I finally got off my figurative butt and inserted a graphic as part of the masthead for the blog. As of this writing it is a photo I took at Buntzen Lake during a hike in January. I am planning on rotating through a number of images. I’ll probably jazz up the site a bit more in the coming weeks, though I am undecided on how best to do this. I can’t decide between animated gifs or auto-playing midi files. If only the <BLINK> tag was still supported.
In case the image mentioned above isn’t the current one, here it is below (click for full-size):
UPDATE, June 6, 2025: Yes, nearly 15 years later, I decided to check again after reading this post and discovered that stanjames.ca was available, and now it is mine. I may do nothing with it, but it's mine all the same.
As you may have cleverly guessed, my real name is not Creole Ned, though I have been known to answer to Ned in person. I like having this one layer of separation online, where my real identity is not exactly hidden (it’s listed in the About section here) but not front and centre, either. This is not to say that I write through a persona — Creole Ned is simply the online ID I use.
From time to time I have thought about going with a domain that uses my real name but it turns out they’re all taken. My last name is very common — James — and the first name (Stan) is not uncommon enough to not be hooked up with James online. I took a little stroll on the web and discovered that stanjames.com is, of all things, a gambling site. That’s kind of depressing (and it’s the reason I’m not providing a direct link to it). I don’t think I’ve ever gambled, apart from an occasional lottery ticket, which I view as more of a charitable donation than anything (I am always reminded of the old Lotto 6/49 slogan from back in the 90s. It was “Hey, you never know!” The long-defunct Doppler Superstore had a sign out front and after they became an authorized lotto dealer, they had the slogan up for awhile, except they got it slightly wrong. It read, “Hey, you’ll never know!” It’s probably the best case of accidental truth in advertising I’ve seen). stanjames.net, stanjames.org and stanjames.info all redirect to stanjames.com. Man, that guy was thorough. stanjames.ca is also taken but in this case it’s “under construction”. I can only dream in anticipation over what wonders will be revealed there.
It turns out that most variations on stanleyjames are still available but I never use my full name, though if I did it might cut down on the whole “Stan the Man” thing or the “No, my name is not Dan” thing (I once had a roommate named Dan and occasionally carried on longish phone calls with people who actually wanted to talk to him and not me). I could also try a variation like stanwjames which is available (trivia: all three of my names can be re-arranged and still work; the middle name is William) but again, I just don’t have a compelling need to switch over.
So creolened.com it shall be for now and the undermined future. Go me!
UPDATE: It turns out this “Stan James” fellow is simply a composite name for a well-known UK bookmaker (Wikipedia link) and when I did a Google search of my name, the bookmaker monopolizes nearly all the first 20 pages of results. I show up once on page 14 due to my Facebook account. I guess this is good if someone decides to “google” me before hiring me for some sort of job. Unless they think I’m a UK bookmaker and have a thing against them, of course.
changed the background to a slate blue-gray kinda thing (will probably play with it some more)
made the site name match other links, color-wise
broke lots of stuff while experimenting but fixed everything back up
I will be restoring the writing exercises shortly and continue to fine-tune. To the average person this is about as exciting as watching a pie-eating contest where no pies are delivered for consumption but to me it’s like a pie-eating contest where one of those huge dump trucks from a strip mine shows up with 500 metric tonnes of pie.
added jQuery Colorbox to the photo galleries (this makes the photos pop-up all pretty-like)
removed a bunch of links from the sidebar, moved some to the Books etc. page and re-ordered others
removed the Sections, uh, section. The Sections links are now only at the top of the page. Redundancy is redundant.
killed the ‘jogging’ tag as it is now its own category
The biggest change is the complete removal of all of my writing. I’ve decided to take a different approach for now and will only be making a few selections available on the site, though all of the writing exercises will be back, since they are freely viewable on the Martian Cartel forums. I haven’t modified the theme yet but will be tweaking the colors and perhaps adding a graphic at the top of the site.
I recently bought an LCD monitor (BenQ FP937) after so many people raved about them on Quarter to Three. After a period of adjustment I can understand the raving. The clarity of the image is well beyond what my trusty old Viewsonic P95f+ was capable of, even when it was new out of the box. The screen is also a lot brighter than my CRT and this reminded me again of how much I dislike websites that have black text on white backgrounds. It’s understandable that people want to create sites that look like printed paper because everyone is cozy and comfortable with books and magazines. However, books and magazines do not throw a ton of light into your face while you peruse them. The Internet, as it currently exists, does.
Down with white, up with greenish-blue, I say.
Meanwhile, Samuel K has blogged his own site (UPDATE, January 3, 2022–yes, nearly 17 years later. Sam’s site no longer works and has probably been offline for the past decade. He’s on Facebook now. Also, I learned how to turn the brightness down on LCD monitors.) and posted a picture of his cat. I am thus obligated to do the same and go one better by posting a slightly larger picture of my cat. I give you Pooter (edit: okay, that was too big even for me):
