kampers.net

I need transparency. Not transparent graphics (PNG’s come to mind), but transparent layout elements on the whole. If I could alpha blend the background of a <td> in Mozilla and IE, that would make me happy.

See, I drew this awesome silhouette revolutionary guy for KSCR to use as a background. But my content on the front page uses small nested tables (it was the only way out, really), and there’s no way to make them transparent. I can’t even fake a transparency well, because the size of the nested tables varies with the length of the content being pumped out of the database.

Hmm. #

The quick update:

I saw Jimmy Eat World at the Wiltern. It was excellent. After banging out a few recent hits, he said, “tonight we’re going to play a lot of stuff from our older albums.” Indeed they did. For Me This Is Heaven right after that. They played three or so songs from Static, and almost all of Clarity. It was great. The best part of the show was the start of the encore, Goodbye Sky Harbor. It’s a completely different song live. They finished up with Sweetness after that. The Wiltern is set up in 5 stadium-like tiers of general admission. This is cool, because short people can actually see. However, it creates five distinct mosh pits/pressure areas, which isn’t cool, because you can be 100 feet away from the stage and still get nailed.

I saw Victor Wooten in Hollywood with new friends from KSCR. He was excellent, and so was his band (of brothers, as it turns out). Cool venue, epic show (3.5 hours long!!), cool people. I happened to get in free, which is even cooler. Well, I would’ve been happy to pay, because Victor Wooten deserves it, and because the Knitting Factory doesn’t use Ticketmaster, but they were sold out when we got there (this was kind of a last minute event for me). So Rebecca, a new friend we’re with, uses her girl-charms to win a comp out of a huge angry-looking Security Man. She talks to him, Security Man pulls me away to look me over, I give him a cool glance, and I have $20 worth of ticket in hand. For that, I am indebted to her, because it was an unforgettable show. Lots of other people didn’t get in, and they probably wanted to get in more than I did. But I think I enjoyed it more than anyone else there, for all these reasons. I think I’ll send Victor a check for $20.

In the meantime, I’m the new KSCR webmaster (kscrradio.com), and this keeps me busy. I was up till 7am last night working on the site. I was working on it just a few minutes ago, and it’s too late. I have a class in just about four hours, and I haven’t slept yet. I’m just writing here because I’m in the mood, and that doesn’t happen very often anymore.

Being the webmaster makes me a manager at KSCR, and all the sudden I have a new tight-knit group of friends — people who are all into music, some into technology, all very smart. Here I am indebted to Susan for introducing me to Courtney, who introduced me to KSCR. I’m going to be an intern on a show hosted by Courtney and her friend Karen, Thursday nights, 10-Midnight PST. You should tune in if you can, we’ll see how it goes. The three of us have been spending a lot of time together… we went to Laguna Beach on Saturday (and Victor Wooten on Friday). Cool. Tonight I went to KSCR’s first big concert of the semester. It was a surprisingly good show, and I picked up a CD from one of the bands, Minus the Bear. It’s pretty good.

It was cool being a KSCR manager at the concert, because I had a pretext for approaching total strangers. How cool. This “total strangers” set includes the subset “females,” as it so happens. And so if it seems like I’m mentioning a lot of girls, that’s because I am, and that’s a good thing.

A lot more has happened to me in the last few weeks, not the least of which is academia. But that will wait for another update, because this Quick Update seems to have become a Long Update, and I need to go to sleep.

I lost my beanie. It was the coolest beanie ever. $5 to the person who can find me a place to order Trans 9 beanies that do not appear on pacsun’s site (that is to say, the one I had).

Update: I bought a new one. #

shipped my clothes, computer withdrawal
drove the highway, desert, trees tall
just now i’ve spent my second fall

that list, another empty set
except for one, who I should strike, not yet
the cost is high, should I try
dave says you pay for what you get #

Can’t sleep. This is a problem for me lately. I can get five hours a night, but it doesn’t make it easier. I feel tired, and my eyes are heavy, but no sleep.

Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon is almost finished with me. It’s great.

I want to start a thing here, a “segment” if you will, where I describe albums that are perfect by my standards. Brace yourself.

If I ever have a band, I will name it Guns and Butter.

I almost forgot. My new year’s resolution is to exercise to the point that I feel healthy again. This will include running and working out.

Maybe I’ll go try sleep again. I have a painful date with my dentist tomorrow. Good night. #