Year: 2002

Mmmm. Databases.

When I think about what I really like as far as the web, technology, etc. go, I realize that I’m more excited by information and data (and sometimes by neat little automation tricks) than by actual design. I like organizing things, categorizing them, finding new ways to search, sort, and reassemble them…

That’s not to say that I don’t like presenting them in a pleasing way; that excites me too, and I think I have at least a slight grasp of good deign principles. But as a rule, I get more of a techno-boner about Filemaker and even Excel (imagine, a Microsloth program which actually works well…) than about, say, Illustrator (whose Bezier curves I have neither the will nor the stamina to decipher…). It’s really cool, though, to find a way to make dry data look good AND be functional…

I’ve been known to sit in front of my computer all night working on a new Filemaker database (you should see the “supermarkets” directory on my G4) to which I’ll eventually refer, at most, about once or twice a month. I’ll spend hours on some pointless little CGI script which may give me a day’s worth of amusement once it goes live. I’ll sometimes spend a day or two trying to make Dreamweaver’s back end do something it doesn’t think it can do (with inconsistent success, alas). This is what gives me a sense of accomplishment…

But it’s as much about the actual data involved as it is about the nuts and bolts. I couldn’t get so excited if the subject were, say, the flora and fauna of Central Iowa. Technology for technology’s sake (and data for data’s sake) does not excite me; technology which has some useful purpose in my life does. I don’t want to understand every aspect of how a database program works, but I do want to understand enough that I can make it do exactly what I want and have the result look exactly as I want it to…

I’m not sure if this makes me right-brained, left-brained, or some strange centrist hybrid. Would that my life and my apartment were as neat and organized and attractively arranged as my miscellaneous sources of information…

Now to try, once again, to solve the dilemma of turning those thousands of dirty pictures into some sort of super database so that I can immediately find that shot of some dark-haired guy getting fucked on a barstool while wearing nothing but his Adidas and a baseball cap…

It’ll keep my hands busy until tomorrow, when I have someone to occupy them…

Randomly Wednesday

Things I meant to write about yesterday but didn’t, since I was making a dent in The Big Pile of Email™:

  • Two consecutive nights of dreams I actually remembered the next day. Neither of them was terribly exciting, but in one of them I was a 1970s cop show detective investigating a murder inside a really cool 1960s motor lodge. I’m not sure, but I think it may have been in Atlanta. Or Reno.

  • San Francisco’s new law banning public urination and defecation. But that was too easy a target. Biggest wonders: (1) why there wasn’t already one and (2) why there was any significant debate on the issue.
  • The loss of a semi-daily Jonno. We’ve both been doing variations on this theme for so damned long that I feel like we’re old friends, even though I don’t think we’ve ever even been in the same state at the same time, much less the same room.