Friday 14 January 2000

Pic of the day: "Like a blue whale in the mood for flying, or something..."

Oh my. I have a feeling that this is going to be fluffy at best. You see, I wrote a long essay earlier today, but it is not usable as an entry. It will go into Approximate Truths (my popular science section) if anything. Now it's soon midnight. Where did the time go? Well, there's the job of course. Then there are mailing lists. I also made a small foray into Daggerfall, though I did not find time for anything more. I fell asleep in my chair, too. It's been a full work week. Oh, and I finished reading The Last Dragonlord. I liked it. It was well written, long and full of exciting subplots. Yes, it was a bit girlie. Then again, ca half my ancestors have been girls at some point of their lives. I still have one X chromosome for each Y. I think I can stand a little girlie stuff.

Anyway, it's late and I'm feeling ... hmm. Not really horny, but a bit erotic I think. Now that's a scary thought. (Like a blue whale in the mood for flying, or something.) I better not try to write any fiction tonight, though I may certainly be tempted to. If the stuff I've done in Micrographx Photomagic is any indication ... ooh, there's some of the other disappeared time. I knew it had to be hiding somewhere.

Oh, and I nearly forgot. I cooked myself one of my standard dinners tonight. Used to be I only cooked myself dinner in the weekends, and then in the middle of the day. But now three days in a row I have eaten little at work (except a full-stomach breakfast) and instead cooked various spaghetti at home. I still have enough for weeks, it seems. I hope I won't need that. Anyway, a delicious pasta meal is easy to make, but there still goes some time. I guess the time thieves have not actually been here after all.

Since I am too fluffy by now to write anything profound (like how keeping a large part of its population in prison helps boost the American economy, or something), I'll just pick a couple questions from the Journal mailing list. This has the added benefit that my non journal writing friends can see what riddles plague us people...

Do pictures improve (enhance) a journal? I already wrote to the list and pointed out a couple of examples who did. But ironically, I am less sure about my own. I have had a JPG picture here from day one, sometime in the summer of 98. In fact, this whole thing started as ".JPG Diary", a poor man's webcam. Since I could not afford to stay online long enough for a webcam to be meaningful, I put up a picture each day instead so people could at least see if I looked tired, healthy, unshaven, happy or all of the above. I added a few lines about how my day had been.
As time went by, my diary grew into a journal, but the picture remained. Well, actually the picture started to wander, too. No longer just a picture of my face or my extensive wardrobe, there cropped up screenshots from my game of the day, outdoors pictures from my walks, and pathetic attempts of art.

But I've never managed to integrate the picture with the thousand words. Well, it happens occasionally, but it is not a rule. Still, I guess I am going to keep the JPG tradition. After all, it should be easy to set any browser to not load pictures as default. In Opera, it is just a mouse click. In MSIE 5 (the industry standard, I'm afraid) it should be in the menus under Tools, Alternatives, Advanced, Multimedia.

Another question was how long an entry could be before your eyes glaze over. That's a pretty good question, and for months I've had the feeling that the answer is "just a little bit shorter than mine".

And on that note, I allow your eyes to glaze over for now, and upload this stuff before dawn breaks or I fall asleep, whichever comes first.