However, there are a bunch of legitimately interesting movies coming out right now. So much so that I am willing to go to the movie theaters to watch them (though I’ll admit that this decision is assisted heavily by the 2 for 1 deal I can get every wednesday).

One such movie that has just come out here in the UK is Black Swan, staring the ever impressive (to me, anyways) Natalie Portman, and the spunky Mila Kunis who shocked me with an actual acting ability. Classed as a psychological thriller, Black Swan draws you in, and then effectively horrifies you on any number of levels for most of the film. For those too lazy to read the rest of this review, I will leave you with the words I uttered when the credits began to roll:

“Holy shit… Holy. Shit.

Synopsis

Nina, played by Portman, is a ballerina at a large theatre house in the city she lives in (both, as near as I can tell are unmentioned). She’s a dedicated performer that hopes to become the next leading lady in the house’s production of Swan Lake. Her mother, played terrifyingly well by Barbara Hershey, is a failed ballerina that has in turn focused all of her energy, hopes, and dreams into Portman’s career. So much so that their relationship is far from healthy.

As the movie progresses, Nina wins the role but is told that she must be both the White swan – fragile, beautiful, a ‘virgin’ – and the black swan – evil, manipulative, seductive – which is a mental state that Nina cannot easily summon. This is due to her borderline insane home life that has cocooned her in a semi-child-like life and has stunted her sexually. She starts noticing scratches on her back, and starts to see a darker version of her as she walks around or looks in mirrors.

Then you have Lily, played by Kunis, who is for all intents and purposes, Ninas opposite. She’s sexy, she’s carefree, a rebel, and a dancer that doesn’t conform to perfection, but flows naturally to the music and as such can lose herself in the moment. Effectively everything Nina is not. They strike up an odd friendship that just goes all over the place. There is a shockingly passionate scene between the two in the film, but when Nina confronts Lily about it, Lily denies it ever happening. This adds weight to Ninas worries that she’s losing her mind, and her paranoia goes through the roof.

As the movie nears the end, Nina distrusts Lily, thinking that Lily is trying to steal her spot as the Swan Queen. As all this is happening the movie gets more and more surreal, with Nina visually losing her mind, not understanding what is going on or even why. Her personality becomes more erratic, and she’s terrified of what’s happening to her.

The movie climaxes with Nina taking her spot as the Swan Queen – much to the chagrin of Lily. As the white swan, she’s nervous and actually blunders one of the scenes. There’s an altercation with Lily where Lily is killed before the show, but at intermission we find out that she’s not dead at all. This confuses Nina, but only for a moment before she transforms herself into the black swan. She dances ‘perfectly’, transforming on stage into what appears to be a human swan. In actuality no such thing happens, but this is what Nina sees.

The end of the movie is very much the same as the play in which the movie surrounds itself with. She embraces the role, and as she says she was ‘perfect.’ This carries so much gravitas, and caused me to go slack-jawed from the power of its delivery.

What I liked

Oh where to start? I could gush for a very long time about Black Swan, but I’ll do my best to stay at least somewhat objective about it.

The acting

Everyone in Black Swan holds their own. The casting was shockingly well done, with everyone managing to click. Portman, Kunis, Hershey, and Vincent Cassel do an utterly amazing job of making you give a shit about the story. Everyone plays their part perfectly; Portman plays the insecure and fragile ballet dancer that just wants to be perfect; Hershey plays an unstable mother with control issues stunningly; Kunis plays what is probably an easy role for her as the sultry, carefree temptress; and Cassel does an amazing job of playing the manipulative, greedy, semi-antagonist.

The chemistry of everyone on screen is explosive. Each direct relationship works perfectly. Real cudos should be given to Natalie Portman, who does an amazing job throughout the whole film. While all the supporting actors work perfectly in their roles, Portman does a good portion of the movie solo. This is a hard thing for any actor to do, let alone one that must demonstrate a degrading psyche with bouts of paranoia and an emerging split-personality. Tack that onto the fact that this girl is fragile in so many other ways, and you are left with a performance that will leave you awed.

The music

You never really realize where some scores are from until it’s spelled out for you. In this case, pretty much all of the music is pulled directly from Swan Lake itself. The tone and flow of the movie fit unsettlingly well with the scores chosen. While many of the scenes in the movie can hold their own without music, the accompaniment of scores from the ballet do so much to help underscore the joy of some scenes, the adulation of others, and the reserved , crushing sadness of the rest. Whoever set up the score for this movie deserves a medal.

The cinematography

This is probably the first film I’ve watched that does a follow-cam to good effect. A good portion of the film is shot over Nina’s shoulder. This happens more and more the further along the movie you go. The technique is used to brilliant effect, and the entire time it’s happening you feel like you’re literally watching her from over her shoulder. This in turn makes her seem uncomfortable to the watcher. There are scenes that are shot in this method where you can hear Ninas breathing, and mild panic-y grunts as she dances trying not to step out of perfection. Sounds are ramped up during many of these scenes so that you really get a feel for how she’s feeling.

Other shots are done with an experts eye. Mirrors are featured heavily throughout the film, and there are many shots that take full advantage of them. Many of the special effects applied are through these mirrors, and of them, most are subtle. If you’re not looking at the right spot at the right time, you can actually miss some of the more unnerving elements of a scene. Many scenes will have just a moment of something off-putting: a face in the mirror glancing in the wrong direction; a ripple in Ninas skin texture; the off glances; the list goes on.

Symbolism

Oh man. Ohhh man. If I was in university for say, psychology or mental illness or occult studies or something, this movie would have made me cream myself. There are layers and layers to this movie that you could spend hours ripping apart and analyzing. You’ve got the creepy one-on-one relationships, Nina’s youthful room, the scratches, the use of mirrors, the self-visualizing Nina does, the sexy-time scenes, the eyes, the use of blood, and a billion other things that I won’t bother listing.

What impresses me about these though is not so much that they’re strewn throughout the movie, but that they’re applied with such academic perfection, that in many cases you don’t even realize what’s going on unless you’re looking. Yet the fact that they’re there affects your interaction with the movie regardless of your noticing them or not.

The movie operates on so many levels that it actually took me a good while of thinking about it to really start to understand just how much was truly going on. I mean on the surface, the plot is not dissimilar to Swan Lake (how meta), but under that there are layers of emotion and concepts that the movie is trying to convey to the user. The strain of being in Ninas position, the stress her mother puts on her, the pressure she gets from Thomas Leroy (Cassel), this list goes on and on as well. Under all that, the movie opts to explore mor basic human nature and needs. Seriously there’s enough going on in this movie to let you analyze it for days.

What I disliked

Shockingly little ends up in this section. Other than a couple of odd bits of CG use that just didn’t look as polished as they could have been, I’ve got no real complaints about Black Swan. I wish there was more to say about what fell short with this movie, but honestly there’s nothing. The only thing I could think to mention is some people seem to dislike Portman for no reason, and seem to transfer that dislike over to the movie itself. This is a damned shame, but people are allowed to do that.

A word of caution

Black Swan is fucked up. I don’t mean that in a zombie-fest sort of way, or in a Chucky sort of way. I mean fucked up on a truly disturbing and upsetting  level. A common phrase to use for Black Swan is that it is ‘difficult to watch.’ This is very true. Black Swan pulls no punches, and while some movies love to roll around in the field of your personal discomfort (laughing all the way), this movie does not. It makes you uncomfortable because you need to be to really get into this movie. Black swan takes no pleasure in upsetting you, but does it so that you can understand (or at least try to) just how tortured Nina is.

If you dislike movies with a lot of thinking, movies with deeply unsettling themes, or scenes of people being sort-of taken advantage of, you will not like Black Swan. Please trust me when I say that this movie will not be for you, and you will be angry at yourself, the movie, and its creators if you go to watch it.

Black Swan is fucked up. It’s amazingly fucked up, but it’s fucked up all the same.

Overall

I could go on and on about Black Swan. It’s one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, and will easily land itself in my favourites list.

The acting was stunning, the score was perfect, the technical aspects were spot on, and there was enough content to read into that could keep my chronically over-analyzing brain happy for a long time. It’s screwed up, it’s dark, it’s revealing, and it’s a work of art.

9/10

I think it’s save to say that I love stories.

Hell I’ve even tried my own hand at writing a couple of my own. I admit that they’re not Pulitzer-level or anything, but I like to think that someone out there will enjoy them. Regardless, I’ve recently decided that I’d like to be told more stories. Lots more stories. What’s more, I’d like others to have the same opportunity. There are other sites out there that do what I’ve decided to do, but I’ve opted to do something a little different…

My focus is on the story.

I’ve made Tell Me a Story to do one thing: tell stories. The only requirements to tell a story are a title, and the story itself. If you don’t want to leave your name, you don’t have to. If you don’t want people to contact you via email, you don’t have to leave it. Like I said, the focus is on the story. There’s no real limit on the kinds of stories that you can tell, short of crazy graphic porn/slashfic (there are places for that), so I implore you to tell me your stories.

The stories do go through a review process to help strain out spam, stories that don’t match the rather liberal criteria, and blatant mis-use. I don’t expect a lot of stories to be rejected, as I’m pretty open to almost every kind of story telling.

So if you’ve got a story, tell it.

Support the cause

If you feel like supporting Tell Me a Story, you can link to it, twitter it, facebook it, or use this handy badge and link to the site:

So that’s Tell Me a Story.

Thank you.

I’m still having a couple issues of course, that I’m trying to figure out (mystery htaccess file issues, CSS tweaks, ) but I’m sure I can get these figured out in the next little while. Anyways, on to things that are important to people other than me.

So I’ve finished my first year at Mohawk College, something I mentioned before that I had gotten into. Overall it’s been a good experience, with a couple colourful exceptions. I’m learning a lot, but I maitain that doing additional reading on the subject of graphic design has been a momentous help.

One part of the course that I am unimpressed with was the web coure(s). Having been on the Internet for as long as I have (10 years, at least) I’ve gained a certain amount of knowledge when it comes to web development. Heck, my resume happens to say that I was paid to do just that. As a result when I heard we were doing web design courses, I was ecstatic. Then I sat in on the first web course and had one of those “oh bugger” moments.

Now I mean no disrespect to the teacher, but I outstrip him in knowledge hands down. As a result I ended up becoming a peer tutor on the subject. I was the only first year peer tutor, may I add (ego stroke ahoy!).This saddens me a great deal, because as my aim is to go into web design when I get out of school, it’s a little upsetting to know that that part of my education is going to have to supplemented almost exclusively by the Internet. That’s never something you want to utter out loud. Trust me, it sounds scarier.

Who knows, maybe after I graduate and see the world somewhat, I’ll come back and offer to teach the course. I’m sure I’d at least get an interview.

The only other thing that’s been irritating me was the photography course. Photography is not an area I know much about. I understand some of the very basics, but I can’t tell you what anything on a DSLR does. As a result I was really looking forward to the class. What I was given was a crash course that left me with nothing to show. I am unimpressed to say the least.

Everything else was pretty much golden. I’ve come out two bursaries richer, and am sitting with a 94% average. This is basically unheard of for me. I was a man who was happy to get a 70, and was okay with having a 60. I never really aimed all that high when I was younger. Now? I don’t know what happened, probably the fact that I’m older, far more jaded, and paying for it all myself. I’m not bragging or anything, believe me when I say that it’s as shocking to me as it is to others who know me.

Also, watching TV while trying to write something is a sure-fire way to sound like your rambling. As punishment to myself, I’m going to leave it as is, just so I can know how terrible I am at things when the TV is actually turned on.

Honestly I never watch the thing, so the fact that it effects me so deeply should be understandable.

ANYWAYS, I’m off to alter my layout some more, play some Super Princess Peach (I hate this game, but I must finish) and My World, My Way (which borders on utterly fantastic).

Now you worried about your faith,
kneel down and obey.
You’re happy you’re in love,
you need someone to hate.
An ordinary girl, an ordinary waist
but ordinary’s just not good enough today.

Superman’s Dead – Our Lady Peace

So as a result of my tooling around with WordPress, I’ve created two plugins for people to use.

RandomQuotr

In one of my older site lay­outs, I had a random quote dis­play­ing at the top of the page. The orig­i­nal logic was based very much on the Hello Dolly plugin that comes shipped with Word­Press. Even though I no longer use the func­tion within my layout, I still had the code and I felt that with a little revi­sion, this could be a psudo-​useful plugin.

So one morn­ing I did exactly that. Ran­domQuotr was born, and with it came the abil­ity to store all of the quotes within the WordPress data­base, as opposed to the PHP array that it started out as. Some more func­tion­al­ity was added to allow the selec­tion of spe­cific quotes.

PostDivider

I was a big advo­cate for using “the_excerpt()” for my sites layout, because it allowed me to split up my con­tent and work around my theme. the prob­lem is that using “the_excerpt()” sucks for many reasons:

1. The field is HTML only.
2. The field is tiny and cannot be re-​sized.
3. It requires you to break up your most in a less than stel­lar way.

Enter Post­Di­vider.

Based on an old post of mine, Post­Di­vider allows the user to get the con­tent before and after the <!–MORE–> tag sep­a­rately. With Post­Di­vider, hooks are pro­vided to allow the Theme to dis­play the text directly (echo­ing it), or return­ing the con­tent as a value from the func­tion. If no <!–MORE–> tag is pro­vided, it will return the_excerpt() and the_content() respectively.

So far those are the only ones I’ve developed. I’ve got a couple ideas for more, when I get around to building my portfolio and the like.

I’ve also created a page that lists all of the plugins I have developed. They’re also hosted over on the wordpress.org plugins directory if you want to keep watch there.

I’m always looking for feedback or suggestions, so feel free to email me or leave a comment.

In my case this revolves around:

• My portfolio
• Posts with real content
• Reading books
• Spending time with Theresa while she is down from that god-forsaken place North Bay.
• Aimlessly trying to catch up on my games

Now since only a couple of those are actually proactive (I’ll leave you to decide which) I have to pick and choose what and when I do these things. What is the result? Well to give you a glimpse, it’s almost 2 AM as of the start of this post. This is after I applied to many, many bursaries through my school. Who knew that working two jobs wouldn’t be enough to actually stay out of debt? Guess I’ll have to get some more!

My financial woes are not what I plan to talk about today though. I plan to talk about what I can take away from my first semester.

Okay, technically this would be my seventh semester if you are counting the six from the last time I was in school. That is also part of this so read on!

1. Being lazy sucks

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I was not always a star pupil. Oh no, in fact I used to revel in my ability to half-ass almost any project and end up with a 65-70 (that’s a C to a B- to the rest of the world) on any given assignment or project. If I didn’t like the course, I would try even less and be happy with a 55-58 (D to D+). My parents browbeat me, my teachers clucked their tongues and shook their heads, but I just breezed though my University-level (that’s Canadian fancy-talk for advanced) courses. By doing the University-level courses and applying to College, my average was bumped up considerably, and I got into College.

So you would think that since my parents were paying, and I had just managed to squeak by, that I would learn the error of my ways, straighten-up and fly right.

You would think wrong, of course.

By the end of my college stint, with the exception of a couple of classes (Web Development 1,2 and 3 pretty much) I was still hovering around that 70. The only thing that landed me the job that I got was through determination, charisma, and steaming piles of luck.

This kind of thing only works so well and for so long.

Working this job changed a lot of things. First, I learned how to stay up for long periods of time. Second, I learned to hate take-out food (don’t worry I’m getting better now). Third, it beat the lazy out of me with the Crowbar of Client Dead-lines. I learned that being lazy when people are paying you is a very good way to get your ass fired. I wasn’t fired, but believe me that there was no alternative to hard work. In many ways I am thankful for this.

When the opportunity came along for me to go back to school for something that interests me way more than keyboard-jockeying, I took it. With that decision came many things in quick succession:

1. Getting a second job
2. Saving like a bastard
3. Tuition, books, and other school bills
4. Losing my full-time, nicely-waged job
5. Homework
6. More goddamned bills
7. Tests, presentations, and apparently a video

If this had happened the first time I went through school, I probably would have killed myself, my family, or everyone I know in a murderous rage by now. Thankfully, through my on-the-job experience, I had learned how to organize my work, get it done, and still manage to find time to sleep.

I’d like to point out that because if this skill, I have managed to work two jobs while maintaining an average of 90% + overall so far. I don’t know how to explain this any better than I already have: being lazy sucks. If you have issues with being lazy, procrastinating, or otherwise messing-about, believe me that you have to work constantly against those urges. I have to all the time, but in the end you only screw yourself if you get lazy.

2. Keep your stuff safe

Dropbox. I love Dropbox. I could sing praises for this system for hours. Well okay, probably more like 15 minutes max, but that’s not the point here. Dropbox allows you to synchronize files within a certain directory (the Dropbox folder, shockingly) to their web servers. What does this mean? It means that everything in that folder can be accessed through their online web interface. and what does that mean? It means that if your are ever separated from your computer, your computer explodes, or anything in between you can still get to the files stored on their servers. You can also hook multiple computers into the same account, and it will sync the files between them as well. This allows you to share files between computers that may not be anywhere near the same network.

I’m not trying to sell you anything (it’s actually a free for the basic level), but it does assist in my point. Keeping your stuff safe is as important when it comes to school as it does ot your home. Thankfully, I didn’t have any horrible experiences with exploding computers or file separation, but it was still a good practice. By using this system, I safeguard myself against very bad situations. Colleges and Universities really don’t care all that much of your personal plights. In fact many teachers I’ve had I’ve overheard them say “well that sucks, too bad.”

You can’t stop every bad thing from happening, but you can take preventative measures.

3. Organization actually works.

I hate organizers. I still do! With their paper and their spiral binding, bah! Thankfully, I found alternatives that work. As it happens, I use Thunderbird. The nice thing about Thunderbird, much like Firefox, is the ability to use add-ons. Lightning (an add-on version of Sunbird) and a Provider for Google Calendars have allowed me to get my shit together without the use of those silly paper-based organizers.

Please note that I have met many people who prefer the paper-based organizers: I was basically born with a mouse in my hand, so I’m inclined to use technology whenever possible. It’s a failing I live with.

In any case, Lightning allows you to have a calendar built into Thunderbird. It also provides an interface to create tasks as well, though I don’t use those. The Google Calendar plugin allows you to use Lightning with Google Calendars. This means that much like the Dropbox argument, you can still access your calendars if your computer explodes. I have made a personal, work, homework/assignment, and school schedule calendars. For the first time, I actually know what things are due when, and how to schedule my time around work and other things. It’s silly to think that it took me this long to figure out that organizing things actually helps get things done faster.

If you don’t use Thunderbird, Google Calendars, or computers in general, you can still work to get yourself organized. I can honestly say that once I introduced the organizer strategy,

4.Go that extra mile

I spent five hours working  on a typography exercise that involved me making an apple. Five hours of tweezers, 12 point font, and rubber cement. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Well, it probably does but it also shows a determination to really put out something that is more than “alright.”

This one comes with at least some backup facts. I’ve only got three of my marks back (out of six), but everything has been above a 90. I’ve been known to spend hours and hours on things that others have put together in one or two. Does that mean I’m overdoing it? Very probably, I have no illusions that I may be going well beyond the call of duty here. That is also my point though: Spending that extra time can (in most cases) result in a more polished product.

This is something I’ve learned over time. Back when I was lazy, I was the master of doing everything last-minute. This wasn’t a lack of organization or anything, I chose to do everything at the last minute because part of me felt that I operated best under the pressure. As it turns out, I do alright under pressure and there is nothing wrong with that. But I do amazingly well, as it turns out, when I have the extra time to self-critique, improve, revise, and even experiment.

Is there anything wrong with only spending two hours on something and getting a 75% (B) on what you did? Not at all, if what you’re looking for is a 75%. Since that’s no where near what I want out of the education I am paying for (and it’s not cheap, though I’m sure there are some angry University students that would love to talk to me), I have to put in the extra time myself. I want to be the best I can, and school only gives you the tools in which to do that; it’s up to you to use them to the best of your ability.

5. Don’t be a Dick

Note: I am so sorry for the amount of times ‘dick’ comes up in this section. This is going to play havoc with my SEO.

This sounds simple, but it’s actually harder than one would think. The issue is that it goes two ways, and it’s easy to act like a dick when you don’t even realize:

Being the Dick

This is pretty simple. If you act like a dick, you are being the dick. Acting like a dick can be, but is not limited to the following:

• Boasting about any/everything you do.
• Trying to out-boast anyone else (they may be dicks, but you’re a bigger one).
• Rubbing marks in peoples face.
• Saying how awesome you are at something, and then criticizing the teacher (publicly).
• Being snooty, arrogant, or otherwise acting “better” than others.
• Making fun of people (grow the fuck up kthnx).
• Picking fights, either physical or mental.

When you do things like this, it may make you feel better. It may make you feel confident and self-assured. It will make everyone around you loathe whenever you open your word hole. Friends that you have will come to resent you, and you will end up with fewer contacts coming out of school, and less leway with people when it’s needed.

Returning the Dickness

This is the one people don’t realize. you may think that “an eye for an eye” is a good mandate to follow, but when other people want to start gouging your eyes out, there’s an issue. Here are easy ways to return the dickness without realizing it:

• Trying to shut up a dick by attacking their person, ability, etc.
• Trying to out boast someone to shut them up/put them in their place (once again, you are the bigger dick).
• Faux modesty (you’re not fooling anyone).
• Following suit with a dick (joining in with mocking, criticizing etc.).
• Being a dick to a dick because their a dick.

Some of those are fairly obvious, but a couple are less obvious.

Trying to act modest just annoys people. You’re really not fooling anyone. When someone gives you a compliment, take it, and return something in kind. Don’t elaborate on your greatness, nor say that you suck and don’t know how you got the mark you did. That will make them feel even worse, they’ll think you’re a liar, and you may even start to believe it yourself. Undermining your own self-confidence doesn’t help anyone.

When being a dick towards a dick, you may think you are giving them a taste (heh) of their own medicine. You may know what you’re doing, but those around you may not perceive it the same way; they may just see two dicks trying to out-dick one another. On top of that, the dick you are being a dick to may not even realize you are being a dick towards them. The result of this is that you look like a dick, but got none of the supposed revenge.

Not being the Dick

This should be fairly apparent, but for the sake of completeness, I will include a list for this anyways. I’m always a fan of things being full-circle. Anyways, how to not be a dick:

• Be helpful. When people ask for help, help them if you can.
• Give constructive criticism. “That sucks” isn’t doing anyone any good. “You could try doing this for this reason” will glean a much better reception.
• Be kind. Don’t rip on people when something isn’t good. You can be kind with constructive criticism as much as you can with compliments.
• Accept compliments, and return in kind.
• Don’t single people out to rip on them. It doesn’t help anyone.
• Be courteous. There’s nothing wrong with “please” and “thank you”.

Generally to avoid being a dick, you have to be a generally good and nice person. I’m not saying I exhibit all of these traits (far from, really); what I’m saying is that you should try to exhibit as many as you can. It’s a process of continuous improvement.

6. Do your work

This doesn’t even need a large section, and by all accounts it shouldn’t really have to be on here. Make time to do your work, and for crap sake, do your work. I can’t tell you how many people I know in my section that lost marks simply because they didn’t do assignment. Generally speaking, you cannot lose marks for trying. If you don’t hand something in, you get a zero. If you hand in crap, you can get a one. One is infinitely better than zero (quiet, math nerds), and handing assignments in can only help your cause.

It is this point that probably caused most of my lost marks. Many assignments in my last stint in College went completely undone; ignored for the sake of ignoring them. I can’t honestly say that I even had better things to do because I was just lazy back then. Teachers even told me that if I just handed something in, it would help my marks, but I scoffed at their wisdom, and ended up (in some cases) with a 58%. I have no defense for it, and now I understand what they were saying.

7. Figure out how to study

This one was probably the hardest for me, and of course it is also the point that gave me the most. It was by a freak accident that I found out how to study effectively. I was in the school lounge one day when someone asked me if I had studied for the test. “What test?” I responded (this is before the organizer thing). I then had two hours to learn 1/3rd of my textbook. It may sound insane, but I figured out a process of reading and constant quizzing is actually how I learned best. I’ve refined it a bit since then, and it now involves me writing the points down, highlighting them, force memorizing them, and having people quiz me on things in random order. By the end of the session I will have forgotten my name, my address, and how to drive, but God damn do I know the course material.

I never used to be this way. I used to depend entirely on my ability to recall from memory. As it turns out that works, but it’s not 100% for me. By combining my passive ability with active studying, I can make sure I know what I need to.

I’m not saying that this will work for you. Hell, some people would look at my method and crap themselves. Others would look at this (my girlfriend comes to mind) and say that it’s not nearly enough. I’m not here to sell my method, though if it works for you go nuts, I’m simply saying that studying is worth it in the end.  Find the best way for you to study, and go for it. It might take a couple takes to get it right, but there’s a way for everyone.

8. Take time to relax

At first glance, you would think that this point would directly contrast others that I have made. You would be wrong, but I can totally understand how you would do that. Let me explain:

Taking time for yourself is not being lazy, it is not skipping out on work, and it is not aiming for the average. It can be if your relaxation time is way too large, and causes those points to happen. It all comes down to balance with relaxation time. All work and no play make jack a dull boy. It’s very true, you know. When you don’t take time for yourself, you will eventually become frustrated, irritable, and probably end up shooting the mailman.

Taking time to relax and recharge has benefits that I don’t need to voice. I’m sure a brief search on the Internet will tell you more than I ever could. It makes you feel better, which will help you work better. It also takes your mind off of things, which can result in you having a flash of brilliance on a problem you were having. I’ve always found that taking an hour for a bath and a book (shut up, I don’t need to hear what a wuss I sound like) leaves me feeling way better.

I’m sure I’m missing many points that I could probably rig up, but after 3000 words, I’m running out of brain and witty banter. I hope that my points on my education can help, maybe even educate, some others. If you have your own points to add, feel free to comment with them.

So here’s the idea: I’m going to pick a word at random, and then continue writing down all the words and first thoughts I have based on that word and everything that follows. Things may not actually follow in a fluid pattern. I’m sure this will be a clear window into the dark regions of my mind. To stop outside influences, I am performing this without any music, Television or other stimulus.

You’ve been warned.

P.S. I invite any and everyone to participate in the comments!

First attempt:

Cabin, crab, cake, cone, arboretum, Algonquin, tether, plink, plankton, absolute, jackson, mrow, appleby, huckleberry, Adrien, pinto, Zack, cack, Orlando, Mesopotamia, gold, gilded, Greek, merium, bottle, cranberry, choir,  sing-a-long, lois gram and Sharron, skiminarink a dink e dink, elephant, umbrella, trumpet sounds, Babylon, platsky, groin, cabin, I’m thinking about cabin a lot. weird, Singapore, Mercedes, merecat, boo ba loo, coo coo kajoo, Randy Pausch, Patterson, Bill Cosby, rev, electrify, meowmix, deliver, litter box, cat, to do, cabbage patch kids, Indiana Jones, amazon, Atlantis, sam n max, Lucas, x-wing, space quest, I wonder what that detective game was called, Mississippi, Mississauga, Florida, Massachusetts, Klingon, some popular techno song on the radio; name escapes me, womanizer, fuck, crapshoot, puppy, portapotty, ring tone, fuck womanizer is stuck in my head, foundations, clone high, student bodies, joke, driving, broom, valentines, toupe, Kraken, Jesus jumping sticks, Adam Sandler, Trisha, Megatron, lyrics from grow old with you playing in my head now, fuck womanizer again, Adam Crosby (i have no idea why this name sticks in my head), Barny Rubble, fruity pebbles, restaurant, pod, bubble plinko, Tarzan, techno song again, tag, flippant, Doctor Who, jazz hands, “keeg”, “hey you guys”, boat, Warcraft, jinx, jip, Nippon, ax, ax to grind, jurassicsaurus rex, free, egg, eggy, loony toons, good idea bad idea, Taylor, wacky, Peru, New Zealand, zap, Zelda, alphabetical, jacks, train, train station, ticket, conductor, stuttering, snakes on a train, ese, womanizer again ( I don’t even know the fucking words), slob, slut, teeter, clip, clank, zipper, traction, tire, ice, phone phoenix, trailer, techno song again, closer, jammin’, hero, hank, husband, zero, Garland, Tesla, ow, electric, vote, vixen, viceroy, VIM, Maylox, shoppers candidate, tile, trinket, train, ziffer, crane, tanner, trachea, voice box, “mmmnnngggg”, book, Captain Jack, eh ohh, Dance Dance Revolution, Playdium, round-about, ka-ching, loser lounge, laser, Dr. Evil saying “laser”, “throw me a frikin bone”, sharks with lasers on their head, ill-tempered. that’s a start, cindy loo hoo, kazba, zombies, neck, west, Atreyu, zinger, car park, Cheat Commandos, “rock rock on”, “aww fiddlesticks”, “pony on pony action”, dysentery, gold mine, oxen, over and out, flounder, axiom, flowers, zero, taboo, Matlock, action, mega monster movie store, help me out i need it, killers, lyrics, without you, callus, dire ants, Mt. Fuji, dreadlocks, tatters, train, traction, genius, trambler, island perk.

Attempt number two:

pineapple, conga, testosterone, wanker, weenis, dean, twang, tazzer, willywoddle, jack the ripper, red, night, dark, James,imbew, traction, sword, train, Star Wars, rebel, rebellion, android, apple, Adrien (again?), executor, “For Aiur”, I love the combat, arbiter, Terran, Zerg, Zergling rush, bunker, Starcraft, Wo lo loo, Wood please, Stone please, I’ll beat you back to Age of Empires I, Moonraker, bond, Sean Connery, James Bond Theme now playing in my head, Casino Royale, card, spade, jack, blackjack, bluff, citron, drink, woman, tar and feather.

At this point I got stuck.

Attempt number three:

Compass, initiation, tabloid, paper, article, newsprint, lithography, tainted, grant, book, while looking at my book: ladder, fireman, hose, water, dog, dalmatian, fire pole, calendar, stupid firemen, flames, building, “save my baby!”, tree, cat, The Incredibles, “you should learn to be more… flexible” marriage, kids, ice cube, baby, step-ladder, food, fruit rollup, snacks, fruit by the foot, sweet tarts, brownies, doughnuts, Zehrs, flours, bread, eggs, meat, deli, cold deli, flame-grilled whopper, burger king, THE KING, wallet, fries, deep fryer, kids zone, DC: DISCOVER ZONE, Daniel, cheating, stamp, bathroom, car, Doolies, drunk, blue not green, puking, white carpet, going to work hung over, parmigiana, smells, kid puking, cardboard scoop, cheese, Hungarian salami, mask, Darth Vader, Hoth, solo, Jaba talking about Solo, AH HA HA (Jaba laugh), UUEEEEHEHEHHEHEHEH (Jabas pet), cantina band, butt-face, Carl, Simpsons, Moe, Lisa, elementary school, skinner, blue hair, willy, hallways, tunnel, train, traction (again? wtf), Action Jackson, JACK DUTSON, Jack (from Doctor Who), Owen, “Doctor!”, *TARDIS noise*, phone bill, ring ring, GOING TO BE KILLED BY A CHRISTMAS TREE!, Jackie, vwooosh, ping, ta da!

I am a screwed up individual.

When I developed the theme I am currently using, I searched high and low for something I could steal take inspiration from. The funny thing is that most people don’t even know where the colour swapper is on my site. So few in fact that I had to add a caption to it to help make it a little more obvious.

In any case I felt that I would share the method I used to create the swapping functionality on my website. I’m aware that most of it can be figured out with a little imagination and some source viewing, but I think that going through it step by step is more helpful.

UPDATE – 10/09/2008 - In record time, a second pair of eyes looking at this has managed to refine the process. Thank you Bart for pointing out that if the CSS files are named the same as the Title attribute of the Anchor, then you can drop the whole If statement. I’ve updated the tutorial accordingly

Table of contents

• The idea
• Before we begin
• Setting up our files
• Setting up the CSS files
• A dash of PHP
• The basic markup
• The JavaScript
  • Importing the required files
  • Adding functionality
• Pulling it all together
  • Flow
• Conclusion

The idea

So you want to build a colour swapper? Easy as pie. You want to do it without causing a postback and sustains itself throughout the navigation? That’s a little more tricky, and what I wanted to do myself.

What, you’re too lazy to figure this out for yourself? No problem. Read on and be merry.

Before we begin

A few words before we begin:

• I am not a master of JavaScript, let alone JQuery. I’m not a novice, but I am in no way a master of the language. There are probably many ways in which to improve my methods here. I’m going to take another crack at them and see what I can come up with. I’ll update the code to this post If I come up with anything.
• In addition to the last note, I’m not going to explain how JQuery works. they do a fine job on their own. If you don’t understand it, I suggest you take some time and become familiar with it.
• This whole solution rides on the idea that your users allow JavaScript and Cookies. If the Cookies are disabled, the styles will still change, but will not persist between page refreshes/navigation. If JavaScript is disabled, nothing will work because I have not yet implemented a postback-friendly alternate. If I find myself with time I’ll do this as well and update this post.
• This whole tutorial is based on the idea that you are applying this to a WordPress theme. If you’re using something else, you’ll need to alter this as you need.
• I have noticed that in some browsers, the swapping is not instant, and you may notice somewhat of a flicker. In my case the colours go away, and then the new ones are applied. Some browsers do not do this. I have no idea why this happens.

Setting up our files

For this solution we’re going to need to get some files from the JQuery website (the latest JQuery build), and create some files in our Theme folder.

You are going to need to make a JavaScript folder – I called mine “js” – and multiple CSS files. One will be a core style sheet that contains all of the universal CSS styles, and then alternate sheets that contain the CSS that is swapped around.

Example setup:

• THEME FOLDER
  • style.css
  • Yellow Version.css
  • Red Version.css
  • Blue Version.css
  • Green Version.css
  • JS FOLDER
    • jquery.js
    • functions.js

The rest of this example will assume that you have that setup.

Setting up the CSS files

First off, you’re going to need some CSS files to play around with. Generally you would have a core css file that would contain all the styles that wouldn’t be affected by your swapper. Depending on how you use your swapper, this may or may not be the case. Some people want to totally alter the website with their swapper; I just wanted a colour change.

Note: I’m not going to paste all the CSS I used to format the actual tiles, because my layout requirements will be different than yours. Set the CSS code up however you need to make your selector HTML – we’ll see that in a bit – look right.

So you have your core css file (style.css for WordPress users). Do what you need to in that file and then put it away. We won’t be touching it very much. The only addition I put in my CSS files are the following:

.red {background-color:#FF3333;}
.yellow {background-color:#FBDC00;}
.green {background-color:#1FF900;}
.blue {background-color:#00CCFF;}

These four styles are in my core CSS file so that my swappers always have access to correct classes for them. What this means is that regardless of what CSS file is imported, the swapper tiles will always look the same.

Next up we have our swapping CSS files: Blue Version, Green Version, Red Version and Yellow Version.

Note: I use Yellow Version as my default, but that doesn’t come in for a little bit yet.

So in each one of these CSS files, I have the same selectors:

.specialBGColor {background-color:#FBDC00;}
a, .specialColourText, #left_bar .widget table th {color:#FBDC00;}
.specialTopBorder{border-top:20px solid #FBDC00;}

All of your swappable CSS files will have the same selectors with whatever colour differences you need. In my case The hex colours are going to change to whatever is appropriate for the file (yellow is #FBDC00, red is #FF3333, etc.) “specialBGColor” is basically a class I apply to anything that is going to have a swappable background. I also have a “speciallTopBorder” that does something similar, and some selectors for links and table headers to change their colours.

All of these swappable CSS files should be in the same directory. Since I am using WordPress my CSS files are all kept together in the same directory: the theme directory. I dislike the lack of separation but I’ll manage.

Once you’ve got all those set up we can move on to setting up the PHP functions

A dash of PHP

We need to add a little function to our functions.php file. The function will attempt to grab a value from the users cookie cache and return it. Pretty simple overall. In my case, if the cookie is not found, it returns a default string that is the URL to my yellow style sheet. As previously stated, the Yellow CSS file is the same.

Add the following to your functions.php file:

function getStyleCookie()
{
   if($_COOKIE["styleHref"] != null && $_COOKIE["styleHref"] != "")
   {
      echo $_COOKIE["styleHref"];
   }
   else
   {
      $url = bloginfo('template_url') + "/Yellow Version.css";
      echo $url;
   }
}

What this does is if it can get the cookies value – in this case “styleHref” cookie – this is explained in the JS – it will echo the value of the cookie. if it can’t it returns the default value of the Yellow Version.css location.

Note: I could have made the function a bit more universal by passing in the cookie name, but as I’m only using it for this one instance, I didn’t bother.

The basic markup

Alright lets set up the markup. Lets start with the header.

Locate the <head></head> section of your website (for WordPress users, this is usually the header.php file).

You’ll need to find where you have any current CSS files linked and paste the following over or after the CSS tags. I say over or after because depending how much of this you’re following, you may already have a core CSS file that you don’t want to remove.

<!-- THIS IS YOUR CORE CSS FILE. IGNORE THIS LINE IF YOU ALREADY HAVE THIS IN YOUR HEADER -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css"/>

<!-- some dynamic stuff that won't make any sense yet, but it will later -->
<?php if($_COOKIE["styleHref"] != null && $_COOKIE["styleHref"] != "") : ?>
   <link id="altsheet" rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $_COOKIE["styleHref"]; ?>" type="text/css"/>
<?php else : ?>
   <link id="altsheet" rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/Yellow Version.css" type="text/css"/>
<?php endif; ?>

What this does: try and get the URL to the currently used CSS file and render that CSS file. If nothing can be found, default to the Yellow Version style sheet. This may seem repetitive given that the functions.php code we put in also compensates for a lack of cookie. I’m one for having backup plans, and this was mine. If you don’t like it, you can simply remove the entire else section.

Next up is the actual swapper markup. I’m going to paste a simplified version of mine, because as I stated before, your swapper will look different than mine. As long as the base HMTL is the same, this solution works. how you style things up is totally up to you.

<div id="colour_swapper">
   <ul>
      <li>
         <a href="javascript:;" class="green" title="Green Version">Swap to green</a>
      </li>
      <li>
         <a href="javascript:;" class="yellow" title="Yellow Version">Swap to yellow</a>
      </li>
      <li>
         <a href="javascript:;" class="blue" title="Blue Version">Swap to blue</a>
      </li>
      <li>
         <a href="javascript:;" class="red" title="Red Version">Swap to red</a>
      </li>
   </ul>
</div>

The important parts to this are two-fold.

First, the ID of the DIV element is going to be used in the JavaScript. I’m aware that the DIV isn’t really needed, but as I said, this is a simplified version of what I’m using, and as such I’ve actually stripped out additional elements contained in the DIV.

The second thing is the title of the ANCHOR items. The title will be used in the JavaScript to determine what CSS file to get.

Note: I’m aware that having a href of ‘javascript:;’ is a bad practice. In reality the href should offer a link that would manually post back the page, and have PHP  code that would look for that action and set the cookie that way. Doing so would allow for the swapper to work when JavaScript is disabled.

The JavaScript

Importing the required files

This is where everything is tied together and starts working.

First off we need to import some JS files. This solution imports JQuery, as well as a functions.js file that I created in a sub directory of my Theme folder called “js”. This was explained in the Setup section, but I’m still reiterating.

First we need to add a bit more markup within our <head></head> sections:

<script type="text/JavaScript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/js/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
   var templateUrl = "<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>";
</script>
<script type="text/JavaScript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/js/functions.js"></script>

What we’re doing here:

1. Importing the JQuery framework.
2. Setting a JavaScript variable that contains the template_url value from WordPress. This makes life easier when we get to the actual cookie setting.
3. Importing our functions.js file that will contain all of our functionality.

Note: I’m not a JavaScript expert, and part of me thinks that there should be a way to pass in the template URL to the functions.js import call. I don’t know and if someone can comment on this and explain, I’d be more than happy to refine my work.

Next up we need to add some functionality to the functions.js file!

Adding functionality

I’ll pase the code first and then explain it:

var $j = jQuery.noConflict();

$j(document).ready(function(){
   $j("#colour_swapper a").click( function(){
	var style_title = $j(this).attr("title");
	var style_href= "";
	var altSheet = $j("#altsheet");

	altSheet.attr({"href":templateUrl +"/" + style_title+".css"});

	style_href = altSheet.attr("href");

	var date = new Date();
	date.setTime(date.getTime()+(1*24*60*60*1000));
	var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString();
	document.cookie = "styleHref="+style_href+"; expires="+date.toGMTString()+"; path=/";
   });
 });

What the hell is going on:

1. Set JQuery to no conflict mode by assigning it to a different variable. I had to do this because of other plugins I use on my site. I maintain that this is a good idea when you are working in a plugin-heavy framework like WordPress.
2. For every link found within the element with the id of colour_swapper attach a new click function
3. Set a variable to the value of the links title (Yellow Version, Green Version, etc)
4. Grab the element with the id of “altsheet” (in our case this is a link element in our header) and change it’s href value to the url of the new style sheet. This url is made up of the template URL and the name of the style sheet (title of the anchor)
5. Set a variable with the URL the new CSS file to be used.
6. Create a date variable, and set it to the future (exact day eludes me at the moment. Part of me thinks that it’s either 24 hours into the future, or 1000 days. I can’t honestly remember at this point).
7. Convert the date to a GMTString which is used in the creation of cookies.
8. Create a cookie, “styleHref”, that stores the URL of the style sheet used. This cookie is set to expire in the future, and will apply to all pages within the website (that’s what the “/” is for)

Whew! That took longer to explain than I thought.

Pulling it all together

So now that we’ve gone through all that, everything should work. To give you an idea on how it all comes together I’ll explain the general flow.

Flow

• While the page is loading, try and grab the cookie and set the secondary style sheet. If none is found, apply a default (Yellow Version)
• Import all of the JavaScript needed.
• User clicks on a style swapping link
• JavaScript figures out what style sheet to use
• Changes the secondary sheets href to the new CSS file
• Sets a cookie to store the URL of the new CSS file

Now if a user navigates to another page in your website, the first step will apply the change right off the bat.

Conclusion

I hope that this helps someone out there, and comments are more than appreciated to help improve the solution. I’ll try and refine the solution a little more when I have time.

Good luck and happy coding!

I myself am a fan despite it’s assault on the CPU and database. It’s fast, it’s simple, and so long as your website isn’t gaining huge traffic (or you’re paying peanuts for CPU usage and storage) than it’s a great selection. It’s fairly customizable, has a huge support and user base, and it’s just damned easy to use. I’ve been slowly getting more and more into customizing and extending what WordPress can do out of the box.There’s more in the code than people think.

Recently I a friend of mine ripped a strip off of me for only using summaries in my RSS feed. He told me that he, along with other net-savvy users, didn’t have time to get teased by RSS summaries.

UPDATE: As of December 3rd, 2008 I’ve turned this baby into a plugin! Check it out.

For those wishing to skip the lengthy buildup, here is a little table of contents:

• The Back Story
• Solution
• Explanation
• Installation and Usage
• Further Notes

The Back Story – To Summarize or not to Summarize

This is some what of a conundrum, as I want people to actually come to my site. On the flip side, I want people to read what I write. So I can force people to come to my site and gain page views, or I can increase my RSS readership. After careful consideration, I’ve opted to fix my RSS feed to display the entire content.

Here’s the issue: Until now, I’ve used ‘The Excerpt’ field in WordPress. Basically this allows me to have a pretty excerpt instead of 55 characters truncated with a “READ MORE PLEAZE!” I use the custom excerpt for the top part of the post; the preview if you will. The problem with this is that I had to rip out the first couple paragraphs from the post area, add some HTML to make sure it worked, and then post. The result looked pretty, but had some unexpected side-effects on the RSS.

As it turns out, when you decide to use the EXCERPT field, that excerpt will become the summary in the RSS. That’s all well and good, but what If you want to have the whole post? One would hope that it would stitch the Excerpt and the Post together, but alas this was not the case.

I turned to the <!–more–> tag to assist me.

What they don’t document about the more tag is pretty much all the bitchy parts of it. When you use the <!–more–> tag, you split the content, allowing for the excerpt to be defaulted to all the content preceding the tag. This is great, except for how my layout works. You see The top have is the Excerpt, and the bottom half is the rest of the post. Just using the_content wouldn’t work, because I would be repeating all the pre-more content.

I thought about maybe using an hr tag, or reworking my entire layout, but I dismissed those due to the complexity of the markup. My only option was to carve into WordPress itself. I first checked Google to see if anyone had come up against what I was facing. As it turns out people have asked the question, but no one has posted the answer.

I am fixing that right now.

Getting the Pre and Post <!–more–> content separately

Here is my solution, in full:

function the_formatted_pre_more_from_content ($body)
{
$returnVal = get_the_formatted_pre_more_from_content ($body);
if ($returnVal !== FALSE)
echo get_the_formatted_pre_more_from_content ($body);
else
the_excerpt();
}

function get_the_formatted_pre_more_from_content ($body)
{
$moreTag = ‘<!–more’;
$content = FALSE;

$morePos = stripos($body, $moreTag);
if ($morePos !== FALSE || $morePos > -1)
$content = substr($body, 0, $morePos);
else
return FALSE;

$content = apply_filters(‘the_content’, $content);
$content = str_replace(‘]]>’, ‘]]>’, $content);

return $content;
}

function the_formatted_post_more_from_content ($body)
{
echo get_the_formatted_post_more_from_content ($body);
}

function get_the_formatted_post_more_from_content ($body)
{
$moreTag = ‘<!–more’;
$content = FALSE;

$morePos = stripos($body, $moreTag);

if ($morePos !== FALSE || $morePos > -1)
{
$content = substr($body, $morePos + strlen($moreTag));
$morePos = stripos($content, ‘–>’); // reuse variable
if ($morePos !== FALSE || $morePos > -1)
$content = substr($content, $morePos + 3); // strip off rest of more tag
}
else
$content = $body;

$content = apply_filters(‘the_content’, $content);
$content = str_replace(‘]]>’, ‘]]&gt;’, $content);

return $content;
}

Explanation

The two important functions here are ‘get_the_formatted_pre_more_from_content’ and ‘get_the_formatted_post_more_from_content’. Long names, I know, but at least their mission is clear.

The other two functions ‘the_formatted_pre_more_from_content’ and ‘the_formatted_post_more_from_content’ pretty much add a bit of logic and echo the content automatically. I chose this naming structure and function structure to emulate what is already in WordPress (e.g. ‘the_content’ versus ‘get_the_content’).

Installation and Usage

To use this code, add it all to your functions.php file of your theme. I’m sure I, or some other enterprising person, could turn this into a plugin, but at the moment I don’t feel it’s warranted.

All of the functions take one parameter: $body.

When you call these functions you must be in The Loop.

example usage: <?php the_formatted_pre_more_from_content($post->post_content); ?>

explanation: This call will display the content preceding the <!–more–> tag.

example usage: <?php the_formatted_post_more_from_content($post->post_content); ?>

explanation: This call will display the content proceeding the <!–more–> tag.

Further Notes

UPDATE: As of December 3rd, 2008 I’ve turned this baby into a plugin! Check it out. I’ve also fixed the post_content bug!

Note the $post->post_content that is passed into the function. This exists automatically when you are in The Loop. This will pass all of the posts content to the function without any formatting. The only thing that isn’t straight text – conveniently – is the <!–more–> tag. As a result the content becomes fairly straight forward.

As of right now you must pass $post->post_content to the functions. I tried to do it without passing the value, and they don’t seem to pick up the value.

I opted for using a substring functionality as opposed to an array split function simply because it was 2 am when I finally got this going. I don’t know which is more efficient, so someone who is more knowledgeable in PHP can comment on this and state which is better.

I only search for ‘<!–more’ because according to the tag documentation, there is text that can follow the MORE that changes some functionality. As a result, I have an additional if statement in the get_post function that will detect for the end of the tag and substring the content again to trim that out.

I hope that this helps out some people who may be in a similar boat as I was.

Recently, I found an all-classical FM station broadcasting out of Toronto that I can actually listen to in Brantford, Cambridge, and Kitchener-Waterloo. This may not sound like anything impressive – who even listens to FM radio anymore – but if you have ever tried to listen to Toronto-based radio in those areas, you would know what I’m talking about. There is something about this strip of land that just destroys radio signals.

Regardless, since I’ve found this station, I have yet to change it back to the others that I listen to. Classical 96.3FM does an amazing job of not only featuring brilliant classical music, past and present, but also features spots like “Sunday night at the Opera”, “The Greatest Music Of All Time…” and spoken poetry. How can you not love this?

Though I feel their website could use a little information architecture – It’s rather busy and cramped in some places- they offer a surprising amount of content for a radio station website. They have an online listening section as the Internet radio is all the rage now, and even the “What Was That Piece” list: a minute to minute feature of every song they’ve played throughout the day and the entire week previous.

I must also mention that though they play the typical classical music, they also feature some fantastic choice music, moving opera pieces, and even arrangements from movies (Lord of the Rings, Forest Gump, and Star Trek to name a few). I actually got home and sat in my car for an additional 6 minutes to listen to the end of Misere Me, Deus by Gregorio Allegri, a moving choir piece. The best part is that I have no idea who that is yet, but thanks to the station and their website, I can find out.

If you’re in the mood for some audible culture, Classical 96.3FM is a station to tune into. If you aren’t in the Toronto area, attach yourself to their Internet radio player.

P.S. be warned: All of the personallities they have working there can hypnotise you with their voice. Every damned one.

They won’t let me leave

well that’s not entirely true…

They are making it impressively inconvenient for me leave

Brilliant strategy of you’ve got someone by the credit card, but it’s a horrible move. Try to follow my logic on this one, and feel free to comment on whether I’m an invalid or not.

When I signed up, I wasn’t pressured

They showed me around, answered all my questions, and then told me I could come back anytime if I was interested in signing up. I ended up signing up that day, as I liked what I saw and liked the staff. It far surpassed any of the other gyms I had looked at, and I was happy to join with them.

I signed some papers, wrote off my soul, etc. etc.. Everything was par for the course.

I used the facilities, and I liked them

Things were clean and maintained. The patrons were nice, followed the rules, and generally got along. I never had a complaint, though I did overhear one of a lady being upset that another lady was wearing a belly top of sorts (this was against the dress code.)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they had a respectable dress code. No scantily clad women or men. This was a place for working out, not gawking.

I got lazy, and stopped going

Yup, all me. I got lazy, fell out of practice, and eventually stopped going. I was still paying for the gym though, despite my never going. That’s no ones fault but my own. I was under a contract with them and I had to wait a while before I could quit.

I finally got around to quitting, or so I thought

I walked into the gym that faithful day, and told them that I wanted to cancel my membership. “No problem,” said the helpful desk girl, “Just mail this paper with your email on it to the head office. They will then send you an email confirmation and you can cancel.”

Wait, what? Mail? You mean that thing with the paper and the stamps and the envelopes? That thing you do with Santa? Seriously?

Seriously.

Well, that’s ridiculous. I’m sure I can just go online or something to do this. They had a way to sign up for an account, so there should be a way to cancel it in the same area right?

Wrong.

This is where things went down hill for me. I created an account (which required a phone call as some of my internal data was missing, causing the validation to fail), and looked around for a ‘Stop Payment’ or ‘Cancel Account’ or something. There was no link to be clicked, no button to be pressed, no email to be sent. The only way to cancel your account was to mail in a paper, which you could print from the website, to their home office on California.

What’s wrong with this picture?

They did such a good job of nabbing me, of keeping me happy and content, of making sure my opinion of them was that of ‘sunshine from the butt’ proportions. Why would they drop me on my ass when I want to leave? Now all the good things they did for me are forgotten, and all I can say is what a bitch it is to cancel my membership.

Lesson: don’t burn bridges

They have, whether intentionally or not, burned a bridge with me. Not only do I want to cancel my account with them (I’m working on it, I promise) but now I want to tell everyone about how much of an ordeal it is to cancel said account. I’m not going to say how wonderful their places are, or how considerate their staff may be; I’m going to remember the freshest experience first: dropped on my ass.

If you’re going to try and screw people out of money, fine. I can’t stop you, because that’s just how a lot of businesses operate and I’m not one to comment on that. I’ll leave the business commentary to those who know what they’re talking about. What I’m trying to get across is a simple usability exercise: If you make everything from start to finish as simple and easy as possible, that’s what I will tell people.

Had the gym made it simple to cancel my account, they may have lost out on my 40 dollars a month. They would have also gained a person who would spout out their greatness to anyone willing to listen. I liked that gym, but I will no longer recommend them for this reason.

To summarize: Be nice from start to finish. Even when people are leaving you, wave them goodbye, don’t slam the door on their ass on the way out. Those people have mouths.

Bonus Lesson: Have a point of contact

If you visit their website, you’ll find that the only way to contact them is via a non-800 phone number, within set hours. No email, no contact form. What’s the point of a website with online user registration, when you can’t even email the company?