Over time I began to find my place, through the kindness of others and the occasional burst of learning from my own stubborn demands that the world fit my narrow-minded vision of right and wrong. I moved from writing about stray cats and working on weekends to endless, repeated praise for trance music and what I quaintly cherished as community. Then at some point I decided to start doing something public with my photography, whether people recognized me for it or not, and thus we arrived at end of the decade. In the time since ubiquitous computing (to use a word that was en vogue with SIGCHI when I was in college), the fragmentation of platforms, portals, and people has made it harder and harder to be noticed, with each microtransaction of communication becoming far and far less meaningful, any rare original thought swallowed in a sea of chaff.

Sheepishly I now realize that I’ve probably driven away the three or four actual people I had reading this public journal with the advent of my adoption of that watered-down sinkhole of information exchange Facebook. I say so much more often so much less, that it leads me to wonder in twenty years’ time will my children find interest in reading my journal or my tweets? The answer is probably neither, but just the same I’m glad I took the time to sit down and actually think about what I was doing before six months went by and I was scratching my head why 2011 felt so much more empty than any of the other years in recent past.

It’s most likely not a coincidence that the speed and density of my current background music, The Plateaux of Mirror, is likely nearly half that of the floor-rattling trance I usually have on at this time of night. Thank you Mr. Eno for helping me collect my thoughts and appreciate the last forty minutes a little more.

Now the real irony is I started this entry meaning to write about love… but there we have it, the attention span of mankind pared to a millisecond.

I brushed up a very few minor parts of the blog template. Headers should be uniform more or less through all category and monthly archives. I think I’ve figured out a way to fix 90% of the broken image links in the history, I just need to risk a global search-and-replace on the DB. The older blogger titles will have to be done by hand, unfortunately. There’s four hundred and eighty-some to deal with.

I put the search form back, it should work all right, though it’ll bring a harsh light onto all of those stupid blogger title entries. Once I get the older posts all marked up with titles, categories, and slugs I’ll add the most dense category labels to the sidebar.

Yesterday I took a one-day course in dark room printing. It was pretty interesting, though as you’d expect quite frustrating at first. There are so many steps in manual printing that are handled for you digitally, mostly alignment-related things. I have a couple of discount coupons to go again in the next few months, though, so I’m looking forward to that.

B: Why don’t you put comments on your blog?
R: Because Blogger doesn’t handle them well, the interface is all clunky and doesn’t look right with my template.
B: Well, it’d be really helpful if you had them. There’re so many things that you write about that I want to reply to.
R: If I had the ability to comment on my blog, you’d really use it?
B: Of course.
R: Alright. It’ll probably be really tough, but I’ll make something happen.
B: Cool.

So yes, we’ve finally kicked Blogger to the curb and are using extensible content management software. Oddly enough, Blogger Beta seems to just have figured out tags (that and a lack of unobtrusive comments were my main reasons for leaving).

In any case, I should have the template back to looking like it used to in the next few days, despite being mostly homeless. Top priority now is support for my legacy posts in Japanese, and after that titles. Then I get to learn just enough CSS to get the template fixed. And for dessert, I’m also making the long overdue upgrade to Gallery 2, which dovetails nicely with WordPress.

Let this be the beginning of better-organized, more aesthetically pleasing communication between us.

Just need to get through one more day at work… pray I can find a place to live this weekend.

Good night!

By the way, with summer ending, the photo feature should be up in full swing by September 23rd! I’m looking forward to playing with Photoshop in more creative ways.

Here goes…

If you can see that, we’re sweet and I can start putting up small versions of my photography and such. Kind of obnoxious that it was to be inline with the text like that, but templates are messy with the automation we employ.

My name is David Ventura, though a lot of people call me Rusty. After finishing graduate school in the spring of 2003, I packed up shop and moved to Japan to embark on an adventure both inwards and out, for both glory and peace; though I admit I probably won’t find the latter without acquiescing to the truthful insignificance of the former.

I used to enjoy bourbon and pizza, now I appreciate green tea and raw tuna. I play a lot of video games, ride a beat-up commuter bicycle, listen to electronic music, and try to take a lot of pictures of things that interest me. Professionally I make commercial video games, though I have a history of research and drama. The most important thing I hope for each day is continual growth and to learn from my mistakes.

In this journal I keep a running account of my thoughts about myself, about humanity, and the things I see. I occasionally create a photo collection, but for the most part it’s just a random shot here and there that I may or may not make the time to edit on the computer. Sometimes what I write about is rather personal, and it may be offensive or depressing, but mostly it’s pedestrian and quite boring. Whatever I do write about though, it’s honest, it’s what I think and what I feel; it’s not for posturing or obligation. If it’s of interest then all the better. But to look back and remember with nostalgia the times both rough and smooth, I’m confident I won’t soon forget what mattered to me and how much I tried to make it work out, so perhaps a little wiser in the long run.

Always moving onwards,
David “Rusty” Ventura

Deep river runs its course
To a warm horizon
Shadows of falling leaves
October moon and rusty skies
Ever changing feelings
The seeds of autumn in my mind

Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Feels like it’s just begun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Waiting for summer sun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Feels like it’s just begun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Waiting for summer sun
Hiding sun, like the hiding sun
Feels like it’s just begun