California's Dark

I am now sitting in the kitchen of my parents house, a mere 43 hours since I was here last. Since I left I have turned in one take home final and designed a front page of a newspaper for another final. I am truly happy to be done with school, I finished today, but there is something strange about having free time. I just got home and I am already bored. I wish I brought home my room mates Playstation two so I could play guitar hero or something. Hell, I would even play the original Tony Hawk game if it were the only thing available.

I keep forgetting to explain the titles of my posts. So I will go back ans explain the last couple ones in case people were confused or think I was making up my own. Back when I wrote, "Happiness is a well organized iTunes," I was listening to The Beatles' White Album which was created in 1968, which has the song on it "Happiness is a warm gun." I was just busy making my itunes all nice and organized for the possible arrival of my iphone.

The post above that is titles, "Punch the keys for god's sake." This post was the first post that I had done in a while because of the hectic schedule the magazine forced myself and others to be ruled by. The title comes from the infamous website, Your the man now dog, (www.ytmnd.com) where Sean Connerey's quotes have been immortalized. This post was sparked by a discussion my friends and I had about using the Ctrl+Z command in InDesign (undo) in real life. It's a laugher to us anyway.

The next post up titled "Sing till your lungs give out" was really made by me and just came out of my reaction to the vocals of the lead singer in Paramore. She just hits all the notes and impressed me. Read the review if you want to know more.

And the post before this one's title called "When you were young" comes from The Killers' 2006 album Sam's Town. It's also on Guitar hero 3, but I kept hearing it at the wedding and it sparked my disgruntled comments about my relatives.

I understand that is post is a bunch of referrals to old posts, but maybe if people commented there would be more to discuss. I am looking forward to this winter break and I think I am going to start it now with a nice coma. Oh, before I forget, I am a huge fan of Rage Against the Machine, so I was happy to see that Tom Morello made a new album with his band the Nightwatchman. If you like Tom's stuff I would suggest picking up a copy of the album called, "One man revolution." The title of this blog is from the first track on that album and I am listening to it right now. So far I like all the songs I have heard.

Happiness Is A Well Organized iTunes

As some of you may know, I am really hoping for the man in the big red coat to get me an iPhone for the holidays. Well, in preparation for the event whether it happens or not, it motivated me to create a balanced, organized and awesome iTunes library which my iPhone could sync to. This means I want everything to be ready for easy sorting and syncing. Yes everything, album art, and all the fields filled in (minus ratings). So I copied non-iTunes store music over to my laptop from my desktop and started the process of filling in the loose ends.

The reason I am trying to get all the album art working, is because on the iPhone you use the newer cover flow method of viewing your music. In my case I was trying to get all the music under one album to go under one image for the cover art. The problem, is even if I copy all the same information to easy song except for the title of the song, I can not get some of the music to go under one album. For example, I have the Legion of Doom's album "Incorporated" and even though I have ripped the music directly from the CD, the album art splits into two images for the one album.

I would understand this if there were multiple CDs to the album, like Metallica's S&M 1 and 2, but they just split, and like I said, even after all the data in the entry being the same. I could ask my friend at the apple store but I was going to try and figure it out before I asked an "Apple Genius." He knows how much I loath apple computers. Although I have to say they make some fine other products.

CDs, iphone, ipod, itunes, legion of doom, metallica, organized, anal retentive, obsessive compulsive

Inspiration On Demand

It is amazing what can happen in one day. Yesterday a comment was left by a moderator of jackbook.com, the website who was hosting the iPhone template I commented about not working. In the comment I got a copy-pasted how-to guide of how to fix the template. Even though I didn't mention it in my last post, I had taken the necessary steps to host the images for the template on my own and properly inserted them into the HTML editor. The comment felt like a weak attempt of saying "It's not our fault you're stupid."

I deleted the comment because I have moved on from the whole iPhone template and decided that it is easier to make small changes to the blogger templates in order to make it different but personalized. I am not HTML retarded for the record. I know how to make all the changes to the template to get it to work, but the comment left by the jackbook rep made me realize that they think I am.

Which lead to my early morning (for me) post about the politeness of comments on the internet. Sure I did call the result of my attempt to make the Iphone template work on my blog, " Transformed into a ridiculous piece of garbage," but it is not like I was directly insulting the creators. It was merely a creative attempt at me voicing my opinion about the increased difficulty of installing that particular template. You know... the main reason people make blogs. To publicly share their opinion.

I was shocked in the first place that they found me (even though I linked to them) and that they were peeved enough with my comment to try and tell me how to fix my template even though I have already decided to not go with it. The whole thing just put me in a sort of funk. Now that I think about it I might put the comment back up just so you all can see how funny the whole thing is. Sure people don't read instructions when they buy things, hell I don't read instruction manuals in video games I buy. But to assume that people don't read install instructions for blog templates (especially when they are not created specifically for you blog host) is like saying people don't read the details of their "cool-down period" before buying a gun. Am I going to get it immediately... NO!

But I have better things to do, like look for presents for the holidays and research the iPhone. I am going to end this post here, I am starting to sound like the ranter of old. Comments and critiques of the new blog look are still welcome. Let me know what you think.

Rise From The Ashes

If this is your first time viewing my blog, welcome. For those of you who are coming back and wondering what happened, I have a story to tell. Yesterday I was looking for something new to make my blog stand out amongst the rest. I wanted my blogger template to resemble an iPhone because of the most likely purchase I am going to make. So I looked around the net and found a template that looked awesome. (Their image is awful.) I loaded the xml file into the template modifier in blogger and awaited the transformation. My page was transformed alright. Transformed into a ridiculous piece of garbage.

Nothing that I saw in the demo worked. Everything including my profile was erased in my eagerness to have my profile look like an iPhone. In my haste I did not create a backup of my template for blogger. Which lead to the day long process of creating a new online persona. My blog used to be called, "Rants of a Former Safeway Employee" and I was known as "Bag Boy" Chris. While I enjoy blogging about the obvious faults of the company (and I still will), it was becoming too hard to focus all my energy coming up with a Safeway related post each week, especially because I only go shopping about twice a month.

So I made this new template and online persona and from what my girlfriend said, "It is more me." I agree. You still can't see my face in my profile photo, but at least I am not wearing a bag over my head. I spent some time trying to make the blog more personal because I usually speak my mind or share about things going on in my life. This, after all, is my serious attempt of building readership and practicing writing for an audience. So, it is not an iPhone template, but I think it looks good.

I am going under a new blogger name now, "Comatose Chris." I think it works pretty well. Dictionary.com defines comatose as: (2.) In a state of deep and usually prolonged unconsciousness. I have no problem with that. Speaking of which... I am going to take a quick coma. Leave any comments about the new name, blog or layout. Anything is appreciated.