it's the little things

May 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Went down to the new apartment today to drop the first small load of stuff off and see if the power was turned on, etc. Each time I'm there it's the little things that strike me about how much I'm never going to miss City Park, the apartment building I've called home for two years now.

First off, it's ridiculously hot right now. In City Park, the hallways reflect that. They're open to the outdoors, so while they do get a little shade, that's it. Premiere Towers, though, has the air on in the hallways.

The City Park elevators are some of the slowest, sketchiest elevators you could imagine. There are two of them, but often one's out of order. Premiere Towers has three or four elevators, with dark wood panelling and framed black and white pictures. Their elevators are about twice as fast getting to the 4th floor.

I checked my mailbox there today and it was full of ads and credit card offers for the last tenent. I'm sure that'll keep up for a while. There was also a lady sitting in the lobby who started talking to Kathy and not making sense, and I don't think she stopped once we got on the elevator. You have to use a key to get in there, though, so she's either pretty sneaky or a crazy lady with means.

oh, and i hate titles too

May 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I hate revising papers. I never feel like I can jump in and change things up but still keep a coherent point or flow. When I write a paper I pretty much write, and then am done. When I finish my conclusion I run a spell-check and turn it in. I don't even read back through it.

I don't know if that's really the USC Writing Program approved approach.

When I go to revise, though, I feel lost. I feel like I need an outline just to tell me where to get back in. The scope of the paper just sort of unnerves me. It's as if the little section that fits on my screen is insufficient for me to understand what it is that I was thinking. My papers aren't made up of words or paragraphs, they just are. Going back and tampering somewhere in the middle just feels so awkward, like I'm trying to make the paper fit a role it was never meant for.

That doesn't change the fact that I've got two papers that have to be revised by 1pm tomorrow to be turned in as a "portfolio." My papers and I are going to just have to learn to get over our dislike of each other and get serious.

new look, again

May 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So this new look makes nineteen, at least since I started counting. I wanted it to include my new downtown residency, and the only pictures I had were phone cam images, so that's what you get. I've got plans for this look in the future, so consider this draft one.

It looks good in Mozilla and IE, but is still a little broken in Safari and Konqueror. I don't consider that my fault, though. Safari/Konq use the Mozilla box model, but don't support max-width (though that will be changing), so the hack for making padding not screw with the widths screws them double. I consider this their problem, not mine.

You can see all the old looks in the eWorld Look Archive, if you're interested.

classic movie fun

May 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

The other day I saw a Film Radar email talking about Last Remaining Seats, a yearly set of events put on by the LA Conservancy. They show classic films in some of LA's historic theatres, places the general public really doesn't get much access to these days.

Kathy and I are going to be seeing three of the films, two of which will be right around the corner from me in the Los Angeles Theater. There we'll be seeing Some Like It Hot on June 2, and It Happened One Night on June 30. In between we'll be seeing Sunrise on June 9 at the Orpheum Theatre.

I'm excited.

doh... documentation = good

May 01, 2004 by Eric Richardson

See, this is why I need to document more of the things I do here in the blog. Not for other people, but for me.

Today I'm working on grabbing some pictures I took today at the new place off my phone and uploading them to Buzznet via the computer instead of via GPRS. Over Christmas I had managed to do this, and it was cool, and I was happy.

Well, since then I forgot how.

I'm slowly figuring it back out, but it would be a lot easier if I had just left myself good notes the first time.

Los Angeles Theatre Center

May 01, 2004 by Eric Richardson

The Downtown News has an interesting article on the Los Angeles Theatre Center. There's a fight going on right now to see who's going to manage the struggling complex, with a lot of politics as usual. Normally I wouldn't really care about something like this, seeing as my nights out don't usually include catching a play, but the Theatre Center is just a block up Spring St. from my new apartment. Pictures I found online don't do any justice to the Bladerunner-esque feel of the building.