jmac.org updates (1999)

December 13, 1999

Another Disbroken, more-or-less meeting that two-week deadline. That makes a dozen comics, since I started last year. Huh! Still, it was probably rather silly of me not to wait until 2000 to begin anew; I'll probably have to miss a strip or two because of holiday chaos followed closely by my big California trip to hit MacWorld Expo (where I've been invited to take part in a panel about open-source Mac software) and visit friends.

Speaking of MacWorld Expo, it looks like my evil twin brother has somehow managed to meddle with things again. I knew I should have thought twice about giving him that account. Sigh.

In other news, I've become a Mad Lab Rabbit for my favorite game company, Looney Labs. They haven't yet decided what they're going to do with this new club of game-promoting fans, so, for now, I shall respond in kind, but I will urge anyone with some time to kill to wander aimlessly around the Looneys' amazing website, wunderland.com.

December 5, 1999

After watching three DVDs in a row at a friend's house last night, something gave way and I created a media journal page, an idea I find quite useful personally, and something I've been meaning to start online for at least a year or so. Of course, all I've added to it so far was my thoughts on two of the films I saw.

Meanwhile, in the background, I managed to plop my whole website into CVS. This is a Good Thing, and I hope it will encourage me to improve much of the site, now than I can hack away on a working copy with ease and safety.

November 26, 1999

Posted another Disbroken, after a pause of over four months. One reason for this gap's enourmity involves my desire to make a serious push to publish cartoons at a predictable, if not necessarily brisk, pace, because I love making them, but they take a lot of time to make, still, and I want to get better, and hence faster, at it. I wanted to wait until my life seemed clear enough to have a realistic chance of meeting a biweekly production schedule, starting with my next comic. So here we go.

November 23, 1999

Finally launched my very own catch-all writings site, which I intend to pattern after similar pages I've seen on many personal websites of folks whose work I admire. The only content right now, though, is a couple of book reviews, but I owe a lot to them; if the kind folks at O'Reilly & Associates hadn't sent me a small pile of free books with the understanding I'd review them, who knows when I would have gotten around to making this page? But then, who knows when I'll actually add something besides O'Reilly reviews. We shall see!

November 18, 1999

Posted an extremely localized account of the IFComp's results to my interactive fiction page. Basically, My game came in 23rd, and I'm quite pleased.

October 03, 1999

My toil for the last month and a half, learning how to make a modern text adventure game, is complete, allowing me to get back to work on all the stuff around this site I've been putting off for so many weeks. My first act involves showcasing my inability to let anything go by updating my interactive fiction page with information about my IFComp adventure, and even linking to it from the front page. Sheesh.

September 02, 1999

Finally got around to repairing Marketroid. One of my favorite experiences of any hackable artform, programming included, involves stepping away from something for a good long while, then picking it up again with a fresh mind, allowing yourself to bellow, 'What on EARTH was I THINKING?!' and then fixing everything in one go. Good stuff.

August 26, 1999

How busy I have been. The catalog is Huge now, and I just keep on gluing improvements to it. Addictive stuff, having a semi-popular website, yessir. (Where I define 'semi-popular' to mean the regular receipt of a thousand or so hits per day.) While I hack away at my IF game, I still get distracted by dumb ideas, and make things like an emailable version of Eliza. Go ahead, try it. Next I gotta fix Marketroid, and then probably make a page for these hacks I'm starting to accumulate, andthenandthen start thinking about opening up some source before I become too big a hypocrite. Mumble.

July 19, 1999

Probably the strangest Disbroken I've done yet, but that's OK. I felt pretty good about this one. Now if I can only figure out a way to draw Martha's hair and Burt's ears consistently between strips, we'll all be fine.

July 11, 1999

My personal site is up again, though it be a shadow of what it was last year. I'll fix it later.

July 10, 1999

After my Open Source site (see June 28, below) earned a July 6 listing on Macintouch, a Mac-centric weblog, my server received tens of thousands of hits in just a few hours, and I started to get lots of email suggesting additional content for the site, which is still rolling in, even after the hitrate has plummeted down to saner levels (though jmac.org still receives three to four times as many visits daily now than it used to). Improving this project, especially its automation, will be my principal time-taker for at least a few more days.

June 28, 1999

After an unsuccessful attempt to see if anyone else has tried the same thing, published the bare beginnings of a MacOS Open Source Software website. I wonder what will happen next!

June 6, 1999

Wow, a new Disbroken. It's interesting how I could only get it done after making my little declaration-to-self (see May 31).

Added fun-fun archival features to Marketroid.

May 31, 1999

After certain personal meditations and relevations too deep to deserve coverage on a personal website's updates page, I posted a grovelly but true note to my Disbroken page. I really do think good things will come out of all of this, but it will take time, a little time.

Relatedly, I have a new (though presently well-nigh empty) interactive fiction page.

May 19, 1999

Downloaded the super-nifty iCab browser for MacOS only to have it mock my pages' HTML 4.0 non-compliance. Spent the whole evening cleaning up. So far the only page that I've bothered to validate through the W3C's validator thingy is this one, so I will now treat myself to their little sticker.

May 17, 1999

Added links to a couple of toys I've been working on, the acronym resolver and the amazing jmac.org webcam.

Changed the text on the front page from 'Huh?' to 'Hello.'

Made the May 02 link update more recursive on Leah's advice.

May 2, 1999

New, bookmarkable (smirk) 'jmac.org Updates' page.

Updates by year:
1999 | 2000 | 2001 (missing, alas) | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 - 2005 | 2006 and later