As Far As I Can Tell

I spent yesterday helping Dan try to sell mopeds to college kids at the WMU Bronco Bash. It’s an event where mostly freshmen go to find out about organizations on campus as well as local merchants. Basically it boils down to frats and cell phone companies giving away free stuff while the local alternative rock station plays music too loudly.

The 1977 Mopeds booth was set up inside of a parking structure, which at least kept us out of the sun. Every once in a while some of us would go work the crowd, passing out handbills with moped information on them. A few people seemed interested, but most just stuffed the flyer into their cup-o-crap.

While there were no sales, it was a good marketing opportunity for the shop. Now at least kids know that there’s a place in town to buy mopeds if they’re interested. I think it’ll need to be followed up by some consistent on campus flyering throughout September.

One of the things I learned at Bronco Bash was that the “ironic trucker-cap” square should be retired from Hipster Bingo. This season that’s the frat boys’ headwear of choice.

I went to Sturgis to screen print shirts yesterday. I messed up one of the screens so I wasn’t able to print the 1977 logo on the back. I let the screen see the sun for just a moment too long and the design didn’t completely wash out. Hopefully some tentative plans for a local screen printing space will pan out and I’ll have a more ideal setup. It’s an idea that Brennan had a while ago. I need to get together with him sometime this week and figure out the details.

So…now available for purchase at 1977 Mopeds (in store only) are the designs you see below.

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My brother was telling me that at a recent Radiohead concert people were holding up their cell phones during the songs instead of lighters. That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard. The AP confirms that this is more than an isolated incident with their story Lighters for a New Generation, though they seem to think it’s for callers to listen to the concert remotely. Either way, still pretty lame.

My truck just got towed from the back parking lot of the Fourth Coast. I’ve parked there for years without a problem, but apparently the owners (which I didn’t realize isn’t the Fourth Coast) are starting to tow. T&J did the job, and I have to say I’ll take them over McDonald’s Towing any day.

I hate that sinking feeling of seeing a blank spot where your vehicle used to be. I’ve been towed too many times in my life. Thanks to Casey for the ride to get my truck back.

I went to Grand Rapids today and picked up shirts from One Stop. I’ll be going to Sturgis this weekend to print on them. There were roughly 6 different types of yellow, so I’m glad I went in to see them firsthand rather than ordering from the catalog.

While I was there I picked up some new music from Vertigo Records. The new Constantines CD, The Weakerthans new record, and a CD by This Bike is a Pipe Bomb. I’m happy to have new music that I can actually hold in my hands.

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On Monday I went with Meredith to stack wood at her parents house. I didn’t actually do any stacking; I was on frog and toad patrol. Meredith has a phobia.

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Photos from the Blood Drive Moped Rally are now online. If you’re really interested check out the full photo archive from the event. There are over 1000 photos and high resolution too. That one is only up for a short time though.

I slept in really late and have felt like going back to bed all day. I feel terrible, and I suppose that eating something would help, but I’m not hungry. Currently my medicine is Bruce Springsteen’s The River; I think it’s working.

I fixed my moped, so at least I’ve accomplished something today. It turned out that the air hole in the gas cap was blocked. I cleaned the carb twice before I realized that. My moped is on the constant verge of breaking down. Multiple vital screws are nearly stripped and barely holding on.

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Yesterday I went to Sturgis and made some screens that I’ll be printing with sometime this week. I’m working on two shirts: Moped BBQ9 and one for 1977 Mopeds. Two of the three screens turned out fine, the third is screwed. I think I put the emulsion on too thick and it didn’t fully dry before I exposed it. That means I have to go through the whole process again before printing.

It’s very convenient to do it at my Grandpa’s shop though. He has a power washer and anything else I could want. I even cut pieces of foam to the exact window sizes to block out the light.

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Paul Sizer has officially announced his intension to make a Moped Army comic book.

I lose all interest in working on something when I can’t do it “the right way”. For example, I’m having to create some new HTML templates from existing code. I’m modifying what someone else has done, and done poorly. I can’t completely re-write it using modern standards and eliminate all the goddamn spacer gifs; but I’m dying to.

I’ve become so used to CSS based, standards compliant layouts that it drains me to look at tables and tables of hacked together madness. Particularly disturbing is that this is an intranet site specified only for IE6+/Win. It was the perfect opportunity for them to do it the right way.

As I was searching for informative sites to link to from this post I ran across Zeldman’s latest lecture, Designing With Web Standards. He starts off by pointing out sites that aren’t designed with standards, and the problems with them. The absolutely hilarious thing is that one of his examples is a site designed by the very company I’m doing work for. The coincidence is almost too much for me. Thank god it’s not a site I had to work on.

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All this being said, I realize that not all of my own websites contain perfectly semantic and valid code. I’ve been doing this for a while, since back when there was no choice but to hack things together. As I get the time I’ve been revisiting my sites and retrofitting them to proper code. It’s going to take some time, and I probably won’t get to all of them.

The important thing is that once you know about the proper way to do something, you start doing it. Ignorance is no longer an acceptable excuse for any web designer who keeps up with their field in the slightest. Even laziness isn’t a good excuse—writing to standards is cleaner, easier, and more logical.

Three cities, two movies, traffic jams, good food, good talk, barns with birthday messages, mopeds and more.

On Friday night and Saturday morning I was in Chicago. I saw Whale Rider (excellent and recommended), ate delicious food, caught up with Ivo, bought some wonderful books and played the “what’s changed since I’ve been here last” game. It was good to be back, and makes me realize that I’ll probably want to live there again soon. I was toying with NY, but I could see going back to Chicago.

Saturday night we were in Sturgis celebrating my Mom’s 50th birthday and visiting the rest of my family. My brother is back from his cross country western adventure. It seems that everyone is going west this summer. On our way back from dinner we went by an Amish barn my Aunt found in Mendon that happened to have an appropriate birthday message scrawled on it. Super kooky.

Sunday I saw another good movie, Raising Victor Vargas, at the Little Theater and went on a 18 person moped ride. It was good to see new people coming out for the ride.

Today has been spent making things work in JavaScript that normally I’d do with a server side language instead. Data manipulation without a page refresh is slicker, but so much more complicated.

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Ivo

Meredith

Me (to complete the set)

Witness the absurdity of the moment as my mom stands next to a barn where someone has scrawled a birthday greeting to someone with the same name. Exclamation point indeed.

I got caught in the rain on my moped tonight. Moped Bill, Brett, and Wayne came over to go riding, and the skies had cleared so I figured I might as well. Unfortunately about 15 minutes into it, the downpour began. We waiting for 20 minutes in a Parchment liquor store, wringing the water out of our shirts and trying to salvage our wet belongings.

Once it let up to a slow drizzle we headed back. Despite the fact that my moped didn’t run right for the first 10 minutes it was a good ride home. Once you’re already soaking wet, being in the rain is really fun.

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I haven’t updated much this week, so here’s a little photo recap:

Last Saturday I ran into people riding mopeds on my way to the Fourth Coast. We hung out a bit and then headed out to visit Meghan, who has been in a moped wreck recently.

Dan being a moped bad-ass

Jake in a wheelchair he found in the dumpster

On Sunday I wandered into the Black Arts Festival in Bronson Park. There was lots of bad art, and way too many religious items and music. I was hungry, but lost hope as I walked past all the BBQ rib-tip booths. I was happily surprised to eventually find a traditional African booth serving a variety of vegetarian options. The best thing I ate was spinach cooked with peanut butter.

On Sunday we had a Moped Army meeting at the Crow’s Nest and made plans for the upcoming Moped BBQ 9. It rained through the whole meeting, but stopped just enough to let us go on a ride when we were done.

A partial lineup of wet mopeds

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Tomorrow Meredith and I are going to Chicago and visiting Ivo. Yeah!

I’m really excited about Trick Shot Magic. I just watched a match between Tom “Dr. Cue” Rossman and Mike Massey, some of the best in the world from what the ESPN announcer said. It’s set up so that each round one of the players gets to call the shot. It can be a classic trick shot or one of their own design. Once they explain and do it, the other person has to try.

They use obstacles, have crazy rules, and make up shots that seem impossible; then they pull them off. One trick involved three pool cues on the table that you have to use as a track for the cue ball to ride on into the pocket. Awesome.