Updated Photoalbum

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I was pretty tired of the ".nizzle":http://www.asp.net/ control that was handling my "photoalbum":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/ section; I couldn't add descriptions, pages would get really long and take awhile to load, no preview on the main page, etc. So, yesterday I found "this cool (and free!) control":http://www.rebex.net/ImageGallery/ that handles all those things for me. I can now go in and edit an XML(eXtensible Markup Language) file to add titles and descriptions to photos, which were sorely needed. Plus, the "front page":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/ of the photoalbum looks much nicer now, thanks to a thumbnailed layout of the galleries, also XML(eXtensible Markup Language) controlled. I have a lot better control over design and layout of the pages, thanks to a suave template-driven implementation. I'll try and go back and put descriptions on pictures, but I promise that'll be a slow process.

Craigslist

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Via "Joey 'AccordionGuy' deVilla":http://accordionguy.blogware.com/, I "see":http://accordionguy.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2003/11/17/6344.html that there now is a "Craigslist, Pittsburgh":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/! Having already moved away from the greater NYC area when it caught on, I haven't really experienced the love that is Craigslist, but hopefully if it catches on I'll be able to do some snarky "Gawker-style commentary":http://www.gawker.com/archives/009050.php on recent postings. Right now "they're":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/ats/19456458.html "fairly":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/ats/19274661.html "lame":http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/for/19282483.html.

Comp

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Well.. the climbing "competition":http://rockcomps.com/rockcomps/comps/event_details.cfm?id=513 at "the gym":http://theclimbingwall.com/ was yesterday, and I had a really good day. I paced myself well to get 10 good problems complete. Having thick callouses from my Bishop trip helped a lot, I think. It was a pretty crowded event, but no real ringers from out of town. I think I placed 4th, but that's just a guess. There was one last problem at the end of the day (that I should have tried sooner) that I kept getting closer and closer, but couldn't quite get. It was getting me so frustrated that I was pounding the wall and screaming with each failure. I _never_ care about problems that much, but this one was dancing just out of reach. I know I can do it, and when I go in on Tuesday and warm up, I know I'll walk it, but it would have been a nice capper on the day to get it. I'm feeling pretty strong these days, and with the new area of the gym open, I'm hoping that over the winter I'll be able to get some work in. Then, when I go back out to Bishop in the spring I'll be able to put my projects to bed without too much difficulty.

Nutty Weather, and No Sex For You!

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Freakish weather this morning. Woke up to sideways hail, thunder and lightning... the end of the world, basically. Step outside, and there's blue skies (with the slate gray clouds of the aforementioned storm dashing off to the east). Makes me really happy that Pittsburgh has just Extra Special weather. And totally unreleated, but somebody must think I actually _have_ the *Paris Hilton Sex Video*, because I've seen about 30 searches in the last day for any combination of *Paris*, *Hilton*, *Sex*, *Tape*, and *Video*. So no, I don't have it anywhere on my site. Go away. You won't find the *Paris Hilton Sex Video* here, and I don't know what search engine gave you that idea, but you're barking up the wrong tree. I have many *Video* clips on my site, and I've probably talked about *Paris* (the city, of course) before, but I'm still not sure why people think that the *Paris Hilton Sex Video* is for some reason hosted on this site. Weird.

Trip Diary

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Diary is going slower than I thought, but I figure if I post a link, that will drive me to work on it faster. Plus, I have a buttload of new pictures from Paul and April that I can use to illustrate and make pretty. So, "here is where(Matt's 2003 Bishop trip diary)":http://feralboy.com/matt/climb/bishop2/ I will be making updates/revisions/etc. while I get everything all commited to 1s and 0s.

Hot tub party.

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This past weekend I crashed "Joey 'Accordion Guy' deVilla":http://accordionguy.blogware.com/'s "Mobile Hot Tub Birthday Bash":http://accordionguy.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2003/11/10/6108.html. Find me in da tub... bottle full of bub

(Sadly, I wasn't _actually_ there, but you'd really think that I was, thanks to "Pat":http://gregcioffi.com/hammerheads/images/galleries/images/otg2_5.jpg's nice "Photoshop":http://64.81.51.213/fpm/ job. See the shadow my head casts? You can see the bikini of the "vivacious beauty":http://meryle.diaryland.com/ behind it!)

Matrix Revolutions Review

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Spoilers abound, so don't read if you don't wanna know... What is The Mattrix? I took advantage of getting home early in the morning from California, right around the whole "Zero Hour" when the movie was released worldwide, so since I figured that most nerds like me have jobs, I should go see it while the theatre was quiet.

Bottom line: I really, really didn't like it. It felt like they forced in a bunch of crap to make it the right length. There was none of the "oh, wow!" mindbending ideas from the first movie, or to a lesser extend, the second.

The way they handled the death of the actress who played The Oracle from the first two movies was awful. The briefest of explainations, a sappy nod towards the actress herself. Ugh.

No pop psychology in this one at all, except for people who will say "Oh, man... it's so deep. You just don't, like, _get it_, man. Wow." The Christ imagery was over the top; same as the last one.

I know it's the 3rd movie, and everyone's seen the first two, but they got so "slang-ey" in this one... "calamari" instead of "squiddies" instead of "Sentinels". "Blue pills" instead of "people still jacked into the Matrix".

There was another pointless rave scene in this one, only this time it was vampire/goth/S&M/fetish party instead of the crappy one in the last movie.

Trinity dying was pointless, and the drawn-out love scene was embarrasingly bad.

No real new special effects, except for one unimpressive one.

Smith was an over-the-top charicature of himself.

I don't even have the heart to finish writing. Go read "the /. comments":http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/05/1613227&mode=thread&tid=188&tid=200&tid=97. To sum up, I was hoping this would be like a chocolate easter bunny... solid and a bit overly sweet, but still tasty. Instead, it wound up being like a hollow one where you curse the person who gave it to you and got your hopes up in the first place.

More Image Fun

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My friend "Lauren":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/20030927_sushi/P1010006.jpg is now getting into the act: Mt. Feralboy

Jesus Loves Feralboy

This, of course, is why "friends don't let friends use MSPaint":http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=688083.

Mad props to Lauren on her first entries (well, not her first entries, if you know what I'm sayin', but that's a whole other post), and here's hoping she has more for me.

Hockey night

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"Dan":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=108230 scored us some kickass floor seats for the Penguins game last night, so four of us went to go check out the action. You see a lot more interesting things being down at "floor level":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=123202 than up in the nosebleeds. First of all, the action moves _really_ "fast":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=123090. Also, these players are "BIG":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=123031. Like, "wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley" big. The other fun was purely just seeing how stuff runs. There were two photographers (both with bad mullets) jockeying for the little porthole where they could poke their camera through for an unobstructed view of the action. The _extra_ interesting thing was the one photographer had a small radio transmitter on his camera, instead of a flash, that would actually trigger a strobe in the house lights for his shots.

The bench was also small enough that the "Hurricaine":http://carolinahurricanes.com/'s backup goalie was "sitting right next":http://feralboy.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=122979 to us. The funniest thing was that in the "little handout magazine":http://www.hooxcards.com/icetimes.asp with the team linups in it, there wasn't a picture of "Jaime Storr":http://carolinahurricanes.com/custom/rad4EA56.asp, so they just had the "Hurricaine's logo":http://carolinahurricanes.com/images/front/primary.gif. We were going to try and get the girls sitting in front of us to ask him to sign his logo, but they didn't do it.