So, seems like I read something somewhere about how Facebook and Twitter and whatnot has been rendering blogs obsolete. There might be something to that…

Joyeux Noël to all our friends and loved ones out there.

See you guys in a few days… we have some…uh… stuff to do
: )

Because it came up as a discussion on the last post, I decided to share with you guys how your little monster gravatars are generated.

It has nothing to do with
personality

or how big your heart is

First, it’s a “gravatar” and not an “avatar.” What’s the difference?

An avatar, in the computer world, is (according to Wikipedia)

An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games,a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. It is an “object” representing the embodiment of the user. The term “avatar” can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.

A gravatar is

Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally-unique avatars which was created by Tom Werner. (Gravatar)

On Gravatar, users can register an account based on their email address, and upload an avatar to be associated with the account. Gravatar plugins are available for popular blogging software; when the user posts a comment on such a blog that requires an e-mail address, the blogging software checks whether that e-mail address has an associated avatar at Gravatar. If so, the Gravatar is shown along with the comment.

MonsterID is a plugin that runs within our blog that randomly generates little monsters for each of our commenters based on the information such as the users email address, ip address, etc. SOOOOO…. since that info is consistent with YOU throughout your internet on-goings, your little monster will be the same on any blog you participate in (it FOLLOWS you), IF the blog uses the MonsterID plugin.

The Monster is built by the program taking your “identifiers (IP, email, etc)” and associating them with a certain “part” in a collection of body parts provided by the creators of the script.

monster

A monster may have the same “body” as another, but the arms, legs, eye, hair– or color may be different.

Neat, huh?

Thought I’d share. Hope I didn’t go too far over anyone’s head (I tried to stay “un-geeky” in my explanations)

So I’m lovin the nice new theme around here, but the fact that its got an Authors bubble right up at the top brings into harsh illustration the simple fact that I haven’t written a damn thing around here in a long time.

Its been more of a Jakandy Bellu… or maybe a Bellandky Jandu… or a Jabelly Kandu.

I dunno.

Something like that.

So, in my defense, I reckon I’ve been busy.  They went and promoted me at work, which was mistake number one, and then come to find out damned if I don’t have some sort of work ethic rolling around in there, which is mistake number two.  I like the work, but its gotten to where the days where I don’t have to do anything are precious, and they’re usually spent doing the things that I’ve put off doing while I’m doing other things.

Yep.

Read that again and you’ll get it.

So, where I used to sit (ahem, at work) and spend about 30 minutes pontificating on the greater nature of things (ok, not so much on the Bennu, alas) and entertaining the general internet-at-large (whoa, almost spelled internet-at-lager, which is a great, great, great idea), now by the time I sit down to write something, I find that the ol’ creative juices are spilled all over the floor and the dog is busy lapping it up.

Freakin dog.

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh yeah, renaming the website in honor of Bell, cuz she’s been the one keeping things real around here.

Yep.

So yeah, like I used to do a lot of blogging.  And I hate that word, blogging.  Its stupid.

It sounds self-depreciating.  Like its something thats embarassed of itself, but by some weirdass nature, keeps on doing it with a Gumpian determination.

I think thats why blogs are on the downhill nowadays.  I’m not going to go on and on about how blogs got overdone, and how all the decent internetness is on the little 160 digit twitter posts or facebook updates, or other applications that are so cool and trendy that they don’t have all of their vowels in the right place.

Hell dude, I’ve lost my train of thought.

Which is probably why theres not as many blogs anymore…

Well… we made it through the holiday weeks. Despite “retail hell week,” a nasty tummy bug and LOTS of things to do…it was a very nice holiday around here. Trips to visit family… and just enjoying being home…

Christmas Eve through Friday…we were home. Hanging out, napping, eating, movies and, well….HOURS of playing time on Rock Band 2 (thanks, Jake!) Saturday we spent the day at my folks house. We missed my brother that’s in Italy…but everyone else was there. And he was in all of our thoughts.

Sunday….spent the day..yes… playing Rock Band

Now it’s time to welcome in the New Year….

So, we upgraded wordpress today, because we’re doing some housekeeping stuff, but we’re too damn tired of doing housekeeping stuff on the house to do, well, house housekeeping.  Or something.

I think we’re scheduled to do that this afternoon.

So, anyway, if its broken, you should probably contact your IT department.  They’ll put a ticket in, and it’ll get submitted to somebody that will probably forward it to somebody else, and then maybe fix it.

Or something.

See, I was going to write this big thing about how I can’t ever keep a pair of sunglasses longer than about 2 months, but then I lost interest when I was digging all over the place to find pictures of the dozen or so glasses I’ve had in the past year, all of which suffered some sort of degrading injury because I’m not careful with them.

Like the pair I lost at Bonnaroo.

Or the pair I closed in the car door not 5 MINUTES after buying them on my way to my first date with Bell.

Or the pair that I sat on.

And the other pair that I sat on.

The one that I stepped on.

The one that fell off in the ocean while wavesurfing.

The one I rescued from falling off in the lake (had to borrow Juicebox’s spiderman underwater goggles for that particular save)

The one that fell apart in my pocket after being crushed and repaired too many times,

And the replacement that I bought last month, which now has an arm taped to it with electrical tape, after I, well, sat on it.

Yeah. I was going to write that, but damned if it just wasn’t too much trouble to find the pictures.

So, instead, I’ll get political for a minute:

Politics suck.

Thank you,
Jake

So, OK, I’ve been on a brief haitus from internetting.

See, I used to do a lot of writing, and reading, and all sorts of stuff on the internet.  Some of you may remember my involvement in certain ventures online, where a relatively prolific and verbose Jake wrote all sorts of crap.

Then stopped.

Its not that I lost the internet’s phone number, or owed gambling money to it, or had some sort of beef with it, its just that, well, we sorta lost contact.

It happens, y’know, things get in the way, you get married, you build a bar, you send your kids to school, and then one day you bump into the internet in the grocery store, and, y’know…

…awkward…

Theres the small talk, you usually say something like “you look good, seems like you’ve been working out or something” and it says “no, not really, but thanks” and you try as hard as you can to keep your buggy moving, because, lord knows, if you stop in the aisle its a genuine CONVERSATION, and you’re not going to get out of it no matter how much you look for an out.

Anyway, that happened to me, figuratively speaking, this morning.  I was watching Bell play around on her facebook, and damned if I didn’t start making an account myself.

And I’m sucked right back in.

So, here I am, internet.  You know where I live now, and that little “write a post today” voice started popping back up in my head.

Guess it beats working…