Month: April 2006

Bill: Hey everyone, I’d like to welcome Steve. He’s going to be our new Priest for the group.
Everyone at the table greets Steve enthusiastically.
Steve: Great to be playing with you guys! I heard you’re all 10th level and ready to set off on an adventure to storm a wizard’s stronghold. Sounds awesome!
Bill: That’s right, they are. As the Game Master, I’ve got a few surprises in store for them though, so they better be on their toes.
Everyone laughs at the table.
Steve: Great! So when do we start!
Bill: Well we’ll be playing now but which day did you want start our private sessions?
Steve: Private sessions? What do you mean? I thought I was playing with everyone tonight?
Bill: Oh no, we don’t allow that Steve! Haha! That’s funny!
Steve raises his eyebrow with a quizzical look on his face.
Steve: Did I say something funny?
Bill: Well you can’t just start up a new character at 10th level and your 1st level Priest wouldn’t survive very long with us now would he? No, we’ll set some private sessions aside just for you and me so that we can work your 1st level character up to 10th level quickly though. You don’t mind playing four or five nights a week for the next few weeks do you? Be better if we get it all done quickly in one swoop so you can finally start playing with the others here. Sound good?
Steve: Huh? You’re kidding right?

I keep hearing people talking about seamless integration. They keep saying that they don’t mind using a third party service to add something to their site but only if it can be integrated seamlessly within their site. In other words, whatever service they use, you shouldn’t be able to tell it’s a third party service. Now ask yourself, how many so called Web 2.0 services today can tout this? Why is this happening? Is it really a limitation of the technology or more a case of these services placing a higher importance on their brand over their customer’s needs?

Got the opportunity to get out last night and see some local talent at the Roxy downtown. Not knowing anything about the bands other than a friend of ours knew the keyboardist in one of the them, I thought they’d probably be “ok” and it was a good chance to let loose for the evening. However after seeing and listening to each of the bands perform, I was pretty much blown away. I had no idea the local talent in Vancouver was this good, as I’d describe them both as extremely talented performers.

Tom Howie and his band were up first and they could have headlined as a local act easily in my opinion. Sincere would be the single word I’d describe Tom with. He just seemed really genuine and didn’t appear to be putting on an “act” in anyway. Kind of a “take me as I am” kind of guy and performance. Overall, I loved what I saw and purchased his EP immediately with a very strong interest in getting a hold of more of his music in the future.

Brandon Paris and his band were up after Tom and again there were amazing. Diversity would be the word I would use to describe the band and what makes them so appealing, as their music seems like it has a little bit of everything in it (a “fusion” if you will). The lead men of the band, Brandon Paris and his exuberant sidekick Dagriff, are an incredible combination together onstage. Brandon’s words cut into you with his sincerity, while Dagriff’s reggae vocals fill you up with endless energy making it hard not to get up and hit the dance floor. Again, I immediately grabbed their CD, as these guys are definitely going places as well.

Update: Apparently both bands will be playing again on April 23rd at The Blarney Stone downtown in Gastown at 216 Carrall Street. It supposed to be a benefit concert and tickets are only $10. Definitely going to see if I can make to this one again, as these guys are awesome. I’ve been playing their CD’s repeatedly since Thursday and with each playing, I like them even more.

I’m fooling around with the design of my site some more. This time I’ve decided that I want to see how far I can push things just using styles. In other words, no layout modifications (i.e. site template changes) to the base Squarespace layout I’m using.

I believe I like this default style setup I’ve got now, primarily because of the larger font size which makes it much more easier to read. I realized this when I switched from my site’s previous style to view Dave Winer’s Scripting News site which has a larger font. I realized that some people may have a difficult time reading with my smaller font sizes, so I bumped them up. After I had finished the change, I actually preferred it much more to the previous font size.

Next step is adding “detailings” such as site header images and so forth. After I’m done, I think I’ll release the style as a download and also indicate how I achieved some of the “tricks” on the site. For example, I want to have a different header image for each area of the site and I’ve finally figured out how to do this now without having to modify your site’s templates. Again, I’ll reveal more of this later.

PS. Oh and I’ve also figured out how to create a “splash page” very easily in Squarespace. These aren’t really recommended nowadays but some people would still like them on their site. Again I’ll reveal this later.

Update: Justed started adding some of the different banner header images to the site. Again, no Squarespace site templates were modified to do this, just added a snippet of CSS code to each page. That’s it.