Chris.Weekly.org - A Web Space

[These are "posts" from my old site, circa 2001. Links (mostly non-RESTful and now broken anyway) have been removed.]

12/29/2001 12:11am
It has been so, so good to be on vacation: to see my brother and sister for the first time since last year; to have extended time alone with my love; to sleep late; to spend time with my folks; to take some slow deep breaths; to catch up on all the small things that are usually left undone; to reflect on the past year, what I’ve learned and who I’ve met and how I’ve grown; to have days on end during which I am answerable to noone but myself. I haven’t taken a full week off since August (when we bought the boat) and it feels great. Tomorrow we leave for Maine (Sunday River, where we have a room in a ski haus) so there may not be further updates till after the new year. Tonight was just this comment and an update to wine, books and movies lists. Cheers, to whomever reads this, and peace.

12/20/2001 10:34pm
Things are good.
SHAWNA: Yesterday was Shawna’s birthday, which was a lot of fun. Went out to the Museum of Fine Arts, then walked around Newbury Street for a bit, went to Tapeo for tapas, and finally had dinner at Prezza, a restaurant in the North End we hadn’t tried before — the food was truly unbelievable.
LOTR: Then today I saw the Lord of the Rings, and was not disappointed. (Context: I’m currently reading LOTR for the 10th time.) It was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Despite some specific areas of deviance from the original text (Arwen/Glorfindel, Bombadil, Barrow-wights, etc) on the whole Peter Jackson did a phenomenal job in capturing both the mood and essence of Middle Earth, and remaining as faithful to the text as could be expected given the limitaions inherent in translation to film. I was afraid it would cheapen the mental imagery that has developed in my mind since earliest childhood and over the course of my life, but instead it seems to have enriched it. Hats off for a job *very* well done.
SITE: Added first cut at a wine section, since Shawna and I enjoy wine but often forget what we’ve liked. Also moved the (extremely simple) age calculator (a tool I created in a hurry to help Shawna with her AP work) and updated the books and movies sections. Added some music too.

12/7/2001 10:31pm
End of a long work week. Finished reading Stephenson’s The Big U which was the only thing he’s written that I hadn’t read. Sigh. Hope he finishes another, soon. In the meantime I’m well into A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius which is, well, pretty much living up to its bold title. No major site updates this week, though I updated links, books and movies… I’ll probably put up some more music soon too. Other thoughts are adding sections for art, beer, places, and restaurants, and massively upgrading the photos section — starting to actually archive the many pics Shawna and I have taken over the last few years. Not tonight though.

11/26/2001 9:38pm
Updated the links page, when I realized that, today, monkeyradio.org sold monkeyradio.net to… a porn site. I was relieved to find that my favorite mp3 radio station had not completely sold out, but had simply sold off an alternate domain. Still, it was a little disconcerting when my bookmark at work directed me there. <grins, rolls eyeballs> Apologies to any of you I’ve emailed about monkeyradio if it took you to the *ahem* wrong place. Use .org. =)
UPDATE 11/28/2001 8:46pm: Minor correction: monkeyradio.org had its .net domain jacked, it did not sell it.

11/25/2001 9:23pm
Added a minimal links page, a quotes page and a music section.

11/25/2001 5:43pm
Turkey day was good. As I told my brother, I was not in a very “let’s view pilgrims as heroes worthy of worshipping and accept the disneyfied revisionist-historical genocide-ignoring account for the sake of feeling better about our culture” kind of mood this year, but it was good to be around good people and to have a much-needed break from work. Yesterday I finished Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States which was pretty eye-opening. Highly recommended reading. Also finished Plowing the Dark, recent and excellent novel by Richard Powers, which was about virtual reality, juxtaposed with a (true) account of an American held hostage by terrorists in Beirut for over three years in the late 80’s. Very interesting and worthwhile. Also had guitar and drum time these four days, and lots of time walking too. Makes for a happy, refreshed Chris.

11/22/2001 1:10am
Lots more changes tonight, including adding a toys section (a fun applet). Also put up some old photos and added my movies list. Related note — I watched the film “Slam” tonight, and was quite moved. Getting ready to add more sections, there’s more content coming…

11/21/2001 12:41am
The loose bits of web-friendly content that have been gradually accumulating in my mind and on the various small pieces of web estate to which I have access seem to have reached a critical mass. So I’ve given this, chris.weekly.org, a bit of attention, and structured templates and webgenz macros to support content development here. Hopefully much more to come. Most recent content is the books list.