All Good Things

This blog started in May 2004 when The OC debuted on UK television screens. Starved of Roswell, Buffy and Dawson's Creek. Orange County provided plenty of laughs, thrills and geeky amusement! Seth's comic book obsession and penchant for perky brunettes parallels my own!

No sooner am I up-to-date with Apple Inc kit; as depicted in The OC. The OC ends! Hot damn!



It's time to say goodbye to the first family of Orange County. In Season Four, high school seems like a distant memory for the young graduates, who have been thrust into adulthood after the death of their beloved friend Marissa. The Cohens struggle to keep Ryan focused on the future, fighting the forces that threaten to pull him back into his old life. Having left Orange County, Summer attends Brown University in Rhode Island, where she has reinvented herself as a left-leaning, tree-hugging activist. And, lonely in Orange County, Seth works at a local comic book store.

So long Sandy, Seth, Summer and co. It was fun and I'll miss seeing you on my Sony Plasma! Perhaps The Real OC will show up on Joost™ as part of the Viacom deal?

Left To My Own Devices

The following chronicles my web exploration and site building exploits. The original article appears here.

Before Google
For anyone who maybe remotely interested. My online adventures began in the summer of 1995. A friend and I spent a leisurely Sunday afternoon in Bournemouth University's main library surfing the net using Netscape 3 Gold (back in the days before the advent of 'free' browsers and IE domination).

The first site I ever visited was Sony USA. And the first search (using Yahoo!) was for actress Winona Ryder. Does anyone remember this site from Eric Harshbarger?

http://www.auburn.edu/~harshec/WWW/Winona.html/

After graduation, and now in gainful employment at Reuters Business Information (RBI), I signed-up with AOL UK (1997).

Google Earth
In the spring of 1998 Macworld UK magazine carried a free copy of Claris Homepage on a cover CD.

Claris Homepage may have lacked the 'killer' features of GoLive and sexier Dreamweaver (the de facto WYSIWYG), but it was simplicity itself, and, above all, no hefty price tag if the medium left me cold. So, whilst off work and suffering from flu, I started to put together an inaugural web site: an eclectic mix of original work and pop culture commentary (Buffy, Party of Five and Dawson's Creek had captured the zeitgeist of the day). This went live on AOL within a week. The first 50 hits came soon after!

By 1999 AOL UK had all but alienated its Mac customers due to tardy application updates and lacklustre support, and I searched for an alternative ISP and web host.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm
Regrettably this was a time prior to the wonder known as the SuperDrive (CD/DVD burner). Despite owning an Iomega Zip 100 Drive the notion of regularly backing up critical data (on my trusty Performa 5200) had yet to enter my design DNA. In a move that would cost me two-years of web development (including graphics, text et al), I accidentally deleted my offline site. For the record let it be noted that Microsoft's Outlook Express 4.x (for Classic OS) should take some of the responsibility too!

The next two years went by and I couldn't muster any enthusiasm to rebuild the site from scratch - work and the transition from Classic OS to OS X took their toll. Then a friend asked me why I hadn't setup a new site? The honest answer was creative apathy. Apologetically I loaded Adobe PageMill 3 (included with my iMac DV SE) and...

Step By Step
Adobe offered registered PageMill 3 users a free upgrade to GoLive 5! In the space of a weekend (burning the midnight oil as-it-were) I'd assembled a basic site and uploaded this to my iTools (.mac) iDisk after some trial and error (mostly the latter) - there were no tutorials explaining how to use original templates and requests (to other iTools webmasters) for help went unanswered. Where had the sense of community gone?

Once I rolled out the site (2.x) the next phase was to promote reciprocal links, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and consider affiliate marketing (pays the hosting bills and adds a high degree of editorial responsibility on my part).

American Idol
A cute recollection. I'd applied to join The Iconfactory's deskbase in 2003. That same afternoon I received a confirmation, from Mindy Weaver, warmly welcoming me to their extended family. At the time Kelly Clarkson's 'Moment Like This' was playing on the radio.

Express Yourself
By 2004 this site had come of age and I could no longer ignore the allure of the brave new frontier: blogging + RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

Although blog templates are often criticised for their homogeneity, ease of use and extendibility far out way any negatives. Critical code updates can be applied to an entire site sans the time-consuming tedium of modifying each page individually. This leaves authors to focus on 'content'.

Think About The Future
2006 and, now that the blog is well established (Buffy and Dawson have graduated out of our lives), it's time to revisit this site again replete with a new 'bag of tricks'! The incumbent GoLive has made way for the sassy Macromedia Studio 8 triple threat (Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash).

What "dreams" may come?

Street Smarts

After a nine-month wait European consumers can now enter the fourth space. Say hello to Sony PSP. Want one? You'll need to get in line, I'm afraid.



Photo reproduced with the permission of the copyright holders SCEE.

In keeping with the Sony theme. Lets focus on their music (software) group and a confession. I listen to Jessica Simpson! Before you flame me. In 1999 I received her debut CD (as part of a larger package) from a US-based friend: Jessica's vocal range and control impressed. Prior to this, Sony had included "Did You Ever Love Somebody" (performed by Jessica) in the first Dawson's Creek soundtrack compilation. So, I was already a convert. MTV's Newlyweds introduced us to her solipsistic lifestyle and has become appointment television (Pepsi floater optional).

Last weekend Michael and me perused the shelves of MVC. The subject of Madonna's next album arose: I had no idea about the forthcoming release of Confessions on a Dance Floor! Madonna sagaciously appears in the new commercial for Motorola's ROKR iTunes phone. The new single "Hang Up" is also premiered during the advertisement. Does this mean that her back catalogue will shortly be made available on the iTunes Music Store? Madonna's lucrative deal with Microsoft (under the Windows Media brand) always struck me as spurious and inherently limiting. Maverick (co-founded by Madonna) artists were introduced last year.

Sweet syndication Batman! Last night FeedBurner got a face-lift and now my Flickr photos are spliced into the feed. The guys and gals at FB are a talented bunch. I'm delighted to have partnered with them. I urge all site managers, overseeing rich media feeds, to do the same. Incidentally, Flickr Uploadr is now at version 2.0.

Firefox fans are in for an early Halloween treat this year. Version 1.5 should bow on October 28th. For further information and news on the Public Preview Beta, point your browser here.

The audience is listening

Discovering Dolby NR on my parents' Panasonic Direct Drive tape cassette player embarked me on a lifelong sonic odyssey. From vinyl to DAT and SACD to AAC, I've marveled at and treasured the capture of indelible audio recordings. Late 2004 Sony BMG piloted the DualDisc format to test audiences. In 2005 the CD/DVD hybrid goes mainstream with the release of Rebirth from Jennifer Lopez.

MAME fans can grab 0.92 now, but 0.93 will include Aaron's sound system changes for end user testing. Audiophiles rejoice.

Looks like sky multiroom is coming to my Mum's nursing home soon. Mum adores movies and digital satellite will augment the extensive DVD catalogue that I'm currently building.

I'm not particularly averse to confessing my fandom of Dawson's Creek (S1 - 4) and, by extension, Katie Holmes. And Amazon UK is now offering S2 at a sub £20 sweet spot! I'll complete my collection over the coming months.

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

Mum's medical condition continues to manifest issues with no sign of 'closure' in sight! The Yellow Brick Road goes ever on.

Steve Jobs appears on the latest cover of Newsweek sporting the new 4G iPod, which elegantly meshes the signature design of 3G and iPod mini variants.

Anyone interested in the development of Blogger may wish to learn more.

Time to watch Dawson's Creek season one episode Detention - a postmodern pastiche of John Hughes' seminal sociological movie The Breakfast Club.

WYSIWYG

Blogger's Post Editor is undergoing further fine tuning and finessing! The web-application interface has been retooled and now resembles a feature-rich e-mail client. Is the Gmail and Blogger development team one and the same I wonder? The value-added additions, including text formatting and image uploading, are welcome. However, there is a caveat in the short to mid term. Mac Users will need to use a Mozilla-based browser (my preferred branch of the Gecko Engine is Firefox) to fully leverage the service improvements for the foreseeable future. One of the Google User Interface Engineer's has a blog and welcomes user feedback.

Bruce Springsteen's haunting ballad Sad Eyes eloquently expresses my current emotional mood! I feel akin to Pacey (Joshua Jackson) in Dawson's Creek season 2 episode His Leading Lady. The past few weeks have been too turbulent.

Everything

"Art imitating life imitating art" was the maxim behind Dawson’s Creek. And anyone who knows me can attest to the parallels between Dawson’s obsession (and by extension writer Kevin Williamson) with Steven Spielberg movies and my own!

Set in the fictional town of Capeside, MA, Dawson's Creek is the coming of age story of four friends on the verge of adulthood. The pilot episode features arguably one of the best mythology establishing openings of any show! The Creek at dusk segueing into the John Williams score for E.T. (a movie that still strikes an emotional resonance) as we are introduced to the principal protagonists Dawson and Joey and their interpersonal conflict.

Dawson, Joey, and Pacey are life long friends, whose lives start to rapidly change when a new girl, Jen, moves in next door to Dawson Leery and the foursome start high school. Along the way they are joined by two other newcomers to Capeside, Jack and Andie.

Often characterised by its intelligence, sharp wit, rich and (often) verbose vocabulary, Dawson's Creek was created by Kevin Williamson. It was loosely based on his life, with each character incorporating a different aspect of himself. The show quickly launched the careers of its stars and in the words of The WB, "defined a network."

Dawson's Creek was filmed primarily on location in Wilmington and Raleigh, NC. It spawned spin-off series Young Americans. Not only did the series re-ignite my passion for film production, which had become diluted by cynicism and creative inertia. It re-initiated a cycle of writing that has led to my being published in international magazines as diverse as heat to starburst.

The two-hour season finale was a tour de force underpinned by the themes of death and marriage. The most insightful line was reserved for Joey Potter (Katie Holmes who is starring in Batman Begins). “Writers get to live twice!” Eloquently put. Goodbye Capeside. Fade to black. Cue end titles.

Inauguration Day

Nothing important happened today other than this! 😉

Started watching new time-traveling drama series Tru Calling on Sky One! Initially, I was averse to the series due to my disappointment at Eliza Dushku's reluctance to sign-on for a second sequel series to Buffy! Faith. However, Tru Calling is a pleasure to watch and the notion of Groundhog Day meets The X-Files is seductive! This show has, as they say in Hollyweird, legs!

Another US show that has become a guilty pleasure is The OC on E4! Now that Dawson's Creek is over (the series should have ended after 4 seasons) I was in need of a witty dose of angst and a cute brunette female fix! The sultry Summer Roberts, played by Rachel Bilson, fits the bill!

Just finished writing my second review for Inside Mac Games (IMG). This time it's Feral Interactive's Mac port of Worms 3D that comes under my literary microscope! Hope that it gets posted over the next few days! Does it need a rewrite? I sincerely hope not, because "real world" activities take precedence! Friends know what I'm alluding to!

Time to 'fire-up' GameRanger and play Jedi Academy MP!