Well, now things are looking good! The Esoterik site is good to go. Like I said in the last post, just click the link at the top of the sidebar, “Back to Main Site”, to go to the main page. This will be our personal “family” site. I have a page up for me, a page for Christine, and links to this blog and the Photo Gallery. Soon, I hope to have a page for the birds, and email (form mailer) page and a guestbook page. Coolness!!

Cheers!

Update: There is now a guestbook, and it is christened! –C.L.W.

Just as I was about to write another blog entry, I noticed my last one was my 199th! Hard to believe, isn’t it? Nearly a year and six months… I can’t believe I wrote so much! So this post goes out to all my family and friends and all the visitors I’ve had reading and commenting here. Thank you for making it all worth it!

Oh, this is what I originally wanted to say. I have unoffically started my family homepage. Family meaning Me, Christine and the birds. I wanted to design it myself, but I also wanted to learn more CSS while doing it. So, I used RapidWeaver (I talked about it in a previous entry) to create the first page and I started re-working the CSS and HTML code that it created to what I wanted. It’s still not entirely finished, but it functions quite well… and the pictures look good; you should have seen me trying to figure out how to make the slick “mirage effect” that Apple and other advertisers love to use! Anyways, there’s a link at the top of this blog’s sidebar to go “Back to Main Site”, replacing the About The Author link. Click it and check it out!

Cheers!

Me being the workaholic that I am, it took the suggestions of quite a few co-workers to get me to realize that 1) I am human and not a superbeing, and 2) that I’m gonna need at least a couple of extra days off besides the weekend to clear my head and recuperate before controlled chaos reigns supreme at my work this coming month.

Man, that’s probably the wordiest sentence I’ve ever written!

I just pray that I’ll be able to keep my mind off my job over the next four days. They say that time off isn’t truly your time if you keep thinking about work. I plan to keep myself busy with various things, one of which is a new site… I’ll keep all of you posted!

Ok everyone… Hell has officially frozen over in the music world.

This is unbelievable news! How unbelievable, you ask? These are the same guys who spearheaded the Napster (1.0) shutdown, who shunned even legal downloading services, who argued vehemently that music should be enjoyed as full albums and to hell with how the times have changed. I learned of this through TUAW, of all places, so you know the news is rocking not just the music world, but all computer sites run by metal-conscious geeks as well.

Their first four full-length albums are not only on iTunes, but also sport bonus tracks! Their other musical offerings are in there as well, though Garage Days Re-Revisited is sadly missing from the list. Here’s hoping that one gets added later!

Welcome, Metallica! Welcome to the 21st century! We embrace you with open arms! (Now make a better album than St. Anger, please.)

Here’s the iTunes link, by the way!

Skype 1.5 for Mac Is Here

Attention all our family and friends. This is something I’ve been waiting on for some time now. If you haven’t used Skype yet, I suggest you check it out. Available for Windows and Mac, Skype is a VoIP client that lets you make telephone calls from your computer, as well as contact other Skype users. For now until 2007, calls to phones anywhere in the U.S. are free. A USB headset is recommended for placing calls to any phone.

With the video capability in Skype now, I’m not sure how well it works with our iSight yet… I’m hoping I can find out soon. Anyone want to help experiment? The Windows version already supports videochat, so hopefully there will be no more barriers to the videochat technology. Last but not least, keep in mind that the video-supported version is in beta status! Skype cannot make claims as to how stable it is, nor can I.

(Click the thumbnail for the full pic of me setting video prefs in Skype!)

Update: As you can see, Skype recognized the iSight just fine. The frame rate is slow compared to what I’m used to with iChat, but not abhorrently slow. It’ll be interesting to see how it handles a full videochat call!