January 13, 2005
Before my post earlier today, this blog had been dormant for almost a full month. The more I think about it, the more inexcusable I find it to be. The last week or so has found me more and more inspired (thanks Joe!) to get this blog going again, and to do it right. My dreams and ideas got bigger and bigger, but I was missing the most important thing. What I really needed to do was just to start posting again, and to keep my posting consistent. So, starting today, that's the plan. A visual redesign is in the works, but the most important changes will be in the frequency (and hopefully the quality) of the content. Here are a few ideas of what's to come:
- More posts on points of local interest, including the 2005 Chattanooga mayoral race
- Reviews of Killing Bono and Get Up Off Your Knees
- And my personal favorite, an essay tentatively titled "Speaking in Tongues: The Foreign Language of Bono's Christianity"
Finally, in a shameless attempt to attract attention, sometime soon I'm going to repost what is probably the most popular thing I've ever (co-)written. Guess who it's about?
September 1, 2004
Stunning. It would look great with a free iPod, and I still need a couple people to sign up under me and complete an offer. It's the first step towards getting your own free iPod, so it's not like you'd be doing it for nothing! Go sign up already!
August 25, 2004
You know me. You (hopefully) love me, or like me at least a little bit. Don't you want me to have a free iPod? You know you do, so help a brother out.
You see, there's this great website called Free iPods and they're really, honest to goodness, going to give me an iPod or iPod Mini if I complete the program requirements. They're pretty simple - I have to get 5 people go to the website through this link, sign up for an account (for free) and then complete an offer through one of their advertising partners. (Tip: When you sign up, you might want to use a new email address or one you don't use all that much just in case of spam. I haven't had any problems with that, though.)
Many of the offers are free and just take a few minutes to complete. The offer I chose was signing up for an account with Infone, the new directory assistance/personal concierge service you might have heard advertised. It won't cost me anything unless I actually call up and use the service. In addition, Infone is sending me a $10 Amazon.com gift card. Once you've signed up by going through my link, you've not only helped me out, but you've taken the first step towards getting your own free iPod.
You're probably pretty skeptical, but my momma didn't raise no dummy. This is legit -- it's even been covered in Wired magazine and on CNN Headline News. There are a growing collection of bloggers online who have reported getting their iPods already. Andy over at External Monologue is well on his way to getting his (I signed up through his link and I think three other people have as well).
So come on, friends, won't you please help me get a free iPod?
As a special bonus, when I see confirmation that you've signed up through me and completed one of the offers, I'll make and send you a personalized mix cd!
May 13, 2004
Esplodere Web Design is proud to announce the launch of its latest project:
coffee-fundraising.com
coffee-fundraising.com is the online front for a great charitable fundraising program offered by local organic coffee roasting company Sunset Mountain Roasters, whose e-commerce website Esplodere will be redesigning from the ground up in the coming months. The new e-commerce site will have a very similar look and feel to the fundraising website.
Also on deck for Esplodere in the coming months:
TennesseeBlack.com, a news and information website founded by Tennessee Media Group targeting African Americans in the state of Tennessee. It will offer original and high quality syndicated content in the areas of news, business, empowerment, faith, entertainment, arts and culture, sports, opinions, and lifestyles
CD cover and booklet design for the new LP Nothing Personal by The Shots of Perspective, as well as a corresponding redesign of their current website.
April 19, 2004
From Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 by Steve Stockman:
October was the first declaration to the outside world of the spiritual twist in the U2 story.Follow the herd:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Via Dead Man Blogging.
March 15, 2004
Since I built this website close to two years ago, I've been updating our photo gallery manually. I go into Photoshop to individually crop and resize and create thumbnails. I code the HTML for each page by hand. I take a lot more photos than ever make it onto the site because of the time commitment required to post a new set of photos, and I really can't do it anymore. I'm looking for an open source or free photo gallery program with at least a moderate amount of customization allowed, and I'd like your suggestions.
March 11, 2004
If there are any loyal FNR readers left, you have surely noticed the decline in blogging since my lovely daughter Bailey was born in November of last year. There simply isn't enough time to devote to this hobby as there once was. That, however, isn't my biggest problem. I'm getting this dad thing down, and there are plenty of times when I have a few minutes to post. The problems I'm facing now are a lack of inspiration and some nagging questions about the form I want this blog to take, mainly regarding post length.
In general, my posts have always been on the long side. I'm a huge fan of Movable Type's "Extended Entry" feature, and use it frequently. Over the last month, I've had multiple post ideas that I never followed through on because I wasn't able to expand them to what I thought was a worthwhile length. Recently I made a post called "Minis" which included a few shorter items. It was modeled after Ben Domenech's "The Rundown" which he posts at least once a week, containing upwards of 10 short items, each ranging from just a sentence to a full paragraph. I was contemplating another "Minis" post earlier this week, but let it go because I didn't have enough short items! I don't know where I got these ideas about lengthy posts, but I'm finally ready to let them go -- they're killing my weblog. I think my new inspiration is a blog I've always enjoyed called Chronic Murmuring. Scott easily posts 4 or 5 times a day, and the posts range anywhere from one or two sentences about an interesting link to several paragraphs of highly intelligent (though sometimes over my head) commentary.
Hopefully this new perspective will breathe some new life into Friday Night Running. But don't worry, the one thing this blog will never lack for is cute baby pictures...
February 13, 2004
Blogger, CEO of the ever-impressive web company silverorange, mountain adventurer, and all-around cool guy Dan James declared himself President of the Internet in July 2003. Recently, his position has been challenged by several other bloggers. Dan diplomatically suggested letting the position go up for a vote, with whoever can win Google's #1 ranking being the true leader of the free net. So I'm voting by -- how else? -- linking to Dan's site!
In the interest of full disclosure, Dan James chose me as minister of homeland security in his cabinet.
Now all I need is an mp3 of Dan saying "I'm Dan James, and I approve this message."
November 13, 2003
After taking Genia for a little pampering at The Nu Cheveux this morning, I spent most of the afternoon right here on the computer. I've been formatting and posting some concert photos to the Served to Raise website that I built and maintain. It's pretty easy, but repetitive, so I started messing around with some effects on a few of the photos to break it up a bit. I was pretty pleased with the one I posted above.
November 12, 2003
Amazon.com has a great new feature called Purchase Circles. Basically, a Purchase Circle is a specialized bestseller list. You can find out the bestselling products to a given town, university, company, or non-profit organization. It's pretty interesting because Amazon bases the lists on the "items that are more popular with each specific group than with the general population." So, here are a few lists of interest:
I tried searching for Covenant College, but apparently there haven't been enough purchases made to create a Purchase Circle yet.
October 11, 2003
Ten Years of My Life is the latest project by Matthew Haughey, creator of MetaFilter and Ticketstubs. The premise is that he will post a new photograph to the site every day for ten years.
"During the upcoming ten years, from the time I turn 31 until I turn 41, I expect I'll be witnessing a great deal of major changes and would love to have a way to remember them."
I think it's an incredible concept. In a way, it's not too different from blogging, or photoblogging. The committment is a huge step up, however, and I think the results will ultimately be more rewarding. The MeFi discussion of the new project contains links to similar sites, where people have committed to a photo, drawing, or post per day for various periods of time. A new meme, perhaps? Whether or not it becomes the next big thing in blogging, Ten Years of My Life is definitely a project worth checking out.
October 10, 2003
1. Do you watch sports? If so, which ones? I watch college football, college basketball, and soccer.
2. What/who are your favorite sports teams and/or favorite athletes? Auburn Tigers football, New York Mets baseball, Covenant Scots soccer, UNC Tar Heels basketball
3. Are there any sports you hate? Pro football and pro basketball bore me to tears.
4. Have you ever been to a sports event? I've been to a few Mets games, a couple Braves games, an Olympic soccer game, a few Covenant soccer games, a couple Lookouts games, and a Georgia Tech football game. I would love to go to an Auburn football game, but it's hard to get tickets.
5. Do/did you play any sports (in school or other)? How long did you play? I swam for many years, from when I was about 5 until I was 14, I think. That was easily the sport I was most talented in, and I've often regretted quitting. I probably could have been on a college team. I also played soccer for many years on club teams, up until around 10th grade. I quit swimming for soccer, which was really stupid considering I didn't even start on any soccer team. Ever.
(via fridayfive.org)
October 1, 2003
Are you a blogaholic? I scored a 48/100, which means I am only a casual weblogger. Pretty accurate.
For a daily dose of Scrabble in blog format, check out Puzzle Blog. Even more entertaining is Babble, which Signal vs. Noise called "a third-party bastard child of Scrabble and Boggle."
September 18, 2003
If you could recommend only two books for me to read, what would the be and why?
September 17, 2003
MindReader v2.0 is "an experimentation of computer technology, advanced mathematics, and extra sensory perception." It claims to be able to predict with 99% accuracy the card you choose from a list of six. It removed the card I picked every time I tried it. However, there's a catch. It's more a riddle than a computer program with ESP. Pay attention to everything when you play and you might be able to figure out how it works.
September 10, 2003
A few links of interest that, for whatever reason, I didn't feel like making a full post about.
August 30, 2003
The topic of the week among the elite group of designer-bloggers has been semantics and how they relate to valid XHTML and CSS. It all started with Jason Kottke pointing out that valid code doesn't necessarily imply semantical correctness. It has been further discussed at Stop Design, Superfluous Banter, and Simple Bits. Anyone who is interested in web development best practices should read all of these discussions -- they have proved valuable reading for me.
I started the journey towards web standards a few months ago, and my first real site developed with this goal was theplaceforcooks.com. The CSS for that site validates and the general template I built for the site validates, but not every individual page does. It was tough, and unfortunately I found that the error reporting on the W3C Validator Service isn't as helpful as I thought it would be. My next project was the redesign of the Esplodere Web Design site, which was a little smoother (thanks in part to my choice of a more fluid layout) and I'm feeling more comfortable with designing for standards each time I approach a new page.
And now semantics are the next step. The most obvious example is using CSS for layout instead of tables. This has caught on quite well throughout the design world, but as Jason Kottke mentioned you can still get a table layout page to validate in XHTML. There are even some big design shops still using tabled layouts.
An even better example of proper semantics is using (h1) instead of (span class="title"). Either tag can be rendered to look the same way using CSS but (h1) is more meaningful -- it more aptly describes the content contained between the two tags. I'm going to continue reading up on this and work to implement these practices into all of my designs from here on out.
August 27, 2003
The Color Schemer - Online Color Scheme Generator is one of the most useful web tools I've come across in a long time. You can click on a color in the commonly used colors box or type in a HEX code and it will show 15 coordinating colors. From there, you can click to "lighten scheme" or "darken scheme" to help find just the right shades. For a web designer who trades in black, white, grey, and red, this is amazing.
August 19, 2003
Here I am, Chattablogs!
Every entry previous to this one is from my old blog. Many thanks to Josiah for importing them into MT for me.
I've been planning for quite some time to convert this blog from Blogger to Moveable Type. I finally started getting around to it this week and decided to join the local blogging community over at Chattablogs. My new blog will be debuting there later this week. Part of the move will include creating a new name for the blog -- "John & Genia Weblog" just isn't very catchy. Josiah, the Chattablogs founder, suggested I call it Not Wearing Pants. I love it -- it's humorous, and it works as an homage to my work-from-home status. I'm also mulling over a couple of other names, and I thought I'd take a little poll. So take a look at the following list and leave a comment telling me which one you like best.
Not Wearing PantsUpdate: I guess it's obvious now that I chose to go with "Friday Night Running." Trust me, "Not Wearing Pants" was a close second.
Friday Night Running
The Static and The Radio
August 16, 2003
Lately I've really been into the song "One Tree Hill" from U2's The Joshua Tree. I was playing around in Photoshop and put together this wallpaper as I was thinking about the song. Click on the picture to get a 1024x768 version of the wallpaper.
August 8, 2003
Today is the one year anniversary of my weblog, which is pretty cool. What was I blogging about one year ago today?
August 8, 1961: David Evans is born in Barking Maternity Hospital, East London. In case you're wondering who David Evans is, he's that guy in U2 that's always wearing a skull cap and holding a guitar... Happy Birthday, Edge.I also mentioned news of the rumored single "Electrical Storm" and my enjoyment of the movie Signs. One year later, I'm still talking obsessively about U2, as well as other music and movies. I've expanded into religious and political topics and tried to open up about personal things as well. This week I actually managed to blog at least once a day -- we'll see if I can keep that up for a year.
August 7, 2003
What do you get when you hook up a web form to an LED display screen and set up a webcam to show the world what people are posting? Even cooler is Speaker's Corner in Huddersfield, UK, where you can submit a message by web or sms and have it shown on a LED screen in the town square. (via metafilter)
August 1, 2003
Last Thursday night was the grand opening of Mia Cucina, the new gourmet cookware store and cooking school in North Chattanooga. The store and demonstration kitchen are amazing, so if you're in the area, stop by. Also, check out the just released cooking class schedule for September. Genia and I are thinking of taking one of these if time permits -- the hardest part would be choosing which one.
July 24, 2003
Tables are the layout tools of the past... it's CSS all the way now for version 3.0 of Esplodere Web Design. With some minor cleaning up of the code, it should be valid XHTML strict, which makes me happy. Check it out; comments welcome.
July 1, 2003
I've become pretty fanatical about checking the statistics for my website in the last month or two. Most interesting are the referrals from links on other websites (top honor belonging to CEO Blues) and the search phrases that brought people to the site from Google and Yahoo. Here are some of the strangest, in order of frequency:
pregnant belly photosMost of these searches correspond to posts on the weblog, but I can think of five that don't. Which ones? And to what pages on the site do they correspond? Click on "comments" to make your guesses.
merovingian matrix priory of zion
aqua net hairspray
why i would follow bono into hell
pastor acceptance letter
hawbaker compost
george does the opposite
tribes of africa
mock the devil and he will flee
austin powers math proportion
neo agent smith ice cream big
madaleine l engle quotes
This post officially inspired by Josiah
June 19, 2003
Esplodere Web Design has just completed the website for Mia Cucina, the place for cooks, a new gourmet cookware store and cooking school opening up in North Chattanooga on July 24th. Honestly, I can't wait for the store to open. It's going to be amazing, and if you're in the Chattanooga area, I definitely recommend checking it out. They're going to be carrying a lot of the top brands in cookware and offering cooking classes, from beginner to expert levels, in a variety of cooking styles. This project was an absolute pleasure to work on, and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. Take a look at the website for yourself and let me know what you think.
May 14, 2003
It's my blog, so I can solicit for web and graphic design jobs or compliments any time I feel like it! Right now, I want yout to take a look at my Portfolio since I just added some examples of my graphic design work, including the CD booklet and some flyers that I designed. If you like anything in particular, let me know. Hopefully I'll be inspired to post something a little less self-indulgent soon, but I've been completely in "Esplodere mode" for the last couple of days. There are a lot of exciting things going on for Andy and I right now -- and by "exciting things" I mean potential projects. Who knows, this business may take off sooner than we thought!
May 3, 2003
I love them... I could stay up until all hours of the night and forget anything else exists (well, almost anything else) when I'm working on a new project and feeling inspired. My latest project was a website for a band called Served to Raise made up of Covenant students. I've heard a couple of their songs and they are pretty talented. Take a look at their site, and let me know what you think.
April 22, 2003
Apparently the BlogShares system had some kind of error that caused it to sell out all the stock available in my blog when it merged in an alternate url. This was not planned by me, and I'm sorry to anyone who bought shares or received shares as a gift from me.
April 14, 2003
So I've joined this online game called BlogShares which is, in short, a fantasy stock market game for weblogs. Weblogs are valued based upon the number and quality of incoming links, and you buy shares with the fictional $500 you get as a new member. Here's a list of the blogs I have stock in:
MoveableType (A popular weblog/content management program)
Dave Barry's Blog (Yep, that Dave Barry)
Blogs4God (A directory of Christian bloggers)
Rick Klau's Weblog (Tech blog)
Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog (Tech blog)
Faraway, So Close (Personal blog named after a U2 song)
Hugh's Ramblings (Tech blog)
Signal vs. Noise (Group blog of a renowned web design firm)
April 7, 2003
My friend Michial has a rock band called The Shots of Perspective. He's got three big shows coming up in Lawrenceville and Toccoa, Georgia, and Hartsville, SC. The show in Lawrenceville will be his first with the newly formed full band -- up until now, Michial's shows had all been solo efforts. So if you live in Atlanta metro, you should definitely check out the show in Lawrenceville, or at least print this awesome flyer (designed by you know who) to help him promote the show. The show in Toccoa is big because he's opening for The Lost Dogs, one of the legendary bands of Christian music in the last 30 years. The show in Hartsville will be Michial's first acoustic show in a year. There's an awesome flyer (designed by me, with Photoshop brushes courtesy of vBrush) for that show as well.
February 24, 2003
Wherein I post lots and lots of links, most of which will have little to do with one another, except that I like and recommend them. Surf away!
The Onion
@ U2
RazorMouth
Obscure Store
Esplodere Web Design
The Shots of Perspective
A List Apart
Despair Demotivational Products
Coldplay
U2 News Weblog
Metafilter
Starsailor
Pitchfork Media
Over the Rhine
February 12, 2003
Some of you know, and some of you don't, that Esplodere is the name I've been using for my freelance web design business. What most of you don't know is that Esplodere is now a partnership between myself and Andy Coleman, a friend who is student at Covenant College. We are working diligently to turn it into a real business (read: we want to make real money). Behind the scenes, we've been working on a business plan, the legal steps for forming a company, and our world domination marketing scheme. The first public step is the relaunch of our website with a new logo, new design, and information about the partnership and our pricing. Take a look, and if you or anyone you know is in need of an incredibly well-designed site at a reasonable price, send them our way!
October 18, 2002
If you're reading this, you probably already know me well enough that I have already sent you an email about this. But, just for the sake of duplicity, I'm going to talk about it here. Yesterday I launched a redesign of theshotsofperspective.com complete with a new online store. Go check it out and let me know what you think. And while you're there, take a minute and listen to a couple of his songs. You can pre-order his great new album The Lame Shall Enter First for only $8.00!
September 12, 2002
Do you read me? Over.
If you are reading this, please click on the word "Comments?" below and leave me a note. I'm just curious if Craig really is the only person who reads this weblog. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
August 8, 2002
I was thinking it might be cool to use clever headlines for each post I make to the blog, but that might be too much pressure. What if I couldn't be clever every time I wanted to post? That's a pretty strong possibility since I just now wanted to post about the movie Signs and couldn't come up with anything good.
I guess I'll just post about the move here. To put it simply, I loved Signs. It was suspenseful, funny without being cheesy, and the real story (small hint: it isn't about crop circles) was excellent. The actors all did a great job with their roles, including the children. The director also had a good (small) role in the film. Overall, I definitely recommend this movie.