Ok, so you're not whiny. Well, some of you are whiny, but I heart you all anyway. The sidebar has returned with full bells and whistles. Some elements of the abortive v3.0 design are staying too. I particularly like the tab bar and the archives page. I'll need to do some tweaking yet to sort out what should be on the tab bar and what should be in the sidebar.
Best of all, my page generation times are still pretty snappy. If you're curious enough to view my page source code, you'll see most of the sidebar content isn't there. The sidebar is now mostly just a framework. The content is loaded into each little box via AHAH. Without all the sidebar content, each page generates quickly. But with the asynchronous fetches, you're still downloading the same amount of data and you're using more transactions to do it. The overall time it takes for a complete page to load might have even increased, but there's still a noticeable improvement in the time it takes to load the main content and make that page usable. I think that's a fair trade.
So I suppose rather than being snarky, I should be thanking you for pushing me to solve my problem more creatively.
Pfft. Whiners.
Have you heard of Chinese Democracy? It's supposed to be the next Guns N' Roses album. It's been in production since 1994, which is long enough to turn it into a complete joke. ("We'll see democracy in China before we see Chinese Democracy.")
This weekend I downloaded an album labeled Chinese Democracy. Some of the tracks are studio, some are live. Who knows what version of what tracks will really be on the album, should it ever actually arrive?
Real or not, I am loving the track "Better." He might not be in the band anymore, but you can't deny Buckethead's influence on this one.
posted at 03/13/2007 08:31 am : Permalink
Categorized Geekery, Music, movies, books, TV : Tagged AHAH, Buckethead, Guns N' Roses, site layout
I'm just distracted. The past week has been… a little different.
The Chicken has been home for school for the holiday break, so he hasn't going to bed quite so early. Since I haven't had to get him to the bus stop, I've had extra time to sleep every morning, so I haven't been going to bed so early. Bunny has been home from work with a tweaked lower back. It's definitely out of the norm for us to have so much together time in the evening. It's been a lot like being on vacation, except I'm still going to work. So… not like a vacation at all, I guess.
Usually my blogging times are in the morning, after Chicken is on the bus and before I go to work, and in the evening after Bunny has gone to work. Neither happened all last week, so my blog has been very neglected. Whenever I've had time to blog, I've instead chosen to focus on my newest obsessions, Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II.
These two games, along with two super cool video game chairs, are the Princess Sparkle Pony I'd been teasing Chicken about for a month or so before Christmas. Chicken definitely likes the games, but I'm the one who's really hooked on them. On Christmas day, I started out on the easy difficulty level. I've played so much in a single week that I'm almost ready to move up to the hard difficulty.
Aside from the fun of actually playing it, I'm having a blast just getting into the music. Before this, I'd listened to Incubus, but I'd never heard their song "Stellar." Now I can't get enough of it.
Before this, I'd never known the artist or title of that Pulp Fiction song that was raped so badly for that Black Eyed Peas thing. (Note to Fergie & Co.: your namesake legume is the black-eyed pea. Note the dash. Ignorant Philistines.) It turns out it's an adaptation of a Greek song named "Misirlou" and it's by Dick Dale and His Del-Tones. Hm. Nope. Didn't know that.
And before this, I'd heard of Buckethead (mostly because of his time with Guns 'N Roses), but never heard any of his music. His bonus track on the second game, "Jordan," is absolutely hypnotic. I tried to find an mp3 of this one because I imagine it's obscure enough that no one has heard it who hasn't played the game, but it turns out the version of the song I like was dramatically rewritten just for the game. If you're feeling adventurous, you can go LimeWire it or something. The first 90 seconds of the version I downloaded are very similar to the game, but everything else is completely different.
What's the deal with Buckethead, anyway? His public image is downright freaky. The Mike Meyers/Halloween mask? The KFC bucket?
I think it says a lot that the guy was too weird for Guns 'N Roses.
posted at 01/01/2007 11:58 pm : Permalink
Categorized General, Music, movies, books, TV : Tagged Buckethead, Christmas, Dick Dale, Guitar Hero, Guns N' Roses, Incubus, present, video game