danbowles.com / blog

Not The Thanksgiving We Had Planned

Dan — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:54:54 +0000

We had plans yesterday to head over to my wive’s parent’s house for dinner. My parents, brother-in-law and his wife and their son would also join us. My wife and I were both looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, my wife awoke each day this week to increasingly intense back pain. The back pain on Thanksgiving Day was to the point there she wasn’t able to be mobile without experiencing sharp pains throughout her back. We made an attempt to get her to the car a couple hours before Thanksgiving dinner was about to start, but the pain was too intense.

We spent the day together, but we were both upset we could not see our family. Still, her health is priority. Later in the evening my folks swung by with leftovers, which most excellent of them. The brought back the two pies my wife made: Banana Creme Pie (aka: OMFG! Pie) and Pumpkin Pie (pie was great, but I am not sold on the idea of eating pumpkin in any capacity).

Today, my wife’s back is better. It is still very painful, but she’s recovering, albeit very slowly.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving. To be honest, I enjoyed my Thanksgiving. Being with family would have been fun, but I was able to be with my wife and help/care for her (something I take great pride in).

I love you sweetie, hope you get well soon!

Giving Thanks and Rememberance

Dan — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:43:24 +0000

And so, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. The last stop before the Christmas Express really picks up steam. Football will be played, thousands of calories will be consumed and millions of naps will be taken.

Most importantly, however - thanks will be given. I am thankful for many things this year. I am thankful that I started my 365 Project as it has been quite a journey. I am incredibly thankful for all the love and support my wife and I received in the days leading up to (and including) our wedding day. I am thankful, lucky and blessed been married to my wife this year. Thankful that our wedding day was simply incredible and went off without a hitch.

Beyond giving thanks, I’m also remembering. Tomorrow will be five years ago exactly that I awoke to my ex-girlfriend’s mother screaming. My ex (we’ll call her T) went to see what was the matter, then I heard her screaming and yelling. Within a few minutes her mother came back to her room with her - she was sobbing.

Sometime during the night, T’s brother, and two of his friends were coming home. The driver was driving too fast and was under the influence. He lost control of the vehicle, hit a large boulder and the two passengers (her brother and a mutual friend) had died.

The days that followed were easily the most intense days I have ever experienced. I had never been around so many heartbroken people while dealing with the loss myself. I had met T’s brother when we first started dating and I immediately found him to be a genuinely awesome guy. It isn’t easy to explain, but he was just down to earth and I immediately felt like I had known him for years.

Today, what’s left of that period of time in my life is a slide show of sorts with sparse bits of audio.

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, I’ll spare you the details of the days following that Thanksgiving. What I want, is for you all to have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

Be safe tonight if you are going out and enjoy your Thanksgiving and subsequent food coma tomorrow.

On NETTUTS.com, Absorbing Mode and Graphic Design

Dan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:03:33 +0000

Not a huge fan of those “On A, B and C” type titles, but I’m trying to have more meaningful titles and give this SEO thing a go.

First thing’s first - NETTUTS.com (pronounced ‘Net Tuts’ or Net Tutorials) is a fantastic site. Jeff and his crew are cranking out some awesome articles and Jeff’s screencasts are my cup of tea. I find myself learning more efficiently with screencasts. Text-based tutorials where I have to scroll, etc seem to prove time consuming for me. That, and I have the attention span of a 3 year-old.

Onto absorbing mode. I want to learn it all and learn it all in about 30 minutes. I realize that isn’t possible but I’m finding myself wanting to get my CSS, PHP, XHTML, PSD-slicing, jQuery, AJAX skills up to snuff as soon as humanly possible. I also gave CakePHP a go this week. While I am still learning the ins and outs of this PHP Framework, I have to say, I am enjoying it thus far. It does take out the overhead when developing. I almost wonder if it is better to learn PHP by writing PHP by itself and not using a framework..sigh.

Lastly, graphic design. I’ve made progress on the mockup for my sister-in-law’s upcoming website. There is a lot of work to do still as I need to mockup how various stages/pages of the site will look. I am finding that doing this quickly is impossible as I am constantly looking at other sites for inspiration and to generally make sure I am “doing it right”.

Start Over?

Dan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:44:51 +0000

I don’t like this blog too much sometimes. I look at the categories and think “What was I thinking?” I want a more concise blog. I want a blog with direction. I find it more difficult to blog as twitter has gotten to be a sort of substitution to blogging. It’s easier, it’s limited (in that, I can only type 140 characters), it’s (very) useful.

I say twitter is very useful loosely. To many, there is no point. To me, it’s become a place to share information, to ask, to answer and to be pointless. I like being pointless sometimes - but not with my blog. I see news blogs, design blogs, etc. As twitter is for “here’s what my day is like”, I want my blog to be for “here’s what my passion is like”. A place to hold/share information on things I’m passionate about and knowledgeable about.

This leads me to a tangent. I just finished reading a post on Noelle’s blog and it sums up some of my feelings as of late. There are ups and downs in life (speaking of moods, that is) and I find I’m in a bit of a valley as of late, looking forward to the “up” portion of the ride.

To assist with my mood (and my slowly eroding physique), I’ve decided to sign up for a two quarter membership RIT’s Field House. Picture a Gym, then super impose the word “Awesome” over it and you get the general idea. I’m looking forward to it - I like getting up early (6am is okay with me - even on weekends!). I can see myself sticking mainly to the stationary bikes and the pull-up/chin-up bars. What I’d eventually like to do is head back to the Red Barn and get my Bouldering on. I’ve missed climbing a lot. If only they opened at 6am.

Election Day. Finally.

Dan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:39:02 +0000

So today is Election Day and I really have very little to say about it minus the usual “Vote! It’s your right!” or some other inspirational slogan.

I will be happy when it is all decided. The ads will stop, the political junk mail will stop and America…er…some college will have decided (’cause you know, the Popular Vote is just plain silly - adding a layer on top of that makes sense).

I thought I had more substance here for this post, but I don’t.

So please, go vote - I don’t care who you vote for, but we all need to get out there and vote!

Heroes Versus The Sopranos

Dan — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:08 +0000

I read an article once talking about how The Sopranos kind of started the complex-storyline-type shows like Lost and a few others. It was sort of the grandfather of them all. Not sure how accurate that is, but The Sopranos is easily my favorite television show. It took me a good long while to get over the fact that they were off the air for good - never to return.

Now Heroes has come along and it is in its third season. Initially, I was kind of floored by the concept. I love super hero movies and shows. I love the idea of an alternate reality. Lastly, time travel is just plain cool - what’s not to love about that!? I feel like as of late, the constant “Huh? Wha?” the viewer is left with is working against the show. Part of me wants to watch, part of me just wants to abandon the show.

So here we are - taking one of my favorite shows on television right now and my favorite show of all time and seeing what I like about both.

The Sopranos

The formula of The Sopranos was simple. It worked very well. There was no feeling like you didn’t know what was behind the plot twist (at least for me). You simply knew that some guy messed up and he was going to get taken care of. Some stuff you didn’t see coming and it came fast and furious. Who knew Tony would kill Christopher? It was easy to watch The Sopranos. The show was very fun to watch as well. You were given a character that you hated and cheered for at the same time. You wanted his therapy sessions to go well.

Heroes

When Heroes first came on the air, I didn’t watch it. It took me until the 12th episode in season one for me to take notice. It was only then that I watched the prior eleven episodes in about three days. I was hooked. The breaks they took were agonizing (but way shorter than the breaks The Sopranos took!). The plot and concept grabbed me very easily and I was hooked.

The problem with Heroes is there are a handful of characters I feel the show could do without. It would be better to trim the excess and focus on the more important (read: well developed) characters. The Patrelli’s, Hiro & Ando, Clare, etc. It almost feels like Tim Kring threw in some characters just to fill out the show - but those characters are in the way almost.

Every week it seems you get very limited time with each sub-plot. It was alright at first but now there are more characters and they are putting too much in the show. I almost want a thirty second recap of what happened as I am finding it hard to keep up and stay focused.

Perhaps Heroes has lost its appeal. Perhaps it should have been a mini-series as opposed to a series. You can’t help but think about where the show will be in two seasons - where else can they take the show and how much more downhill will it go?

Life After 365

Dan — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:21:55 +0000

Lately, I’ve been wondering what, if anything, I should attempt as a photo project after my 36r project is over with. I have less than 100 pictures to go. I’ll definitely feel as if something is missing come January 1st 2009.

Taking a photo everyday is not a big deal, really. For me, it was the whole uploading, tagging, etc part that grew tiresome. Perhaps my workflow was/isn’t the greatest though. I’ve enjoyed it for the most part. Getting going was difficult and Winter proved to be the hardest time for the project as I am pretty much a hermit when it comes to winter (I hope to change this though, as I’ve started going for walks after work).

I am thinking I’ll hold off on starting anything like 365 though. Really, I want to focus more on this blog, and graphic design as more of a side career. I have a tendency to load up my plate full of things to do. This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that I get irritated if I can’t do everything at once. I guess this is the problem with enjoying all the items on your to-do list.