Dino Drac is live.
For those following me on obsolete accounts: Dino Drac is live!
Come with me.
I’m moving. Come with me.
New site, which will be under wraps until the big launch a while later: http://dinosaurdracula.com
New Tumblr, which you should follow, because I’m eventually going to leave this one to die: http://dinosaurdracula.tumblr.com
See you there, I hope!
Designers/Coders?
This is a little random, but I’m looking for a designer/coder to help me build “something.”
It’s a big project. The person should be familiar with Wordpress especially.
Unfortunately. at this time I’m really looking for someone who can both design AND code. (And by code, I mean take what they build and transform it into a functioning, Wordpress-powered blog.)
Obviously, this is a paying job. I can’t afford to spend a fortune but I can be fair. I have ideas and mockups of what I’m after, but need someone who is more of a pro to take it to the next level and actualize it all.
If interested, shoot me an e-mail. Matt at x-entertainment dot com. Thx!
The sad thing is that Gray Cat has no way of knowing that her weeks-long attempt to climb the floor-to-ceiling pile in the corner of my office has ended with the successful conquering of Grayskull. That’s too cool.
The Godzilla Koosh Ball.
It took me over a decade, but I finally saw Godzilla. The Matthew Broderick 1998 version, I mean.
Wow. Terrible.
I try to enjoy what everyone else trashes, because it’s the easiest way to be a bitchin’ nonconformist. But I could not do it with this movie. I’ve seen a thousand “giant monster” films, and even the worst of them had some charm. Here? No.
Everything about it was bad. By the time my mental bullet list grew to 37 lines – and I believe #37 was “Could they have chosen worse music even if limited to tracks from Ace of Base’s seminal album, Happy Nation?” – I gave up and agreed with the critics.
Still, I’m not sorry that they made it. Without 1998’s Godzilla, we wouldn’t have gotten 1998’s Godzilla Koosh ball.
You all remember the Koosh fad, I’m sure. Millions of rubber strings working together as a weird ball, ready to stretch and smoosh all of life’s little stresses away.
Well, at some point, King Koosh decided that his empire would grow to new heights by sticking heads, arms and feet into the things. I’m not sure how many “Koosh characters” came to fruition, but as the photo proves, there was a Godzilla version at the very least.
He’s awesome. They even used specially colored filaments to match Godzilla’s grey-green skin. He can’t stand without using his tail for balance, and sure, he looks a bit like Godzilla-as-a-Fry-Guy, but the fact remains that Koosh balls are infinitely more interesting with dragon limbs.
Also: Note the bunch of looped Koosh strings just behind Godzilla’s head. That means I can hang him from my rearview. I won’t, but it does mean I could.
There’s the header card. Not very interesting, but I didn’t want anyone to hatch the theory that I simply disassembled a Godzilla figure and glued the parts into a Koosh ball, all to perpetuate the idea that these really existed. I’m not a bad guy.
Boring.
So I never finished Candymania. Shocking, we can all agree. I just couldn’t come up with anything poignant about that Zagnut bar, other than the obvious Beetlejuice reference. I’ve already made Zagnut/Beetlejuice references so many times.
Then, in a fit of trying to find motivation through clean sheets, I started messing around with my Tumblr theme. Ended up buying one of the premium versions, thinking it was customizable and easy on the eyes. It was neither. When I tried to switch back to the original, I came to the fun realization that I’d neglected to save it anywhere. So, for the moment, I’ve cobbled it back together as best I could. Just need to relocate that image of me looking sad, in clown makeup.
My work schedule has relaxed, finally, and most of what’s on the immediate horizon is “homework.” So I’m trying to get my head back in the game. This Tumblr is a side toy; the main site is the bigger issue. I’ve been purposely neglecting it because it badly needs a revised design. My main issues:
1) That whole top header area is obsolete. Like, way obsolete. I’ve had it since 2005 and while it still looks okay, it just feels old. Plus, nothing in the navbar links to anything useful. Mostly dead pages. I don’t need a “links” page. I’m a hermit. I don’t need a “downloads” page for a bunch of ‘80s commercials in WMV format when they’re all on YouTube now, anyway.
2) The UGO button. I’m no longer part of the UGO network. (If one still exists? I see the site is still up, but know they merged with IGN. Don’t know if they’re continuing as separate entities permanently or what.) I don’t necessarily care that I’m sending the site’s former ad supplier four hits every six months, but it still shouldn’t be there.
3) The main content table width. It’s wide enough to work, but not as wide as I want it to be. The annoying thing is that I’d be fine with a content table even an inch or so wider, but with the way the design was built, that’s impossible to do without a complete and total gutting.
4) …and to that end, the way the whole thing is coded is unbelievably, uh, antique. My pal Brian did an amazing job with the core design (especially for those who remember the site’s main page), but it certainly wasn’t intended for what I want out of X-E now. Even so, the core code was built like seven years ago. It’s a miracle that I can still do anything with it at all, but it’s unforgivingly uncustomizable.
That and so much more. I’ve gotta hire someone to help me with this. In theory, I could choose a theme that better suits what I want and slug it in temporarily, but the fact that anyone could grab the same theme and make the same hacks would drive me batty. I’d rather have the ugly thing if it’s unique. It’s why I always picked the nastiest hamsters with the bluest fur.
I’ll probably throw in the towel and just work with the current design for a while longer. What I want to do won’t happen overnight, anyway.
There really wasn’t much need to post this. Here’s a pink monster with issues:
