New Design Complete

As you can see, I have the new layout up. I'm not going to say too much about the layout as you can read all about it under Projects -> Web Design.

However, I'm proud of this layout. I never really realized how easy building a site like this could be. All I needed was a couple of programs and here we are. For once, there was very little scripting of my own done.

One last note, HIT THE MESSAGE BOARDS UP AND CHAT!!!! Thank you.

B.E.Z.

Changes Coming

I got to thinking about this page over the last couple of days. For those of you that have been visiting this page over the last couple of years, you might remember that this page used to be "Skoo's Web Jawn". Well, I thought about that idea a little bit, got creative with it and decided to bring it back.

I came into my Web Design class today with this idea and started playing around in Photoshop and came up with the banner you see above. Next thing you know, I'm being asked to make a webpage from Photoshop and I figured that if I'm going to do something like this, I'm going to put it to use. Also, I'm already working with the banner at the time, why not make my new layout now? So, I am and it can possibly be done by Friday or at least by Monday.

One of the major changes I'll be doing is going back to a splash page (basically an intro page) with a pop-up window for the main content.

Another thing I'm thinking about doing is moving over to Movable Type for my blogging service. In saying that, if it's possible I'd like to have more people posting on here to supply something of a "guest column" format to the page. Just sounds like a fun idea.

Looking good

Came to the time where my Web Design class takes a 15 minute break and switches rooms. At that time, my instructor wanted to pull me to the side. I'm like "ok, what's up?" Turns out that he feels I'm way ahead of what the class is teaching (which I agree) and that h just hopes that I don't get bored. So, in other words, I'm practically teeing off on this class.

So, just so y'all know what's up, I left a screen shot of what I've done so far above this post.

Anyway, that's it. B.E.Z.

Hockey's Back!!!

The National Hockey League's Board of Governors has ratified the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiated with the NHL Players' Association, ending a 310-day work stoppage, signaling a new era of cooperation and partnership, and ensuring the League will resume play for the 2005-06 season.

The six-year agreement, scheduled to run through September 15, 2011, may be reopened by the Players' Association following Year Four (2008-09). The Players' Association also has the option to extend the agreement for one year at the end of the scheduled term.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement includes a completely revamped economic system under which, during the first year, total player costs of the 30 NHL Clubs will not exceed 54% of League-wide revenue. The calibration of the percentage in future years of the Agreement will be linked to a percentage of League-wide revenue, and could rise to 57% if League-wide revenue exceeds $2.7 billion.

No Club payroll for the 2005-06 season will be less than $21.5 million and no payroll will exceed $39 million - including all salaries, signing bonuses and performance bonuses. Each individual player contract currently in existence will include a 24% reduction of NHL salary for every year of its term, and no individual player salary can exceed 20% of a Club's Upper Limit on payroll.

The economic system also includes provisions for enhanced revenue sharing.

Accounting of League-wide revenue will be monitored jointly by the NHL and NHLPA. In addition, the League and Players' Association have agreed to create several joint committees that will work together toward the advancement of the game in a variety of areas, including competition, broadcasting and marketing.

The new Agreement also creates, for the first time, a joint program dealing with the use of Performance-Enhancing Substances. Per the agreement, every NHL player will be subject to up to two "no notice" tests per year. The first positive test for performance-enhancing substances will result in a mandatory 20-game suspension without pay to the player. A second positive test would result in a 60-game suspension, and a third would result in permanent suspension; however, such a player would be eligible to apply for reinstatement after two years.

Other elements of the agreement:

COMPLIANCE BUYOUTS - Clubs may buy out player contracts at no charge toward the Club's Upper Limit from July 23, 2005 to July 29, 2005 at 5 p.m., ET. A player who is bought out may not rejoin his old club during the 2005-06 season.

CONTRACTS FOR 2004-05 - Contracts for the 2004-05 season have been eliminated.

ENHANCED REVENUE SHARING - Enhanced revenue sharing will see clubs eligible for subsidies if they rank in the bottom half of League revenues and operate in markets of 2.5 million TV households or fewer.

ENTRY DRAFT - The Entry Draft has been reduced to seven rounds from nine, beginning with 2005.

ENTRY-LEVEL SALARY - The entry-level salary limit is $850,000 for 2005 and 2006 draftees and reaches a high of $925,000 for 2011 draftees. Entry-level performance bonus categories and thresholds have been revised.

MINIMUM SALARY - The minimum salary has been increased from $185,000 under the previous agreement to $450,000 in 2005-06. It will rise to $500,000 in the final two years of the agreement.

OLYMPICS - NHL players will participate in the Olympic Winter Games in 2006 (Turin, Italy) and 2010 (Vancouver); no All-Star Game will be played in Olympic years.

RENEGOTIATION - Player contracts will not be re-negotiated, upward or downward, during their term.

SIGNING DEADLINE - Restricted free agents who do not sign contracts by December 1 of a given year will be ineligible to play in the League for the balance of that season.

TRADE DEADLINE - The trade deadline will be moved from the 26th day to the 40th day prior to the conclusion of the regular season. Presuming an April 18 conclusion to the 2005-06 regular season, the trading deadline would occur March 10.

TWO-WAY ARBITRATION - Eligibility rules for Player Salary Arbitration have been modified and Clubs will now have the ability to elect Salary Arbitration for eligible Players.

UNRESTRICTED FREE AGENCY - The age of unrestricted free agency remains 31 (with four accrued seasons of 40 or more games on an NHL Club's roster) for 2005-06. It will drop to 29 (with four accrued seasons) or eight accrued seasons - regardless of age - in 2006-07. The following season, the age drops to 28 (with four accrued seasons) or seven accrued seasons, and falls to 27 (with four accrued seasons) or seven accrued seasons in 2008-09.

WAIVER DRAFT - The Waiver Draft has been eliminated.

Story from coloradoavalanche.com

Oppose John Roberts

Respect to CHASE SwAyZe for posting this on the okayplayer.com boards:

In the past weeks, Republicans and Democrats have called on President Bush to nominate a moderate for the Supreme Court - someone who would honor the legacy of independent Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But last night, President Bush nominated Judge John Roberts, a far-right lawyer and corporate lobbyist, to fill her post on the Supreme Court.

We've got to stop Roberts. He opposed clean air rules and worked to help coal companies strip-mine mountaintops. He worked with Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr), and tried to keep Congress from defending the Voting Rights Act. He wrote that Roe v. Wade should be "overruled," and as a lawyer argued (and won) the case that stopped some doctors from even discussing abortion.

Join our urgent petition to let our senators know we expect them to oppose John Roberts right now here

This is one of the most important domestic fights of President Bush's career. We can win - Americans overwhelmingly want a moderate judge. But to win, we need to get the word out early that Roberts is out of the mainstream.

After you've signed, please send this message on to your friends and colleagues. We need to fight back against the misinformation that the Bush administration is putting out.

John Roberts has little experience as a judge - he was only appointed in 2003. But he's got a lot of experience as a corporate lobbyist and lawyer, consistently favoring wealthy corporations over regular Americans.

Here's a list of some of the things that make Roberts the wrong pick for the Supreme Court:
Wrong on environmental protection: Roberts appears to want to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act, and in papers he wrote while in law school he supported far-right legal theories about "takings" which would make it almost impossible for the government to enforce most environmental legislation.

Wrong on civil rights: Roberts worked to keep Congress from defending parts of the Voting Rights Act.

Wrong on human rights: As a appeals court judge, Roberts ruled that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to some prisoners of war.

Wrong on our right to religious freedom: Roberts argued that schools should be able to impose religious speech on attendees.

Wrong on women's rights: Roberts wrote that "Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled." He also weighed in on behalf of Operation Rescue, a violent anti-abortion group, in a federal case.

President Bush could have chosen many fair-minded and independent jurists to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. Instead, he chose a corporate partisan loved by Bush's right-wing base but out of step with the rest of the country.

Tell your senators they need to stop John Roberts now here

Just some ol shullbit

Made a few minor changes. First, I took down the sports blog. I starting thinking about that it says "hip-hop · sports · life" at the top of this page. It would only make sense to include all of that content on one page. so, expect some of that.

That brings me to another thing... if anyone knows of a blogging service that works as well as Blogger, cost as much as Blogger (i.e. free.99), and allows you to post your own templates but catagorize your blogs, let me know.

Anyways, I also provided a link on the left column for copyright info and my XML feed. So, you can now incluse me in your news readers and your My Yahoo! page if you really like rading this page enough. Personaly, that might be a scary thought to me so if you do choose to do that, keep that to yourselves.

Speaking of pages. I've started building my page for my Web Design I class. Wrote the extreamly basic code for it on Friday (everyone was given the same code), made my banner and added a photo today. An image of the page is below.



It's nothing too major at this point. However, I doubt it'll be anything that becomes my page in the future. I'm fairly happy with what I have right now.

Anyway, there isn't too much to say for now.

B.E.Z.

The Foreign Exchange - Connected

Excuse me for sleeping on this album. If it wasn't for cdnow.com saving my preferences while I was browsing to see what's out, I wouldn't have even gave this disc a look.

As I didn't, I'm sure the majority of you that are reading this have not heard of The Foreign Exchange.

FE consists of Phonte from Little Brother fame (check out LB if you haven't done so either) and producer Nicolay. The two met on okayplayer.com, where many mc's and beatmakers like them often hang out online. The two started IM'ing each other, where Nicolay started sending over beats that Phonte would rap over and then send back (thus the group's name). Neither of them knew that the final product would be Connected.

Quite frankly, I'm tired of Hip-Hop for the most part. I'm finding myself in a state where I'm tired of the mainstream and the mixtapes aren't giving me enough of the underground artists I like. Connected is a breath of fresh air in times like these. With beats reminiscent of A Tribe Called Quest or Slum Village and Phonte's flows over those beats, the mixture seems to be a perfect marriage.

This is one of the few albums I can actually listen all the way through without skipping tracks. If you appreciate a change from the normal ignorance that is projected from radio station towers these days, check out Connected. You won't be disappointed.

For more info check out the official site and listen to some sound clips from the album.

Huey Freeman goes swimming

I was looking at the site and making a few minor changes while I was at it, and decided that I would click on the Boondocks link towards the bottom to see if they've updated their site.

They have.

Come to find out in viewing the site that on October 2nd, the series is going to be animated as part of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. Aaron McGruder, the strip's creator, will executive produce the series. Regina King will be doing the voices of Huey and Riley Freeman while john Witherspoon will do the voice for Grandad Freeman. Other character voices will be done by Gary Anthony Williams, Jill Taley, and Cedric Yarbough.

For more info check out boondocks.net

And to read the strip and check out some other cool stuff, check out okayplayer.com

Random notes...

Just had some free time between my classes; three hour's worth to be exact. It's only supposed to be an hour and 40 minute break. But, being that this is the first day of classes, it's nothing but orientation today.

Anyway, just wanted to drop a few notes of things that have been going on around here.

First off, I can't believe that I didn't say anything concerning the approach and aftermath of Hurricane Dennis in the Pensacola area. So, how did things go down there? Well, my father rode out the storm, something that made me nervous up until Dennis' sudden turn northward into the Santa Rosa County area to the east of Pensacola. I'm still awaiting official word from my dad on how things went. I'm guessing electricity is a possible issue.

However, I do know that Pensacola as a whole is in pretty good shape and that the Perdido Key area (not too far from W. Pensacola) reported minimal damage and has been open to the public for the last two days. So, I'm expecting a good report from my dad when I get it.

Now, back to good ol' Lincoln. As I mentioned, I started classes again. I'm taking Web Design I and Photoshop II this quarter. This is the part of my course load that I've been looking to get into. I'm expecting to have a lot of fun with this as this is where I take what I do as a hobby (i.e. this page) and start to make a career out of it. Seriously, how many people can say they get paid for their hobbies? Exactly!!!

So, I'm expecting to start working on what could be some nice changes to the design of this page, not that there's anything wrong with what I have. But, I'm looking to take what I already know and improve on that, which should produce some interesting results. So, stay tuned.

That's all for now.

B.E.Z.