RKNet Blog... Thing

You are hiding behind a stone wall being shot at by heavily armed cultist. You have had two weeks of training to deal with situations like this. But you’re only just starting to remember this. You know you should feel angry that people are shooting at you. But you consider that they would shoot at anyone trying to sneak into their heavily armed and very secretive religious compound. Instead you think about the figurative bastards that put you in this situation. They woke you up at four in the morning approximately thirteen hours ago. Bundled you into a car, then an airplane and whisked you six hundred miles from your home. They told you that that two week blackout you had was their fault. That two week blackout two years ago. A blackout that cost you a relationship with a person you deeply loved and very nearly alienated you from your immediate family. They said that you’d been taken to a secret government facility and been in their words ‘The Clockwork Orange’ treatment. Except instead of making you dislike violence they taught you to know how to do very unpleasant things to your fellow human beings. When you didn’t believe this as they quite reasonably expected they produced photographic evidence, timestamped and digitally signed. These memories slowly came back to you. You attributed this to the background music playing in the airplane’s cabin.

The current problem that you are to be injected into was explained to as a local disturbance which could rapidly turn into the European version of the Waco Ranch massacre. They explain to you that this is where you come in. You, they explain are to sneak into the compound and assassinate the leader of the cult as well as disrupt as much of the chain of command. Logically you try to explain to them that Solid Snake does this in the video games and he tends to die an awful lot in the attempt. They do not get the reference. They also suck their gums a lot which you take as a sign of ‘you’re not the first one we’ve sent in.’

The sneaking into the farm ran by crazy cult members did go better than expected. You made it past the official police line and through a field past the body of who you assume was ‘the first one sent in.’ As you reach the edge of the main farm complex however it all goes wrong.

Not the first one to be sent in seems to explain the problem well as you hide behind a dry wall. Your mouth is dry and your hands have almost stopped trembling. Their bullets have stopped firing. Cautiously you peer around the corner and see that three of the larger cultists are running towards you while brandishing very scary looking shotguns. You gulp. Aim the silenced pistol you were given at the closest cultist. Then you fire. It isn’t a perfect shot. It goes through his leg and he tumbles to the floor. He is screaming but the other two have upped the pace. You take aim again and fire. The next one drops without a sound in a mist of red. The third cultist stops. He raises his shotgun. You take cover. He discharges the weapon into the wall and the pellets bounce off the wall harmlessly. You feel you are getting the hang of this. Looking around the corner you feel slightly disappointed that he is running away from you.

You move forwards from this wall to the next. This is progress you think. Then they start firing a machine gun at you and you dive for the closest thing you see that looks like cover. The training you remember consisted of firing ranges, simulated close quarters combat exercises and training drills. Very little of the training (although you cannot be quite certain right now as your memory is still fragmented) involved being shot at and the immediate action to be taken when you inevitably come into the situation. You go on instinct here. Duck and cover, then hope that the machine gun breaks or runs out of bullets. 

The person manning the machine gun appears to be enjoying himself. Every few seconds a burst of fire removes fragments of the dry stone wall. The bullets are close and you hear some of them whistle through the air. The gunner however has a steady rhythm to his firing. You remember that you have a mirror on one of the cargo pockets. You take it out and use it to peer round the edge of the wall. There is only him. His burst finishes. You jump over the wall and shoot him in the head. The way into the main building is clear now. You kick the flimsy wooden door from it’s hinges. You hear a thumping noise.

You are cold and cannot move. Your head aches with a dull throbbing sensation. Your face hurts. Opening your eyes you see that you are in a cellar. The thin light of sunset comes in through an opening in the wall near the ceiling. You work out why you are cold and cannot move. Directly ahead of you  is a man.  He is naked and strapped to a gurney. His right arm has a horrific gunshot wound and his groans occasionally break his possibly drug induced sleep.

Four sky clad people walk into the cellar. One of them has a demonic mask and a evil knife. Another, a drum made from wood with a tight white skin with tattoo ink blue Celtic markings on it. The other two are women who start dancing and chanting as soon as they enter the room. The drummer starts to hit his drum and the masked man you watch move to stand in front of the injured man blocking him from your view.

“For your intrusion onto hallowed ground we punish you,” the masked man shouts.
“For your intrusion onto hallowed ground we punish you,” the others repeat.
You watch the masked man drag the knife across the injured mans chest. Blood runs to the ground.
“For your violent ways we injured you,” the masked man shouts.
“So we shall injure you again!” The two dancers say.
The masked man pushes the knife into the injured mans gunshot wound.
He screams!
“We the children of the gods say you must die,” all of the cultists say.
The injured man screams one last time.
You see the masked man turn to you. 

You are sweating heavily now. That evil knife is covered in gore and the blank look of the masked man you feel hides a sadistic smile. The drumming man carries on his vile rhythm for the dancers to follow. You see a small ball shaped object role through the sunlight opening. It bounces on the stone floor of the cellar.
“For your intrusion,” the masked man starts to say. You close your eyes in terror.

You hear a deafening noise followed by chaotic screams and gunshot. You close your eyes even more. The ringing in your ears stops and you open your eyes. You try to speak and a desperate whimper is all you can summon. You see eight people in battle dress and black full face gas masks. One of them approaches you and slings his weapon over his shoulder. You watch him take his gas mask off.
“It will be alright. You’ve done your duty. You’ve exceeded our expectations. Let us help you,” he says.

This story was originally entered into the SFX Pulp Idol competition. It didn’t win (aw), didn’t get shortlisted and it didn’t even get an honerable mention. No matter I’m well aware of it’s deficencies and it was a tracer bullet. Oh well it’s a success if someone enjoys it.

Will.

The bathroom was a terrible place to be. All the stall doors were slightly ajar and the terrible placement of the typical office fluorescent lighting gave the shadows life that they certainly wouldn’t have possessed on their own. I kept turning back in terror from what I assumed was a malevolent face in the handicapped stall. The wall by the sink provided me something to look at to occupy my mind, but this too became a source of vile fascination. Whether the talk was all in my mind or if there was someone there I do not know. Kindly and reassuring it spoke to me of demons, and angels, and paths to power sometimes being fraught with dangerous-looking things. There was no need to worry though of course, not if you were prepared.
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Day one was fraught with challenges, up to and including having trouble finding the venue. It took a lot of wandering around, a phone call, and I think two concierge desk stops to finally figure out that the Copley Plaza Marriott was in fact through the Copley Plaza Westin and the attached mall. That said, on with the notes.

Session 1: Understanding Web Design - Jeffrey Zeldman

• Missed this session entirely. :(

Session 2: Lessons of CSS Frameworks - Eric Meyer

• Missed over half of this session. :( I blame Mass traffic.
• Hits on server vs. File size. The more hits to the server, the slower the load times. File size isn’t nearly as much of an issue.
• IE(6) does not cache 2nd tier stylesheets. (stylesheets linked from within other stylesheets)
• IE6 wants nothing to do with your fancy link styling. Don’t rely on it to convey critical information if you think you’ll have a significant amount of IE6 visitors. (Know your audience!)
• Mobile phones probably can’t handle your stylesheet (iPhone notably excepted from this guideline).
• create a grid or layout background to use for debugging.
• Create a debugging stylesheet that replaces more subtle elements with large, bold colors to see exactly how your major elements line up.
• Set default colors in the body of the document to override any CSS weirdness or absence.
• Try to avoid measurements in pixels. Percentage or EM will provide better usability and cross-browser support.
• Create a framework file. This is a totally empty stylesheet, containing only elements, classes and ids, as well as comments explaining the general purpose of each. This provides the framework for others to understand your work, and gives you a blank to start from in future work.
• Maintain clean, logical naming conventions. Don’t use .RedBigText use .Header or .CallToAction. This way if you have to make this class perform a function other than red, big text you can make those changes while maintaining your markup.

Session 3: Good Design Ain’t Easy - Jason Santa Maria (turned 30! Happy Birthday!)

• Look to be different. Be familiar with popular box models & learn what you can do to separate yourself from them.
• Print != the web. (!= is does not equal for those who aren’t familiar) Therefore, instead of innovating based on standards of print, we must look to usability standards and concepts to build a better (mousetrap) website.
• Design reinforces your message.
• Design fills in where content leaves off to create impressions.
• Referenced the storytelling power of a mostly visual chart of Napoleon’s progress.
• Pacing must be capable of including all pertinent info. Editor’s Note: I don’t remember what I meant by this note.
• Design must account for flexibility, changes, functions
• Design must be able to demonstrate depth, or give the visitor confidence that they can navigate comfortably.
• Design for your audience, not just to fit your box model.
• Take advantage of the medium, learn to apply the tech to its fullest.
• Plan before you do, and make stylesheets accordingly flexible
• Level of design intricacy hinges largely on the type of content it is meant to showcase and support.
• “Design can’t not communicate.” - David Carson, Helvetica
• The Golden Rule or other ratio is a handy reference for balancing a box model.
• Links:
• A Brief Message
• Fray
• Principles of Beautiful Web Design
• No One Belongs Here More Than You
• We Tell Stories
• “You can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s black.” - Henry Ford regarding the Model T
• Art direction should apply to the web also.
• Evaluate the saclability of unique content art direction (i.e. serious differences between pages, breaking from one standard template between pages).
• Marry your design to your code.

Session 4: Web Application Hierarchy - Luke Wroblewski

• You have approximately 1.6 seconds to make an impression on a first time visitor.
• References Steve Krug’s excellent book Don’t Make Me Think in regards to illustrating how we use the web. We don’t read. We track around the web looking for the next thing to get us to our intended informational goal.
• Great presentation on the web is comprised of a balance between information and emotion, or Visual Organization and Personality.
• Organize things in ways people can relate to. For example, organizing information in a customer lookup system like a rolodex.
• What’s front and center is critical
• Presentation should follow desired function
• Downplay non-critical information
• Create context by applying contrast, placement and seperation
• Consider the color scheme. Contrasting colors attract attention.
• Make uniquely important items distinct from the remainder of the page.
• Focus on your use of labels, whitespace, and the scanability of your page.
• Proximity of items, similarity of items, and pattern of items dictate how noticable they are.
• The more differences between neighboring items, the higher the contrast and the more likely a visitor is to focus on it.
• Orchestrate the distribution of visual weight (what’s most noticable to what’s least noticable) to influence user experience.
• Avoid too many “look at me!” items as it creates confusion.
• Avoid too few “look at me!” items as it leads to disinterest
• Information should not be distributed via firehose
• Be aware of how people access and use your site. Or how it is intended to be used at least. These factors inform how the hierarchy of information should be structured.
• Consider how people find you and what you want them to do when they get there.
• People come to your site for some kind of content. Don’t let the overhead (structural elements of your website, other navigation, etc) overwhelm that content. Give the people what they want.
• Visually prioritize the actions you want or need people to take
• Strive for a clear, logical flow of information using visual cues and standardization of content. (Hint: Centering text is very unhelpful when trying to achieve this logical flow.
• Consider your overall signal to noise ratio when displaying lots of information. Too much contrast and the data gets overwhelmed. Too little and the data itself is overwhelming.
• Luke’s site: Lukew.com

And then it was lunchtime! Will talk more about that when I get around to my travel log post. I’ll have the rest of day one in a seperate post, so keep your eyes open, and if you aren’t already subscribed to the RSS feed, by all means hit the GIANT PURPLE BOX at the top of the site to do so. :)

A clear and flagrant disrespect for all things was extruded from the two young men chatting back and forth on the mostly empty train car and left the air palpably unclean. Crisp suits, slick and greasy hair, shifty bright eyes, and utter animal stupidity were readily apparent upon a quick glance. Typical upper-class white boys with no sense of purpose beyond where their dicks will be by the end of the night or who they can roll under the bus to get the next raise. No love except the long-since-abandoned love for mother, and a lust for money and the status associated with it that they assume is love.
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Simple links that summarize my feelings for this particular pseudo holiday that inspires more jealousy, depression, and ill-will than possibly even Christmas!

• Wordlab - $122.98 Says I Love You In which the spending habits of the besotted and pussywhipped are discussed.
• Ectomo - Lupercalia: Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day In which the dubious history of the holiday’s Christian/pagan associations is discussed.
• The Sherman Foundation - New Word Order: Honey Trapper In which the definition of a newer phrase says a lot about modern relationships.

Enjoy tomorrow’s discount candy!

A while back I wrote an article discussing the less-than-finer points of an invention known as the “shenis”. The inventor happened by here just yesterday and decided to let me know that she wasn’t terribly enthused by my rather negative first impression.

Well, once the subject of “what’s a girl to do when there’s no sit-down toilet services available?” was broached, someone was kind enough to mention a similar invention they’d heard of in years past.

The invention in question was developed in 1988 by a Dutch woman named Moon Zijp and is called the P-mate. It’s a simple cardboard funnel, really. It can be folded for discreet and space-saving storage. It comes with a baggie for disposal (or sanitary storage if immediate disposal isn’t available). Most importantly, it allows women the alternative of peeing standing up when conditions merit it.

Now maybe it won’t let you pee off the side of a boat as perfectly as a twelve inch golden dong, but at least I won’t have to worry about urine in my purse afterward. For purchase of the P-mate in the US, please see their US-based order-and-info site.

If I may be so bold as to quote Animaniacs…

“It’s time for another good idea, bad idea”

Good idea:
A device that allows folks with female sex organs to pee standing up.
Bad idea:
Fashioning said device to look something akin to a giant golden dildo.

It’s certainly a device that’s an invention of necessity. Yet I fail to see the need for it to be - as the site describes it - 12 inches long, and golden. And as it’s stated on the site “The Ebony model is due out soon. It will be significantly larger than the gold model, come with wheels and is…priceless.”

I’m absolutely positive that concept of this device could be executed with a LOT more discretion. I can’t picture wasting that much space in a hiking or camping pack, much less a purse with something that huge. A plastic funnel would probably serve the same purpose, at that.

Plus, I’d bet a nickel they’ve done SOME kind of keyword research, too. On the “Blog On” page, I couldn’t help but notice the sub-header stating: “The Shenis fits all designer vaginas”. The designer vagina issue seems to be coming up a lot more lately, probably due to changes in surgical proceedures and promotion. (I distinctly recall complaining about the very idea, in fact.) They could probably do more to optimize for that particular keyword, but I find it’s placement and presence in general to be highly suspect.

Conclusion: This is a pure novelty item and I’m not terribly impressed, to be honest. Campers, hikers, and road-trip travelling ladies, just make sure you have a plastic funnel (or good directions). You’ll be fine. Don’t throw money at this silly attempt to provoke in the name of convenience.

Just to keep things brief:
I dreamt I had a fish tank with a few kinds of viscious, snappy fish in it, and a small octopus and some other kind of shellfish or something. I accidentally screwed up the whole aquairum by collapsing one of the sides leaving only a tiny bit of water at the bottom, and nearly crushing the fish. I set everything back up and added in the appropriate salt water for this collection of pirhana like fish. (One looked like one of those clap-trap deals from Donkey Kong Jr.)
Next time I looked into the fish tank, it was full of irridescent octopi. They would look like small, but relatively normal, bluish and reddish octopi, then they would contract and glow in neon colors with cartoon faces. I watched this in fascination, as more were arrising, born out of the dead bodies of the fish that did in fact die because I had broken the tank.
That’s all I remember now. There was so much more. There has been so much more lately but I unfortunately haven’t had time to record the overall details. I have been told I need to watch Until the End of the World. …I can’t imagine why.

No names have been changed, but appropriate links have been provided to appropriately ID the other participants in the conversation. Where no appropriate link could be found, the name has been omitted. Some cross-talk has also been omitted, since it doesn’t make quite as much sense out of context as it would with much more text. Rather than retell the story, again, in another format, I figured just sharing this with everyone would suffice.

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I technically speaking didn't wear a bra today! *GASP* Given my overall build, it's typically fairly impractical for me to go without a bra and also without attracting unnecessary attention or getting annoyed.
However, the last few days have left me with aches and pains in my back and ribs, and I believe it has to do with weight gain coupled with a poorly fitted bra.
So today as an alternative I wore a tanktop with one of those “shelf bra” type things in it. I typically don't trust that type of garment any further than I can throw it (i.e. not far), but today has worked out fairly well. I threw a button down over the tank, and I've been comfortable and devoid of awkward attention all day. Although the “awkward attention” factor definitely hinges on how much I focus on whether or not I should feel awkward. Well, I haven't really thought about it all that much all day, and everything has gone swimmingly.
I don't have stomach pains, rib pains, back pains, general discomfort, and I haven't had to fuck with my bra straps all day.
They haven't made the shelf bra top yet that can truly, properly contain my extreme boobage, but this one I got from Express for Christmas comes pretty close to perfect.
Thank goodness, too, because with the rampant stresses and my general lack of personal care a break on some level was more than necessary.
With that, I say unto you Ladies of Larger Bust: Try out a shelf tank! Your body will thank you for it.