What could it be?!
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300
Welcome to the 300th episode of my life!
And in this episode, I will now Jump the Shark! In this Very Special Episode, Kitty! becomes pregnant, my friend Bill dangerously experiments with the evil weed, and I'm getting married!
Naaaaaaw. But the site just got a new makeover.
Welcome also to Version 5 of ChaosInAustin, or Formula V.05 for you hair care fanatics.
So what's new on the ole site?
NOTHING! In fact, less than nothing!
Just lots of grays and day-glo yellow all over the place. It's very retro! Got my can of digital paint out and gave the 'ole girl a new coat.
What you see before you is a sleeker, silkier, less robust version of the previous site.
You will notice a new toolbar. Thanks to Michael at for the assist on helping me 'navigate' away from the Frames that everyone hated, but still am able to globally update key elements without having to dive into PHP or ASP.
The site gets down to business. Bio4ms has been re-formatted, with an assist from my friend Jules who put about 40 hours into culling through all the old galleries, and leaving only 8 “preview” images in each. Yep. The new site has LESS!
As you all know, bandwidth has always been a crazy high expense. The galleries started off as a way for me to show off my favorite photos, and that meant LOTS of photos to download. So like many sites nowadays, you only get small sampling to hopefully pull in a few more customers.
I tried doing it myself, but I kept adding “just one more image.” So Jules made the call, and now only a few of the more popular models get some extra images thrown in.
Wallpapers continue to have a prominent position in the galleries, and for the most part, all wallpaper images can be accessed right from the model's gallery. I love Jeff's stuff, and you should too!
You will also notice the addition of Vids to the site. We are still working on the PPV technology, and hopefully will have it together by August 15th, 2004.
There is less Me in this site. The Ego area has gone away. But the journal is still here. The cams seem to have survived this latest round of slashing and hacking. The journal really sits on BryanOckert.com and you should updated your bookmarks to http://www.bryanockert.com/fotoj/current.html to always jump to the latest entry.
I'm still a part of this site though, and links go over to that area fairly seemlessly.
I DO plan on adding more Me to BryanOckert.com- mostly the minutia of stuff that was formally in the Ego section. I think it fits more appropriately on that site, but it is a side project, and will have other areas to focus on first.
The membership area is exactly the same. That will be overhauled in the June/July edits. I plan to go through every single gallery and make them all move and navigate the same. Some of the older images might be re-created, cuz I sure did size things funky and didn't pay attention to compression and all the stuff I know about now.
It was wholesale slaughter on friends as I got this site up. I've pretty much spent every available waking free moment to do this in a two week period.
I've pretty much nixed all my friendships, and am really focusing on business. I tend to be more successful there, and I don't let anyone down. Everyone seems to Want something from me, and usually when I hear from someone its cuz I have a favor I can do for them. So sticking to myself and not getting involved.
Will of course venture out for fundraisers and such, but this guy's mantra is now:
FOCUS!
As some of you noticed, no entry last week. I had a model in town, so was doing some entertaining and shooting. When he wasn't looking, I would dash into my office to get some more work done on the overhaul.
Gregg came in from Tampa and shot with Robert and I. Gregg was awesome to work with and I totally dug hanging with him also. Gregg is a talker, so always had lively things to say, and is very charming and comfortable to be around. Hope to get him back here real soon!
We did several shoots, including doing a couple shoots in some Ajaxx63 gear. You can see the guy's got some serious guns on him! Big, giant, arms all bulgy and ripply….sigh. Not surprisingly Gregg's got a boyfriend back home. ~double sigh~
Gregg shot the day before out at Barbara's with Robert and I got to see some advanced images. They look great! The work Barbara and I did really paid off. I can't wait to use the place myself. We did do some outdoor shots. We found a nice field of Indian Blankets, and even went down and did that waterfall again. We got some good stuff!
During all this, I had a couple meetings. The Hill Country Ride had one last event, which was a thank-you thang. It took place downtown in a lovely house that had that 100 year old, newly updated feel to it. They had a slide show going, and guests munched on cake while trying to spot themselves and friends in the images.
The following day, Sunday, I had meeting over at Ted Smith's. Ted headed up the training rides, and next year Jason and Ellen are in charge. They've invited me to be one of the ride leaders, which means I will volunteer to be support at least once a weekend to help riders get properly trained, and help them out on the training rides.
Doesn't sound like a lot of extra work, and I was doing at least one training ride a week, so the commitment doesn't seem like it will be taxing.
Can you guess whose shoes these are?
It middle of the week, Bobbette from aGLIFF emailed me saying that they were having a John Waters event, and had forgotten to get a photographer, and would I mind coming to photograph him.
Would I mind photographing John Waters?!?
Summer, who is Bobbette's partner, was looking gorgeous as she hosted John and made sure he got where he needed to be and had his needs met.
John was a real trooper and posed with dozens of people, all wanting his autograph and photo op. Here he is posing with Ms. Marla and Jenn Garrison, everyone looking quite dashing.
After the reception we went over to watch him perform at the theatre. I thought maybe he was going introduce clips, but he stuck to an anecdotal history of his filmmaking carrer.
Needless to say, Mr. Waters is funny and had the audience in fits of laughter.
There was even a question and answer session afterwards, which can be painfully embarrassing, but I found the questions really interesting, and John's answer were not of the Yes or No variety. He would have a funny insightful anecdote for every question.
My mom came for a visit over the Memorial Day weekend, and I worked way too much.
We did go and see several movies including Shrek 2 (whats not to love!?) and The Day After Yesterday, Tomorrows, Today….er…you know, the corny Dennis Quaid movie where everyone's snot freezes in their nose. Neither of us can say we liked it, yet neither of us wanted to get up and go pee or get popcorn. We stayed glued to our seats and for me, the tension was pretty high during the scenes were LA and New York get destroyed. Still a little close to 9/11 for me I guess.
I also managed a photoshoot and video shoot on Sunday. I dropped my mom at the Mall and took Ethan out to the Barbara's. Got some good stuff. Think I am finally getting the hang of this video thing too!
We did some shopping too. I bought some new clothes, new shoes, and a new bedspread! I tend to buy clothes twice a year, so it was a bit of a splurge, but took advantage of the Memorial Day Sales.
The rest of the time I just spent working working working on the site.
Hope you all like!
Go give it a spin!
http://www.chaosinaustin.com/
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