Well, I was all ready to make a tutorial on how to make those cute little RSS feed icons - I was doing well, working in Fireworks, getting it done. Then I hit a snag, getting the arc to look right. I searched the regular resources for hints on how to get this done and one of them pointed me to a website. When I got there, I realized, this was the perfect solution. Unfortunately, it also made the creation of the icon moot - it was a free collection of PSD and other graphic formats of the icon all sized, colored and ready to go, even a grayscale copy of the image for customization.

Check out Feed Icons to pick up this handy little resource.

TODCON 2007 RULED!

Ok, this was the best TODCon ever (exceptions listed below) and here are my top reasons:

• It was the largest so far!
• Great speaker line up with many new speakers
• Good deal of regulars attended and I always love seeing the regulars
• Adobe was there in force! (and they are a really great bunch of people, took time to speak to everyone they could and accepted everyone's suggestions and opinions to make the products better).
  • Ken - wow, managed to handle questions very diplomatically and with great patience (and yes, we want everything)
  • Randy - was sent to speak to the extension developers, which was me and Tom Muck - we had excellent conversations with some good dialog, really appreciated your time!
  • Christian - yes, Spry's code base is too big and, yes, I know you'll work on that :-) I enjoyed the conversations with you a lot and appreciate the time you spent talking with me (and the ideas you gave me for products I could make!)
  • Sharon - congrats on the promotion to manager! And thanks for the discussions on the product and helping us realize the daunting task of quality Adobe faces each cycle.
  • Greg - thanks for the dinner! And for bringing Steph in on time for her keynote session!
• I got to meet some wonderful small business people, some who'd been around for a little while (like the bike shop guys from Tallahassee - go Noles) and some who are just starting out (like Carrie Enders - CKA Creative who is transitioning from print work to web design work with a focus on small business).
• Met the crew from lucidus (or, found out they were the crew from lucidus, already having known them a little while) and that was cool!
• Found some new opportunities from several attenders via networking!
• Got to pick up the slack on giving Green a hard time.
• Several really good dinner conversations and good eats too!
• Found out that, in fact, I can survive drinking Pepsi instead of Coke products.

Some exceptions are:

• Chris Flick wasn't there, nor was Sheri and other regulars, they were really missed.
• Barbra had to leave early and I didn't get to spend any time chatting with her
• Vegas, in June, is still very very hot
• I didn't have an internet connection through the first half of my AJAX/server side presentation - but I was able to recover!
• Missed out on Chaz's BBQ dinner (heard he is a great griller!)
• Didn't get to meet with a lot of the new attenders this year.
• I have to wait another year to go to the next one (once Ray recovers from this one and wants to do the next one!)

As usual, the conference was better then the prior ones. Hopefully next year, everyone can attend and we will have a better conference then before! A special thanks to Judy for the ride to the airport!

A web buddy has just hipped me to This.

See that item down in the left corner? Safari now has a shiny new version number, and it works on the PC too. So old Stevie has entered the PC Browser Wars, eh? That should stir the pot a bit.

You'd think that the perfect Web 2.0 recipe organizer would already exist online — after all, they have a tool for everything else! — but I have yet to find it.

Food blogs are really big now, and though I don't food blog myself, I have gotten hooked on reading them. In fact, I pretty much get all my recipes these days from food blogs and never look in my cookbooks. Why would I? They're not searchable, they don't have beautiful full color photos of every recipe, recipes aren't backed up by real people's comments of how they liked it or adapted it, etc. Online recipes really are the way to go.

I began bookmarking each individual recipe in del.icio.us, as do many other food bloggers and their readers, because you can tag each recipe bookmark with all of its main ingredients or other characteristics (like "low fat," "easy," "Indian") and then use those tags to search for recipes that contain the mixture of characteristics you are looking for. So, I could find all recipes tagged with the combination of "dinner," "low carb," "chicken," and "garlic" by using the plus signs by each tag listed as a "related tag" to further filter down. I could also just do a search within my bookmarks if I was looking for something very specific.

This system worked exactly as I wanted, with these exceptions:

• no photos of recipes from the pages
• no rating ability
• no ability to add items to my list that aren't online
  

The rating ability wasn't a big deal to me, and I could also do without the ability to add my own recipes (I was fine with maintaining both an online and offline paper recipe collection) but I really, really wanted the photos. I searched high and low for an online tool that had the abilities of del.icio.us but with the added ability to choose a picture from the page you're bookmarking to associate with the bookmark. I found a number of online recipe organizers that came nowhere close to what I needed, and a number of social bookmarking tools that let you have a thumbnail of the whole page associated with the bookmark but not an individual picture that you can choose from within the page itself.

Finally I found Kaboodle, which is billed mainly as a wish list and shopping site. I thought it did everything I wanted except the rating, so I was thrilled. But I was wrong — it actually lacks the essential search tool of combining multiple tags to search that is the strength of my current system in del.icio.us. You can view all your items with a specific tag, but then can only filter those by keywords within their titles, instead of by further tags.

So, I'm still without the perfect online recipe manager, and undecided whether to stick with del.icio.us or Kaboodle. If anyone has a suggestion for what to use, I'd love to hear it! In the meantime, I have no problem with someone stealing my idea for the perfect online recipe manager and becoming the next big Web 2.0 success story — just please let me be the first person in your beta.

Last year, I made a blog post here describing a certain holiday song/story that my brother and I used to listen to on a holiday album my mother used to have. The story was by Red Skelton and it was called "The Littlest Christmas Tree".

Since that post last year, I have received so many personal e-mails and responses to my blog from people telling me how they too had listened to that story on that same album and how they thought they'd never be able to find it ever again.

Needless to say, when I did my very thorough internet search last year for this Red Skelton story, I never thought I'd get the response that I have. Last year, I was just trying to find out if I could still purchase the story some where or if that old holiday album even existed any more. Apparently, the album has been re-recorded but the story has been left off. I found a lot of Red Skelton stuff - CDs and DVds but nothing that gave definitive proof whether this story was included on any of his collections. But I did find a web site that had a WAV file of the story. It was here: www.albertarose.org.

If you go to my original blog, you can get the direct link from there. But what I thought I'd do this year is save it to my own web site in a .MOV file... just in case there have been some web visitors out there that have been unable to listen to the Albertarose WAV file.

Here is the .MOV version of the Littlest Christmas Tree, by Red Skelton:
The Littlest Christmas Tree (.MOV)

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season this year!

Sincerely,
-Chris Flick

Cast your memories back to the early 80's when guitar music was all the rage in midwestern Catholic churches. I'm around 12 years old and not nearly as good with my guitar as my older brother and sister. Nonetheless, I get roped into playing during mass. Our priest was from the "old school." Definitely liked old fashioned organ music better. Anyway, it's spring in Michigan. In fact, it's time to spring-forward. You know what that means, right? Yeah, yeah, reset all the clocks. Not in my family, though. We always forgot to reset them. So, of course, our family gets to the church late. The priest has already begun and is singing the old fashioned organ music - a capella, no less! My parents "encourage" me to get up there and do my guitar thing. I do. Some of the people out there in the pews respond but the priest doesn't. I don't think he intentionally ignored me. But he was really old! So after a few half-hearted attempts, I slink back down to join my family in the front pew. We never spoke of it again.

Oh, and I'm still scared of public speaking. I did perform music in public again. Never guitar, though. That was it for me.

Looking over the Top 10 Worst Presentation Moments on some Microsoft blog, brings back memories... reminding me of a Worst Presentation Moment of mine. Boy was it a doozy.

It's the early 90's, and back then I was big into space advocacy, because it seemed like the next best thing to being an astronaut aboard the Space Shuttle. I'm 21, and doing a major presentation of the latest findings of some unmanned spacecraft, I forget the name now, on behalf of the Mars Society, York University Chapter in Toronto. My co-presenter was a recent astrophysics graduate or something. I've got no university degree, no formal scientific training, but being self taught, what I lacked in education I made up for in enthusiasm as a volunteer for the society, so they gave me a prime presenting spot. Now I knew I could do it, because at the time I managed a small sales force selling security services door-to-door, so I was not shy in front of people, even if it was my first big presentation of this kind.

In the audience were physicists, teachers, students, astronomers, financial supporters for the society, and a few deans of the university. And they were all waiting for the latest juicy scientific details, because we got our info straight from JPL in Pasadena (this was before the internet, so you had to either subscribe to a journal or go to a lecture to get the latest news on this kind of stuff).

I got up to present, confident in my ability to deliver a presentation I knew by heart. But I had spent so much time the previous night absorbing the material, getting all the scientific details down, so nervous about the presentation, that I got almost no sleep. And the next evening, I was so hyped up on coffee and nerves, all that came out of my mouth was:

uh... ummm... and this is the ummm... uhhh...

My mind went completely blank. Three weeks of straight astronomy research completely down the tubes. I froze. I even got heckled to get off the stage by the sixth slide or so.

It was THE most embarrassing moment in my life. I so crashed and burned...

Luckily my colleagues sitting in the front row took pity on me and someone relieved me and did an impromptu presentation in my place, to this day I don't remember who it was, maybe the chapter president.

Prior to this I was involved in the society in a big way, and did a lot of volunteering with them. My embarrassment after that incident was so total that next month I resigned from the society's activities and never went back to a single meeting.

The good thing that came out of it was, I realized years later, I got over my fear of public speaking, for good. To this day I have absolutely ZERO fear of speaking in public, because I know, no matter how badly I screw up, nothing could be anywhere near as bad as that presentation.

What I learned is that no amount of preparation will ever make up for a good night's sleep. And until you screw up real bad, at least once, you never get any good at public speaking.

; )

Well, what can you say? Another heartbreaking loss for the senior league in last night's All-star game. Brought back memories of two years or so ago when the National League had their best closer on the mound at the time - Eric Gagne - and he ended up blowing a save opportunity. I know a lot of people probably enjoy a higher scoring all-star game but last night was an enjoyable game to watch.

At the same time though, it also proved to be exactly why I tend to dislike the American League so much. Last night proved exactly how meaningless the DH is - or, at least, how meaningless it SHOULD be. Big Pappi DH's because, apparently, he can't play defense yet he made a couple of outstanding fielding plays last night and, obviously, he played first base when the Red Sox beat the Cardinals in the World Series two years ago so why does he HAVE to be a DH? That's the thing I hate about the American League - and, with the American league winning the All-star game last night, the DH is going to again play a major advantage in the World Series this year since the American League will have, potentially, more games at home then the visiting National League team.

The nice thing is that the National League certainly has some exciting young players that made the game enjoyable to watch. Just sorry to see Nomar didn't get a chance to play... but that's the negative aspect about "making the game count". Garner had to make sure he had to have some reserves on the bench incase the national league tied the game in the ninth. I'm almost positive Nomar would have played in the 10 inning had the national League scored in their last at bat. I still say, in baseball, if 9 men play the field, those same 9 should bat. Ah well... maybe next year.

And now for a bit of a self-plug...

I've just started an Art Blog over at Blogger. The reason i did that is so I can share a wide variety of my art - not just stuff I've either done or am doing for Community MX. If you want to go check it out, the URL is: http://www.csf-graphics.blogspot.com. Come on over and say Hi or leave a comment on some of my stuff.

-Chris

What a great idea! myBlogTunes provides the ability for you to add music to your blogs by creating online radio stations with their own custom player.

Dan at myBlogTunes had this to say when I spoke to him about the concept...

myBlogTunes allows bloggers and webmasters to create online "radio stations" and post them on their own blog or web site via the myBlogTunes player.

Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) May 15, 2006 -- Tornadostream, LLC (www.tornadostream.com), a multimedia company from Salt Lake City, Utah that specializes in streaming media of all types, announced today the beta launch of their new myBlogTunes player which allows bloggers and webmasters to create online "radio stations" and post them on their own blog or web site.

A first of its kind, myBlogTunes has a simple user interface in which bloggers can create new stations, select songs for that station to play, and then ad a simple line of code to their web sites to display the player.

As a blogger creates more stations they are automatically displayed in the player on the blogger’s site without ever having to change the code.

Jesse Harding, co-creator of the tool says he and Dan Smith came up with the idea while trying to find a convenient way to share new songs they had discovered. “We’re both music fanatics. We built the player so that we could point each other to new songs online, and then realized the potential this had for the blogging community.”

Harding and Smith are both avid bloggers and both have had the player on their own blogs for the past two months.

“The response has been great.” said Smith. “People love the ease of use and the idea that they can check out new music as they read my blog”.

Interested bloggers and webmasters can sign up for a free myBlogTunes beta account at www.tornadostream.com.

You would have thought no one ever saw someone eat 3 lbs. of crabs before...

Hey folks... I've been back from TODCON almost a full day now (got back into Washington DC at 7:00pm last night). So I thought I'd give you a brief synopsis of my trip and what I did, what I thought and what I experienced the last couple of days at TODCON.

Thursday (leaving for Orlando):
My one big purchase for this trip was a Washington Nationals baseball jersey. I promised myself I wouldn't purchase any Nationals merchandise until Major League Baseball got their proverbial act together and named an owner and, since they did that two days before I had to leave, I was good to go with my capitalistic morals still intact.

Got to the hotel a few hours earlier then everyone else, so I got my room and walked around the lobby where I ran into Ray and Danielle Mickey. So, we helped Ray set up the registration table with all the books, t-shirts and name tags for all the TODCON attendees. For the t-shirts, I PROMISE I'll put the t-shirt design up on my web site today or tomorrow (I swear!). While Danielle and I were organizing the name tags, I grabbed Tom Green's name tag and re-inserted the generic name tag sample that comes with all the plastic holders. You've seen them before... they generally have a picture of man or woman with the office supply logo on them. So, in essence, Tom's tag has his name on the front and a picture of some generic secretary-looking lady on the back. I made a bet with Danielle to see how long it would take Tom to discover this. I won the bet with "half a day".

Later that night, many of us went to Roy's - a Hawaiian restaurant where Vicki Berry blinded us with her digital camera. The women is dangerous with a camera, folks! She's posted some of her TODCON pics here.

Friday:
After the sessions for the day, a group of us went out searching for a good ribs place. Unfortunately, after walking endlessly around the strip mall, we found out the place went out of business so we opted for a steakhouse instead. By that time though, I was too hungry to notice what the name of the place was but they had some gooooooood steak.

One of the TODCON attendees that came with our group was Hassan Ellis. Eating and talking with Hassan is an example of one of the nicest and coolest things about TODCON - it's a chance to meet your peers and "talk shop" in an intimate and pressure-free way that no other conference can. As Paul Davis is fond of saying: You sometimes learn MORE from the "after sessions" then you do DURING the actual sessions. TODCON gives you a chance to discuss and compare each other's working habits, techniques and general advice to one another.

By the end of the evening, we came to the conclusion that Hassan was "separated at birth" from the actor, Richard T. Jones ("Judging Amy) and we all had a good laugh about that as others at the conference told him the same thing (even though Hassan didn't know who Richard T. Jones was).

Saturday:
The morning session, we all got to talk with Scott Fegette and Paul Gubbay (formerly of Macromedia and now Adobe) about all of our "wishes" for all the tweaks, changes, improvements and other things related to the Adobe line of products. My "big wish" was that if we were all going to play "Taps" for Freehand, at least make Illustrator a lot more "Freehand-ish" so it's much more intuitive and easier to use. That and I wanted them to add "bendable triangles" in Fireworks so triangles can be manipulated the same way they currently are in Freehand.

That night, it was decided that seafood would be the place of eats that night. At first, I was reluctant to go since Ray said the place didn't have crabs - imagine that... a seafood restaurant that didn't serve crabs!!! Talk about the horror! But I decided to go any way.

Thankfully, the restaurant did, indeed, serve crabs. In fact, they had three main choices of snow crab legs to choose from: 1.5 pounds, 3 pounds or all-you-can-eat. To everyone's utter horror and shock, I chose the 3 pound selection and casually explained to all the dropped jaws at the table that I come from a long line of crab eaters and in the Flick family, we take our crab eating VERY seriously. Three pounds of crabs is nothing but I chose that instead of the all-you-can-eat selection because I would still be eating there if I did.

I'm telling you... it's like people never saw someone eat crabs before! Amateurs.

Later on, many of us decided to take the Trolley back to the hotel since it was about 5 miles away. Me? I decided to get off 4 miles away from the hotel. Mainly because I had to do some "tourist shopping" to bring back something for my wife and kids.

And... walking four miles wasn't a bad way to burn off three pounds of crab.

Later on that night, I went swimming at the hotel with the Interakt gang where two ducks decided a hotel pool was a nice place as any for a 1:00am dip as any!

Sunday:
Sunday was the debut of the Orlando Jumpstart. I designed the layout while Zoe, Sheri and Jim helped organize and put together. As in Las Vegas last year, we wanted to show a preview of the Orlando Jumpstart and give everyone there a taste of how it was put together and what some of the things you can do with it.

All in all, it was a great session and my first since speaking at MX North a few years ago. Quite a few people came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed my particular part in explaining the design process and commented that they would certainly be interested if I decided to ever do a full session on something at future TODCON. So if you were at this year's TODCON and attended our Orlando Session, what are some things you might like to see from a guy who mainly uses Photoshop, Fireworks, Freehand and Dreamweaver? TODCON 9 is, sadly, a full year away but like I always say, you can never start preparing too soon!

Anyway, that was some of my memorable moments at this year's TODCON. What were yours?

My sudden obsession with Callie (Sara Ramirez)

First off, let me explain that one of the things my wife and I enjoy doing is talking about our "secret" celebrity crushes. She's never made it a secret how much she has the hubba-hubbas for a certain bald Starship Enterprise Captain (Patrick Stewart). And likewise, she's always known about my own hubba-hubbas for Stevie Nicks. But lately, a new celebrity crush has slowed entered my realm. A celebrity crush that appears (mostly) in the background of a certain Seattle Hospital ever Sunday night.

I am, of course, talking about Sara Ramirez' character, Callie, from Gray's Anatomy. I have to admit though that I'm not a long time fan of the show. I only recently started watching it right after the Superbowl (The Bomb episode) but even then, I almost took an immediate fascination with the Callie character - the dark haired, big bodied beauty played by Sara Ramirez (Spamalot). And my fascination has only increased since then.

I'm not sure exactly why I'm suddenly fascinated with Callie though. Maybe it's because I see so much of me and my wife in the George and Callie thing. My wife was Callie when I first met her in art school. She was, on the outside, the one I thought was the most confident, most responsible, most self-assured person there was despite the fact that she wore wild and crazy clothes and obviously - and maybe purposely - didn't "fit in". But instead of turning me off, it was those very same things that attracted me to her. In simple terms, even though she also seemed to try and hide in the background as Callie seems to do, it was her crazy clothes and bold spirit that did the opposite to me.

For me, Callie represents the loner high school rebel chic... the one that secretly probably wants to be cool but knows she can never fit in with the "cool kids" so she puts up that fierce, fake wall of toughness, of general disdain for everything - and everyone - she thinks represents "cool". She's the rebel who desperatley wants to fit in but still fights fiercely for her individuality. Looking back after all these years, that's probably how I first viewed my wife. In my eyes, here was a woman who was working her own way through art school (an expensive art school at that), living by herself and, if push came to shove, definitely not afraid to voice her opinion. While I was a guy who was more worried about fitting in, pleasing all the right people and, generally, doing all the things that were asked of me - especially by any authority figures I thought could influence my future.

Sound like George and Callie to any one?

In the end though, it's only a TV show. I do hope though, that the writers and creators of the show decide to keep her around for a long, long time. My hope is that she becomes the Jimmy Smit of GA. I remember when Jimmy started his stinct on LA Law, he was rumored to only be a minor character and was supposed to be gone after a season or two yet he was so strong and so popular, he became a mainstay of that show. I hope the same bodes well for Sara/Callie too because, for my money, her and George are THE most facinating couple in that show that's all about people sleeping with - and cheating on - each other. Those two seem to have the most genuine things to give to each other - a sense of fitting in and a huge shot of self-confidence.

I hope those two characters are given the chance to expand and grow together even though I know, in TV land - and especially a drama like GA - that rarely, rarley, RARELY ever happens.

But as long as it is, I'm still going along for the ride!

-Chris

I think I have finally taken a bite out of trackback spam. When I instituted trackbacks on these blogs, it worked well. . .for a couple of months. The next time I looked, there were literally thousands of spams that had to be deleted. It seems once these spammers find you, they add you to their automated spammer machines and hit you relentlessly. Filtering by keywords was the first defense, and it worked on 90% of the spam. The problem is, every new spam contains some new spammer product or service. . .acne treatments, cricket blogs, disney vacations. I can't possibly keep up with all of it.

Rather than submit to these parasites or remove trackback functionality, I added functionality that automatically checks every link in the trackback post, goes out to each linked site, reads the site content, and checks for a reference to the post being trackback linked. If there is no reference to the post, the trackback is not legitimate. In those cases, I check the whois and grab the information in put it into my database. At that point, I can parse the email addresses of the domain holders and send them an automated bill for their trackback spam and send out an automated email to whoever I think the spam should be reported to.

I don't expect to ever get results from the measures, but at least now the trackback spam has dropped off from thousands to hundreds to dozens to zero. I deleted over 16,000 spams from Community MX over the last few months.

Cross posted at http://www.tom-muck.com/blog

As you can see from today's strip, I am indeed 39 today (March 21st). Thanks so much for all the kind birthday wishes and e-mails I've received so far. My mom and dad reminded me today that 39 years ago, it snowed in Virginia. That's funny because today - in Virginia - they are calling for snow. Maybe not much but it's still kind of a weird sign, huh? Especially given the fact that my birthday also fell on a Tuesday this year. :-)

But anyway... just the other day, I bought Journey's live version of "Don't stop believing" from iTunes. And maybe the combination of my birthday and listening to that tune have put me in a bit of a reflective mood as I can't stop thinking about the fact that I never got the chance to see Journey live. I've seen a lot of great concerts live but every time I hear a Journey or The Cars on the radio or CD, I can't help but think "man, that would have been so cool to see them live just once"... you know, the big arena rock concerts... hearing the thunderous high pitched sounds of Steve Perry's voice mixed in with the great guitar and pounding piano and synthesizer sounds that were the signature of their Escape album...

But I can't really complain all that much. Although I'm not a huge concert goer, I've seen some really great concerts in my day. Some of my favorite:

Stevie Nicks - young and older.
Stevie Nicks was my first concert. saw her in Baltimore back in '86 when I was still in art school. Some friends of mine had two extra tickets but no way to get there. So, I told them if they gave me one of their tickets, I'd drive everyone there. That may not sound so adventurous but considering I was driving a '78 Chevet with a bad radiator at the time, I still don't know who got the better deal at the time.

Last year, at Nissan Pavilion (in my backyard here in Virginia) I saw Stevie one more time. Yeah, she's gotten older and a little heavier and didn't go through quite so many costume changes as she did back in Baltimore but she can still sing with the best of 'em!

Def Leppard - Hysteria Tour
Saw them while I was going to college at Radford University in southern Virginia. They had a theater-in-the-round so everyone had a great seat. Tesla opened for them and wouldn't quit reminding the crowd "who the hell they were" (even though they only had two minor hits at the time).

I loved Def Leppard so much that I made a pair of my own razor blade cut jeans just like Joe Elliott wore in concert and all their Hysteria videos.

Billy Joel - I've seen Billy live five times, once with Elton John
Billy Joel's The Bridge tour was absolutely phenomenal. Me and my best friend, Jeff, were luck enough to get nose bleed seats at the very top of the old Capital Arena where the Washington Capitals used to play. I remember Billy grabbing a microphone and jumping into the floor seats while he was singing "Only the good die young". As high up as we were, it looked like beans pouring down an hour glass or something as the audience rushed towards him. I can still remember the sounds of the crowd bumping and hitting his microphone as he was still trying to sing.

U2 - Joshua Tree tour, RFK Stadium
I probably would have enjoyed this concert a lot more if I wasn't dealing with a wisdom tooth pushing through my gums at the time AND Bono slipping on the dam pm outdoor stage of RFK Stadium (due to a slight drizzle) and dislocating his elbow. Of course, the following concert in Philly, Bruce Springsteen played guitar to "help him out". But it was still a great time and a great concert even though I wasn't the biggest U2 fan in the world. Again, another concert attended with Jeff.

The Outfield & Jefferson Starship, Kings Dominion, Virginia
The Outfield had just released "Play Deep" and had a co-concert with Jefferson Starship at Kings Dominion - an amusement park here in Virginia. Best moment from this concert was the "older" lady beside us (of course, she was probably 39 or 40 at the time) who swore Jeff and I didn't "know no damn Starship songs" and bought us both a couple of beers when we proved her wrong (of course, I won't say how old Jeff and I were at the time).

KISS reunion tour, Nissan Pavilion
Stevie Nicks may have been my first concert but the first album (ok, cassette) I ever bought was KISS: Destroyer. So, finally getting to see ALL of the original members of KISS in concert together was a thrill of a lifetime - especially seeing and hearing peter Criss (my favorite) sing Beth was the best Father's day present my wife and kids have ever gotten me.

I was able to see KISS a couple more times but without Ace and then, later, without Peter (that was the Aerosmith/KISS tour). I wish Paul and Gene would have the guts to not let anyone else wear Ace or Peter's makeup if they are going to go out on tour again. I'd rather see new make-up designs from "non-members" of KISS then "pretend" the originals are still there. I sort of felt ripped off knowing Peter and Ace weren't there but others were wearing their "faces". Only Superman can wear "the cape", you know?

Aerosmith - KISS/Aerosmith tour, Nissan Pavilion
My wife was and is a much bigger Aerosmith fan than I am - especially when it comes to their older stuff. But I never thought I'd actually see someone out -rock KISS but Aerosmith did that night.

Huey Lewis and The News - The Sports tour
Well, I'm sure this WOULD have been a great concert had I actually gone. I bought Huey Lewis tickets from some "grandma cash" I got one year. And even though I bought the tickets in March, the concert wasn't going to be until the late summer. Two weeks after I bought those tickets, some guys I was playing summer baseball with asked if I would be interested in going to Winter Haven, Florida to participate in week-long baseball camp run by ex-pro baseball players.

It only took me a day to find someone to buy my tickets from me.

So... those are some of my favorite concert memories. What are some of yours?

With back to back trips lately (an actual skiing vacation to Colorado), I've been more than slammed. And through all this, the repeated narcolepsy of my computer has been loads of fun. ;) But the good news is -- my husband and I are at South by Southwest in Austin. Timothy does "music and movie" stuff, so this is the first conference I've had opportunity to attend that includes us both. Most have been more Macromedia/Adobe-related and I'm looking forward to hanging with a huge assortment of my favorite things -- geeks! Geeks from every walk of life doing every imaginable type of code. And is this city hoppin'!

I'm about to go register and get my real schedule, but looking at the options online, I see some great panels to attend... great friends to meet... and some great parties (pace yourself Stephanie)... Jen Taylor, Scott Fegette and Bob Regan are here from Adobe. We're having our annual Web Standards Project (WaSP) meeting, so there are over 30 WaSPs registered. A great turn out and some names I'm really going to enjoy meeting in person. And of course, I can't wait to reconnect and hang out with friends I don't often see.

I'll try to report back about the fun and learning... just to make your mouths water a little. And hey -- this Austin place is cool!

Yes, it's finally happened. Someone thought I was worthy enough to be interviewed. That person is Dan Smith. Dan and I got to know each other from being members in Webweavers - a Google Group e-mail list for everything related to web designing (and ruled with an iron maiden thumb by our very own Stef! LOL!).

Anyway, Dan hosts and creates audio interviews on his blog. He thought it would be interesting to let people know what I sound like and had the crazy notion others might be interested in hearing what my thoughts were on the wide variety of topics we discussed. It took a while to get all the logistics worked out, but you can finally hear our interview today.

The interview consists of a wide range of topics such as how I got into web design, information about the two books I helped write with Tom Green, the 'Bots autistic benefit book I participated in (and wrote a blog about not too long ago) as well as some of my thoughts about web comic strips - including CMX Suite! - and a whole bunch of other stuff!

So if you're interested in hearing what I sound like, now your curiosity can be appeased. :-)

- Chris

This is another one of those David and Goliath stories that always aggravate me. Another case of the big giant shoving around the little guy who has a smaller sword and shield in the hopes he'll just give up.

For those that aren't familiar, this story is about Paul Dell who lives in Spain. He's a web designer who, in 2001 purchased the domain name www.dellwebsites.com. Novel idea naming your business after yourself and what you do -- I doubt anyone's ever done it before. About a year later, Dell came knocking. "Hey, give us your domain name. It might confuse people." Huh? If I'm looking for a new computer, I'm sure not looking for a website -- nor the other way around. Paul said no. Dell went away -- for a while.

Then, about a year ago, they came back. "You're still using the same name." Ummm, yes, I sure am. It's my name. It's what I do. "Give it to us." Ummmm -- no? (You can read the story from Jan 2005 at The Register.) And again he didn't hear for a while.

Now Dell is back in a BIG way. Not only asking for the domain name but suing Paul for hundreds of thousands of Euro for all this loss they've incurred by him continuing to run his web design business using the name Dell WebSites. And we, his friends and fellow business owners are encouraging Paul to fight.

Why do large corporations have more of a right to every "possibly related" URL that exists? I own www.violetsky.net -- why do I not own www.violetsky.com? Because someone else does. Now that I'm "famous" do I go to him and say, "Hey, I should have that domain because it might cause people confusion." And in fact, it does cause people confusion. I've had clients forget and email me at that address. However, the gentleman that owns it has been kind enough to set me up with forwarding so that if they make a mistake, I don't miss any email. Dell shouldn't have any more right to Paul's domain than I have to the dot com of my domain. It was available when they were "famous." They should have purchased all the available related domain names that might confuse people -- just to be sure. But if they didn't and it's gone now, just like me, they don't get it. It's a free society of domain names and the heavy hitters shouldn't have any more weight than the little guy. And if they're nice, maybe Paul will set up email forwarding for their clients that get confused. Something like buyacheapcomputer@dellwebsites.com -- he's a nice guy -- I know he'd do it.

So what's the problem with Paul fighting? Cash baby. Plain and simple. He lives in Spain, the suit is in France. Paul's Spanish lawyers want him to use a specialist in Paris. A great lawyer -- but a very expensive one. The down payment to get this lawyer to read the case and advise would buy Paul a new car. And though it was tough for him, we've finally convinced him to take donations so that he can actually fight it hard. I've set up a blog for his defense. Paul's even willing to give anyone that wants to help out -- however big or small -- a copy of his Sunflowers Web Template as a token of his appreciation. A link will be included in his thanks to you.

So Goliath is yelling and strutting his stuff -- but hey, we're sending you rocks, Paul. Put one in your sling and give it a whirl.

You can keep up with the story on the Paul Dell blog some friends have created. Please donate to the Paul Dell Defense fund. Let's keep the internet accessible to the little guys. Maybe next time, it will be you the corporations come after.

I just thought I'd mention that the stylized self-portrait of myself in the second panel of today's CMX Suite strip ("The CMX Zone") was done entirely on a Wacom tablet. I've been reluctant to use a Wacom tablet because, in the past, the Wacom tablet and I have pretty much had a hate-hate relationship. But I was pretty pleased with the outcome of this particular illustration. It is, by far, the best Wacom tablet illustration I've ever done thus far.

I think the biggest reason that might be is because, in the past, I had always used Photoshop when practicing and doodling with the Wacom. But this time, I decided to see what would happen if I used Freehand. For me, personally, I had found using Photoshop and the Wacom together was very frustrating. I found I had trouble controlling the line width of whatever I was trying to draw. Lines didn't stop or end where I thought they would. I'd end up getting big "paint blobs" when I pressed too hard on the pen. For the most part though, I still couldn't grasp what made the Wacom so "special"... I was finding that it would usually take me two or three times longer to draw something using the Wacom then it would if I had just sketched, inked and scanned something.

But I was determined to see if I could get this thing to finally work for me.

So, for this particular illustration, I already had a rough pencil sketch of myself as a cartoon taken from a previous CMX Suite strip but I needed to add the same kind of pose Rod Sterling was famous for when he was introducing each new Twilight Zone episode. That meant modifying the facial expression and the body arms (and adding Rod's famous cigarette!). I opened Photoshop, imported my original sketch that I was going to use as a guide, and adjusted the opacity to 35% (so it ended up being a very, very light gray). I then imported that illustration into Freehand, locked its layer, created a new layer and then started drawing with the Wacom.

In the past, I had tried placing a sketch underneath the little plastic sheet that's on a Wacom but I found this extremely difficult to look at the Wacom and pay attention to your screen as you "traced" the illustration. I found using the method up above was so much more effective. Here is the result of my initial work in Freehand:

My initial Wacom sketch in Freehand.

After this was done, I converted the file to a PNG format and imported it into Photoshop where I cleaned up and modified various lines. Here are the results:

The results after my Photoshop clean-up.

And then, finally, I added color. Again, in Photoshop (sans the "smoke" effect of the cigarette).

But... if this is in color, why is the cartoon strip in black & white?

Well, for me, you're not really watching "The Twilight Zone" unless you're watching it in black & white. The more modern episodes that are in color don't seem to be quite as spooky or illicit the same kind of "feel" as the "classic" black and white episodes do. And, since I was essentially spoofing these "classic" Twilight Zone episodes, it made sense to convert this illustration - as well as the Ryan Celldisbak one - from color to grayscale.

I never really colored anything in grayscale before so I was reluctant to "paint" with a grayscale palette. I was afraid if I did so, I would end up making the gradient levels way too dark so I decided to draw inspiration from Mel Brooks and the "Young Frankenstein" comedy he wrote and directed years ago with Gene Wilder.

I remembered seeing "behind-the-scene" photos of some of the make-up work from that movie and could never understand why Mel decided to have all the make-up (especially the Frankenstein monster) in colored make-up when he was going to eventually film in black and white. At the time, that didn't make sense but today it does.

By initially coloring all the characters in full color and then converting to grayscale, I got much richer details and the results were much more softer and gentler on the eyes then had I done everything in shades and tints of black.

Anyway, that's my little road to discovery with today's strip. I hope you enjoyed it.

Sincerely,

Chris

I've blogged about my various laptop problems (Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100), and have come to the conclusion over the years that a laptop cannot be depended on. My latest use of the laptop has been strictly using remote desktop to my main workstation, and for things like browsing the Internet and playing poker. Anything that requires storage dependability is not worth putting on a laptop. This includes things like running a web server with ColdFusion, PHP, SQL, etc, and also includes programs like Dreamweaver. After running numerous installs, it seems like I was getting at most a few weeks or months before having to do it all over again. Summing up the various repairs I've had in 3 years:

12 total repairs:

6/30/2003
No boot/video
Reseat VGA board
P000372720 VGA support assembly

9/18/2003
Boot failure, no boot
HDD, LCD Hook, HDD Unit (60 GB)

3/10/2004
HDD Failure, no boot, grinding HDD
HDD Unit (60 GB)

5/7/2004
Cursor drifts every day, unit shorts out and shuts off when moved
Defective PCB Main Board

5/12/2004
no boot, just had M/B and video card replaced
Reseat and Secured all internal connections

6/4/2004
no boot
Main Board PCB Assembly

6/18/2004
LCD goes grey, mouse only works on horizontal axis
Keyboard unit

6/23/2004
Boot failure, no display
Power supply, CPU 2.0 GHZ P4 Processor

9/14/2004
No boot, blue screen, DVD not working
Update Win DVD

11/19/2004
HDD failure, no boot
HDD Unit 60gig

12/2/2004
Unit gets extremely hot, fan not working
Main Board

7/25/2005
HDD Failure, no boot, grinding HDD
HDD Unit (60 GB)

10/30/2005
Unit dead, warranty expired. RIP.

Summing up: 4 hard drives, 4 motherboards, 2 video boards, one P4, one keyboard, and miscellaneous other parts. Luckily I had a 3 year extended warranty, so all repairs were free, but there was way too much time consumed with all this crap. It's not like I abused the machine. It sat on my table and I used it a few hours a night. Once in a while it would go into a bag and be taken to a hotel room where it would sit on a table. Here's the good part: after blogging about it a few times, one of the comments on my blog talked about a lawsuit against Toshiba for the faulty 6100:

The lawsuit alleges that the Satellite Pro 6100 contains a design defect that causes certain power-supply, display and related failures. The lawsuit further alleges that Toshiba knew of, and concealed the existence of, the alleged defect at the time it sold the Satellite Pro 6100. Toshiba denies any and all liability to Plaintiffs and the Class and has agreed to settle the actions for the sole purpose of avoiding the expense and time of further litigation.

Sounds like it applies to me! I signed up at the settlement site and should be getting a credit of $1500 for a new laptop (which I have to spend at Toshiba, unfortunately). The unit was about $2200 originally plus $300 for a warranty, but $1500 is better than nothing and will get me a new laptop. So who says blogging doesn't pay?

So this Christmas, I seem to find myself in a very nostalgic mood. Last night, while getting some last minute gifts - okay... after desperatly searching for that ONE %$#&^% gift I still haven't been able to find - I came across a Christmas CD called "Oldies but goodies". One of the songs happened to be an old childhood favorite of mine that I very rarely ever hear on the radio any more. It was "Snoopy's Christmas" by The Royal Guardsmen.

My brother and I used to listen to that song on the radio all the time on Christmas Eve as we were trying to keep ourselves desperately awake in order to see Santa. And even though I didn't care for the rest of the songs on the album, this one was worth getting so I plunked down my $5.00 and happily strolled out the store.
Along the way home though, listening to Snoopy fight the Red Baron during Christmas time got me to recall another long time tradition my family used to do on Christmas eve.

There was an old Christmas album my mother loved. There were a ton of songs on it but there was one selection that always seemed to hold a special place in my heart. It was a touching little story about a small Christmas tree that realized he was dying but a visit by Santa on Christmas Eve makes him realize what his purpose is.
It took me a while to find it since I didn't know what the title of the story was or who even narrated it. But thanks to lots of creative Google and Yahoo searches, I am happy to say I found it.

The story was an old radio play by Red Skelton. And, if you're interested, you can listen to the WAV format by clicking here. You should bare in mind though, that this is a very old recording so some things are dreadfully out of date.

But it's still a very touching story and takes you back to a gentler and perhaps a more simpler time too.

Now to get back home and start watching the 24 hour marathon of "A Christmas Story"!!!

Hello everybody. Today, I thought I'd write another movie-related blog since I've seen so many over the years. But I thought I'd do something a little bit different. I thought I would list all of the wonderful knowledge I have accumulated over the years thanks to Hollywood. Consider this a "Guideline to life according to Hollywood (and Chris Flick)".

THINGS ACTION ADVENTURE MOVIES HAVE TAUGHT ME:

1) If you're going to be a bad guy, you must have a British accent.
Preferably, to be REALLY bad, you should also be German but have a British accent.

2) When approaching your car, you should always drop your keys to the ground.
I mean, seriously, how else are you going to notice the blinking red light of the bomb that's been planted underneath your car?

3) Bad guy uniforms always come in a "one-size-fits-all"...
After all, that's why it's so easy to penetrate the evil bad guy's lair.

4) Pistols or hand guns are better weapons then automatic rifles.
Everyone knows when bad guys shoot automatic weapons, they don't hit diddly-doo-doo, but our hero always hits his target with his trusty hand gun.

5) Always make sure you have a full arsenal of bullets.
Bwwwwhahahahahahahahahahahaha! Seriously??? Bullets? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that out loud. Everyone knows there's no such thing as handguns needing reloading in an action/adventure film.

6) Run - don't walk carefully - through a booby trapped Aztec temple.
If you run, none of the booby traps will affect you - especially after you have replaced a statue with a bag full of sand. But if you carefully try to crawl through the booby traps, that's when you get hit by the poisoned darts.

7) Macs rule!
In the Hollywood-world, Macs are the dominant computer/operating system - especially when it comes time to infect an unstoppable alien race by infecting their mother ship with a virus. But... if Macs don't get viruses, how can they transmit one... never mind., You heard NOTHING!!! NOTHING, I say!

8) Worst bad guy mode of transport? A helicopter.
If you're in the city, your helicopter will always touch electrical wires. If you're in the desert, your pilot will always crash into the side of a mountain. As a bad guy, you should avoid helicopters at all cost.

9) Need a car? Just flash a badge.
Everyone knows you're suppose to stop and surrender your car to anyone who flashes a badge in front of you.

10) Heck, it's only my pension. What do I need that for?
If you're a cop about to retire, you will always be talked into risking your career, your retirement, your reputation, your children's college tuition by breaking every rule and regulation you ever believed in because that's the only way to "get the bad guys".

:-)

-Chris