Recently in Announcements Category

Now that this here blog is more than 1000 posts old, I figured that it was about time that it actually worked.

The redesign is still a work in progress, but my goal this go around is to clean things up a bit. Sadly, that required the purging of all comments that have ever been made. My outdated version of the Movable Type platform left me more than a little bit vulnerable to spammers. In the past year, I racked up an astounding 81,000 bullshit comments, mostly in the archives.

A while ago, I remember someone high up at AOL proposing an e-mail tax. A penny to send an e-mail, any e-mail. Still forty-one cents cheaper than a stamp! The reasoning was pretty sound--spammers won't be able to afford it!

Sadly, when you want to encourage a talkback on a blip of a website like my own, you need the comment engine to be as easy for people to use as possible. Otherwise, the interest wanes and we all move on to Gizmodo or some other gadget porn website. (Certainly it isn't just me.) The easy commenting lets the robots walk all over it and some stupid ringtone website just got a slightly higher ranking in Google thanks to it's new link from my blog. So you see, it's all Google's fault that all of your comments are deleted. If you'd like to let them know how you feel about it, climb onto your roof and organize the tiles into a message for their satellite to photograph.

Also, get naked. You'll be three pixels high and famous one day.

That aside, I've finally introduced categories to my blog in a bid to catch up with 2002. Soon, I'll be posting scary food news in the Food Truths category as well as some interesting stories from My Friend, the Waiter in his. Both of these were ideas that I wanted to start as separate blogs, but never got around to. Now, they'll be something to post here! Something I'm allowed to post here, unlike the current project that I am working on.

Finally, the site should be more compatible than ever. Reading better on them fancy new devices, the iPhone and most importantly the Kindle. If a blog is all one big ego stroke, it might as well look the best on my device of choice.

Elise and I launched our new business today, Stella Star Designs. We make custom photo cards for any kind of announcement, such as Save the Dates or Wedding or Baby Announcements.

We've been working on this for months now, so check it out!

Now that the website is finished, we can finally get back to work on filling out our catalog with more designs!

Ribcage: Volume 2

145 Pages.
54 stories.
1 short exclusive story, "Dolphins", 1 untitled page and a set of facts on the back cover.
6 full-page photos printed in almost stunning black and white ink.
Red-spotted newt cover art by Elise.
Looks really pretty next to Volume 1.

I have decided to finish out the Ribcage series and complete the final Ribcage volume as I had originally planned. Starting soon, there will once again be a new story every Wednesday at www.ribcage.org.

Update: More than 200 wedding photos are now up in the Wedding gallery of my Picasa page.

From Wedding

Elise and I did in fact get married. It was beautiful and I have hundreds of photos, but for now I have posted just a few.

From Top of the Duomo

There are however over two hundred photos of our honeymoon in Italy posted on my new Picasa web album. Some of them have commentary, but much is left out. Use the slideshow feature to see all of the pictures in bigger, better glory. I will have to write a grand old post about the wedding, the trip and all of the wonderfuls just as soon as I can.

Hoping all is just as well in your neck of the woods.

From Piazza Signoria

You can click here to watch our segment on The Insider.

Delayed flights, layovers in Charlotte, Washington DC--no sleep, drinking, seeing the family cat Princess' grave and coming back with a cold--I think it was probably worth it. I had not been on TV in a very long time, other than that Insider-like show in Germany that we did for reasons that are still beyond me.

My essay, Nine Lives for the Fat Kid Frame of Mind is now available as a digital download at Lulu.com for $.99.

Digital content delivery is something I've been wanting to do legitimately for some time, so I've decided to test the waters with this 4,200 word essay.

It's a fifteen page, fast paced retelling of the story I'm covering in my book, but from a different angle, touching on some things I've never touched on before.

And if I don't have much of a future in e-publishing, Lulu just introduced hardcover printing, with full dustjackets and gold embossed letters on the book's spine--so I'm pretty excited about that.

Hello everyone.

Obviously this blog is up and running and the old blog is dead, and boy am I glad about that.

There are many changes to come to this site, the biggest being an integration into a full blown website that should be happening in the next few weeks. Nothing obtrusive or anything, just a tiny menu bar that will appear in the black space above the title banner of the blog. (Which will always be the main page and main focus of this site.) I wanted a place to keep a bio page and a page dedicated to my writing and what not... with Movable Type I can merge those into the blog, so here I am. Only none of those extra bells and whistles exist just yet!

Also, the left sidebar is still unfinished and emptyish. The FlickR random photo popups seem to only load half of the time. This makes me angry.

The new title... the new title is something I'll have to bring up on the yet to be created FAQ page. Jeremy commented that I was getting a bit pretentious when he saw the title. He said, "What does that even mean?" I don't know what the hell it means, really. I didn't come up with it!

The title comes from a message board thread about my family that I found on Google. You can read the entire thread here. (The relevant stuff starts on the third post.) It is the single funniest thing I've read in regards to my father's television show.

I want to put a transcript of it in my book, it's so funny. These people are so critical of us, yet they have really nice things to say at the same time. That thread is a rollercoaster and I love it.

For those that don't feel like sorting through the thread to find the good stuff, I'll reprint some of it below...

-I've discovered George Stella from "Low Carb & Lovin' It" on the food network channel, and I bought his recipe book.

-I TIVO that show, but the man scares me.

-That's because he *is* scary . . . and his wife and kids seem like robots instead of real people. The show does have great meal ideas tho, and I've cooked a couple of them for my roommates and sig. other.

-Hmm, why is he scary to you guys? His son Christian is cute. They probably seem like robots because they aren't actors, and maybe they're a little nervous about being on TV.

-It's not a robotic thing for me, it's quite the opposite. His personality is still that of the jovial-yet-insecure "fat guy", yet his body is not. There's an incongruity there that's quite dissonant to me.

-Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. He does annoy me sometimes. But I love his recipes!

-***** is probably right, his wife and kids are probably just nervous about being on TV, but that results in the robotic-like behavior that I perceive. (His son is cute!)