I had one of those reference-quality days today. It started with

watching my daughter at an academic awards breakfast. Then I finished

work on a nice, clean tabbed interface implementation and committed it

nicely into CVS. Following that was a successful test of a new PDF to

SWF converting web service that I put together using SWFtools and PHP.

Then it was on to a successful install of Netjuke to stream all of the

MP3s on our lan from one location. Oh, and on my way home I dropped an

Airport Extreme card into a friend’s iMac and got all his files

transferred nicely from the old Win98 machine.

Think I’ll just go to bed before the Karma police show up.

Someone at lunch said that there was to be a remake of Willy Wonka and

the Chocolate Factory. My first thought was that Tim Burton should

direct it. Turns out he’s [in talks

to do just that.](//www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2497274a1860,00.html)

Adaption is simply

fantastic. It’s one of those movies where there’s just no way you can

know what’s going to happen next, but you absolutely can’t wait to

find out. Strange, fun and quite wonderful.

Nielsen’s [latest

Alertbox](http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030519.html) discusses possible answers to questions that repeatedly

come up when trying to sell usability. Like “What should you say when

clients complain that there’s no reason to test the design since they

hired you because you supposedly know how to create good websites in

the first place?”

I haven’t seen the new Matrix movie yet, but on my way in to the

office this morning I heard “Do You Feel Like We Do?” from “Frampton

Comes Alive.”

So what? Well, it occurred to me that both the Frampton song and the

first Matrix movie contained what are probably now known as “bullet

time moments.” You know, that moment when you say to yourself “Holy

crap! that’s the coolest thing EVER!” In the original Matrix it was

the bullet time scenes. In the Frampton song, it was the talk box. I

remember buying the Frampton Comes Alive album when it came out - 25

years ago now. And I remember the shivers and awe that I experienced

when the guy’s guitar started to SING! It was cool then, and after

hearing it again this morning, it’s still cool.

I think that perhaps much of what keeps me exploring is the desire to

experience more moments like that.

test post

And speaking of To Do lists, I’ve got that list of books listed over

there and the reason it hasn’t changed isn’t because I’m too lazy to

update it. The reason it hasn’t changed is not reading. So, I’m

going to prune that list soon also.

I’ve gotten everything I’m going to out of Master and Margarita. I’m

about 3/4 through it and it’s very good, but I’m not feeling compelled

to finish it.

Gravity’s Rainbow is fabulous - I bet. Fact is I’m completely lost

reading it. By the time I have time to read I’m typically pretty

tired, so books like this just turn to gibberish. Maybe some day.

Satan Says: Very nice poetry about not very nice things. It’s

depressing, so it’s gone.

Kavalier is hanging in there, but it’s slow going.

I have a list of new books to buy, but maybe I should hold off just a

bit longer.

Where the hell was I? Family Guy is just

plain funny, and I’d never even heard of it until a couple weeks ago.

Of course Stewie is my favorite, but the most fun comes in trying to

figure out all of the pop culture references.

There must be something in the air. Jeremy Zawodny [writes about

procrastination](//jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000729.html) and managing things to do.

“It’s not a simple matter of procrastination. There’s more to it than

that. Procrastination is a simple. You just keep not doing it. But I

make a mental “project” about not doing it.”

I’m officially putting PHPetal in maintenance

mode. It does everything I need it to do and most of the really ugly

bugs are gone. I have a number of ideas and even some additional code

and patches, but I just don’t have the time to implement completely.

Feel free to send me patches and if they make sense and don’t disrupt

existing code too much I’ll try to find time to roll them in.