WELCOME to the personal home page/blog of Matthew La France. Please enjoy your stay.

8/30/2007

I got a cool gig working on a website recently. I was really psyched about it until I was reintroduced to the horror which is writing for multiple browsers. I made this sweet layout that looked great in IE. It perfectly reproduced my design artwork using only divs and floats with all the style in my style sheet, no tables or other messy markup. I felt very l33t until I opened it in Firefox and to my great horror found something more closely resembling a steaming pile of %&$#! than my beautiful website. I found myself completely unable to circumvent the superiority of it's "standard's compliance", and was left having to admit defeat and COMPLETELY REDESIGN THE SITE.

If ever I have hated Firefox (which I have since say one) I fucking hate it now with a passion heretofore unknown. I've been reduced to using tables and spacer gifs, which ironically, is exactly the kind of markup that CSS was designed to avoid. The irony is overwhelming. Thank you Firefox, thank you very much. :( Maybe someday when I'm l33t enough, I'll understand the folly of my ways and look back laughing at what a fool I was writing such sloppy markup, but until then my hatred for Firefox will consume me like the fire which is it's very namesake. May it expire into the hellish sea of flames from which it was fiendishly spawned.



My only consolation during this unbearable trauma has been the giggling, bouncy, polygonal forms of the DOA girls as they jet-ski and water-slide their way to the millions upon millions of zacks needed to buy bathing suits, one after one, in ever decreasing size. I've decided the value of the suits are exponential in relation to their surface area, or their amount of moe, whichever is greater. An example of this is Lisa's Venus (surface area), vs. Ayane's high school bathing suit (moe), both of which are 1,000,000 Zach items.
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8/21/2007

I've had no motivation to work on translation projects recently. Too bad since things seem to be taking off so well, but I have to be true to my desires, and right now I just can't fire myself up for it. I haven't exactly been unhappy, quite the contrary, I've been feeling ok. Maybe that's part of it, I usually translate when I'm not feeling very well, but I've been slightly less melancholy recently. I've been meditating, making money, reading, playing video games, I went to a concert, hell I'm even exercising again, and (god forbid) considering maybe trying to get a girlfriend. Or at least not completely avoiding the idea.

Speaking of reading, as I stated on a message board post, I'm reading some arguabley non-fiction by local author Joe Citro. I'm not a native Vermonter, but I've been here for around 2/3rds of my life, so I feel at least some connection to the state. Being at least a little interested in the occult and supernatural I've been enjoying his books about local Vermont folktales, ghost stories, odd residents, monsters, etc... Though he is the storyteller, I think what gives the stories depth is that they are not his own, they are the stories that have been passed down or chronicaled in this state for the past 200 years. I recenlty read his "Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries", and am now reading "Green Mountains, Dark Tales". Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries has a partciularly fun element which is map at the beginning of each chapter highlighting the towns disscussed in that chapter. One includes a documented UFO sighting in the town I am currently living in. It isn't all ghosts and UFOs, many of the more enjoyable stories are about the folks who settled the towns we live in today. I have a new perspective on the era of the mid to late 1800s "spritiualist" movement that led to some interesting things like end of the world cults, numerous demonstrations of spirit channeling, healing, and other things that sort of defy definition. Some really interesting history, and likely a large amount of Vermont make-belive, but I'll admit I had a little trouble getting to bed after finishing the first book.

My friend Morgan introduced me to an interesting site called LastFM. You can check out my profile which includes tracks I've recently listened to, and you can play a "radio" broadcast of the music I like. I've also included it on my homepage. You can also compare your musical tastes to mine if you have an account yourself. It's free to sign up, and there is a plug-in that works with winamp and other music players to feed the track info to the site. You can even find other people who have simmilar tastes and get recommendations for bands you should like. It's a pretty cool idea.
2 comments

8/18/2007

I just got back from seeing Static X tonight. It was freakin awesome. I guess I shouldn't have been so worried about it being sold out since the place was only half packed, but this is Vermont after all. :P There were 4 bands of which we saw three, Ankla, In This Moment, and of course Static X. Ankla was realy loud, but good. In This Moment has a female lead and was really good, I picked up their CD. I also got a signed copy of Statix X's new one since I didn't have it yet. To those of you who I invited but didn't make it, you missed a great concert and some minor hearing damage. It was a good time.
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8/09/2007

I've been relaxing pretty much most of the day today. I did some meditation, listened to music, played DOAX2. I guess I needed a day to chill out. I'm planning to do some cleaning and ebaying tommorow.

I had a computer built for someone I know recently. I picked out the parts and ordered them with assembly. I'll check out the machine when it comes in and configure it the way I want. I'm getting paid for it which is nice, plus I'm helping them get a really nice machine. The thing I was most impressed with was the turn around time from directron. It seemed like processing and assembly took all of 1 day! I was expecting it to take about a week. The machine should be in by Friday. And here I was worried it might not be in time for the end of the month!

I organized my music collection today. I realized I have a lot of music I don't listen to anymore. I couldn't bring myself to gut large portions of my collection, but I shaved off a bit here and there. If I haven't listened to some stuff in 10 years, I have to at least entertain the idea that I may just not be into it anymore.
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8/03/2007

Butt BattleI've been a little busy and stressed recently. I've been playing DOAX2 to take my mind off things a little. I know it's one of those games that it's impossible to get gamer points for. I'd like to chip away at it a bit. It's fun playing dress up with the girls from DOA. If I could only get any good at the butt battle. For lack of a better term, it's a pain in the ass. ;)

I got a couple of albums recently. Kittie's new album "Funeral for Yesterday", and "Start a War" by Static X. I found out they are playing near me - Static X that is - and I bought some tickets. I'm not waiting this time. I should get to see them in a couple of weeks, I can't wait!

Translation projects are going crazy! I'm still messing around with editing WtPC. I heard from Zigfried that he's doing some editing too. I got a playable version of 3x3 Eyes from KingMike that I'm playing around with, plus it looks like Slayers on the PC98 is going to be a new project for me, many thanks to Guest and Pennywise. I have a script dump that I started translating a little of this evening.
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