exbe3

the weather was cold but crisp and clear, so my drive to cleveland was smooth: i got there in less than 5 1/2 hours including 2-3 stops (i intended to get gas and lunch at the same stop, only to discover there was no atm at the gas station i chose, & the only quick food option there was mcdonald's... so i ended up waiting a couple more hours before eating).

the sondguy was supposed to arrive at the venue at 7, and i got there at about 6:45. so i went "next door" (actually two or three doors down) to music saves (where the pre-show performance by j scott franklin was to take place) to pass the time. music saves is a record store that carries almost nothing but the hott indie rock & emo stuff. this is great if you're into indie & emo, but not so good if you're into anything else. i did see a couple hip-hop cds but only the ones that crowd would be looking for: madvillain, el-p, beans, etc.

before long i headed back to the venue & began setting up. i set up near the back of the venue (right in front of the door, in fact), so i could play during transitions yet leave the stage empty for other performers. then it was back to music saves to see j scott franklin.

j scott performed as a one-man band: he had guitar, trumpet, microphone, and pedals. one of the pedals was a loop pedal, which allowed him to play a lick & then loop it so he could play something else on top of it. at times he sounded like a full band. the sound was folkier than i generally listen to, but the tech was very interesting and i found myself wondering how easy it would be to perform live barbershop if i had pedals like j scott's. in fact i imagine lord of the yum-yum probably has a very similar setup.

birthday cake was served (it was experimental behavior's first birthday), but there were no frosty beverages to wash it down with, so i didn't quite finish my piece. by this point it was nearing 9pm, and i was supposed to start the show at 9pm, so i made my way back to the beachland tavern.

soon the crowd started to make their way over & i began my first set. i started off with some short pieces i had created specifically for exbe & mixed in various other noise, loops, and silly samples. i was actually fighting a headache all night, but i managed to keep it at bay & perform pretty well, considering, i thought.

next up was humachine. you can't really understand the humachine phenomenon unless you go on exbe and read some of his posts... a large percentage of them are about how awesome he is, how he has "the highest technology" in music, how bands like skinny puppy have ripped off his sound, etc. but if you listen to his mp3s, while the production is high quality, the actual content is pretty run-of-the-mill ebm-type stuff.

his live setup consisted of a bunch of gear (indeed he has a lot, & some of it looks pretty nice) and a video display (he also has a public access tv show, you see). the music itself was not bad: in fact it was quite competent; busy, with various crisp sounds and beats and samples. at one point jack commented that his live sets were better than his recorded output, and i had to agree... though it wasn't particularly original (unless those really were his ideas and they were all stolen long ago by other club acts). but the video...

well the video truly looked like it came from public access tv. humachine himself was in almost every shot, nodding to the beat, mugging for the camera, playing with cds (not playing cds but fidgeting with a stack of presumably blank cdrs), tossing cds at a friend's face, making grasping motions with his hands... there were some video fx laid on top but not enough to mask the actual content. it was totally narcissistic & amateurish: ridiculous and often hilarious. but clearly not on purpose.

next i performed again as a transition between humachine and the afrodesiatics, a 7-piece funk band with full-size xylophone, bongos, drum kit, the works. this changeover was only scheduled to last 15 minutes but it took closer to 30. my performance trailed off a bit after awhile, but whatever. nobody seemed to notice.

the afrodesiatics were very tight: they were obviously all accomplished, talented musicians, and they really brought the funk.

by this point the venue was simply packed: i never heard a total head count, but there were enough people there that one had trouble moving around, & there were actually people standing behind me just hanging out.

next up, nick traenkner gave a powerpoint presentation about cleveland. for some reason, nick decided to stop using the term "powerpoint presentation" to describe his work but i don't know why: that's exactly what it is, and i think the idea of an artistic powerpoint presentation sounds much more interesting than "multimedia performance" or whatever he's calling it now.

the presentation was highly entertaining: amusing and informative, similar to irene moon but without the bizarre sound effects or wacky costumes. nick did his presentation without amplification: he just stood in the middle of the bar projecting his voice. he didn't want to use a mic though i thought he would've done better with one: not a handheld, but a lavaliere or a headset would work great.

after nick came beautiful loser, a 3-piece. when they started their first song i thought maybe they were blues, but then i decided they were closer to jazz. i don't know much about jazz beyond john zorn, so maybe i was wrong, or even if i was right, i have no idea what kind of jazz band they were (i guess their website refers to them as "instrumental/pop/world/rock"). color me clueless. still, they were clearly very talented musicians: the guitar player had to be in his 50s, so i suspect he's been playing guitar for at least 30 years.

then i played again, opening up my final set with "spamouflage" & transitioning into... something else. i forget, and i didn't get anything recorded.

infinite number of sounds finished off the night. as usual they were great. they started off with some new material, then into some classic older material. if you've never experienced them, they're a catchy instrumental indie-type band with electronics and a kick-ass video display that's mixed live to the music. they never disappoint.

after awhile of sitting around, tearing down, etc, we made our way back to the INS house, where brent (the video guy) put me up for the night in their guest room: there was even a computer in the room so i could check my email & stuff! the following morning we went out for "breakfast" (even though it was 1pm) at a restaurant called
"my friends"... i'd been there several times during previous lakewood visits. then it was time to drive home...

in total, brent paid me $60 (possibly the most i've ever been paid for a show) and i sold $50 worth of merchandise! an extremely successful night for me, a good show with lots of diversity, and good times. even my headache stayed away enough that i was able to enjoy myself.

thanks again to everyone who played, and especially the exbe crew for putting the event together & inviting me to participate.

bobby vomit's blawg

this is either a brilliant idea or a really terrible one: bobby vomit's blog is now online.

get your bookmarks ready: http://www.animalswithinanimals.com/bobbyvomit

this week's mp3: chains rattling

new mp3 of the week! it's a cover of devo's "mongoloid" by an old side project called chains rattling. check it out!

downloads for the past two mp3s of the week have been atrocious. i'm talking in the 20s. if the demand remains that low i won't have much incentive to keep doing the mp3 of the week. the first week got a respectable 95 requests, so the obvious difference is that i spammed a few forums and mailing lists the first week. i refuse to spam those places every week: that's just annoying. maybe i need to set up a mailing list for awia/stally announcements? we've never had one of those for the site...

brutal cincinnati damage

bobby vomit reports in from the massive noise show in cincinnati... sounds like one hell of an experience.

if you've never heard the legends about bobby vomit's emails, he says he treats email like an artform, and plays loose with conventions of spelling, punctuation, etc. i have left it here verbatim and unedited so you can get the real vomitmail experience.

 mockbees was fuckin rad

   literally m,,,, ask jason ,was a factory renivated
into art warhouse space awsom huge domed blocked vault
like tube chambers 2 downstairs 2 upstairs and huge 30
or 40 foot ceiling ball room they sold beer had movie
projectors playing it was like a noise rave in fucking
sane so i played in the main room up stairs but true
to the werd we set up a gurilla rig matts fuckin loud
pa jason played guerilla in cincinati but ticket is
now that i got my mavckie mono tape recorder i use it
sounds great and i got his hole set and mine so if you
want to post it werd.. and also i got or had jason
make me some buttons so i got a couple more fore you
cool ,,and i got your fuckn stallio bobby vomit remmix
done fuckin insane and i plaid it it is one of my
favorite prepared peices of old data storage disk ever
,, sold four tapes unszene bobby vomit shared stereo ,
i need to make you a copy ,and make a tpe with ya
,............ and one record traded for two cds and a
tape walked aeay with 5 beers in me a tape a flier 2
cds and a (social junk) patch very good show....i will
tell maore about line up to you later i was only there
on day .......

cribs: "jason" is unszene. "matt" is bobby's cousin, aka matt turd from monster pagan death ride and days & nights in the skeleton crew. and the "stallio bobby vomit remmix" is most likely a playable art piece created out of copies of my true data 12".

did you enjoy that? maybe there should be a bobby vomit blog. would you like that? would he even post? i wonder... it would be one hell of a blog.

i'll post again soon with details of the extremely successful exbe 3 showcase

why does the secretary of education hate bunny rabbits?

my sister tipped me off yesterday to this msnbc article about the pbs kids show "postcards from buster", a spinoff of "arthur" where buster, an animated bunny, goes around filming live action families doing educational stuff... you know, like when mr rogers visited the ranch or the factory, only with an animated bunny.

turns out that in an upcoming episode, buster visits some vermont families that show him how maple syrup and cheese are made. sounds educational? well apparently not. and the reason it's not educational is... because the families happen to be headed by lesbian couples.

not that words like "gay" or "queer" or "homosexual" or "hot girl-on-girl action" actually appear in the episode: they don't. but even having these women and their families in the show has apparently queered up the episode to such an extent that pbs will not distribute it to their affiliates. pbs claims the fact that they received hate mail from bush's brand new education secretary margaret spellings about the episode is entirely coincidental and has nothing to do with the fact that the show was pulled that same day. and if you're gullible enough to believe that, you're probably in the preschool demographic that watches "postcards from buster".

the washington post explains in more detail:

Spellings, who has been charged with the difficult task of fixing the nation's troubled public education system, took time out on her second day on the job to fire off a letter to PBS CEO Pat Mitchell expressing "strong and very serious concerns" about the "Postcards From Buster" episode. Specifically that, in the episode, called "Sugartime!," the animated asthmatic little bunny visits Vermont and meets actual, real-live, not make-believe children there who have gay parents.

...

At one of the homes, Buster is introduced to all of the children and to the two moms. One girl explains that one of the women is her "stepmom," whom she says she loves a lot.

One of the women asks the kids to get some maple syrup and some cheese for dinner, and to stop by the other home to borrow a big lasagna pan. In the other home, Buster is introduced to the whole family, including two more moms. Then the kids head off to get the ingredients, and Buster learns where syrup and cheese come from.

where do syrup and cheese come from? they come from queers! we must protect our children from the insidious dangers of gay cheddar!

"You should also know," Spellings says, "that two years ago the Senate Appropriations Committee raised questions about the accountability of funds appropriated for Ready-To-Learn programs." A bit ominous, we think.

"We believe the 'Sugartime!' episode does not come within these purposes or within the intent of Congress and would undermine the overall objective of the Ready-To-Learn program -- to produce programming that reaches as many children and families as possible," Spellings wrote.

Why, you might wonder, given that preschoolers who watch the episode learn how maple syrup and cheese are made, not to mention useful English-language phrases (the series is also designed to help children for whom English is a second language).

Because, Spellings explained in her letter, "many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode." She did not say how many is "many," or cite a source for that information.

Congress's point in funding this programming "certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children," she added.

Au contraire, says WGBH, which produces "Postcards." The Boston public TV station says it will air the episode and has offered it to any station willing to defy the Education Department, which, in fairness, did shovel out major bucks for this series and, therefore, understandably feels it has the right to get in its two conservative cents' worth.

According to Brigid Sullivan, WGBH's vice president of children's programming, the RFP -- that's government-speak for request for proposals -- on the show said Ready-to-Learn was looking for a program that would "appeal to all of America's children by providing them with content and or characters with which they can identify. Diversity will be incorporated into the fabric of the series to help children understand and respect differences and learn to live in a multicultural society. The series will avoid stereotypical images of all kinds and show modern multi-ethnic/lingual/cultural families and children."

Except, it would seem, children who have two mothers.

like we learned from the spongebob attacks, tolerance and understanding do not apply to homosexuals. i guess wgbh didn't get the memo until this week.

We asked all parties involved what they would say to the children who were filmed for this episode, and who expected to be seen on national TV and are now being told by the federal government that their families are not fit for other children to see on national TV -- at least not on any show that has received federal funding.

here's what you tell them: the president hates you.

round on the ends and high in the middle

ohio is the place to be this weekend! tomorrow, friday, brings both the exbe showcase in cleveland (featuring stAllio!) and brutal cincinnati damage (featuring bobby vomit).

see awia news for more details.

the cleveland free times has a blurb about the exbe show... but mysteriously, even though i'm the only one at that show who isn't a cleveland local, i am not mentioned. whatever. i guess that won't be going in my collection of press clippings.

all the news that fits into my agenda

a couple weeks ago a big scandal hit revolving around commentator and pundit armstrong williams. it was discovered that williams had received $240,000 from the bush administration to pimp the "no child left behind" act. williams wrote columns, went on tv, & basically stuck his ass in the air at every opportunity to promote NCLB and never disclosed the enormous pile of bribe money propping him up. he tried to claim that it didn't really matter because he liked NCLB & would've talked it up even if he hadn't been paid off. but everyone knew this was garbage (as the prwatch article above explains, he'd sold out before), and he lost his column and punditry jobs. oh, the shame. the media went all out damning williams and the government, although apparently not so many had bad things to say about the pr house that bribed him: ketchum. then again, maybe everyone knows to expect this kind of thing from ketchum.

but now the blood is in the water and others have begun to actually look for government payoffs to journalists and columnists. and surprise surprise, those searches aren't coming up empty.

the next right-wing columnist to be outed as a sell-out is maggie gallagher:

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

big money, no whammies. only one tenth of armstrong williams's payoff, but it's still more than 2/3 of what i make in a year. the ethical violation seems clear to me: the govt paid her to work on their program, then she pimped the program without mentioning the 20 large of govt cash in her pockets. do you suppose you might think highly of someone who paid you $21,500?

in her latest column, gallagher tries to dig her way out. first she says that they didn't actually pay her to write columns, so disclosure isn't necessary. of course even if this is true, it's still a fairly blatant conflict of interest, and if she was writing columns about programs she worked for, she was duty-bound to disclose that. and by the end of the column she seems to acknowledge this: her final, official excuse is "the real truth is that it never occurred to me."

hoo boy. gallagher says that armstrong williams "rightly" lost his column and that she isn't interested in the lines of defense he used. but her own defense (oops, i forgot) is even worse than williams's! so she's damn lucky that her ethical lapse isn't quite as bad: she only got one tenth the money, and she wasn't explicitly paid to promote the marriage act in the media. although she did promote it, HHS surely knew she would, and she never disclosed her conflict of interest, so she clearly violated ethical standards. unless things get worse for her, the quotes at the bottom of the post article suggest she won't be losing her job anytime soon. but she's already lost respect (well, not from me; i didn't respect her to begin with) and prestige...

who will be the next to fall?

mp3 of the week: my first databent track

here it is kids! new mp3 of the week is "industry L fickafule", the first databent track i ever made, way back in 1996. download it now!

very few people have downloaded last week's mp3, "my good twin". do people not want the barbershop? more likely the problem is that the first week i spammed several lists and boards, but the second week i didn't. still, it could be the barbershop. "my good twin" is still up, so prove me wrong by downloading it while it's still up.

the first mp3 of the week, i love bob dole, has been deleted! two weeks and that's it! now you must track it down on p2p if you didn't get it.

god hates spongebob

ah, agape press... what a happy little name that is: agape being a greek word used in the bible to describe unconditional unselfish love, the highest form of love, that perfect love that god had for mankind, or love for all mankind. jesus commanded us to agape our neighbors, so they say.

so let's see what kind of lovely christian messages we can find on a news site with such a wholesome name:

It is as unprecedented as it is cunning, using all the right words and happiest faces in an attempt to speak directly to the nation's children about "tolerance and diversity." Once again, of course, those ideas include homosexual advocacy.

so christians don't like tolerance and diversity?

and who is this false prophet who is spreading this vile, immoral, and anti-christian message of tolerance and diversity? why, the devil himself, also known as spongebob squarepants!

"Does anybody here know SpongeBob?" Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, asked the guests Tuesday night at a black-tie dinner for members of Congress and political allies to celebrate the election results.

SpongeBob needed no introduction. In addition to his popularity among children, who watch his cartoon show, he has become a well-known camp figure among adult gay men, perhaps because he holds hands with his animated sidekick Patrick and likes to watch the imaginary television show "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy."

Now, Dr. Dobson said, SpongeBob's creators had enlisted him in a "pro-homosexual video," in which he appeared alongside children's television colleagues like Barney and Jimmy Neutron, among many others. The makers of the video, he said, planned to mail it to thousands of elementary schools to promote a "tolerance pledge" that includes tolerance for differences of "sexual identity."

love thy brother, so long as he doesn't "love" his brothers in the wrong way, if you know what i mean, wink wink nudge nudge.

supposedly the video features 100 characters from cartoons & children's shows. so why are the crusaders focusing on spongebob, the one character out of all of then who by definition cannot be homosexual because sponges reproduce asexually?

the mp3ofthweek shall inherit the earth

this week's mp3 of the week is up! it's "my good twin" from the legendary cassette-only barbershop demo.

falling apart

so we have a leak in our roof that has started coming through into my bedroom. i'd always had stains on the ceiling tiles in a few places but recently it got worse somehow. i've since lost two ceiling tiles and now i have drips in two places when it rains or snows a lot (& it's been raining & snowing a lot recently). we've called a couple different roofers now... the first ones never showed up, though a couple times they suggested they would. the second roofer was supposed to show up for an estimate on friday but that didn't happen either.

i went to eric's 11th annual birthday bash last night in anderson (where the night before, there was a fire at an enormous magnesium processing center, though it was far from the party location). the party was fun: it's a "bottle party" where guests bring 5ths of alcohol in lieu of a more traditional "gift" & everyone is free to drink all night. they put up lists of drinks they've invented & you roll d&d dice to determine what you get: 2d10 for mixed drinks (yes, there are 100 mixed drinks on the list), or 1d20 for shots. i drank my quota but never got too drunk & made sure i was sober enough to drive before heading home.

on my way home from the party, almost immediately after i got onto 69S, i hit a pothole or something, which shredded my tire. i never actually saw whatever it was; i wasn't swerving or anything, so it must've been a pothole or car part in my lane or something. so i pulled over, got my donut spare out of the trunk... but for the life of me i could not find a jack. if there's one in there, they hid it somewhere funky. or possibly i took it out for some reason years ago & forgot about it. anyway, at that time i couldn't find it.

so i called back to the party, but in all the hubbub i forgot just how far i had driven, and gave eric faulty information about my location. fortunately partygoer jeanne was on her way out & had a jack i could use, but it took her 30 minutes to find me because she was working with bad info. finally she showed up, i took my lugnuts off, we jacked up my car... but the rim (which was bent) would not come off. i don't know why. jeanne concluded that it wouldn't come off without a sledgehammer or a propane torch, so i locked up the car & she drove me home, so i could call a tower & deal with it in the morning.

come morning, lib called AAA (they have a membership but i currently don't, a problem i expect to remedy soon), & barry drove me back out there. it took awhile: the towers actually arrived a couple minutes before we did. then when the tower jacked up my car, the rim just fell off, smooth like butter. i don't know what we were doing wrong last night or what the difference was, but that's how it happened.

i've needed to take the car in for my 40,000mi maintenance for some time now, so i think i'll take it there to get the rim done too. they'll charge me more than a discount tire place would, but i might as well get all the work done at the same time.

on top of all that, barry & i went out for awhile this evening, and when we got home, barry tried to boot up his computer. it wouldn't. and barry noticed a troublesome odor. some important part of it has seemingly fried. and this was his second computer: the other one's AGP port fried a couple months back & has been offline until it gets a new motherboard. i predict a trip to the computer parts store tomorrow.

the secret is out

now the truth can be told... animals within animals co-founder lander kitt is in fact an american shorthair tiger cat (aka a "brown tabby"). not a human being. but thanks to the miracles of the internet, he too can have his own friendster-like website thanks to catster.

mp3s are for the weak

mp3 of the week is now online! this week's mp3 is the classic track "i love bob dole" from 1996, with guest production by everyone's favorite: murkbox.

so download that sucker from http://www.animalswithinanimals.com/stallio/mp3oftheweek/! now, dammit!

content flooding

so i've been thinking about implementing a new feature for 2005: an mp3 of the week. each week i would upload an mp3 from my discography. i have a lot of unreleased & rare shit out there, including old remixes, compilation submissions that were never released (or were, but with little/no distribution), stuff that i simply never publicly released for one reason or another, & lots of tracks that were previously "cassette only". hell, i could fill out the whole year simply with pre-bad taste stuff (like the "mighty mighty ben-boy" tapes), assuming i had a working tape deck that i could use to record the tapes to my hard drive.

this would also be an excuse to finally get my 4-track fixed so that i could "remaster" old 4-track stuff such as perpetual emotion machine.

i've also been talking to drbmd about releasing some of the old bad taste stuff online as mp3s. because nobody's really buying the stuff anyway, so we might as well make it available for download. i personally would rather people hear the stuff for free than not hear it at all. drbmd seemed supportive of the idea, but we probably need to finish the redesign of the bad taste site before then, & the redesign is going excruciatingly slowly...

anyway, now that my home computer is operating normally again, i might get that mp3-of-the-week up & online as soon as tonight. so stay tuned.

full capacity

remember way back when my heatsink broke for the second time & i had to get a new one? well, when installing that second heat sink barry had to move one of my ram cards, which apparently didn't get reseated properly. even worse, it was the bigger of the two cards (256mb), so i've been operating at 128mb. winxp barely functions with 128mb of ram. anyway, i finally got back in there & reseated all my memory, so once again i'm back at 384mb. positively zippy, compared to the past couple weeks.

and remember way, way back when i vomited on my keyboard? well i finally bought a new one: all this time i've been working with a borrowed one. my new keyboard is a memorex mx3300. it was $16.99 at compusa, with plenty of extra features. i'm adjusting to it (a couple keys are ever so slightly moved from where i expect them to be, but not as bad as with the one i was borrowing from barry, which was also memorex... specifically the caps lock is closer to the A than i'm used to).

so i'm excited to be back where i was in terms of home computing, but i'm still working with a machine that was built in 2000 or 2001. at the time it was fairly high end, but by current standards it's a piece of shit. i've decided that it needs a major upgrade soon: new motherboard, new processor, new memory, dvd burner, probably a newer video card. i'd like a new printer at some point as well. i'll keep my current hard drives, & i was thinking i'd keep my current soundcard also, but i might even consider upgrading that if i do everything else & there's still money. it's a good card, but not up to today's prosumer cards.

i was wondering how to pay for all this (i have plenty in savings but generally hate dipping in to my savings account) & connie suggested using my tax return. i hadn't even considered that, but it seems like such an obvious idea that i almost have to use it. i should get $800 or more for my refund, judging from past years, which would be plenty to replace most of my computer guts.

i'm very interested in the athlon 64 chip series. that seems to be the best family of processors around right now, though my information about chips is probably several months old by this point so i'm not too familiar with the exact chips that are out now. (my most current info comes from working on the maxpc 2005 buyer's guide.) i don't need anything bleeding edge; the 64fx series is probably overkill. but a nice slower athlon 64 chip like the 3000 series with a good mobo should suit me very well for $300 or so, leaving lots of refund money left over for memory, dvd burner, etc. i just need to get my w2s first so i can actually file my tax return...

now i need to grab a nuvo...

this week's issue of nuvo has a best of 2004 list (like all media outlets do right now), & it turns out that rob g (co-host of the free zone as well as the guy who reviewed mmcb for imn) has included maura's milk chocolate bath as one of the "Top 10 new releases I listened to most in 2004"... so i need to grab a copy so i can see my name in 10pt print once again. (someday i'm going to start making collages out of old fliers & press clippings.... someday...)

this, along with tfy's inclusion of true data on his best of 2004 post on exbe, will probably be the only times i pop up in any "best of" lists this year, since mmcb came out in 2003 & there are only 90 copies at most of true data in circulation (buy my record, people! i have more than 100 left! i'm thinking i'll even reduce the price in 2005). but two is better than zero.

text/plain

spoke too soon... it's still reverting to text/plain.

i have no idea why deleting the file extension works: that's still showing up as text/html.

everything works in ie, so for once ie users are not totally fucked (at least regarding this one tiny issue)

text/html

i'm at home now, my blog is still visible, & my mime-type is still "text/html".

all i did was move up my meta tags to the top of the head section (as opposed to being at the bottom of the head, underneath all my link, script, & style tags). could that have been the cure?

i won't really know until at least tomorrow morn, but so far this is promising. even if that wasn't the fix, i'm still glad i updated the template because now it's cleaner as well as RSS-enabled.

hmm...

ah... here's a much better discussion of the plaintext bug...

if you see the bug again, right-click & select "view page info". the content-type should be "text/html": if it shows "text/plain" then something is wrong, most likely an apache bug.

plaintext

still tracking down the "source code" issue (i think i should start calling it the "plaintext issue" because html markup is not really source code, & googling for "source code" will turn up primarily false hits). found a blog entry mentioning a site with a similar problem... some of the commenters assert that a meta problem was responsible for that issue, so i'm moving my meta tags around & republishing. of course, i don't know how to test this because i don't know how to duplicate the error other than just going home...

harumph

okay, obviously not a simple validation error... i guess more research is required.

happy refresh

first post of 2005 y'all.

i'm still investigating the mysterious "source code" problem. tfy noted in the comments that if you experience that problem, deleting ".html" from the url will render the page properly (ie: www.animalswithinanimals.com/stallio/blog). i have no idea what's up with that, but it's a workaround just in case.

right now i'm working on getting the blog to validate properly (at least most of the way: i have lots of &s that should be &s and i'm not going to replace them all by hand). the theory is that the problem is some sort of intermittent rendering error has been caused by bad code, & cleaner code will make it go away. i have no idea how to test my theories because i don't know how to duplicate the error; it just seems to appear when i arrive at the office, then i fix it... it stays fixed during the workday, then it reappears when i get home. maybe rebooting or restarting mozilla will do it...

i've had an rss feed for the blog for awhile, but it's now actually linked to the page rather than hyperlinked. if you're using a non-ie browser you might also have noticed my new favicon. it's not perfect but i like it.