ggggrrrrrr geocities. I had a potentially productive day turn into a bloody waste of time. I had such great plans too. Was going to teach Mags how to use the Internet so she can teach it only to find the stupid macs at her school seem to be such gutless wonders I couldn't even get the geocities page generator up. Man, for a school that's barely a year old, they have some crap hardware. They don't even have CD drives for goodness sakes. I guess they were either ripped of big time, or someone on the Board of Trustees cut a deal somewhere along the line. I have NEVER seen such a slow connection, and i would bet dollars to donuts that 'puter has less than 16megs of RAM. But she thought the homepage was cool, but then, she's barely ever seen a homepage in her life so it was easy passing off the work as cool. There, that's better isn't it? You can't beat margins. You will never believe it after the last entry, but I got away with the soundclip thing by the skin of my teeth. It appears Steven D had the cd in his drive so I ripped it out and recorded the voiceover, chucked some tweetybird sounds and highheelsingravel (no, they are not horse's hooves) and a big arse train sound into the background and got the assignment in on time. So, I guess I still won't have learnt my lesson about getting things done early/when I have time to. Oh well, I wouldn't be me otherwise I suppose. The Cdrom project is in its final weeks, which is enough to put anyone into a spin. I emailed the Company for copyright permissions and any video or audio stuff they have. Doing Premiere and needing some footage to edit and shove on the Cd you see. If I let it, the oh-my-god-i-will-never-finish-this's come to the surface. Not at all helped by the addition of a second assignment handed out on Friday, due two days before the CDRom one is due. Just a leeetle bit of pressure. The new assignment is to make a 30 second video clip featuring my car (there are clauses for those who are car-deficient but seeing as thats not me i won't go into it here). Oh, and it's meant to be funny. Some have said i just need to film my car and its hilarious enough. Well, erm. Okay. For some odd reason I have emailed a person I don't know. He wrote back. I replied. He answered. I responded. Amazing. I can't help what happens when I lick the sugar bowl 49 too many times (mind you some might say once is too often).

I think I quite like the fact no one knows this exists. Back Page, August Issue of New Zealand PC World:

'Does your PC give you grief? It might sense that you're a wimp. Try Dr Deeram's assertive maintenance techniques.

• Approach the problem machine in a confident manner. Let it think that you don't care if it works or not. Like dogs, computers can smell fear.
• If others are watching, always be ready for a machine to start working of its own accord. Rehearse lines like: "There, I thought that would work."
• Try percussive maintenace. This involves gently lifting the uncooperative device about 100mm above the desk as though looking for something underneath. Then suddenly drop the beast. This often completely fixes the fault.
• If all else fails, simply swap your PC with a working model from another department. If there's a danger that serial numbers are kept somewhere, make sure you've swapped your computer long before it breaks down (this is called 'preventative maintenance).'

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So look, another entry, that's amazing. Checking out flights to Melbourne. Booking by the end of the week. Going to see the trams, cafe and Freya's of Melbourne. About time too. I think I have screwed up my sound assignment. Why do I leave things til the last minute? I always do, and most of the time I pull it off, but late this afternoon I realised the file I had made in the sound studio last week, that I ripped off the cd to use later *today* refuses to play without it's original disk. And I can't find the original disk. Seems someone has it in their pocket or in their bag or some such oversight, and I don't know where it is. The files are being burned tomorrow for show and tell on Thursday morning, and there is a blank space next to my name that should read michelle.wav. Bugger. Why do I do that? I am my own worst enemy. Oh it won't mean I fail the course or anything but being sooo anal about filling in forms and such i hate blank spaces where there should be none. *plonks* and I have a headache. I am getting too many of those these days. It's the sitting-in-front-of-a-computer thing and it's the you-are-running-out-of-time thing. I watched the X-Files tonight. Gawd damn Mulder is a fine looking man. And he's funny too. When Santa gets to the Plaza I am going to ask him for Mulder for Christmas. I bet I get him too, because Santa is pretty nifty and fairly well connected when it comes to getting stuff. He has more access to more stuff than any other human on the Planet, I reckon. I will be good for the rest of the year to improve my chances. Do you think these pages need colourful titles and stuff like that? Adobe Premier tomorrow. I need two gigs free on the hard drive for that. Hungry little program indeed. Video. Who would have thought it? I might get to say 'action' and 'cut' and 'wrap' a bit later this month. And no one in the Articulate - which is a good thing. I need to go to bed. I haven't been sleeping well lately. Screwed my sleep patterns up again. At least I do it well. I drink too much coffee. I don't drink enough water. I don't move enough. My breath is far too shallow. I need to make a list and improve some stuff. Of course, I will have to shop around for some nice paper to write the list on. And find a comfy blue pen. No doubt, I will drink 2 ltrs of water, run 10kms, drink tea, sleep 8 hours and ihale deeply the night before and feel very virtuous. I suck. --------

Already I am late. Dated this HTML file with 11/7/99 and here it is the 25th already. So I had better think of another way to name these files so dates don't hover with such menacing presence. This merger between Yahoo and Geocities has caused a few hiccups with saving files. To the point that I went into IHUG to ask about domain names and virtual hosting options. The old saying 'you get what you pay for' was wearing a bit thin last week. But basically, for 12MB's and a wee bit of advertising, this really isn't a bad deal. I just hope their fiddling around and merging stuff will settle down sooner rather than later. Besides, do you think I could think of a Domain name? no sir-ry. Well I thought of tons, and mostly they were available, but I couldn't decide one from the other. Made me clench my teeth. Maybe next year, when I am more sure of what I am doing, I will re-consider the Domain name question. Anyways, I still have my IHUG space sitting empty, I want to get that up and running once I start producing things in Flash and Shocking Director more. 5 MBs over there will make a handy little resume. So another week is about to start and it's going to be a busy one, mainly because I had a fairly cruisy one last week. Later on in the week we are heading down to the Audio College to use their sound recording facilities. We are making an audio file each of a joke using sound effects, to be put onto an animation later on when we use Premiere. The audio has to work on it's own though. I don't really have any brilliant ideas about what I am going to do, but will just do the 'two blondes walking through the forest' joke. Don't know that one? ah well, you can listen to my audio translation when it's done. Friday is the deadline for the Lingo scripting for the ongoing CDRom project. What was that? yes, that was the sound of me pulling my finger out. Why do I insist on leaving things til the last minute. This week's going to be a full on slog right up to Friday afternoon now. Mike's birthday today. That makes three years I have been chatting to that Goose. Man, he's getting ooold. Blast in the Articulate the other night. I got all teary it was so Couplety. Ryan was in as AnotherMan'sRhubarb and Sander changed into Spaceman Spiff complete with pic. The room was split America vs Us and it was all on and more fun than a really fun thing on Fun Sunday. A real tonic. Things I Hate About the Internet SEARCH ENGINES: oh yes, they sound so simple and so useful and so 'switched on'. But they aren't. The day that you can type in simple language, ask a simple question such as "show me Flash 4 sites" and get a direct answer, not "TEEN PIC PORN" is the day the Internet comes of age. DEAD LINKS: and then, when you do find a link from a search engine that looks as if it may meet the needs of your initial inquiry, it might be nice, once and a while if you don't get the ERROR 400 whatever page. I am convinced, at this stage of the Net evolution, that it is held together by string, spit, porn sites and broken links. Get with the program people! check your links often -- update, delete, whatever, I don't care, but MAINTAIN! UNDERSCORES: well, if it's a link to another URL, fair enough, underscore away. But if it's not, DON'T. For goodness sakes, anyone with half an hour's experience on the internet is going to try and click underscored text expecting to be transported to another page. Do not underscore unless its clickable. Every heard the word "bolden". If you want to make text stand out as a title or a heading, use the bold option or increase the type size and leave the underscore to primary school kids with red pens and rulers. NO CONTENT: the worst sin, in my book, is lack of content. The net is very text based. I do not mind waiting for a shocked or flashed movie site to load if I have any inkling whatsoever that it's going to have content. When I have waited, patiently I might add, for a file to load, only to find there is nothing of interest to be had at all, I get grumpy. And believe me, you do NOT want me to get grumpy. The old saying of "six seconds to hook a punter" *okay i a)paraphrased and b)made that up* is oh so very true. If you promise, deliver. Plain and simple. Stop pissing me off! Some of you, by now, may be asking what the heck prompted this outburst? I have been hurtling around the 'net in search of Flash and Director content. I have found plenty of icing but no cake. I want cake. I want substance. With billions of webpages out there, it shouldn't be this hard to find a slice of what I want. Should it? Yes, yes, I know that the internet is still evolving. Yes, yes, I know that in twenty years time we will look back and laugh at our infancy. But, Hells Bells, I am NOT a patient person. Give me at least a taste of it now. If you have a web page, go to it right now. Check the links. Check for interesting content. Make my effort to lug my hulking mass to your page worth the trip. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Just fucking do it will you? TELEPORTALS: just how long are we going to have to wait for these things to become available to the public? I am so sick of this. --------