Where are all of the pictures?

I know many of you have been waiting patiently (?) for the return of the “Offspring” photo galleries. Unfortunately I’ve been really busy with work (and life)… and I’ve been spending most of my “geek” time doing music in GarageBand or playing the Wii (i.e. losing to Fletcher at bowling), rather than getting the new photo gallery stuff set up on the site.

Fortunately for you, we’ve taken almost no new pictures since Christmas, because a) the camera’s batteries are crapping out and b) the camera has been misplaced for several weeks. So, you haven’t missed anything, really.

One of the key points in getting this set up was finding a mechanism in WordPress to restrict access: in short, I want to know who’s looking at pictures of my kids. Now I’ve found a plug-in to manage access to individual blog posts, so that’s one more hurdle jumped.

Future posts in this category will require you to be logged in. Fortunately, it’s easy to register and once you’ve done it, you should never have to do it again. (At least, not until I decide to change my site entirely again. But I don’t anticipate doing that in the near future, if only because I’m not going to have the time to mess with it!)

Commander Mark!

Wow, here’s a blast from the past. And perhaps a disturbing look into the bizarre and meandering train of thought my brain often follows.

Sometimes I will get a word or name stuck in my head, the way many people (myself included) often get songs stuck in their heads. For instance, once a few years ago I had the name Frau Farbissina on a mental audio loop.

Anyway, today the word in my head was “foreshortening.” And whenever I think of that word, I think of the place where I first heard it… from a crazy PBS drawing show host named Commander Mark!

Back in the day, I watched his original show, The Secret City.

T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

I am certainly accustomed to encountering PHP parser errors, but I was not expecting to see this: T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

And apparently I’m not alone. Even with an explanation (it’s Hebrew for “double colons”… and I leave for you to discover on your own why PHP constants might be named in transliterated Hebrew), it’s still a bit confusing, as the expected character should have been a dollar sign, not a double colon. Still awaiting an answer on that one…

A new song (and a new title)

I’ve just posted an early, as-yet-incomplete version of my latest track, “Every Stroke of the Oar Seemed to Enrage the Missouri.” The title is a line from an old educational film from the ’50s that surfaced as part of a video project at my job.

Highway 34 RevisitedI’ve also given the album its proper title now. Hors d’Oeuvreture is out, Highway 34 Revisited is in (with all due respect to Bob Dylan). The cover is not finalized, but as with the music, I have posted an in-progress version of it.

To read more and listen to full-length MP3s of the tracks, visit the album’s page.