6.05.99

It's definitely summer. Today I was playing around with interfaces in the office (hey, it's better than my original idea of spending the afternoon seeing The Matrix for the third time.) and for some reason, I started thinking of the Beach Boys.

So of course I had to buy a Beach Boys CD. Because, they're like, the best. Diet music for any generation. That means it's ten minutes past one on a Friday night, and I'm home rocking out to "409" and "Wouldn't it be nice". I dunno- the inimitable sweetness of the opening lyric- "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn't have to wait so long..."

Josh hates me. But the way I figure it, it's better than subjecting him to the house music I've developed a taste for. And the Beach Boys, after all, were my first love. "God Only Knows" was the height of lyrical acheivement to me when I was twelve. And I always wanted to be one of the surfer girls they sang about. I even got really really into the Frankie and Annette beach movies just because they had to do with the beach.

Of course, none of the Beach Boys really surfed. And not one of them ever owned a Woodie, I bet (no lewd comments, thanks. It's your vernacular, I'm just trying to use it.)

Have fun, folks. And may I recommend the "Made in U.S.A." album. I've owned three copies of this damned thing. The first two were cassettes- I wore them out. The third was a CD, and I probably sold it in a fit of poverty one year. That's okay. I always get them back.

They're the Beach Boys. They're forever.

6.03.99

About a year ago, when I was first doing a domain search, I wanted to buy privett.net so that my sisters and I could all have personal websites that read like our names (i.e., brianna.privett.net, brittany.privett.net, bobbi-jo.privett.net). It never occurred to me to look and see if privett.com was available, but when I finally did I was very pleased. MailBank owns the domain, but they offer email and subdomains for $15 a year. I love that. Now, instead of one division of the Privett family getting to use the domain, anyone can use it. It's publicly available. MailBank, I applaud you.

Faire was wonderful. Exhausting, uplifting, and damned good food. I got to play with one of the best improv actors I've ever met in my life. This is him:

More features in the works. I've redesigned Out Here in the Fields (only the fourth redesign. That's good, for me.) again, and am just waiting until I get some time to HTML-ize it. So, you're stuck with the same crappy feature I've had up for the last three weeks. HA! It's my domain! I can leave it up for as long as I want AND THERE ISN'T ANYTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!

(I'm trying to turn it into a power trip so that I stop feeling guilty for not keeping it updated.)

And let's not EVEN talk about the portfolio section of this site.

5.25.99

I've been many things at Faire, but I've always wanted most to be one of the exotic, belly dancing women in the Trader's Market, wearing the colorful Persian costumes and being allowed to wear lots of makeup (playing an Irish girl at Faire allows me the freedom of not having to wear a hat, but still not being able to wear makeup. Rules for performers are very strict in matters of dress, costume and speech). You aren't even allowed to smoke white cigarettes, which is why the smell of cloves is so pervasive among some of my old costumes.

Richard and Shelby will be performing there, and so will the Poxy Boggards. All of my old friends should be there, I hope. This is the first year I've been that I haven't been wearing the typical bodice/chemise/two skirts deal.

It has been a long time.

I'm so excited I can barely breath.

5.23.99

The question came up in one of the Yahoo! clubs I browse, something along the lines of "why do YOU have a personal homepage?" The person asking the question was attempting to make a point- that people have personal homepages because they're exhibitionists.

Bullshit.

My first homepage (which I've left up as sort of a history, so that I can gauge the progress I've made since '96) had a one page bio, some of my poetry and poetry by other people, and a links list, of course. There was also an unfinished travelogue of some time I spent in Europe. No journal. No real pictures of me, save the one I used in the header. This site was my most personal one, the closest thing to an "exhibitionist" site that I've ever built, at least in the sense of putting up personal information.

So what we have, ladies and gentleman, is a picture of me, a bio, and some poetry. I even had a guestbook, mainly signed by friends I know in real life. It never occurred to me that there was any other audience. It still hasn't. Brianna.org gets about fifty hits a day, and god knows how many of those are new visitors or repeat visits. I've gotten about two emails from people I DON'T know regarding my site, and both of those were from a brief personal essay I had written about being sick in Paris. I maintain brianna.org because I work with the web, and clients don't give a rat's ass about things I love, like CSS and dHTML and PHP ( not used on this domain, since my server doesn't support it). I have to have a place to practice those things, but in order to play with interfaces/designs, I have to have some content. So I haphazardly pull it from my own life (sparing you, my small audience, the arduous task of reading my old poetry.)

Everyone needs a creative outlet. Not everyone needs to be harassed for being an exhibitionist.

5.14.99

Well, the U.S. government, after "accidentally" bombing the Chinese Embassy (I'm sorry, NATO accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy. I should at least be precise), cut off internet access by way of blocking satellite communications to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (which includes Serbia and Montenegro.) What you saw on the index page today was a posting made by a man currently in Yugoslavia.

I don't know what to do other than to make people aware of what is going on. It's frightening enough that the U.S. government is instituting policies daily that not only keep us from viewing information online, but also dictate how we must design our pages (in the name of aiding people with disabilities. A good cause, but I don't think it exactly necessitates making use of frames illegal on government sites.) and who we can or cannot send email to. Every single day the government takes one more step to turning the Web into American network television. If you're reading this now, think of what that means to you. No longer will the Web be the largest source of free information and global communication. By cutting off a country from access to the Internet, our government has instituted international boundaries that, until now, had largely been eradicated.

Somehow, while we still have largely unrestricted access to the net, we need to find a way of keeping the Web from becoming only a bastion of store fronts and government sites. The best thing about being online is our freedom to say what we want to who we want, to gather information from anywhere in the world with a touch of a button. Freedom of information is, I think, the most important right we have as people, not just as Americans, and it is the one right that few Americans even realise is in jeopardy. Americans believe that their freedom is so inviolate, that they don't realise the extent to which they are being restricted. And that is only in the U.S. I won't even get into the global repercussions.

5.11.99

Hey! I've started a literature mailing list. This is how it works: put your email in the little text box down there, and every other day some magical bit of prose or poetry will appear in your inbox. I promise a good time will be had by all.

If you'd like to submit favourite poems or stories to be distributed on the list, simply email me at poetry@brianna.org, and I'll definitely consider it- I'm always game for new ideas.

If you have poetry or stories of your own to share, and you would like them featured on this site, email submissions@brianna.org. If we select your work, you'll be notified with a launch date and consulted on the design of the pages. All rights are yours. If we choose not to feature your work, you'll still be notified, of course, with our reasons for not including that piece. (Yes, "we". It may be brianna.org, but I am too ambitious and have trouble keeping up with the volume of work I create for myself. So I've elicited help from one of the best writers I know. He doesn't know it yet.)

So put your email in the little box, and receive a prize!

5.04.99

No, Out Here in the Fields still isn't up. I've been spending my time on paying projects, you know. Not that is justifies it, but I'm thinking that I should put another tiny feature up here in lieu of it until the unveiling takes place. So, here it is- three poems. No fancy interface- listen to the words, dummy. (I'm not saying there's no interface- I'm just saying it's not fancy.) This feature opens in a new browser window.

In other news, I finally hit on the design I want for the portfolio site. I was biking to the office this morning, sniffing the air, and all of a sudden I was nine again. I could smell cut grass and heated cement sidewalks and dew from the sprinklers ticking clockwise on the lawns. It felt like an early summer morning in my childhood. I could almost sense my little brother with me, biking too. We were off to some great adventure or another. I haven't seen him in awhile.

So, while this interface is for "spring", the portfolio was built for summer. But not this summer- for all the summers I spent playing and exploring and getting filthy. It's for bonfires and the Fourth of July and days at the beach and coming home with sand in your hair and roasted marshmallows and hide and seek at sunset, just before you get called in for dinner. Remember?

Remember how to enjoy a moment so perfectly that irritating thoughts about schedules and chores and obligations are simply forgotten? I don't remember how. I remember being nine, though. The difference is that, when I was nine, if I was out biking on a summer morning, I was enjoying the smell of the grass, the wind in my hair, the eternal bubble of laughter that always seems to sit at the back of your throat when you're a kid. Now, when I'm biking, I'm thinking of other things, like the office ahead of me with its paperwork, email and databases. And when I smell the grass and feel the wind in my hair, I can't help but think about how much better those things felt back then.

Somehow, that isn't a sad thought at all. It would be sad if I was thinking about those things without the possibility of ever having them again. But tomorrow, I'm getting up at the same time. I'm going to put on jeans and sneakers, grab my backpack, and pedal my way down to the shore. And I'm going to sniff the air as if it were nitrous. I'm going to stop and pick all the flowers I wanted to pick yesterday, but wouldn't let myself because they weren't mine. I'm going to pedal really fast on Grand Ave., because the sidewalk there is old and corners of it rise and tilt like scattered tiles. I discovered this morning that if you go through it fast, you hardly touch the ground from one end of the block to the other.

Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll fall off and skin my knee. I haven't done that in a long time.

5.01.99

An update! At last, the long promised, long awaited cross browser version of this site. If you're not on IE4 on the PC, then you aren't seeing this site as it was intended. But I can hardly blame you if you AREN'T on a PC, so I was nice and built a lovely cross browser version.

This week's feature is Out Here in the Fields, a digital chapbook by Joshua Wood. I don't have it uploaded yet because I'm busy making it cross-browser compatible as well. So I'll let you all know when it's up.

That's most of the news.

4.12.99
I've been without an internet connection all weekend, and it's still not back up, so I'm feeling bitchy. But everything else is good, and I can always steal Josh's connection when he's not looking, so it's not that bad.

In other news, I'm on the road to recovery, which means I'm catching all the stupid interface mistakes I made when I first designed these pages while I was ill. See, I was so fascinated with the pretty colours I was using in my CSS rollovers, that I made "news" a link, when in actuality, you're looking at the news right here, no linking necessary. I was distracted. So a few other little things will be ironed out, and the Netscape version of this site should be up soon too. The portfolio is static for the moment until I kill some dHTML bugs.

And last, but not least, Fitz the cat is happily settled into his home. Currently he is viciously attacking a fearsome feather he discovered trespassing on our couch. But Fitz was there to save the day, so I feel safe in my home again. Fitz, however, was somewhat traumatized by the experience, seeing as the feather knocked him off the couch once or twice in the course of their battle. Because, of course, a cat would never fall off the couch, right Fitz?

4.04.99
Happy Easter, and for those of you who don't celebrate Easter, well, then, sorry you missed out on all the candy. Here is the first official launch of brianna.org, with actual content and an interface and everything! I say official, because if you've been here before, you know I usually have something or other up here. But this is different. This is...official.

So here's how it works. The links open up new content in this very box. The arrows to your right scroll that selfsame content up and down. It's all nice and clean and unfortunately only works in IE4. Not because I couldn't make it work in Netscape, but because I couldn't make it work right in Netscape. So since you're here, you've obviously got the right browser and you're viewing this site as it was intended. Not that Microsoft is right and Netscape is wrong, but it was just easier to code it for Microsoft, okay?

Here's how it works out:
news: This will contain all the updates to the site, all the stuff that's going on in my life that I think might interest you (not a journal, just an update, okay?), and other such things.
about: This contains my site notes, my bio, and some of things I think about the web and developing for it. You know, about the internet.
feature: This will be the design escapade, updated weekly until I run out of old stuff and then probably bimonthly after that. This week's feature is Le Vair Palefroi, as told by Laird Hunt. It was first published in The Bestiary.
portfolio: Like most web developers, I'm always seeking new projects and new reasons for showing off stuff I did that I think is pretty neat. This kills both those birds with one stone.
The email link should be pretty self-explanatory. As well as easy to use. Since I don't have a guestbook or any intention of putting one up, I'd like to hear from you in person. Otherwise, it defeats the whole purpose.

Happy browsing.