Today I’ll be following the Golden Road from Millinocket to Greenville, and if I have time I might try to get as far as the Harris Dam… back in time for Desperate Housewives at 9!
umm, yeah.
It’s my first photo trip in a while. Hopefully it’ll turn out well.
So I got this $10 Kohl’s gift card in the mail a couple of weeks ago, good for any purchase $10 or over. We just had our first Kohl’s grand opening here, so they wanted to do it as a sort of “try us out, see what you like” thing. I’ve gone to the store a couple of times looking for things to buy with it, but I didn’t want to fall victim to their plan (sure, you get $10, but you probably buy something for $24.99 – ha ha! $14.99 in revenue they didn’t have before). I was trying to look for something around $11.99 that I actually needed; then I remembered I could use a few more pairs of socks. There were multiple pairs on display for $10. Perfect! But wait – they were 45% off. Darn. I saw a pair for $15 on sale for $8.25. Great, but I needed something else now to move over the $10 mark. I looked around for something, and then I saw this wonderful holiday napkin ring on sale that looked fairly festive. Here was my bill:
The cashier was quite amused.
…and as a bonus…
And another year begins at the University of Maine. This time, I’m not a part of it.
That said, I’m sitting in the Memorial Union in Orono looking up at a stage with a big yellow and black ZOX logo. I’m up here for a free concert from one of my favorite bands. While I wait for their set to start, though, I’m spending my time checking up on my e-mail and, more importantly, looking around at what’s happening around me.
When I left high school, I thought back at everything that was wrong with the concept of secondary education. My critique of post-secondary learning isn’t so harsh; I’m really glad I went where I went and I did what I did (it worked, too, judging from the Sephone cap I’m wearing on my head).
I’m spending this time looking around at the people around me. It’s the first day of classes here; a third of the people here are doing the same old routine, a third are walking around like they own the place, and a third aren’t sure about where to step next. Some are wearing the fashions they learned in high school. Some are wearing next to nothing in a probable attempt to gather attention. Here in the union, people seem to be enjoying themselves with groups of friends. The funniest part? Everyone looks like a freshman to me. It’s weird to think that I’ve completed this stage in my life.
The University has learned from our Student Forum rantings and Maine Campus letters to the editor. The entire dining system has been revamped. There’s better parking. And, of course, there’s construction. (Nothing’s perfect.)
There’s about an hour until ZOX performs, and I’ll be jacked in with my headphones listening to “Leaving Me,” “Ghost Town,” and “Rain on Me.” That means I have an hour to reflect – this is going to be interesting.
Aww, look at the doggie… wait, who’s that?
Photograph by Denise Farwell, (c) 2005, Bangor Daily News
This is it – the launch of Semsym. Semsym follows in the rich traditions of M@ineSites and Lighthouse Media Solutions but adds a new and more directed focus. Semmsym is a collection of sites that allow me to experiment with development in a bunch of different ways.
The first such site is called ufeed. ufeed is, quite simply, a single page that combines your blog posts, your del.icio.us links, and your flickr photos. And it’s free. To see how it works, check out my feed.
I’ve got lots of ideas, and I’m really excited. Go and check out Semsym today!
For all the Web developers here: ever had one of those times that you just need a quick tool, but don’t know where to find it?
My solution: head to semtools. You could call semtools a preview of the kind of things Semsym will offer; you can also call it a random collection of stuff. Call it whatever you want, but spread the word.
The launch collection includes a MD5 encoder, timestamp decoder, current timestamp and IP finders, and a cool color grid that I finally got to drop somewhere. These tools probably won’t mean much to you if you’re not a Web developer, but you might just want to play around with them anyway to see what happens.
Please e-mail me via the link at tools.semsym.com if you have any comments or suggestions for new tools.
Last night I launched justinrussell.com/writing – my writing center. I’ve talked about creating one for a long time (remember the “writing” choice in the top banner of the last justinrussell.com layout?), and I finally got around to making it this weekend.
The Writing Center will be the place for me to explore topics in more depth than would be suitable for the blog. My blog will slowly be turning into more of a personal journal; the Writing Center picks out the more “formal” writing and puts it all in one place. I really think it has a lot of potential.
Once you’re at the site, you can read pieces, cite them, print them, e-mail them, post them to del.icio.us… and the administration is really easy to use (I mean it this time). There are even drafts and stats and all of that. I think I’ll be using it a lot purely based on its ease of use.
Go and explore. There’s no RSS feed yet, but it’s coming. For now, I’ll be posting here whenever I put a new piece up there. In the future… well… something different will happen.
The first of it’s kind: a video blog entry!
Click the frame to view the 11.4 MB MPEG-4 file.
UPDATE: So apparently a few people had trouble seeing the vid. I’ve put up a new file that’s bigger (20 MB) but hopefully more compatible. Let me know if you have any problems with this one.