[You know, there is a new log page here for September, or you might want to change the link to enter through the index page. Or not.]

Friday, August 30, 2002 Link

Breaking news:

I can wear my thin pants without popping the top button off them at speeds that would put out an eye. My weight is down twenty pounds from its January peak.

This is what it took to do it:

• less beef, more chicken
• less Coca-Cola (one per week, tops), more water
• less milk, more water
• less wheat (good-bye, pasta and pizza; smell you around, homemade bread), more rice
• less beef, more chicken
• (somewhat) less sloth, more bicycle time (in addition to the daily walk)
• no fast food (well, there were those onion rings)

Five more pounds to go.

It was never about appearances; it was about buying new pants.
06:00 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Monday, August 26, 2002 Link

For some folks, a Monday is a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of day, and it should be so for me too, but, well, a different outlook prevails. The day feels more like a nose-to-the-touchstone kind of day to me, a day when the world's quintessence might reveal itself in the quotidian (and just why does the quotidian feel closer to the quintessential than does the mere "everyday"?), in the answers to questions, for instance, such as why Burger King onion rings are all the same size, or why no Nissan Altima on the road today has all four wheel covers, or when did who decide that all commas and periods should appear inside the quotation marks, when I clearly remember learning in a distant decade that only those in direct quotations appear inside the quotation marks, and yet now both MLA and APA styles prescribe comma and period placement only inside the quotation marks except when a parenthetical citation follows the direct quotation. (Whew!)

Small things amuse small minds, and (as ever) the forest obscures the tree.

I'm better now. Thanks for your kind indulgence. Cool weather, a huge blue sky, and a generalized, unexamined elation might have caused the previous outburst. Or maybe it was the onion rings.
05:55 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Sunday, August 25, 2002 Link

Sharing this info might reveal just how ungeeked I am (okay, okay, that was already apparent to you), but here goes.

I needed some screen shots for a set of instructional materials I'm preparing for my students. Because I didn't know how to capture a screen shot, I searched the Web yesterday for some software (preferably free) that would perform this mysterious task. My search turned up several vendors, one of whom, in touting the ease of use of its own program, fully described the antiquated method it improved on. The product had some advantages, but after reading the instructions, I didn't think the old-fashioned method was that cumbersome or complicated, and I recognized that the old method would serve my simple, short-term requirements.

For my fellow ungeeked, here it is:

1. Load the page in the condition in which you wish to save it. You might want a drop-down menu to appear on it, for instance, or you might want to scroll to a particular location. (No, that moth will not show up.)

2. Hit the "Print Screen" key, that previously unused key in the northeast quadrant of the keyboard. This key will place a copy of the current screen--in its current state--on your clipboard.

3. Open a graphics or photo-editing program and create a new file. (The file should probably be as large as your screen's settings, 800 x 600, for instance.) Paint, Photo Editor--any will do, as long as it has some kind of paste command.

4. Paste it.

No eye of newt, nothing. After editing and cropping the image, you're ready to bask in the glory of your geekhood.

I am so geeked.
07:20 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Monday, August 19, 2002 Link

In the wee small hours of the morning, the firstborn pointed his little Buick back toward Virginia for his junior year of college, and I uploaded a less than perfect entry for August 19.
08:45 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Thursday, August 15, 2002 Link

Apophasis postponed:

If I hadn't said it elsewhere so recently, I would have shouted "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" yesterday when Owen and Taylor returned to school.
01:00 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Sunday, August 11, 2002 Link

Today in the jumble, I linked to the site for the Magic Eye because the now-you-see-it-but-sometimes-you-just-don't-get-it nature of those pictures illustrates my befuddlement when I read reviews that rank John McGahern alongside other great Irish writers (Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, among others).

I've looked at only two of McGahern's books, The Barracks (his first) and By the Lake (his most recent), and I've read the latter twice now in the past two weeks as I tried for the second time to see the picture within the picture, to see what I'm missing that the critics must see so clearly when they rank him with the greats not only of Irish literature, but of world literature.

In By the Lake, parts of two springs surround a summer, a fall, and a winter in a rural Irish community that is populated by characters flawed and awkward and wonderful, and that has its own familiar, a heron that appears (and disappears) nearly as regularly as rosy-fingered dawn. It's a delightful read. I recommend it. I recommend it particularly as a winter selection for readers in cold climates who need a reminder that the season will indeed progress--it's that cozy without becoming cloying. I suspect I'll read it again myself someday.

But he ain't Joyce or Yeats or Beckett. My god, what a burden to work under that would be! McGahern's writing is lovely, subtle, powerfully visual, and as rhythmic as the seasons, and that's enough. But because he's Irish, he must stand with Joyce and Yeats and Beckett? It's become a mantra--Joyce and Yeats and Beckett, oh my! And maybe that's the problem.
06:35 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Thursday, August 8, 2002 Link

I've uploaded a new journal entry for August 8th on the other side of this place.
01:15 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Tuesday, August 6, 2002 Link

Yesterday afternoon I replaced the index page and the log page with the new improved versions. The CSS and HTML validate at W3C (as I officiously note on each page), and the pages themselves will offer a more consistent appearance in their various roles on this site. For the journal pages, there's also a new format that is not yet in use. It's balanced like the index page, not like this log page, where the three main columns have different widths to accommodate different functions. On the journal pages I'll vary the width of the left and right columns to accommodate the occasional larger photo in the middle column. For now, I'll let stand the three July journal entries done in the previous version.

All that remains to be done (for now) is to consolidate onto a single, linked style sheet all the style instructions that now reside on the individual pages. I can hardly wait.

I realize this news is nearly as riveting as my saying "Hey, I just put on my left sock. Watch me put on the right." But, well, there it is.
12:40 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Monday, August 5, 2002 Link

Not much has happened in these pages in the last few days. I've spent online time adjusting the HTML and CSS for this page and for another new version of the index and the journal pages, a design that shares the appearance of this version of the log page. I'll upload the newer versions as soon as I discover why some images tend to drift from their assigned stations and come to rest on top of a block of text in Netscape 4.79. Exciting stuff, eh.

John McGahern also took some of my time this weekend. Last month, I read his first novel, The Barracks. Reading it was a chore for me. Although the characters were clearly drawn and powerful, I read the book as a grammar teacher might, ticking off points for comma splices and fused sentences, which were abundant and distracting. Because I could not discover a reason for them--most were coming from the narrator's exposition, not from dialogue--I counted them as errors, not technique. But the book had an editor, no? So they (the spliced and fused sentences) must be part of the technique, right? Well, around in circles I went, no doubt missing the point of McGahern's language.

However, By the Lake, McGahern's most recent novel, now holds me in its thrall. I picked it up Friday after finishing Viken Berberian's psychological portrait of a young gourmet and sensualist set on a terrorist's mission (The Cyclist), and I'm now on my second reading. John Sutherlund's March 2002 NY Times review of By the Lake is here. For a review of the grammar in McGahern's latest book, see me after class. (The sentence-fault problem--or technique--has disappeared or has been abandoned.)
06:30 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Thursday, August 1, 2002 Link

Last month I strayed too far from who I am, a guy who moves into a place, strips the floors, and paints the walls white. Add several yards of books to dress up the walls and a few feet of magazines and newspapers to stack and strew about the floor--that's decorating.

I own multiple pairs of pants in three shades: khaki (olive), khaki (charcoal), and khaki (khaki). I suppose that I wear the khaki khakis most frequently. I don't know why.

I own shirts in various colors and patterns--solids, stripes and plaids (I can't be trusted to choose a print)--to go with any of the khakis, thereby avoiding the dangers inherent in dressing early in the morning.

I make my most cutting-edge fashion statement wearing one navy and one black sock. The idea of buying only black socks has begun to seem sensible to me. Doing so would enable me to dress in the dark (as I often do) and to turn myself out no more (or less) ill attired than if I'd dressed in daylight.

As my indecision about the colors for the backgrounds in the July version of this log demonstrates, the time I have spent under a dull gray (khaki, to some) rock has not improved my color sense.

So.

I'm back to white. Goes with anything. Opens up the page a little. Doesn't hide the taco sauce, but it's me--for now.
06:30 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)