 0 comments

This weekend was the exact kind of refreshing weekend I needed. emma and I got out of our heads and had an amazing conversation about balance with nature and where we as individuals draw the line with that balance. Killing a bug, an animal, a person, etc. The conversation carried through our meal at CPK (California Pizza Kitchen), zooming up to the Westchester, and then walking around the mall looking for linen pants - of which only $70+ linen pants were found! Oy!

Ahhh. It was a great weekend. We talked. What a huge weight it was off both our shoulders.

Added to that feeling was the sense of wholeness with War Music. We have finally made our way through each scene with generic blocking. Lines are in the 90% bracket. We're on our way to having a complete show with 3 weeks until curtain. )smiles inside( As much as I've been looking forward to the show rehearsals haven't been the excitement that I thought they would be. All that is gone now. I feel the personal sense of investment finally. RAH! I am utter ecstatic to do this show now!

With these breakthroughs, and emma's non-softball day (a double header was cancelled after she and the team arrived at the field in NJ) giving me a few hours to sift through my grey juices I laid out a plan to completely overhaul my web site. I don't have a defined list as I probably should but I do have a rough draft that has been revisited about 10+ times. Here goes...

TO DO'S
clean out phpnuke from joomla db - complete
trim/clean out 2004/2003 gallery

LAYOUT
Collage image - front page
domino effected pages - ???

CONTENT
PIX
-gallery
--most recent
--daily
-my drawings
-bam
-desktops
BLOG
-blogger
-wordpress
--reviews
ABOUT
-bio
-faqs
-acting
ON/@
-amazon wishlist
-myspace
-digg
-email
-slc
NEWS

import blogger to wp - image import problem
import joomla into wp? yes/no?

AFTER UPDATE
tag blogs

Phew. Yup. It's going to take a while. I have an idea in mind that may, or may not work which is a thumbnail here. Under the squares/circles will be a collage of something (a desktop, pix from the day to day, etc. That's un certain still. Within the boxes on the top left will be image links to the most recent pic or a daily pic in the gallery, the BAM pix, desktop pix from long ago, and drawings I've scribbled over the years. On & @ will include links to me on other sites such as digg, myspace, etc. Interactive mode initiate... )powering up sound( vvvvoooooOOOOOOOOPPPP

Suggestions? Thoughts? Confusion? Fire away below.
- posted by garyploski @ 4/10/2006 07:54:00 AM 0 comments

Back in 2003 an ordinary teen became an Internet sensation. In his home town and school he felt as though he became the target of ridicule. After a few years his case has been settled and he's famous one more time. Digg, /., Boing, Boing, and many other sites will be talking about his fame, his missed opportunity to cash in, and how sad it is that he went down hill after the video became a sensation.

Personally, I feel as though it was his own fault to have left the video out in the open. If I left something out in the open and someone posted it online... It's my own damn fault.

Sure, it'd suck to have this personal thing on the net but I'd be damn sure to cash in on it ASAP. Hell, if you're going to make fun of me because of something I (with a capital with great power comes great responsibility) made, did, etc. I'm going to do my best to profit from it and control what happens with the content in question.

I truly do feel bad for Star Wars Kid but I also pity him and his family for not taking advantage of this. Instead of going through everything that happened with courts and lawyers things could be very different right now.

So with that, I raise my glass (of milk) to you Star Wars Kid! Best of luck to you in the future. You will NOT be forgotten.

No, really, you will not be forgotten.

An ordinary teen in this Quebec town became a worldwide object of ridicule when schoolmates put on the Internet a video of him pretending to be a Star Wars character.
Mr. Raza and his parents this week reached an out-of-court settlement with the families of three former schoolmates they had sued for $351,000 in damages.

From the article :

"they had sued for $351,000 in damages."

"No one would comment yesterday about the settlement, including whether it included monetary compensation."

read more | digg story
- posted by garyploski @ 4/07/2006 01:22:00 PM 0 comments

It's a good number - 66. In just 66 days my girl and I will be on a plane bound for Kaua'i, Hawaii for 11 days and 10 nights. We decided that a honeymoon needed to be a honeymoon. It feels like the modern honeymoon is standardish ala a vacation somewhere for a week. Seven days does not equal one week when traveling is involved. We're set. We're ready. We're in the busiest month of the semester! = )

Today was a long day. Work - normal. I trekked home, ate, and then took off for rehearsal which went from 7-10. We are now rehearsing (mon 2 + tue 3 + thu 2 + sat 4) 11 hours per week on War Music. It's rough sometimes but it's worth it. It's going to be such a great phenomenally fun piece that SLC doesn't normally present. This show is what story telling is all about. A section of the Trojan War told by 7 people. Four women and three men.

I walked by a rock on my way home tonight and thought about the script. It was where I first read the opening pages. At the time I was exhausted and unfocused. I became uninterested in the piece but hoped it would become something cool. Thank you fortune. Please do keep smiling down on me. I'll keep smiling back.

In typical me fashion I'm celebrating something! The end of the semester! But it's in May Gar. Yes it is. And I'll treat myself in July, August, or September with the Iron Man Comiquette. It is based on The Invincible Iron Man #76 (pictured to the right), painted by fan favorite artist Adi Granov.

I'm so far ahead of treating myself in fact that this item wasn't even purchased this month. No. It was purchased on March 21st. Yes, Iron Man will be seated beside all the other mini-busts and random comic "stuff" but I have to sit tight, rehearse, perform, work, sleep, work out, travel to Kaua'i, and even wrap up the summer events (most likely) before I get to see my treat. So does this make me selfish or plain out there? How many people treat themselves two months before something is slated to end and two - four months after the wrap up. Ummm....

It wasn't the smoothest of days. I started off in land of the unfocused, enjoyed a walk to work, it's been nice lately, did the day and evening thing and wrapped up with a very tired emma and a gui-less Evynne up at UCONN. 45 minutes later she's in need of a installation disk. So sad. Stupid OS X breaking. GRAH! Now super sleepy. Bed thump-thud-crash time
- posted by garyploski @ 4/05/2006 12:22:00 AM 0 comments

It's one of those days, and previous nights, that have you sitting and staring. I know I have something I want to say but it can't find a focal point. Dead air on the radio. Grumble grumble. It's a long day ahead for this Y chromosome. With four weeks left until War Music goes up our Tuesday evenings begin! Three hours here, four hours there. I think we'll have this show pretty tight by the time the 27th roles around.

Right, with little more in my mind it's time for the shigoto thing.
- posted by garyploski @ 4/04/2006 08:25:00 AM 0 comments