GizmoLA.com

I bought and assembled a Smith machine, which is a sorta home gym weight rack a while back, and set it up in our basement room. Gizmo likes to sit out on the porch entrance and monitor the stairway while I'm working out.

It's been a long time since I updated, primarily thanks to the demise of my DSL Internet connection when Northpoint went bankrupt. Apparently, my house is just a bit too far to from the local pacbell central office for me to get reliable DSL service (even though I had it for over a year from Northpoint!). I tried two seperate ISP's and in both cases waited weeks only to find out at the last minute that they couldn't provide me service.

I've found a new one and am keeping my fingers crossed. Fortunately, I was able to colocate the gizmola server with Kent Bulza, who has been nice enough to help get it and my mail going again. Thanks Kent!

In post Z news, The Synj has landed down in San Diego at Presto Studios, makers of the Journeyman game series and now doing a Myst title. Congrats Dan.

Looks like I'm gonna be playing some hockey down at Culver City with my old pal Ted Henning. He apparently has a new company Scream Therapy doing some interesting web entertainment stuff, including animated horror episodes. It's a heavy flash site, FYI. If any x-z.comers want an intro let me know. Check out some of their sample work Here.

Peter Filardi's film Ricky6 has emerged from it's legal squabbles and has been playing the festival circuit and has been getting some nice reviews. Our old pal Hobbs and a buddy of his have done an official site, which includes the trailer for the film.

Well, I have finally decided what to do with my life. Military service! I've enlisted and am now private first class in the:

Ah unemployment. Lately I find myself with plenty of time to read, work on little projects, and scan negatives. I've done another RedHat Linux upgrade on Gizmola, and added some notes on using rpm. Tracy recently snapped some 35mm photos of the Scrapples, and we liked one in particular. I scanned the negative, and with a little help from photoshop, we have the thumbnail on the left. Click on it to see the photo gallery.

Z.com and I have parted ways. 1999 was a very tough year for dot-coms, and Z suffered during the economic down swing as did so many other companies. After a tremendously enjoyable and challenging year, it appears that the Z.com I knew and loved, was coming to an end, the victim of lean times in the online advertising market, and the complete retreat of the venture markets to invest in anything online. I'm not 100% sure what will happen to Z.com. As of now it still appears to be humming along, serving up entertainment. I wish Joe and Mike the best with Z, and of course I'll be rooting for it to survive in some capacity, or at least to see some of the great entertainment sites built at Z, reborn in acquisition. I will miss all the creative and talented people at Z. Oh yeah, and I need a job! :-(

Y2k is nearly over, as we boldy approach 2001, a space odyssey. Among the many milestones of the year, several friends became new parents. Companies rose and fell. The stock market imploded. Lawsuits were filed, and records were set.

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  Gizmo and Scrappy continue their whirlwind year. They were recently Cover boys on an album by local Jazz musicians "Laurel Canyon Radio Company".
  Click on the image to check out their site, which has some interesting information regarding Laurel Canyon and more about their albums, which are for sale nationally. The album has a canine theme, in that the songs are about dogs and their owners in both the literal and allegorical sense. Gizmo and Scrappy are scheduled to appear in a book of photography due out some time in the future. We should have more details later.
  If I can get a scanner hooked up I'll try and post some of the proofs.


• My Experiments with Audiocasting continue. From time to time I'll run a relayed streaming mp3 channel on Live365. I've stayed with the Alternapop.net domain. If it's running, you can stream it using an mp3 player like winamp. The playlist has over 500 songs in it pulled from my music collection. Try clicking here and if it's up, you should get the station.