Ionrock Dot Org

I consistantly come to my blog knowing that the content is less than exciting. I am not much of a writer and after reading the blogs of a few friends, I realize that I am missing the point entirely. A good example of this is on the homepage of the WordPress site. It says, "WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform..."

My problem is I have totally missed the point when it comes to the publishing side of things. To me, my blog is nothing more than a made up reason to store data in a database. The whole idea of publishing content because I have something to say has been absent from my blog. While it sounds sad it really is not at all. I really enjoy blogging when I do take the time to do it. My results are nothing too exciting but I have a little fun with it so I don't mind. My blog is always a way for me to remember what I really love about computers, the Internet and programming.

I like the work. I like to get a problem or project and make a solution. The important part of that is receiving a problem. I am not one to go out and put together my own dynamic html menu system or create random designs for sites that don't exist because there is no need for it. This is probably the reason I don't spend more time blogging and doing a better job of it. If it isn't required, I don't see the need.

This sounds a little shallow but the truth is my artistic side really is there too. I enjoy being creative and I get that opportunity often with programming. But, I also have a great band that I get to create with, so I have other outlets for my more artistic side. My resolve at this point is to just blog when I want and keep the pressure low. I will try to improve my writing because that will help with other areas but as far as trying to create an audience, I will leave that to those who enjoy keeping track of hundreds of urls a day while they should be working.

I cannot believe the best Lollapalooza bill since Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales! The world is going down the tubes. We will have to get tickets to The Pixies now... It could be worse.

Yesterday I did nothing but waste my time. I played Max Payne 2 at my brother in-law's apt. and beat it. The question you be asking is "Why did you waste your time on some stupid video game?" I must say, while I am not a "gamer", I do enjoy some games a great deal. I had the opportunity (the experience was positive enough to call an "opportunity"), to play Max Payne and later its sequel. Both engulfed my time during the few days I devoted to beating the games. I have always been a sucker for a good first/third person shooter. I enjoyed Metal Gear solid to no end and would have put it on my resume that I had beaten it in my high school years. Syphon Filter 1 & 2 were are also a lot of fun even though they were not nearly as high of quality. I have had my run-ins playing quake as well along with one experience playing unreal tournament. With this in mind, I was really glad to get done with Max Payne 2. It was playing in mind quite a bit and I really wanted to beat it. It was quite a relief to get a few hours to play and finish the game why everyone took a nap after swimming. I knew I would not have to take it home so that was the best feeling about the whole experience. For my next game...

UME played the "Damn You, Drunk Rooster" benefit show the other day for our friend Travis. I think the url is damnyourooster.com or something similar. Travis puts together a zine that exposes the fleshy underbelly of the Houston independent music scene. He is a very good writer and the show was a lot of fun. Two highlights were seeing some friends play, Sjolander (ex-practice space mates and all around nice people) and Motion Turns It On (current practice space mates and finding to be very genuine and kind folks). They were both really great and I was honored to see them play. We also played a show in Austin on Friday that went pretty well. There were not too many people at the show and the guys at Emo's were less than nice before we played. They did apologize for not being a bit more respectful to us after we played which I took as a pretty hefty compliment. I say this because we take playing shows very seriously and take the relationship between band and club as the highest priority. I got the impression they thought we were just some dumb band (which is somewhat true), so seeing them act differently after we played made me happy we work hard to put on a good show. I don't really blame them for being kind of rude. I have put on a few shows and it is nothing but a pain, so I hope no one thinks badly of Emo's Staff. They were very kind in the end and most importantly, professional which makes music a safer and more positive place in my opinion.

We have a show coming up on Wednesday with Bring Back the Guns (The Groceries), The Octopus Project and a band with dynamos in the name from St. Louis. We are playing first in hopes of getting a nice crowd for the touring band. We did not know about the show until we saw it in the Houston Press which was a very weird experience. If you ever book UME for a show make sure you give us a confirmation email with load in times, playing times and any other info you can think of. If you don't we may just miss the show and we never want to miss a show.

The other day we played a show with The Unicorns, Arcade Fire and Fiery Furnaces at Walter's on Washington. The show was really fun and there were a ton of people there (it sold out!). The strangest aspect of the show was the crowd. We knew the show would attract a younger audience which in itself is a little depressing since we still consider ourselves youth culture. After getting to the club for load in we immediately noticed the kids waiting in line to get in the show. By the time the doors were open a rather hefty line strung around the building and it was obvious the show would sell out. Once the doors did open kids were immediately at the front of the stage in order to get a good spot for all the bands. I am pretty sure they were there for Arcade Fire and The Unicorns as they seemed to get the best response. They held out the whole nite at the front and everyone had a really great time.

It reminded me of when I was a youngster going to shows and how important it was to see all the bands. I hated getting rides from friends because some were a little cooler than I and didn' t mind making it a little late to the show. It also reminded me of how much opening bands suck sometimes because I felt like we were that band. The response we received was pretty positive by the end and I have to admit I tried as hard as I could to put on a good show for these kids, so I hope they liked it. At the very least my impression was that we did not bore them, so for me, my goals were met.

What I liked the best about that show was the crowd. I can't put a finger on why exactly, but it was really the best thing about it. It is really inspiring to see young kids making it to your show and moving around a bit. Given, we were not the band they came to see, but it just didn't matter. Some kids came up to us after the show to give us the traditional "nice show" while others just appeared timid whenever someone in a band walked by. As the show went on we were able to watch the kids mingle and just have a fun time being "at the show." When the show was over some even talked about how they were sad it was over. It was just such an event to everyone it made me remember how much music and sub-culture means to people.

My parents never understood this (which is alright really). They never knew how important it was that I skateboard or go see some band I liked. I think they would have understood when they were younger of course. When you get older you start to consider things like paying bills, having kids, working, etc. and you forget that life is not about paying a bill. I am glad I play music with Lauren because it forces us to consistantly remember that there are more important things than paying bills and working. Now that I think about it maybe my parents understood things after all. They always said to me that they never were going to let me or my sister lose out an opportunity because of money and that was really how things were. We never had a ton-o-money or anything but we were never turned down for financial reasons. It is so important that we make an effor to experience as much as we can and I am fortunate enough to be married to a woman who makes sure that happens. Enough rambling...

Having a little time to waste I started reading a few blogs (add cheesy drum to signify sarcastic humor here). I came across CleverCactus, a file sharing network that seems really nice. I have found that I really prefer to share files with friends than to use something like Kazaa or gnutella. I never really look for things except when I have to and even then I am not really crazy about it. I primarily look for software since I am way beyond poor enough to pay for something like Photoshop or Macromedia stuff. Whenever I make the big bucks I will go ahead and buy these great products but at the moment is just not possible.

Back to the post though...

What I really enjoy doing is getting new music from people. Lauren and I don't get to buy nearly as much music as we would like. There are just too many bands and too limited funds. It looks like this Clever Cactus thing would be really cool for doing something like that. I have used aim in the past for this kind of thing but aim was not made for it so something that would more of a dedicated solution sounds really good. It is still in beta though so maybe I can find someone to give me an invite. In any sense, I hope it can go live soon b/c I really think it will be cool.

I am committed to actually writing in my blog. Although I don't really know why. I suppose it will make me a better person at some point. In any case I am going to write in my blog...

In other news, I am working on a calendar application that will be meant to be an easy customizable calendar. The goal will be to produce an easy to install, moderately complicated to configure, easy to use calendar application that will allow easy integration of an event calendar in a website. Why would I have "complicated to configure" as a goal? Well, the fact of the matter is that us web developers have a skill and since most of us are the ones that setup these free solutions (this will be GPL), we always have to configure these things. Very rarely is this an easy task and there always seems to be problems in the configuration whether it is the class name at span uses or how to arrange a template. this project will hopefully be able to provide something that allows for extensive configuration while keeping the functionality simple. I will probably say more on this later when I actually have some real code working but for now, this is what I got.

I am working on creating a template for an osCommerce site. I have never actually gotten the chance to work with osCommerce yet so this is a good experience... except for the fact that it is the most un-documented project I have ever seen! It is mind boggling to me that they have never taken the time to document how to create templates or alter the system. There are plenty of forums for the many different modded versions but each has its own differences and tweaks. I really think that most people do not write documentation and say that the project sucks because if they did they may not be able to make money off doing custom solutions. It is a never ending cycle that is pretty gross. At the very least I will be able to gouge folks too so that is a plus.
UPDATE!
Just to be clear I was venting above. I do think osCommerce is a very feature rich system that seems to be the most developed open source solution today. With that said I still get the impression that they are not about writing good code as much as they are making a bunch of money making custom solutions. Of course, I can't blame anyone for trying to make a buck so kudos to the osCommerce team for making me want to just spend the $50 to make me a stylesheet :)