I don’t know about you but I kind of get the blues when the weather begins to get warm.I’m a wacko but there’s real reason behind it.
When the weather is warm you can’t wear a coat.When you can’t just throw a coat on over your clothes everyone outside can see what you’re wearing.If everyone can see what you’re wearing maybe you should make an effort.If you have to make an effort you’ve got to spend money to do so.If you have to spend money don’t you have to have money.See? The blues.
Therein lies the dilemma.
In an earlier post I described at length my desire to begin dressing more feminine and wear less black this spring/summer season. So far I have done alright as it is still slightly cool and I’ve been able to lean on the coat crutch. But my days are numbered and my trips to Forever 21 have sent me home with the usual one black item to keep and one color item to return. Despite my attempts to break away from black it seems I veer back to the black rut of comfort,time and again. My closet looks funereal.
I may have to just accept this about myself.It’s that or an endless loop of shop &return, shop&return.
I have been known to spend a woozy 4 hours in Macy’s,trolling the sale racks and getting some super deals: a pair of pants for 11.99.AT-shirt for 9.99. A RL blouse for 20.00 and etc.But that was all luck I seemed to have in the larger 34th street branch;the Brooklyn branch being so much smaller has less to choose from.
When I was richer and I got the blues I’d buy shoes. Typical. Then I became poor because I no longer wished to work for anyone and my retail events were cut down to the Salvation Army. That tended to have an exacerbating effect on depression so I turned to Chinatown for relief. In NYC, our Chinatown is the home of Pearl River which is basically a chinese version of a bazaar where you can pick up a brightly coloured rice paper lantern for 5 bucks and be happy.
If I need a bigger buzz I head to Strand Books and dive into their bargain books section.In Fiction you can do well,there a famous, widely reviewed, multiple printing copy of a novel can be had for about 5 to 7 dollars. Not bad.
Lately,I’ve had to make due with what can be turned up on Myrtle ave here in Brooklyn.I really don’t have any $ at the moment and so going to the city is doubly pointless,for shopping, that is.
We have a store called Home Mart and it isn’t actually that dismal.I’ve been able to cheer myself up with a new cloth shower curtain from France for 6.00. That’s less than those horrible plastic ones from Bed Bath and Beyond…Or some blue and white china mugs by Oenida for 2.99 a pair. Or new feather pillow for 6.00.
You might say I’m making myself poorer with all these little purchases which can add up.But even if you are right I was explaining my method of retail therapy for the poor, not the judicious. I don’t think the judicious need to shop at all.They’re all so smug rolling on top of their pile of money.
It’s over
I wrote to my host about getting a site for a friend and he told me he couldn’t take on new business.But he gave me a referral to another host and they look more than decent. This correspondence also led to him telling me I was going to have to move my site as well.
While I completely understand why I have to move I am a little nervous.Luckily I don’t have anything on there that can’t be easily transferred (I hope).My ” work”
site comments haven’t gotten any comments and my other blog is flat file.Hopefully they have as good a set up as I already have.See? Try to do someone a favor and you get the boot yourself.It’s ok, I knew it wasn’t going to last forever…
opensource PHP gallery
I came across this really easy to use photo gallery,written in PHP and XML.It uses XML files instead of a database. Give me a break – I just started playing with it at 2:45 am! It’s called
Phormer and you can download it from Sourceforge. Or to make it even easier on you I’ll pass you the Webpage & download LINK .
I’m always on the lookout for small,lightweight gallery software. I’ve collected mostly non-database flat file stuff so far. Everyone knows the big mysql+php apps,anyway:
- Coppermine
- Gallery,Gallery2
- Serendipity( or is that a blog thing,I forget)
So, you don’t need me to tell you that those packaged gallery applications do all the mysql table populating for you and that all you really need is a mysql connection and database name and password to use them. This was a stumbling block for me. I used to only have access to the world’s most hostile php environment, and in order to test projects on this host I had to struggle immensely against this environment to get anything to work.I was lucky to get another project test site running Apache with a Fedora core set up by Troy Wolf who knows PHP & programs with it or whatever. Things I upload to that host run so fast and sharp I couldn’t believe it.But working the hard way did force me to open up the files of an application and visit a lot of help forums and I think I learned a little whereas if it had all worked from the start and out of the box I’d be really clueless instead of mildly clueless.
Like I said,Phormer is e a s y. I unzipped the files,ftp’d them and I didn’t have to edit one file.All of the configuring is done in the administration panel.You can upload pics and it makes thumbnails.You can write descriptions.You can delete it all and start over. There’s 9 or 10 skins, although there isn’t much of a difference in the skins… some of the colour names display very similar looks.But they are very nice looking skins indeed.You really wouldn’t be ashamed to use it for your photos at all even if you didn’t modify one line of CSS.
It shows exif info(I think exif info is kind of ugly)but you can opt out of that. You might have a bit of an organising hassle when sorting your pictures since the package has some default cats set up. I only spent 10 minutes looking at it and I think I get what it’s up to…
Much like Quick.Cart(a free flatfile shopping cart) the admin panel takes a bit of figuring out but is pretty instinctive.It might a little difficult for a complete noob.
Nerdily excited
I finally got a chance to meet up and actually talk with my next client.
Our project is a redesign of his website for his bar in midtown Manhattan.And he wants a flash splash page with vector graphics.Of course he does.Thankfully nalds, who heads the doop team(an excellent CMS), sent me a link to SWISHmax.I may be able to create a fairly nice and functional set of flash demo pages with the 30 day free trial.He
knows what he doesn’t want.The site is a bit out of date.I think he said it was made over 8 years ago.The decor of the bar gave me an idea of his design sensibility since he did the interior decorating…This is a barter job.But I do not care about the money (or lack of it)I need more sites under my belt and I’m going to work like mad until I get a decent amount in my portfolio.