UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Let’s see. Something’s just not quite right. What am I missing?

It’s a never-ending quest to design the perfect website. Especially when the definition of “perfect” keeps changing. And when I have other things I should be doing than screwing around with my own site. But there you go. So as I explore the sites of people whose ideas and skills I admire, I often note things that I’m supposed to have on my site but don’t. What are those things right now?

There’s the paperclip:

Yeah, the whole “my website is really my desk” metaphor just doesn’t quite work with my aesthetic (such as it is), and besides I did a paperclip on an early iteration of a client’s site recently and it ended up being nixed. (Probably a good decision.)

Oh and there’s the giant pullquote in Georgia font:

OK now it’s starting to look like I’m just picking on Merlin. But really I’m just jealous. I wish I could get away with being named “Merlin.” (And be interesting and/or funny.)

I need lots of swirly doodads in retina-scorching colors, in a late ’60s psychedelic rock album and/or Camus paperback cover art style:

(In case you think this design technique is new, I own a paperback edition of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which I believe dates back to the early 1970s, with a hand-drawn cover illustration to prove my point.)

But to be honest I’m just not good enough with Illustrator to pull something like that off (and my pen-holding muscles have atrophied after a decade plus of extensive computer use, so freehand is strictly out of the question).

Eventually it’ll come to me. In the meantime I’ll just keep doing my own thing. Yet another site redesign may be on its way sometime soon!

OK, first off let me say that I have finally arrived at an age where I can honestly and without shame say that, no sir, I just don’t really like A Prairie Home Companion that much. And that’s a tough statement to make as a born-and-bred die-hard self-styled intellectual liberal Minnesota DFLer. (That’s Minnesota’s slightly-more-liberal-and-even-more-union-friendly flavor of the Democratic party.) And I think the thing I dislike most about the program, more than Garrison Keillor’s meticulously cultivated faux-folksiness is the nauseating preponderance of jazz violin in the featured music. I hate jazz violin. (And I love the fact that it has yet to earn its own Wikipedia entry.)

Well, I’ve been working on some new music. In the spirit of the title of a track from the latest Joe Satriani album, I’m currently calling it “Dun Dun Tsh.” And right now I am really enjoying it because it’s drowning out the jazz violin that’s currently playing at the Caribou Coffee where I’m sitting as I write this. I’m not really sure how I’d classify this music, but it’s definitely inspired by the “electronic breakbeat jazz” work of Revolution Void.

Once I have a finished version I plan to release this as part of a new series of free downloads distributed under Creative Commons licensing.

For now, here’s a rough mix for you to enjoy. I said enjoy!

[audio:http://blog.room34.com/wp-content/uploads/underdog/dun-dun-tsh-03.mp3]

Although it’s becoming less and less clear to me exactly why I am doing this, I still jump over to CNN.com several times a day to see what’s happening (or what they think, in their now tragically questionable judgment, is worth identifying as “happening”). Probably because it’s the first item in the predefined News bookmark menu in Safari, which (again, for reasons I can no longer understand) I have left unaltered in my bookmarks bar.

I think things may have finally gone too far today though. When I got to the page I was greeted with this giant “Breaking News” banner:

Wow. Really? Lame Duck Bush giving a rousing endorsement to his party’s nominee? No friggin’ way! Please. How about “Breaking News: We’re Totally Irrelevant!” There you go. Now that’s a news flash. (For themselves, at least.)

I’ve just added some updates to the iPokédex today, inspired (as was the iPokédex) itself by questions my son asked that I couldn’t answer.

The search page now offers a “special evolution conditions” dropdown menu, allowing you to see at a glance all of the various special evolution conditions that exist and, with a click, get a list of the Pokémon affected. (So now he knows which Pokémon evolve with Thunderstone.)

I also added a link to a handy battle chart on the “sources” page, although I would like to add a direct capability to select a type (or click the type on the Pokémon’s detail page) and instantly see all of the details about that type’s strengths and weaknesses. That’ll be version 1.3.

I was initially nonplussed when I heard the news early this morning that John McCain had selected Sarah Palin (who?) as his running mate. I know a lot more about her now than I did twelve hours ago, but nothing that’s been added to my brain in that time span has done anything to change my opinion that this was a move that was at best cynical, at worst a sign of utter desperation (and/or utter cluelessness).

Along the way the geeky but not terribly profound thought occurred to me that (as I’ve always liked to think anyway) the Democrats are like Apple in this election, and the Republicans like Microsoft. Apple delivers true innovation while Microsoft plays copycat and catch-up. But despite offering what the people really want and need, Apple usually loses to Microsoft and whatever appeal it offers. (Really, I don’t know. Why do people like Microsoft? And why do they think the Republicans represent their interests? Unless they count themselves among the select group of Americans who think people making $4,999,999 a year aren’t rich and are even more self-centered than that would suggest.)

But then another thought occurred to me. A non-partisan thought (for once). History is going to be made in this election. History has already been made of course, but nominating someone who’s not an old white guy is not so new (1984, anyone?). Having someone who’s either non-white or non-male (or both, but Oprah’s not running this year, and I don’t mean that to be as glib as it sounds) actually win election to either office, president or vice president, is something that’s never even been close to happening before (again, 1984?). But it is definitely going to happen this year. There will be an African-American president. Or there will be a woman vice president. One of the two of these things absolutely is going to happen this year.

Wow. Of course I have a preference. And I suspect that accusations of racism and/or sexism are going to be flying for the next couple of months. But in the end, history is going to change, and we don’t even need a flux capacitor to do it.