the Wordherder Online

The Good:

I had the great fortune of seeing 30 Seconds to Mars live. Opening acts included Neon Trees and Mute Math which both rocked surprisingly hard and sounded amazing. Right up center in the crowd was my chosen spot as dealing with the moshpit and constant pushing back and forth of a sea of people is usually annoying but hardly enough to distract from having excellent bands (and this time an excellent Hollywood actor singing his heart out as well).

Mute Math, 2nd opener for 30 Seconds to Mars. the drummer was absolutely insane… came out and started duct-taping his headphones to his head. i counted at least 2 broken drum sticks. I loved the way they ended the show, by breaking down their instruments but jamming on them at the same time… eventually everyone had part of the drum set and the song turned into a tribal beat with the entire band banging on whatever they could grab. at one point the singer threw a weird theramin into the crowd which i was able to grab and play a few notes as it was passed around.

Neon Trees, first opener for 30 Seconds to Mars. Decent band — singer is like a high-energy, punk version of Mick Jagger. Getting a non-blurry picture of anyone in that group was impossible… made even more so that I was close enough to wonder if I would be nailed with a swinging microphone which would have been awesome, haha.

well… I survived 30 Seconds to Mars. Was one person deep in center pit until some dick stole my camera right out of my hand… chased him down, got punched in the face and another guy nailed me in the kidney but I got the camera back. Spent the rest of the next couple songs gasping for breath amidst the sea of people. But eventually the fun came back to me and the rest of the show rocked!

The Bad:

The next day, I went to the old market in order to play my own music for the masses. The night wasn’t the best for street busking so soon after the sun went down I began making my way back home. Unfortunately I was jacked on my way back up what I thought was 13th St but was 16th street. Five black dudes tried to take my guitar but I beat them back. Thankfully my only injuries were minor wounds where I impacted with the assailants: cut knuckle from a punch, and sides of both palms where I blocked their hits. After I knocked one guy’s wind out of him the rest took off running away allowing me to dart into an opened door that just happened to be backstage at the same venue that I saw 30 Seconds to Mars the night before.  After a song or two by the band on stage, a roadie spotted me and asked for credentials. He surprisingly believed me when I lied that I had lost them but when he asked who I was with, I drew a blank.

Rule 1: If you find yourself one step away from a Roadie letting you stay backstage, it is always a good idea to have at least some clue as to which bands are playing.  I voluntarily left, caught a ride with Shera to home where I nursed my minor scrapes and cuts.

F*ing Hell:

I went back to the Old Market the next night because I found myself playing guitar and realised that I might as well make a few dollar bills while I practice. It was a very slow night so I ended up chatting and jamming with other buskers, eventually just putting instruments away and babbling about music on the porch of Billy Frogs Tavern.  It was after 2 when I took off knowing that I had borrowed a car this night so as not to worry about having an attempted mugging once again on the way home.  Instead, I got lost on the way home driving down 10th street while thinking it was 13th street.  10th ends going south as soon as you approach Rosenblatt Stadium and the Henry Doorly Zoo campus to which I discovered too late. While attempting t o turn around quickly in the narrow one way street, the car hit the curb and possibly a sign. The airbag went off and knocked me out.  I have no recollection of at least an hour after that. I know a policeman issued me a ticket for the collision because I have the ticket. The blankness off the accident and at least an hour after is what is worrying me.  Unfortunately, I have no visible head injury and no seatbelt bruise. My only injuries are still those from the mugging the night before. I say this as unfortunately because at least some physical sign except for a broken car might spur memory or at least show a clue.

I just learned that the car is technically totalled due to the repair cost. It certainly didn’t look totalled but in the end it is better, at least insurance-wise.

Well, I think that I am going to officially call this new version of my blog, theWordherderOnline.com, to be pretty much completely reopened… at least in the respect that there should be no noticeable changes beyond the usual tinkering and fixing of bugs that might pop up.

Keeping it Simple!
The most noticeable change is certainly the extremely minimal visual appearance that this version has as opposed to previous flavors.  As the focus of this place is going to eventually become more of a portfolio than a daily news/blog site, I rather like the clean, almost empty look that surprisingly opens itself to more pages, options, bells and whistles that most “overly busy” feeling WordPress sites have. This is certainly the case with previous Wordherder designs that have always seemed too much all at once and then lacking in any deeper content depth.

Tasty on the inside as well!
The design isn’t the only thing that got trimmed and toned — under this baby’s hood is a far more efficient set of plug-ins, css tweaks, apps that offer me so many better ways to get the content out there all while not bogging the load times down with unneeded garbage or glitchy code. In a later post I shall give everyone a tour of some interesting things that are on the back-end and slightly beyond the recreational blog (thank you PHP and CSS classes, haha).

Let the Games Begin!
Feel free to play around in here and look forward to a LOT more content to come now that the scripting and geekery is pretty much finished.  Throw me some comments and check back often!

- j.

Update:  7:00 am  4/16/10

The new design is starting to take shape visually as well as an actual gameplan for what I even want to accomplish here is starting to sink in.

Goal:
I have long since become bored with the typical blog-format and have also become far too busy in other areas for any realistic attempt to run a daily posted blog that is worth routine visits.  Also, the insanity that Internet Marketing and Advertising has become is just too strange for a right-brainer such as myself.    SO…

With a new design comes a new focus:  a personal web presence that acts as a portfolio first and social networking place for me to play second.

I have begun to upload a smattering of things that I have written — some published, some never to be published, and some that are just strange but need a page for themselves instead of creeping into other future ideas.  If there is not much here yet, there soon shall be!  It is just a matter of time to wrangle them up and copy/paste, retype, or figure out the best way to link to their officially published sources.

For the first time for any of my websites/blogs, I am locking the content up to make it just a little more work to violate the various licenses, copyrights, or more importantly- protect the stuff I haven’t officially protected or published with protection.  Now, I hardly worry about such things but by doing so, this allows me to post content that I would have been nervous to before. This will allow for more content and a win/win for everyone!

Once again, pardon the dust as it shall certainly take a while to make this place what it should be.  I have started this one completely and utterly from scratch so things are slightly more interesting than just slapping a new WP theme on and moving widgets around, ha!