Category: Electronics & Software
The Unpublished Works
Everyone likes seeing their name in print.
Well, unless of course it’s trash tabloid-ism or an arrest warrant… But I’m not talking just-printed-on-paper but I mean a by-line of one sort or another. I can say that from experience as I’ve gotten that kick — seeing “John Fontana” linked to letters-to-the-editor, or being sourced/interviewed by USA Today, being quoted in The Hockey News, The New York Times Slap Shot blog and la-de-da.
But I can also say that wasn’t where I intended to go with writing when I started out as a kid. My intention wasn’t to be a face-in-the-crowd (though no matter what you write or publish, you are another face in the crowd of literature) in the newspaper. Not another source for magazines and what not. Not a weblogger. I planned on doing things creatively and having my own book. Or books — plural. Take your pick.
But that never happened. See, when i was a teen I got away from story writing so much and was writing poetry most of the time… a habit that’s followed me into adulthood. Lyrical verse more-so than deep observations and perspectives.. Well, yeah they are perspectives but they are my perspectives. Sometimes just pop, sometimes inspired by events or people or feelings in my life.
Over the years, I’ve had some of them available to the masses through the web… Certainly you can find a couple of them on this site and probably elsewhere on the web… But they’ve never really been published in the sense of print. Never published in the sense of being out there for any traditional form of mass consumption. I haven’t bothered to take the time with sending out poems to magazines who have niches all of their own (and aren’t available unless you pay for a subscription or pay for a copy — while you’re not getting paid for your contribution).
I ought to put together a manuscript and do something with it. But I’m hesistant.
Catherine Durkin Robinson, local blogger and Creative Loafing contributor, has written two book manuscripts. Her first one is being published, chapter-by-chapter, on a blogspot site. The other, a more recent work based on her life as a teacher in Hillsborough County, is being sent around to literary agents in hopes someone will pick up the work and mass-market it. Sadly, that has not been the case and the rejections have been comical at best.
Their loss. I’ve read the book and it’s not only a good read, it’s provocative and controversial enough to be read widely by those fearing school-district scandals.
I also have another friend, in the Pacific Northwest this time, who went out and self-published her first novel. The book, Steel Goddesses, is currently available on Amazon.com for purchase. It takes a lot of courage to go out on a limb like that and self-publish any work… But it sort of cuts out the middle-man of having to appease literary agents who tell you what a proper market for your writing is-or-isn’t and tells you to change your work to fit that niche. At least that’s what I’ve seen with rejections served up to Catherine.
So the idea I am kicking around is actually putting together a manuscript of poetry I’ve written over the past decade and self-publishing it. I realize that poetry is not exactly a hot seller and not going to lead me to riches… It’d cost me more to publish than the commissions I’d get in the long run from doing it… But it does what I have long sought to do — take the writings jammed in Mead notebooks that I’ve carried around since High School and take some of those verses and show them to the masses. Will people connect? I have doubts. Will strangers read what I’ve written? Even more doubts… But it’s mine, and it’d be out there. My claim. My piece of literature.
My book.
It’s a thought, at least.
An Open Letter to Oren Koules
Posted on Raw Charge, this piece responds to remarks made by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Oren Koules after he remarked about blogging on 620 WDAE radio.
Don’t tweet like a twit
I’ve found myself forced to use Twitter. I’m learning the ropes and all that… And while I’ve learned plenty of do’s and don’t, I have one peeve that people ought to learn regarding Retweets:
When someone Retweets (RT’s) another person’s message (rt @username ) — they can cut down the original message to get under the 140 character length. But if you’re going to add text to the Retweet, do it BEFORE the RT. Otherwise, you make it look like your comment was part of the original message someone posted.
One other thing: if you’re going to follow someone because they cover a certain subject matter, don’t badger that person when they go off-topic and talk about something else. No one, and I mean no one, is on topic 24/7/365.
The Epic nature of Clarketplace
My buddy Clark has taken the time and the effort in recent weeks to offer some very worthwhile items on Craig’s List. So worthwhile, in fact, the advertisements border on EPIC in nature! It’s a steal! Get it while you can! (and it’s humor! Yay humor!)
It’s amazing! It’s spectacular, and it’s leaving me in stitches with every week’s new offering. Check Clarketplace and see absurdity at it’s finest!
Ain't Technology Grand?
Will the technological wonders never cease?!? Behold the latest offering (by way of Penny Arcade):
Technologial advancements and good for the environment! Uses next to no energy at all!
Indifferent on history
There are a lot of people around Tampa and the greater Tampa Bay area who know more about the historic Floridan Hotel in Downtown Tampa (it’s distant past, it’s declining years, it’s failed restoration attempts in the past, it’s present, etc) than I do. That being said, why does the hotel have such a sorry ass Wikipedia page and why am I the one updating it?
…And not even doing a good job of it, but it’s better than it was just a few hours ago.
My Quest for Glory
I’ve been re-playing the old Quest for Glory games from Sierra Online the last few days. The redesigned Trial by Fire from AGD Interactive, Wages of War and Shadows of Darkness. So I’m really re-living my love for the game.
Re-living it so much that I took the Famous Adventurers Corespondence School’s Admissions test:
My name is Forge of Armongaar and I am a Paladin.
What kind of Hero Are You?
The odd thing was that with my love for the game, I wanted to finisht eh series and re-play the fifth and final game of the series: Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire.
After I installed it and played for a few minutes, I couldn’t believe how much I hated it.
The three previous games I had played (I skipped the original game, but the design I am about to talk about holds true for that game as well) were graphical/art driven adventures. Dragon Fire, however, is a bridge game for Role Playing Games in general. Everything is developed in computer-animated 3-D… Not the quality you would see if you were playing a MMORPG now, but a very early version of such interfaces.
I just wasn’t satisfied with the product, which I had played before, this time around. Not after playing the other adventures back-to-back-to-back. I expected the cartoonish 2-D fun and instead I got early 3-D boxiness that just didn’t fit in the overall scheme.
**shrug**
So this is what it's like running the local blogroll…
Almost a year ago, Tommy over at Sticks of Fire and Brett Glisson worked out a deal where Tommy… well, he bought / took over Brett’s brainchild TampaBLAB. For the uninformed, uninititated or the plain flat out uncurious (helloooo Bush family!) the TampaBLAB is an aggregator / blog reader. It shares new posts from blogs in the greater Tampa Bay metropolitan area.
It sounds really complex but really, it’s not.  It’s simply like this: You have a blog, most (if not all) blogs provide feeds — ways to syndicate or share their content with other web sites. If you’re a blogger living in the Tampa Bay area and you wanna’ share your blog with the rest of the Tampa Bay blogosphere, you submit it to TampaBLAB and lo and behold — every new post you write gets published at the BLAB (not in it’s entirety, mind you, just a lead in).
Of course, someone has to be in charge of the BLAB (acronym for Bay Local Area Bloggers). Tommy didn’t have the time to update the theme and add newly submitted blogs, nor maintain the main blog page on the BLAB. That’s where I’ve come in… Running the day to day and keeping an eye on things… Dropping defunct blogs that haven’t updated in a long while… Adding newly submitted sites. Occasionally posting on the BLAB Blog and fixing technical SNAFU’s that show up from time to time.
…Well, more often than not with thanks to the number of upgrades WordPress has gone through in the last few months and compatibility issues that arise because of it. But that’s techno-jargon you could do without.
So it’s been good so far, a little slow. Know someone who blogs in Tampa Bay and wants more readers? Suggest they submit their site to the BLAB. Brand spanking new blogs with no posts need not apply, though… Sorry. Blogs come and go so quickly that we can’t accept the newest of new kids on the blogging block.
Also, I’m trying to figure out if I should make the Skyway theme that’s employed at the BLAB available to the general WordPress-blogging public for download. It’s cute but not cutting edge, you know?
A Day in the Life at the Tampa Tribune
Copy Editor: “RUMORS OF OUR DEMISE HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED“; bold faced and centered across the front page. Print it.
Janet Coats: What are you doing?
CE: Refuting the rumors that are going around that the newspaper will be ceasing publication in the coming weeks. It’s really heinous stuff and we have to re-assure readership with…
JC: You can’t print that headline.
CE: Well, no, I guess we can’t now that I look at it. It’s kind of long… We could, well, you know, find another phrase to use…
JC: No, you can’t print a headline like that — in bold — at all. Ink isn’t on sale this quarter and stockholders are upset as is that Mother Corporate‘s share price is down. You need to pare down that statement to the bare bones.
CE: Well, all right, we’ll —
JC: Look, “exaggerated” is too big a word to stick in there. No one who still reads a print edition of a newspaper will understand it… That’s got to go.
CE: Oka–
JC: And then pare down the most common words you are using: of, our, have… They have no relevance in this age of buzz words. Change the typed out version of the word “are” to “R”… See, it’s looking fine. Now nix the -ly on greatly and we can save all of another penny on ink! This will so please everyone back in Richmond!
CE: But —
JC: Just LOOK! It’s a bold statement in itself without actually being bold! It’s hip and now! Print it! Ship it!
CE: “Rumors r great”?
JC: Don’t QUESTION it, just DO it. We’re in the Internet age! By now the Times has already posted three stories on their blogs and out on the rest of the Internet, there are thousands of new, fresh stories! How can we be with-it with you lolly gagging in your old ways?! HOP TO!
—
Life. Printed Inanely.
About JohnnyFonts.com
Johnny Fonts is the continued web presence and weblog of life-long online personality, sports fan/writer, and Tampa Bay-area blogger John Fontana (a 1997 graduate of East Lake High School).
Lemme stop with the third-party writing and say it directly. I’ve been online since the ear;u days of dial-up and the Prodigy network. JohnnyFonts.com is built upon my time as a blogger, which started officially in the summer of 2002. Unofficially, I began what I didn’t know was blogging in 2000 on a Tripod web page.
- I’m more well known for my involvement in coverage of the Tampa Bay Lightning as the Bay area’s original Tampa Bay Lightning blogger. I started in February 2004 (the season in which the Lightning would win its first Stanley Cup championship) and later founded Raw Charge on the SB Nation network. I’ve also spent plenty of time on baseball and had a web site pushing for the end of the designated hitter rule, how about that!</p>
<!– wp:paragraph –>
<p>I also have the rare disease Neurofibromatosis Type 2. This disease has too often affected me physically in life. An unknown fact: It was while I recovered from back surgery (an operation necessitated due to the disease) that influenced me to start hockey blogging, Sadly, NF2 has ended my involvement in sports coverage by way of low-vision.</p>
<!– /wp:paragraph –>
<!– wp:paragraph –>
<p>Plus it’s made typing a bitch (grumble, grumble). New, fresh blog pposts on this site are less common</p>
<!– /wp:paragraph –>
<!– wp:paragraph –>
<p>I ramble, I rant. I can be funny and I can be an outright asshole (anxiety can influence that). I can be naive and ignorant in a man-boy way (my experience with the Beatles shows this) and I can be creative. In simplicity: I’m a writwe. The archives of this blog and elsewhere onoine show thAt.</p>
<!– /wp:paragraph –>
<!– wp:paragraph –>
<p>Much of what you can find on this blog is pop – movies, music, ‘net stuff – and other times it’s personal. It’s also gone political, Will it piss you off or please you, I don’t know. Ir’s the avenue of my self-expression…and typos. Lot’s of typos.</p>
<!– /wp:paragraph –>
<!– wp:paragraph –>
<p>I spend much of my time now researching and editing TunedQuest, a list of radio stations accepting music submissions. I got uibto that gavut in the summer of 2019. Why? Read about that here.</p>
<!– /wp:paragraph –>
.
As for the nickname Johnny Fonts: it’s been clung to since 2010. It comes from a minor anecdote on social media. John had helped his friend Catherine Robinson’s novel writing by editing drafts of Learning Curves. In one status post on Facebook, her husband, Marc, simply barked the name “Johnny Fonts!” in an enthusiastic-yet-bizare show of thanks toward Fontana. It came out of nowhere and… and… well, why not go with it?
For those interested in guest post advertisements: I do not accept guest post.This is a private blog, not a commercial company. Please do not request information about guest posts.
"Are you eyeballin' me, son?!"
One fo the tough things I have to do when handling graphic design is trying to eyeball graphics out to see how aligned the graphics are — or how pleasing to my eye things look in their final arrangement. It can drive me crazy.
That being said, I got a kick out of this Eyeballing game. It’s basic geometry and a lot of alignment spotting. Though my average is quite high, it was better than I figured it to be.
48 hours of Metroid update
Just a little update regarding those crazy college kids who are playing Metroid to raise money for Child’s Play: After 24 hours of play, they have earned $366 dollars. Their goal is $500.
It’s kids being kids for the kids. Stop by the site and help’em out by donating.
going to "wars"
I’ve got a few minutes here while waitng for technical support to get back to me on a plugin issue with some software, so I’m doing my normal Wednesday web-surfing rounds while I wait and I come across the always enjoyable Penny Arcade (10 years of Tycho and Gabe! All rejoice!) and their latest comic and it gets me to thinking…
One thing I hated about the Star Wars prequels was the defining of the Force, or the defining of Storm Troopers (they were all clones!) and other rationalizations that killed the mysticism of the original trilogy. Conversely, it’s the pop culture references to Star Wars and inane in-depth discussion that I love. I mean, Clerks? Randall and Dante musing about the construction and destruction of the 2nd Death Star? INSANELY Funny in it’s inanity.
There are other places that don’t immediately come to mind regarding Star Wars and inanities about the how and other side stories that never get to the forefront of the story. One of the classics that I can think of is this image:
…and of course Penny Arcade’s latest comic seems like another great example… Though it goes a bit beyond just Star Wars: It’s the story about henchmen’s families. You see guys getting offed here and there… But we don’t care about them. That doesn’t mean other’s don’t.
[ad#ad-1]
They're not even trying any more
Anyone else getting hit with massive amounts of spam labeled “CNN.com Top 10” or some such? How about being blasted the last 12 hours with another Phishing attempt from someone posing as MSNBC?
Let me first make this clear — you don’t have to be signed up for either site for these malicious emails to be sent to you. They aren’t news pieces, they are attempts to get your interest and lead you to fake web sites. So, no, you weren’t signed up for things without asking.
That being said, I just guffawed looking at this headline:
msnbc.com: BREAKING NEWS: NASDAQ index gains 720 points overnight upon war announcement
Uh, newsflash: NASDAQ doesn’t do shit overnight. Unless you are in Asia. In that case, why send out an email in English with that title? Because the English speaking world (most of it) who follow MSNBC are awake during NASDAQ trading.
But I digress. I find humor in this… But I’ve also given it more attention than it deserves.
No Boltsmag is not Dead
Just FYI for people who are being redirected here while searching for the other site. It’s an issue I am only starting to deal with now.
Six years ago today…
The St. Petersburg Times gave me my closeup (as Cecil B. DeMille was not available)
A limp yellow dog
I get sorta pissed when I keep hearing die-hard fans or supporters – be it in politics or pro sports – confess their undying devotion towards one thing or another… and then cynically stomp on what they love or some item they are true-blue about.
I mean, I just wrote an article last week at Boltsmag (yeah, Boltsmag isn’t gone yet) about sports fans not being willing to leave their comfort zone to devote themselves to something bigger than their pro sports team… So what do you say about a political junkie who cynically tears down an issue, or a candidate, or a part position… All for the sake of the opportunist stance of “wait and see”?
If you really believe in something, aren’t you supposed to be willing to stand up for that something or at least do what you can to put its best foot forward? Be it an idea, a team, a principle, etc? Or are we all supposed to be just blind soldiers who will accept whatever we are handed by the powers-that-be?
Will wonders never cease?
Stop the presses! Big news! Huge news!
I actually posted on Boltsmag! Twice today, in fact! Like, Ohmigod!
(why the snark? I’ve been avoiding Boltsmag for quite some time due various reasons expressed on the site tonight)
Focus, Daniel-san
You know what’s hectic? Getting a thousand things on your mind you want to accomplish, only being able to accomplish a fraction of them because you’re depending on other people, and not starting on other things because you lack the focus to follow up on your thought. It’s maddening.
It’s good to be thinking straight again but it’s horrid having so much I want to get done and only being able to do a fraction of it before I burn out.
What's the Font?
I’ve been struggling to figure out what is the name of the Typeface being employed by the Tampa Bay Lightning in their (alleged) new logo layout:
In all honesty, the closest typeface I can find to font being employed in the logo is the Star Jedi typeface — yeah, that’s the Star Wars font for all those who don’t want to click on the link. I’ve been searching a few font sites but I’m not even sure where to begin looking regarding this typeface. Some people complain how “Cartoony” the font is, some people complain how “comic book” the font is… Yet it looks like a variant of Ariel or some other standard typeface and not cartooni-ish or whimsical in the least bit (that’s coming from someone who has actually seen what font creators think “comic” or “cartoon” fonts look like).
Any leads to the appropriate type face are appreciated.
Bonus for Boltsmag
So for 3 years I have been toiling (off and on) away at Boltsmag. It’s got a reputation as the Lightning Weblog, it’s renown around the hockey blogosphere…
And as of a few days ago it’s linked to on Sports Illustrated’s Tampa Bay Lightning team profile page. How is that for a birthday gift?
A rare event
I’ve been doing all I can to prevent people from visiting my CSS testing site… Now I need a little input on changes I plan to make to Boltsmag‘s design…
Losing a room mate
Many of you don’t know this but about 19 months ago or so I contact a guy who was using blogspot to post his items for his Tampa based blog, about me hosting his blog and upgrading things for him.
It’s been a long, strange trip but in the 14 months I’ve been officially hostingSticks of Fire, it’s gone from blogspot hotspot to dot-com phenom. I knew at the time I approached Tommy about upgrading things that he had something great going on… Little did I know how much it would grow.
Tommy Duncan is probably the Bay area’s most unheralded media star. He gets invites to speak in various capacities (round table discussions, conferences, TV spots) and pretty much has Tampa covered with himself and his cast of supporting writers.
And now, Tommy has taken the next step by getting into a business alliance with Tampa Gold. When that officially kicks off, Tommy will be departing from my server space at Dreamhost and going to the land of far-far-away… Or on shared hosting package with Tampa Gold, take your pick.
I haven’t seen profit from hosting Tommy’s site and I haven’t requested payment for doing so. I never stuck in some personal reference (“Hosted by Dreamhost” etc) or anything like that… It made me feel good to be doing this.
But to just make a long story short, I want to wish my buddy well with his new venture and I hope it takes him where I couldn’t take him — to his rightful place at the to of local pop culture and beyond.
Re-design time
With the coming NHL hockey season, I’ve been working on a new design for Boltsmag.com.
Only problem is that Boltsmag’s new design isn’t cooperating and is driving Johnny insane…
To be continued.
Guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue…
OK, this isn’t an Airplane post, or a Llyod Bridges fanclub post. No, sir… This is just me harping that I picked the wrong time of year to get less-lazy with shaving. (headnod to the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams for the awesome title to this post)
I’ve been shaving daily the past few days and it’s been nice to be “smooth as a baby’s ass” with regards to my facial skin. But alas, I can do this no more.
It’s playoff beard time.
Happy New Gears
I’m in the middle of testing some new stuff that I normally would only do on a testing blog… But I would like to implment these things on several sites, so… Stonegauge may be a guinea pig for a while.