breathing the danube air

After over 24hours of travel, the last lag bumbling on public transit with strange underground trains that passengers have to open and close doors themselves on, I arrived at my hostel to discover they hadn’t received my booking.  I paid extra for a room that was still available, and too exhausted to fume at the circumstances, and too excited to sleep, or being too tired to sleep, I went for a walk.

I crossed a bridge that spanned the Danube around 9pm, its dark, silent waters kissing the still night air…and i sighed.  I was here :) I walked for two hours or so, following the danube and crossing a few of its bridges.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Technorati
  • LinkedIn
  • Slashdot
  • MySpace
  • email
  • Print
Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

kiss my ash

freakin exhausted.  2 1/2 hours till departure for Vienna from London.  Can’t find anywhere to nap.  Moving around the crowds just to keep awake. 

some strange things about my flight from Toronto to London:

served dinner at 10pm  which included two desserts. 

complimentary socks and toothbrush (which I first mistook for a tampon)

arrived at 8:15 local time, 3:15am my time. catch up body. fuck you circadian rhythms. so what if i slept from 1-3am my time.  i landed on a fresh, cheery morning, 81/2 hours old.  Ahhhhh… double espresso and two straight smokes. 

weird breakfast of rubbery eggs, giant sausage AND back bacon, sickly sweet and starchy baked beans. Toast is normal.  Don’t mess with toast. 

English boys providing eye candy while smoking and lounging in the sun outside terminal three.  Men. Men. Men. Tight faded jeans, crotch and ass-fitted, curves and suggestive bumps.  Exposed legs, arm muscles, triangle of chest extended down from neck, hint of body hair, hint of muscle and musk, display of sex appeal.  Pulled by an invisible string attached to my libido, I’m pulled first one direction, then another, each time as consuming, as believable.  I want, I want morphs into the idea, delusion of a need. 

t-2 hours to departure. 

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Technorati
  • LinkedIn
  • Slashdot
  • MySpace
  • email
  • Print
Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Javascript and CSS compression in CakePHP

Just a quick note for all of those looking to optimize their JS/CSS in CakePHP. The awesome Matt Curry put together a CakePHP plugin which makes this incredibly easy. Here is his Asset plugin on Github.

It works almost perfectly right out of the box but I ran into a small problem when setting it up on one of my sites. The Javascript component of TinyMCE does not play well with JSMin and is rendered useless when you run it through Asset.

Unfortunately, I load the TinyMCE scripts within my view but they need to appear within the <head> tag. Because Asset filters all scripts that are passed through the Javascript Helper with the inline => false parameter, there was no avoiding it. I ended up hacking away at the plugin a bit to add a Configure option which lets you specify files to output directly (and not compress/combine with the rest). Check out my fork of mcurry’s asset on Github.

It’s a small hack that should rarely need to be used, and be aware that using it will likely mess up the order of your JS. If the order in which your scripts are output is important, than it might not work for you. Usage is quite simple and is explained in the README.

Questions and comments are welcome!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Technorati
  • LinkedIn
  • Slashdot
  • MySpace
  • email
  • Print
Posted in Development | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

some short stories

Over the past year and a half, after finishing an education that threatened to suck me dry of the will to live, let alone do anything else, I moved into an apartment in Little Portugal where I wrote two stories.  Both, of course, are only in draft form and need revisiting and revisions.  But, for what they’re worth, here they are.

Poo vs. One

Employees of a bistro are forced to ban together in order to defeat the invasion of Poo Lords who have been controlling their management and rendering them beyond human recognition.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgxzgrr9_90hq8vzxnx

Nettie Nutts

A squirrel matriarch, living a comfortable, content life, is inspired to change the world as she knows it upon discovering the gross inequality in nut distribution.  Nuttiness ensues. (updated April 27/10).

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgxzgrr9_216cjmg7shq

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Technorati
  • LinkedIn
  • Slashdot
  • MySpace
  • email
  • Print
Posted in Random, Rants, Short stories | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

fairwell mayfair

Fairwell Mayfair

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Technorati
  • LinkedIn
  • Slashdot
  • MySpace
  • email
  • Print
Posted in Random, Travel | Tagged , , | Leave a comment