Tiny Pineapple

This weekend I’m holed up in a quiet hotel at an undisclosed remote location trying to hammer out Chapter 6 of Her Majesty’s Gardener. Unfortunately, one consequence of being holed up in a quiet hotel at an undisclosed remote location is that my internet connection sucks. Posting the names of the lucky winners of the Debra Fotheringham Autographed CD contest has been hampered by the fact that my Novatel V640 EVDO ExpressCard is doing a rather convincing impersonation of a 2400 baud modem.

But now, without further ado…because I think we all have far too much ado in our lives already…

The Lucky Winners Are:

• Chelsea
• bennion
• Emily
• s’mee

I’ve notified each of the lucky winners via email, but in the unlikely event that one of our lucky winners is unable to fulfill their obligations as a lucky winner, one of you unlucky non-winners may be asked to assume the role of lucky winner in his or her place.

Winners were chosen using RANDOM.ORG’s True Random Number Generator (TRNG), which, unlike Pseudo-Random Number Generators (PRNGs), uses atmostpheric noise to generate truly random numbers.

I was originally going to use LavaRand, which used a lava lamp to generate random numbers. (See Patent 5,732,138: “Method for seeding a pseudo-random number generator with a cryptographic hash of a digitization of a chaotic system.”) Unfortunately, SGI’s LavaRand web site is no longer online and, perhaps more importantly, one of the contestants claimed to be able to control illuminated liquids with his mind, so in the interest of fairness I had to find another solution.

Anyway, congratulations to the lucky winners and stay tuned for another contest in March. (Prizes and details to be announced shortly.)

We’re in the middle of a “live reboot,” meaning that we’re tearing the place down to the frame and rebuilding it from scratch. Most sites have the decency not to subject their visitors to this process, but we’re nothing if not indecent.

We have no idea what it’s going to look like when we’re done, but we do know that it’s going to look pretty wonky until then. Everything (layout, colors, font size, pants, logo) is in flux, so if you don’t like what you see, wait five minutes. It’ll probably change.

In the meantime, everything is still here:

• Archives
• Gallery
• Nurse Books
• Postcards
• Tidbits

We’ll let you know when we’re done…

I’m pleased to announce that on May 27, 2007, the Tiny Pineapple Nurse Book Collection was inducted into Coudal Partners’ Museum of Online Museums (MoOM).

(Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the induction ceremonies because Steve Perry borrowed my power blue, velvet-lapelled tuxedo in 1981 and still hasn’t returned it.)

The tpNBC can be found in the Museum’s Galleries, Exhibitions and Shows wing, just 43 spots below The Smithsonian. But those Washingtonian dandies better watch their government-subsidized backsides because I’ve posted Nos. 275 and 276 since then, and I’m knocking them out of the Top 20 if it’s the last thing I do!

The girls and I are bound for Yellowstone. We’ll be back on Monday. To avoid comment spam, all comments will be moderated until then. So don’t get worried if any comments you post don’t show up on the site for a few days.

Cheers,
Grettir

I hope that everyone got along OK without a 2nd Annual Tiny Pineapple Academy Awards Report. I was in no position to offer my views on the telecast this year since I was on the road somewhere between Baker and Barstow when Ms. Knightley was taking her seat (sadly, not beside me) in the Kodak Theater.

It’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t able to report on them this year anyway. I was so bored with most of the films this year that I probably would have just greeted each announcement with a hearty, “Who gives a flying Thalberg!?!” Besides, I think Jodi summed things up quite nicely without me.

And why was I somewhere on the road between Baker and Barstow, you ask? Because we’re on our annual pilgrimage to Disneyland, I answer. But I’ll have to write about it after we get back, because right now the teacups are calling…

All of us here at Tiny Pineapple are thrilled nigh unto incontinence to announce the new home of Maria Samuelson’s fantabulous Blobbies:

BlobbyFarm.com

“Where,” according to the press release, “frumpy, free-range plush toys roam the countryside of Newbraska. You’ll also find bibs, finger puppets, cards, buttons, and whatever else we can come up with to entertain you. Peruse the site, buys a little something, and spread the word.”

(I’m not sure how Emma’s Lady Skewampus would feel if she knew she was being referred to as “frumpy,” but we’ll just skip some of the less-flattering adjectives when we read her the news.)

To celebrate the launch of the new site, Maria is sponsoring a “Design a Blobby” Contest, for which Emma and Zoe have been preparing for the last two weeks, so you’d better get to work.

The character descriptions alone are worth taking a lunch hour to browse. Take, for instance, the following for Blobzilla (which I should have snapped up when I had the chance):

When dark clouds of foreboding settle over Newbraska, tiny twins who live in a matchbox sing a siren song over the still waters of the sea to awake Blobzilla from his slumber in his tent at the public campgrounds. He gets up, scratches, stretches, tests his flaming belch and sets off to save the land.

…or this for Martin Sheen, Jr.:

Martin was found in the crack of a thrift store couch along with $1.37 in change, a pink barrette, and Burt Reynolds. Mr. Sheen is currently watching Stakeout 2.

Go! Browse! Buy!

I received the following email message this morning…

To: Me
From: webmaster@obfuscated.com
Subject: Link exchange request

Hello,
I have found your website tinypineapple.com by searching Google for “mullet lake vacation home rentals michigan”. I think our websites has [sic] a similar theme, so I have already added your link to my website.

I would like you to add our link to your website too…

[blah, blah, blah…]

I wish you the best with your project and believe this link exchange can be useful for our websites by seeking better search engine ranking. If you have any questions, do not hesitate, contact me.

Jeff P.
webmaster@obfuscated.com

Look, I know I’ve let things coast for a while, but if this site really has devolved into something with a “similar theme” to anything with the word “mullet” in the title, could someone please shoot me?

Let me dispel the rumors right now:

• I have not joined a Trappist monastery in Panguich, Utah, and taken a vow of silence.
• I am not in an SEC-mandated “quiet period” in anticipation of a Tiny Pineapple IPO.
• I am not under a “gag order” issued by the judge in the Michael Jackson trial.
• I am not so famous that I’ve forgotten my audience…yet.

Here’s what I have been doing:

• Working 50-80 hour work weeks.
• Parenting.
• …and that’s about it.

And after I get home from work, and the kids are fed, homeworked, bathed, and in bed, and the laundry is done, and the house is cleaned, and the bills are paid, and then more work is done into the wee hours of the night, I collapse into bed and think, “You know, I really should answer some of the email that has been backing up for the past few weeks. Jodi might start having second thoughts about our impending nuptials if she doesn’t hear from me soon. And if I don’t start posting stuff on the weblog, the comments section could devolve into quasi-geriatric discussions of stool samples and gall bladders. And I should probably…erm…I should…<yawn>…probably…zzzzzzzzzzzzz.” And I’m carried away on diaphanous clouds to a faraway place where I don’t feel like a deadbeat because I haven’t produced a single ounce of worthwhile prose in months and small faeries massage my feet and feed me marshmallows shaped like bunnies and…and…um…where was I? Oh, yeah…

(Sorry, it’s 2:51am. I’m a little…fuzzy.)

But time is not my only problem. It’s not like I’ve been withholding great pearls of wisdom here. Trust me, if I had anything even vaguely interesting to say, I’d be saying it. But I have a hard time writing when the well is dry…and the barn is empty…and the fields are fallow…and the farmer’s daughter has gone off to college…and there are no faeries to massage my feet and feed me marshmallows shaped like bunnies…and…and…um…where was I? Oh, yeah…

But this evening I knew I’d gone too far when my sister, Amy, who is an extremely patient woman, said, “Hey you. You need to post something on your weblog.” If even she is fed up with my lack of output, it’s time to get back to work.

So, since I still have nothing even vaguely interesting to say, I’d like to introduce the new and improved Tiny Pineapple Gallery. With the newly-expanded content, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve gone from a mere “plethora of pineapple pictures” to a veritable “panoply of pineapple paraphernalia.”

(“Panoply of pineapple paraphernalia?” Man, I think “fuzzy” was a bit of an understatement…)

Chapter 5 has finally left the building.

Please don’t assume from the four-month gap between chapters 4 and 5, that I’ve spent the last four months polishing Chapter 5 to absolute perfection. What really happened is that I wrote a first revision of Chapter 5 four months ago that was so bone-crushingly awful that I had to abandon it and let the whole thing sit for a while. Shortly thereafter, my life got really busy, so “for a while” turned into four months.

When I finally had time to revisit it about a week ago, I had to scrap the whole thing and start again from scratch. I’m still not particularly pleased with it, but at least it’s done, so let’s just move on. “We’ll fix it ‘in post,’” as they say.

In the meantime, I’ll start work on Chapter 6…and sit back and wait for the inevitable phone call from The Eagles’ lawyers.

“Mother is the dead heart of the family, spending father’s earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps and watches the television.”

Germaine Greer
The Female Eunuch, 1970

Here are some postcards for that special, dead-heart matriarch in your life:

Pumps

Wilted

At long last, the redesign is complete. I’ll probably be tweaking for weeks/months to come, but here’s what’s new right now:

• New Design and Layout

  We’ve freshened things up a bit. The new logo is one that Chris did for me a while ago, but I could never figure out how to use it without using too much screen real estate. Chris was kind enough to do a mockup that I tweaked ever-so-slightly to arrive at what you see today. I like it…a lot.

• Cleaner Code

  We’ve done a major cleanup of the underlying XHTML and CSS code. It’s still not quite as clean as I’d like it to be, but thanks to the writings of Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Dan Cedarholm it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the CodeBloat™ I had going.

• Comment Registration

  To fight comment spam we’ve implemented the TypeKey Authentication Service. Here’s a blurb from the TypeKey web site:

  “TypeKey is a free, open system providing a central identity that anyone can use to log in and post comments on blogs and other web sites.

  “…TypeKey gives weblog authors more control over managing comments that have been posted, prevents comment spamming (junk comments) and prohibits unauthorized comments. This is accomplished by requiring commenters to log in with a verified account before they can post, and by offering weblog authors the power to approve or ban a commenter’s ability to post on the site.”

  This is a pilot program for us. As one of the alpha/beta test sites, we’re going to give it a try and see how it works. I realize that requiring someone to register with a third party before they can make comments does take some of the spontaneity out of life, but our visibility has made us a real target for comment spam in the past. Anything that gives me the ability to allow comments without requiring me to act as a moderator is worth trying.

  The new version of Movable Type does provide us with the ability to approve comments from unregistered users before they’re published to the site, but the lag between posting and publishing would probably do just as much to kill the spontaneity. (You’d try to be the first to respond to someone’s wisecrack only to find that 20 people were ahead of you in the queue.)

  So, I’d encourage you to either register with TypeKey or get more information.

  (Keep in mind that one of the advantages of signing up for a service in its infancy is that you can usually register a username that doesn’t resemble something like “grettirUK925bleu.”)

• New Swag

  …with the new logo. Again, thanks to Chris.

• Weeding

  I’ve weeded out some of the older, inconsequential weblog entries. The volume of posts was getting hard to wade through and a lot of content was no longer valid (broken links, etc). Besides, I was the number one result returned by Google for a few very disturbing search phrases, so a little expurgating was called for.

I readily acknowledge that there are a few deficiencies with the new design:

• It’s Too Darn Wide

  To accommodate the logo, I’ve added a 90-pixel, fixed-width, left margin that makes the the entire page roughly 820 pixels wide. Those people with 800x600 screens will become good friends with the horizontal scroll bar.

• An Over-Reliance On <hr /> Tags

  The dark orange-red bars that separate the entries are created using <hr /> tags. I faked them properly, but there are too many instances where they’re there for purely decorative, not structural, purposes.

• Non-Browser-Safe Colors

  It was time to move on…

• Still No Worthwhile Content

  Yeah, so what’s your point?

I’d be interested in getting your feedback (if for no other reason than to give the comment system a workout). So, what do you think?

If the number of polite inquires I’ve received about when I was going to “get off my duff” and “get around to posting Chapter 5” is any indication, the readership of HMG is much larger and more…um…devoted…than I had imagined.

I apologize for the delay, but I haven’t had much time to devote to it lately. In addition to my regular dad duties, I recently started a new job. Due to the nature of the work I’m doing, I can’t divulge what it is. Well, I could tell you what it is but then I’d have to kill you and I don’t even know where most of you live so I’d have to do quite a bit of research and to save money I’d have to try using Priceline to book the airline flights and I’ve never once been able to book a flight on Priceline because it always thinks my bids are too low even though I don’t think they are too low so once I’ve changed my itinerary twenty time in order to get around their lame policy of not being able to bid on the same itinerary twice I’d be two weeks outside my travel window so it would be a total waste of time which I can’t afford because I’m working now and I just don’t have that kind of free time anymore.

Anyway, the point is that I finally had some time to work on it yesterday, and hope to have Chapter 5 posted by tonight (Monday) or tomorrow (Tuesday) at the latest. Really.

Because I’ve been in the mood lately for a good old-fashioned derivative pulp teen romance adventure serial novel.

I was just resting, I promise.

Sorry about the extended silence. I ended up going two weeks without a computer and now that it has arrived I’m off to Disneyland for a week with the girls. Just a few things before I go:

• I’m painfully behind in responding to email so I apologize to anyone who has written recently. I hope to get caught up during the trip.

• Comment spam has gotten so bad that I’ve had to close comments for the time being.

Anyway, I gotta go. The Enchanted Tiki Room is calling…

Just in case you were wondering, this is what 15 minutes of fame looks like on a web site report:

We now return to our regularly scheduled (and much deserved) obscurity…

After a failed attempt a few weeks ago, the Tiny Pineapple web site has undergone a major redesign. We’re now using CSS for almost all of our page layout. The next step will be to update all of the underlying code to XHTML 1.0 (but that won’t affect the layout or design). Our goal is to eventually be 100% web standards compliant.

This move to web standards doesn’t come without some pain. We’re saying goodbye to full support for ancient browsers. Those people using browsers that have a rendering engine that is more than 5 years old (an eternity in the world of browser advances) will still be able to access all of the information on the site, but they won’t have the same stunning aesthetic experience as those who aren’t frozen in a state of browser-upgrade denial.

Also, keep in mind that since the basic design of this site hasn’t changed in over three years, regular visitors might become disoriented and may need to put their head between their knees until they get their bearings.

Internet Explorer on the Mac likes to cache old stylesheets, so if things look odd you may need to quit and restart IE to have it recognize and load the new one.

Let me know if you experience any other anomalies or have any questions…

Further Reading:

• Web Standards Project
• To Hell With Bad Browsers

I just wanted to let everyone know that Apple has lowered the price of it’s 23” Apple HD Cinema Display from $3499 to $1999.

It has been on my Amazon Wish List for quite a while and, to be honest with you, it has kind of hurt my feelings that no one has purchased it for me yet. But since the recent price drop puts it well within the means of some of my less affluent friends, it will give them the opportunity to contribute to my happiness in a way that may have been unreasonable for me to expect before.

I know my birthday isn’t until June, but I’ve always believed that it’s important to show people how much they mean to you no matter what time of year it is. After all, you won’t find “Appreciation” on the calendar. It’s something you have to live every day.

I’ll let everyone know what I think of it when it arrives. I’m so excited!

You might be interested in knowing that, as of today, the Tiny Pineapple Web site is the 5th most popular site when searching the Internet for a black Jamaican hooker.

All hell broke loose in my life a month or so ago. Confusion. Chaos. Topsyturviness (yep, it’s a real word). Mass hysteria. You name it…

I have a hard time multi-tasking under even the most ideal of conditions, but with so much going on at home and work I’ve been in a state of paralysis when it comes to the Tiny Pineapple Web site. Blog entries ceased. E-mail has gone unanswered. A planned redesign remained undone.

Now, in an attempt to return some semblance of sanity to my life, I’m coming back to the site. It’s something over which I have a modicum of control. It’s something that makes sense. It’s something I can do.

There have been a few changes. The “Web Site Architectural Overhaul & Total Redesign Task Force” has experienced a “resource reallocation” and has been rechristened the “Web Site Minor Tweak Group.” We got rid of some superfluous graphics, did away with the image pop-ups, and simplified things a bit.

We’ve also added a number of new and updated pictures to the Tiny Pineapple Gallery, including “A Good Wagon Load,” a 17th century English engraving, and a shot of the famous Dole water tower.

As for the 419 e-mail messages that sit, unanswered, in my In Box…I just don’t have the time or resources to respond to them all. As awful as it sounds, I’m going to have dump them all in an archive folder, call it a loss, and start with a clean slate. I apologize to all those who have written in the past few months, especially those expressing their sorrow at the passing of Radio Free Tiny Pineapple. I appreciate your taking the time to write and I’m very sorry for not returning the courtesy.

I’m a bad person.

Thank goodness I’ve still got my looks…

Well, folks, the Librarian of Congress came back with his/her final ruling on the CARP’s Webcasting royalty recommendations…and it ain’t much better than the original.

In other words, we’re toast.

As of 2:00pm MST, Radio Free Tiny Pineapple will be closing its doors to the general public and will simply revert to what it was in the beginning: a way for me to listen to my CDs at work.

Tears will be shed, garments rent, sack-cloth and ashes worn.

But, if you’re unhappy about the ruling, don’t blame the Librarian of Congress. According to U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee and Rick Boucher:

“We are moderately encouraged that the Librarian of Congress reduced the rates for Internet-only webcasters to the same level AM/FM radio Internet broadcasters. We remain very concerned, however, that this rate will lead to the elimination of hundreds of small businesses and does not provide a viable model to serve both the Internet radio industry and recording artists.

“Unfortunately, these rates are a direct result of the flawed ‘willing-buyer/willing-seller’ standard that Congress mandated the Librarian of Congress use in determining these rates. Instead of assessing a fair rate, the flawed standard instead requires the arbitrators to try to replicate willing buyers and willing sellers in an already flawed marketplace.

“While the Librarian of Congress clearly went to great lengths to change the burdensome Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) ruling, we believe that such a contorted process and poor outcome can be avoided by changing the standard guiding the Librarian’s decision-making and removing other obstacles in current copyright law that were identified by the Librarian.”

Additional Links:

RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter

Wired News

Huzzah! The CARP recommendations have been rejected by the Librarian of Congress. (Am I the only one who, when hearing the title “Librarian of Congress,” pictures some elderly, matronly woman shushing rowdy Senators for speaking too loudly in the non-fiction section?)

It’s probably only a temporary stay of execution, but it looks like we’ll be able to broadcast for at least a few more months. <knock on silicon>

As many of you know, the Librarian of Congress has until May 21 to either accept or reject the recommendations of the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (“CARP”) concerning Internet radio royalty rates and record-keeping requirements.

Barring an unseasonable drop in temperature in hell and the subsequent transformation of H2O from liquid to solid form, Radio Free Tiny Pineapple will be going dark on or around May 21st. RFTP will simply revert to what it was in the beginning: a way for me to listen to my CDs at work. You just won’t be able to listen in anymore.

That’s a shame because, based on the traffic and fan mail that we get, it is obvious that RFTP is meeting the needs of a niche that is poorly-served by conventional broadcasters.

It is also obvious, based on the number of CD purchases at Amazon.com that are made by RFTP listeners linking directly from our site, that RFTP is generating quite a bit of revenue for the record labels. (And who knows how much revenue we’re generating indirectly? I think Jonatha Brooke owes me a car.)

Still, I do believe that artists should be compensated for their works, and if artists (by way of their labels and the RIAA) feel that the CARP recommendations are the best way to facilitate that, who am I to say otherwise?

As Goethe once said, “There ain’t no fighting The Man…”

Additional Links:

• The New York Times’ “Panel’s Ruling on Royalties Is Setback for Web Radio Services” (Requires free registration.)
• CNET’s “ Webcasters Grumble Over Proposed Fees”
• Robert X. Cringely’s “Internet Radio is Dead — Long Live Internet Radio!”
• SaveInternetRadio.net

As you may have noticed, the Tiny Pineapple Web site has undergone a bit of a redesign. As part of the redesign I’ve started using Cascading Style Sheets almost exclusively for the typography.

I didn’t have the guts to move to CSS positioning for the page layout. There are still too many CSS browser bugs/quirks at this point. While I’ve become a master of coding HTML to overcome browser incompatibilities over the years, CSS seems to have taken browser-specific coding to an entirely new level.

(And I thought CSS was supposed to get rid of the need for browser-specific coding. Go figure.)

Also, I’ve started a weblog. Yeah, I know…

We’ve significantly revised The Tiny Pineapple Gallery including the addition of The Dunmore Pineapple and a gentleman “who lives in a pineapple under the sea.”