My Old Provider

I’ve been with my former hosting company for about 10 years now (name withheld to not only prevent inadvertent advertising for them, but also because if you’re happy with their service – by all means, have a ball). I can’t remember exactly when I switched, but I’m pretty sure I was either living in Seattle (making it 11 years), or shortly after I moved to CA (making it almost 10 years).

In that time, the original company was bought out and switched names, then bought out again and switched names. With the name switching and server upgrades, I was relegated to obscurity. My hosting plan stayed the same, despite the fact that they never upgraded my plan. In fact, my plan didn’t even exist anymore. My only option was to upgrade. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me just swap to a newer solution, saying instead that my nearest upgrade path was around $120/month. Fuck that.

Here’s the problems I’ve had in the last 10 years, which I complained about numerous times and were never resolved :

1. No burst capabilities. If I got any type of traffic surge, my server would just up and die on me (ya know, lest they charge me out the ass for overages)
2. Ridiculously low timeouts. If I connected to my server, changed a file and saved it back to the server, I’d be waiting up to a minute for the server to respond. Even connecting via FTP took me close to a minute each time.
3. My SMTP server had mismatched rDNS (I explain this below) – this was a giant pain in my ass
4. No support for IMAP email
5. Every new domain, new DB, new subdomain, or anything outside of very basic server administration meant submitting a support ticket and waiting hours (sometimes days) for someone to get around to it
6. Did I mention they wouldn’t let me migrate to a newer plan to match their new owners’ service plans?

rDNS Issues

I don’t know too much about the specifics, but apparently my SMTP server didn’t match the DNS records for the domain. Because of this, almost every email service in the world would toss email from RevMitcz.com into the Junk folder and never look back. Having mismatched rDNS is the realm of spammers, and the very first line of defense against spam is to just reject those emails outright — even though spammers haven’t bothered with mismatched rDNS in over a decade. Craigslist responses would immediately be returned to me, stating basically “your rDNS is fucked”. Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, all of them – they’d just toss my emails into a junk folder and call it a day. For the past year or two, I’ve used GMail for all outgoing mail to get around this limitation.

Now, About MediaTemple

For me, the number one thing that got me turned onto MediaTemple were all the great designers that willingly put “hosted by (mt)” banners on their sites. I’ve never in my life put a banner on my site for my previous provider, and frankly I was always pretty reluctant to answer the question I got from clients “which host do YOU use?”. Being a freelance designer/developer, it makes sense that I should know a good provider and be using the very best. I’m an expert – I’ve been doing this shit for 14 years now. But, no, I would shrug and say “I dunno.. my host sucks, but I can find you a good one… I think”. Now, I’ll just say “MediaTemple – without a doubt”.

Their site is gorgeous, and standards-compliant. They keep it updated, too (WebAir, who I was with for all of about an hour once, still uses their design from 1999). They’ve got an iPhone-optimized control panel. They use Twitter (and they even reply if you mention them). They keep a regularly-updated blog. But, most important? They have the best service and support I’ve ever seen. Not only do they have a fully-searchable Knowledge Base that answers just about every question you could have – but they run a 24/7 phone support system (with real, live people who speak real, live English).

For the past year or so, I’d eye their site and think about switching to them, but groan to myself about the difficulties of server migration (I tend to have between 4 and 10 domains hosted on separate IPs at any given time). For fun, I’d call their support line at 4am and ask random questions. I never once waited for more than 2 minutes. When I called for actual support reasons on Saturday, my wait time was 3 minutes and the tech immediately solved my (admittedly very basic) problem, and didn’t try to shove me off the phone once I said “ahh.. that worked!”. I even got an email a few minutes later that described in detail the problem I had, and how it was solved. That’s some serious attention to detail.

What This Means Now

I’m pretty fuckin’ pumped that I’m finally on a nice, fast host. I can finally send email from my own domain to any service in the world. I’ve got IMAP email (!!!!!). I’m future-ready should I do some crazy shit that gets me a huge traffic burst. I can add my own domains without having to submit a support ticket and wait for some lazy bastard to “get around to it” days later. Ditto for setting up new DBs, or subdomains.

I’m in a position where I’m not scared to give the server a little workout. I can work on my own sites faster and in realtime (in Coda) without having to make 100s of edits and then commit the changes to a server and wait for a minute or two for my server to respond, only to find out I misplaced a semicolon and wait even longer.

The long and short of it is – I’m motivated to do more cool shit with my online presence and I have a forward-thinking host that can support such ventures.

Support Me (and MediaTemple)

If you need hosting, get it through MediaTemple and tell ‘em revmitcz.com sent ya :)

(I did not write this whole entry just to plug their shit, I wrote it cause I’m a geek and I’m excited about the new server)

Related posts:

1. IE6 “access is denied” Javascript error – FIXED
2. WebSpeak – A Primer.

Mi Vida Ridiculo

This is an area where I plan to tell stories about the whacky shit that goes on in my life. Too long for twitter, but not always long enough for a full blog post (though some stories will end up blog-length). I have a series of weird thoughts that go through my head throughout the day, sometimes triggered by an event, sometimes not. I thought it would be cool to have a little holding pen for them. And now I do.

Mitcz : The Expert

Mitcz : The Expert episodes are now prominently displayed on the frontpage. This will make it not only easier for longtime viewers to keep up with, but will help newcomers actually find out it exists and watch all of them in one place.

Twitter Archives

I was amused to find Twitter Tools, which can automatically post a daily blog entry for my Twitter posts. I took them out of my feed, and out of search results on my blog, so they stand on their own as sort of a mini-blog.

Enhancements

Pretty much just a cleaning up of pages and code, and making everything a little easier to read and digest. If you have thoughts – spit ‘em out.

Related posts:

1. Mitcz.com Version 2.0
2. Ecto 2.3.6 Test Post
3. My Finest Bloggings of 2006

Personally, I want the Kindle to fail. Amazon’s taking SEVENTY FUCKING PERCENT of the price on e-books and magazines. That’s just insane and fucking wrong. Sure, they’re providing the platform – but since the entirety of the platform depends on the content you consume with it, they’re cannibalizing their entire market. Also, the average price for Kindle books is $10. For Apple’s iBooks store? $5. Bam! G’night, Amazon.

Why it’s a game changer

Right off the bat – forget e-book readers. They’re dead in the water now. Unless they all drop to under $100, they’re just not even worth it.

So, 16GB is WAY more than any current e-book reader has. Not that it matters, you can fit like 10,000 books on a $5 thumb drive. I was a little bummed about the 3G functionality tax, but $30/mo for UNLIMITED 3G, NO contract? That’s a “holy shit” price.

Here’s something you might not have considered, which only just occurred to me a few minutes ago – I have an iPhone, as do millions of others. The iPhone supports tethering. AT&T is supposed to enable tethering soon. What this means for an iPhone-and-iPad owner is : you can save that $130 3G tax AND the $30/month, and still get unlimited 3G service 24/7 just by using the iPhone’s 3G signal as your mobile WiFi hotspot. Fuck yes.

Suddenly, it all makes sense. Throw in that kick-ass keyboard stand, and it’s like having an iMac anywhere you go. Better even than a laptop in some cases : longer battery life, less distractions, thinner, lighter, smaller, higher viewing angle. As you may know, I’ve been writing a book, and while I prefer to chill on my couch or in bed and type out on my laptop – I’m using a 17″ MacBook Pro. I still haven’t found a comfortable way to sit there and write, without lighting my damned lap on fire and/or contorting my body in some manner to fit the damned thing on my lap but still giving me room to type.

The idea of being able to sit there with a slab of 1/2-inch-wide, 10-inch-diagonal touchscreen tech that’s practically weightless, doesn’t overheat, and lets me type on a full-size keyboard anywhere I’d want to sit? Dude – Amazing (or, ya know “magical“).

What’s Missing?

A camera. I can hardly believe Apple didn’t toss a camera up in that bitch. It would be trivial to add, would add something like $2 to the manufacturing cost, and would increase it’s utility by a wide margin. While you can pretty much bet the farm that the 2nd-gen iPad will most definitely include a front-facing camera, I wouldn’t be too surprised to find someone (maybe even Apple) make a dock-connected camera accessory soon. Personally, it doesn’t matter too much to me, cause I’ve already got a perfectly capable Macbook Pro with integrated webcam and video conferencing software, but it’d be damn cool to be able to do Mitcz : The Expert with a thin slab of tech.

All of that being said… I want one. It’s quite possibly the greatest thing Apple’s ever done.

UPDATE :

Looks like Apple’s already announced dongles for things like USB :

So, I give it about 1 month after launch before there’s a webcam solution.

Related posts:

1. New Mac Day
2. My “Sex Book” Sample Chapter
3. A Geek and His Money Are Soon Parted

Nonetheless, here’s a quick breakdown of Do’s and Don’ts.

Do Not…

• Use netspeak/slang. (words like “ur”, “u”, “luv”) or bad spelling (“wut”, “realy”, “cant”)
• Use physical compliments (“you’re sexy”, “beautiful”, “hey cutie”, etc)
• Mention using outside services to get to know them (email, AIM, yahoo, cellphone, etc)
• Mention god. Unsurprisingly (to me, at least), Jesus and God decrease reply rates even amongst other religious terms.

Do…

• Be humble, especially for men. Surprisingly “sorry”, “awkward” and “apologize” all had high success rates.
• Mention something in their ad. The phrase “you mention..” had the highest rate of any term
• Mention a common interest. It appears common taste in a specific band is your best bet.
• Compliment something non-physical. Phrases like “it’s cool that..”, “fascinating” and “awesome” did very well
• Use “how’s it going”, “what’s up”, or even “howdy” (my fave). “hi”, “hello” and “hey” achieved very low success rates.
• Mention atheism. Oddly enough, it got a success rate almost on-par with musical tastes. No other religion fares well, though.

The Perfect Message*

Putting all that data (hooray science and math!) into a human-readable form means that the following form letter should yield you the highest possible success rate for messaging another user on a dating site. The keywords/phrases from the OkTrends article in bold, insert your own variables between {brackets}

How’s it going? Cool profile. I noticed that you’re a fan of {band}, aren’t they awesome? Have you heard {obscure older album by that band, or one similar}? It’s amazing. Also, You mention {random topic}, so I’m curious what you think of {similar topic}. Sorry if these questions seem awkward, but I’m pretty sure you’d have some fascinating responses, being a fellow {atheist, vegetarian, metalhead, gamer} with good taste.

Hope you’re doing well, and maybe we’ll talk soon.

There ya go, kids. It’s like having an aggregating math robot do all your small-talk for you! Have fun with that and let me know if it works.

Theoretically, if the robots are to be believed, this hits all the right chords. I’d feel cheesy sending out this message, too, but it’s worth a shot

Related posts:

1. We Have Hijacked Your Baby
2. Wading through the personals pool
3. My Evening with Skinny Puppy

Along with the redesign, I’ve unveiled the new logo for all things Mitcz. It’s something I sketched out about a year ago, but never got around to actually finalizing. Last weekend, I did. Last night, I finally used it somewhere.

If you’d like a closer look, here’s the semi-final Mitcz Industries (tongue firmly planted in cheek on that one) logo…

As for the blog – you’ll notice a few new things here, some enhancements, and obviously a whole new look. One of the best things about this new design is how much more readable the entries are. The line spacing, font size and color scheme really invite your eyes to keep going.

For years, I’ve wanted to project “evil…. but classy” throughout my projects / marketing, for reasons I’ll explain another time, and I feel like I finally nailed that goal with the current Mitcz.com design. I’m really happy with this new look, and it almost makes me want to redesign RevMitcz.com again. I neither have the time nor energy to do that right now, so it’s on the backburner.

Who knows, maybe this new look will inspire me to blog more often, too. We shall see.

Related posts:

1. ReLaunch : RevMitcz.com v3.0
2. New Mitcz.com
3. Mitcz.com, Redesigned and Reworked

Design Related

- I take pictures of certain textures/lighting in the real world so I can try and synthesize them in Photoshop later. I once spent 6 hours making a chrome gradient because of a toyota logo I saw on the back of a truck while I was stuck in traffic.

- I play “guess the font face” with restuarant menus. No one else likes this game, so I play it in my head and I’ll shout the answers when I feel confident that I’m right. If you ever see me shout “Helvetica Neue Black Italic!” in public – you know why.

- I generally refuse to frequent any establishments that use 72PPI artwork on their signage. If I NEED to frequent that establishment, I always ask if they want a better designer. You can ask Misi, as I did this in Vegas at the Rio cause their door hangers were printed with 72PPI artwork. So tacky.

- When I go to the grocery store, I make sure everything is placed on an imaginary grid, usually in order of its size (if I have time). I won’t even let the items get rung up if they’re not positioned correctly. People hate going to the grocery store with me.

Internet Related

- I have GMail alerts pushed to my phone (which means they come in automatically, without my having to check them) and Google Alerts set up for myself. This means that if you write about “mitcz” online, I’ll know about it within 24 hours. (this includes when I write about myself, like I am right now)

- I’ve actually interrupted arguments at parties, half-drunk, holding my phone as it’s pointed to an informational page (wikipedia, snopes, etc) because I needed to prove that (for instance) “yes, in fact, you DO use more than 10% of your brain”

- If someone mentions pregnancy around me, I immediately yell “OMG! PREGGERS! LOL”.

- Nad and Misi were right when they made a secret bet that I would, in fact, look up the hierarchy of poker hands on Google if we ever played poker together.

- Yesterday, I was in the mall food court w/Nad (waiting for Iron Man to start). While staring up at a FuddRuckers ButtFuckers, I actually thought to myself “I CAN has cheeseburger!”

Random Geekery

- Whenever I make a minor mistake (like knocking something over), someone in my head yells “Shit! Undo!” (and I’ve actually thought of reaching forth to hit Command-Z on an invisible keyboard in front of me)

- Instead of counting sheep, I type out the alphabet and random phrases on a keyboard in my head

- I’ve gotten so familiar with coding basic/intermediate Flash, Javascript and PHP that I’ve come to document my thought processes like so :

if ( I’ve explained Myself == true) {
wait for answer;
if (they agree) {
give ‘em a hug
} else {
walk away angry
}
} else {
rephrase argument;
return false;
}

Related posts:

1. I Changed Colin Farrell’s Life (maybe)
2. My New Place : A Visual Tour
3. My YouTube Channel is GONE : But there’s good news, and more videos.

Anyway, enough of that. Here’s a look into the past week or so of my life, and some shots of the new place. Please to be clicking the thumbnails for full-size images.

Some Random Street Art. Found near the new place. Thought it looked pretty cool, and took a pic. It looked like either Alfred Hitchcock or Hunter S. Thompson at first, but I’ve since found the inspiration for this piece on a huge wall a few blocks up – and it’s of Alfred Hitchcock (obviously, the original is lacking the sign).

Mr Peepers #1. My Valentine’s Day gift for The Woman. She had fallen in love with this little beauty some months ago on a random trip to Orange County at the world’s greatest reptile store (Prehistoric Pets) but her mom hates snakes. So, I felt it was a good housewarming gift, as well as a mushy-mush VD gift. It’s an albino corn snake. his head (and beady red eyes) is in the lower right corner of the white bag he’s in.

Mr Peepers #2. Mr. Peepers (I called him that cause he likes to hide and then “peep” out at the world) is also Misi’s new favorite hair decor. He can literally chill out there for hours, and we’ve gone shopping for hours with him just wrapped up and relaxing. No one even notices.

Bouschka, worn out. Bouschka’s so lazy, he gets worn out just watching me and Nad pack up our old place.

Box o’ Cords #1. My office/desk/command center area has grown quite large since my last move, and this box is just the cords for my setup.

Box o’ Cords #2. A side-shot of the cord box, for size reference against a stereo receiver and the box for my 20-inch Apple Cinema Display.

Bouschka, again. Bouschka warmed up to the new place very quickly. Here he is doing what he does best – lying around and looking cute.

Mitcz’s Bathroom Kit. Because Misi rules, she got me this badass badger hair shaving brush, high-quality shaving soap, and my very own straight razor. Now I can shave like my grandpa. And that rules.

DVD Racks. Our 400-and-growing DVD collection (which now includes Misi’s collection) has outgrown the 3 bookshelves. Nad and I were kinda stressing on how we’d fit a 4th bookshelf into the old place, but there’s enough room in the new place to make it happen. A 5th bookshelf, however, while require a little more planning.

The Living Room This is a shot of our living room. We’ll be replacing the couch soon, but it works for now. I’d like to replace that TV, too, but Nad and Misi tell me there’s more important things to buy first. Oh well. At least the new HD box from the cable company pumps some pretty impressive imagery into that thing.

Shaitan, Cookie Puss and Seven “The Kids” as we call them. Well, 3 of the 6 anyway. Shaitan is the ball python. Seven is one of the emperor scorpions (named as such because she’s got but 7 legs). Cookie Puss is the other one. Named because I took too long to name her and Misi thought she needed a cute name, since I bend towards “evil” names.

The Command Center #1 This is where I spend most of my time. It’s a pretty sweet setup, and I finally have room for all my crap. But, where’s all the cords?

The Command Center #2 Oh. There they are. Well, most of ‘em anyway. I still haven’t setup everything, but it’s about 95% of the way there.

Related posts:

1. Behind The Desk of Mitcz
2. What is Love?
3. Mitchell, come here and get high with your mother.

51 years from now – how heartily will we chuckle at early 21st century citizens’ wide-eyed view of multi-terrabyte drives?

Related posts:

1. Behind The Desk of Mitcz
2. A Geek and His Money Are Soon Parted
3. Let’s Talk iPad

Cause we’ve all done it.

I recently bought a Wii (best fucking thing EVER, btw) and I bought Super Mario Bros on the Virtual Console cause.. I just love that game. I can never get enough of it. The game brings back so many great memories for me that I can just sit there listening to the music and go into some nostalgic wonderland in my head.

Anyway, so I was playing it the other night to unwind after a 12-hour workday, and having a drink, and after a few levels of “Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle” I thought about making a shirt that showed the same scene but instead said..

“Thank you Mario! But your Princess is with another man…”

Cause wouldn’t that just be it? I mean, he puts up with ALL this shit and you know in real life she’d just leave him for his brother Luigi. Or Bowser.

I bring this up cause I recently ran into this little tidbit (taken from play-nintendo.com)

Nintendo of America Requests the Pleasure of Your Company at the Marriage of Peach to Bowser on the 9th Day of April 2007

The nuptials will take place at the beginning of Super Paper Mario™, which will be available for Nintendo’s hot new Wii™ home video game system. Those who wish to attend – or thwart – the ceremony will need to switch between 2-D and 3-D.

Moreover, an analyst suggest this …

Bowser doesn’t actually kidnap Peach, she goes voluntarily. Unfortunately, Mario always has to ruin it by ’saving’ her in order to make himself look good.

It gets even creepier. This, taken from the manual for Super Mario DS :

Who’s behind Princess Peach’s disappearance?
Who is behind the attack on Peach’s Castle?
Are the two inclidents related?
Didn’t Bowser Jr. once think Princess Peach might be his mother?

What a goddamned mind-fuck. Seriously. Let me explain (please, I need to, it’ll keep me sane to get this shit out)…

So here’s this hairy, overweight, Italian plumber guy. He’s no superhero. Probably not the brightest bulb in the box (my sincerest of apologies to hairy, overweight, Italian plumbers the world-over) and he’s way into this chick. She’s fuckin’ gorgeous. Way out of his class. But, because of his undying love for her, he goes after her every time she gets up and kidnapped (which happens a lot in the world of Mario).

This poor fella’s been beaten down – had rocks and hammers and bullets tossed at him, had to ride around on dinosaurs and smash turtles and WTF is a goomba? and jump over screamin’ hot lava and learn how to fly with a feather (lord only knows wtf that was about) and dress up in weird costumes and he even brought his brother into the mix to help out…. just, you name it.

So he goes through ALL that shit, MANY times over in many different worlds, and here’s this prissy little thing who doesn’t have the cojones to just say “Look, Mario, I’m just not that into you”?? Man, FUCK that shit.

It’s not that Mario’s a sucker, or that he’s a creepy stalker-dude or anything. He just doesn’t know. Probably figures she’s too mentally fucked up from all these kidnappings to be ready to settle down and have little Mario babies. All the while, this chick’s playin’ him for a damned fool.

Why do I even give a shit? Well, beyond it shattering everything wholesome and sacred about the Mario empire – this shit echoes through in my own life. I’ve been there. I’ve been Mario. Not literally, and certainly I didn’t traverse 32 levels of insanity to save her from some evil ex-boyfriend or anything.

But, I have been through that shit where some chick plays the victim role and says “this guy just won’t leave me alone” or “my ex keeps bothering me to marry him” bla bla bla. And ya know, you take pity, as a man. Cause we’re all entertaining the thought of being heroes and shit. Probably because of too much Mario-playing as a kid. So, I’d go forth and comfort her, and try to be exclusive and shit. And try to cuddle a poor girl. And sit there trying to help her get rid of the stalker. Meanwhile, some months later, you come to find out that she was saying the SAME shit to that guy about YOU. And then she goes and marries him. Secretly. And lies to you by telling you her mom died so you wouldn’t wonder why she was suddenly distant and quiet and always wrapped up in personal shit.

True story.

Anyway, so this whole Mario thing is fuckin’ me up. It’s sneaking into my dreams, masquerading as a different scenario with similarities to prove some kind of lesson or something. Hell, I had a dream recently where a boyfriend showed up to get his g/f away from me and went on this whole speech about “do you have ANY idea what I’ve been through to get here??” and I was just like “dude, she’s just not that into you”.

Nintendo – I’m sending you a bill for my therapy.

Related posts:

1. Dear Mr. Burton – Don’t Rape My Childhood
2. Women’s Sex Gripes? Mitcz Responds.
3. I’m Gonna Be Naked in Playboy!

(try mousing over the circle in the upper-left corner once you’re on the site for a nice surprise)

Normally, I’d write some long-winded thing about the design process involved with a re-launch, and discuss the ins and outs and specifics of choosing certain ideas over others bla bla bla. I’m still going to detail a few things regarding the relaunch but to put it simply : I was hating my old site. It was too cumbersome to update, I didn’t think it reflected much of my current goals and lifestyle, and basically… it was in bad need of a refresh.

I’ve also just started to use iPhoto + Flickr, so now updating Photos in my gallery will be a simple, streamlined process. Expect to see shitloads of photos show up in the new gallery as I take the time to organize everything. Since my videos these days are all uploaded to YouTube or Google Video, the old interface I used for streaming Quicktime movies was outdated and useless. Furthermore, I’ve made my other sites a bit more integrated into the main RevMitcz.com interface. That’s more of a marketing decision than anything else.

In the past few weeks, I’ve looked around at a number of other comedians’ websites – both world-renowned, and that of lesser-known “up and coming” comics. I’m pretty sure none of them wrote their own guestbook script from scratch, or coded their own Flickr-retrieving gallery pages, or hand-coded their own “send to a friend” script, or designed all their own desktops, buddy icons, and what-have-you. I feel good in knowing most comedians ain’t got shit on my site. Exception, of course, given to DaneCook.com. Maybe one day I’ll sit and redo my whole site in Flash and make myself all superstar-like. But for this refresh, it was overkill and I don’t like not being able to direct-link to anything. I have a Flash solution for that as well, but again.. overkill. Besides, Dane has a marketing team and a webdev team that put that thing together – I’m sure he oversaw the project and gave specific instructions to his people, but in the end I guarantee it wasn’t free. My site didn’t cost me a dime to redesign. I know it’s a lofty goal to go up against “America’s Hottest Comic”, but if I don’t shoot for the stars I’ll never get off the ground. And before you say it, yes I’m well aware I’m nowhere near the same league as him – I’m talking purely about websites here.

The old site was never meant to include high-profile links to my MySpace page, Mitcz.com, AuralSalvation.com, et al. – so I did this half-assed thing w/the flash intro that linked to all those places, long after the fact. Hell, RevMitcz v2.0 launched with a blog that pulled in my LiveJournal, there was no AuralSalvation.com at the time, MySpace was just beginning to take off, and YouTube was completely non-existent. My new site has a little area at the top of every page that links to important secondary sites in the Mitczosphere. Should I later launch another site or two, I can simply redesign that top area to include the links and voila! done.

Up until last week, I sat around playing with various redesign attempts for over almost 2 months. I even had a beta version up that I used for sending photos to people, or videos. I really wanted the new features of the site available immediately.. but I was hating the design. Not unlike how RMv2 got it’s last-minute redesign, RMv3 was made in a quick “wait! what if I try…… THIS?!?” – inspired almost exclusively by the Flash intro that I made on a whim. From there, it was a simple matter of figuring out how to style individual pages and give it a clean, unified look. As these things go, I’ll end up feeling constricted and bored by this site in less than a year and I’ll set out to redo the shit from scratch yet again.

The final decision I had to make with this redesign was to shift focus away from the multi-faceted purpose of the old site – designer, comedian, musician, actor, blogger, model – to a much simpler “entertainer, with a focus on comedy” fashion that the new site has going for it. There’s no design portfolio, cause frankly I don’t need any more clients and I’m hoping to retire from design in the next few years. The music is gone cause they were all half-done attempts anyway and on the uber-d/l, I’ve got a new project I’m working on that I hope to unveil before the year’s end and I don’t want it tainted by another shift in focus or getting mixed in with half-finished shit from years ago.

If you get a weird PHP error on the front page, that’s my RSS script to pull in my blog. For some reason, it doesn’t want to use the cache folder I created and I don’t know enough fancy shit to make a MySQL solution as of yet, but that’s my next goal. I’ll have it fixed soon enough, but a simple refresh of the front page will fix it for now, in case you have that problem.

And now, stats for the geektastic :

# of beta redesigns before it went final : 4
Technologies utilized : AJAX, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, hCard, Flash, RSS
# of lines of hand-coded CSS in rm3.css : 859
# of pages created for new site : 16
# of javascripts used : 6
# of images (not including gallery/downloads) : 56
# of Flash movies (not including YouTube videos) : 3
# of Validation errors in the XHTML : 7 (all of them b/c of the Flash)
Approx # of hours spent since first attempt : 65+

Now what are you waiting for? GO TAKE A LOOK!

Related posts:

1. New RevMitcz.com Frontpage
2. Mitcz.com Redesign, and a new logo
3. New RevMitcz.com and MORE

Here’s a short list of things that make me giddy (from least giddy to most giddy) :

1. Seeing new boobs
2. Caressing and/or smacking firm woman-ass
3. Seeing new vagina
4. New Hardware
5. Good “First-Time” sex.
6. Threesomes
7. Performing a good stand-up comedy routine
8. New Mac Day
9. Being heralded as a king of comedy

(okay, so that last one has never happened, but let a guy dream)

This marks my 8th Mac to date. Let’s count..

1. Macintosh LC (1990) – Received through my mom’s middle school. I learned MacPaint on this fucker.
2. Macintosh Performa 6400/180 (1996) – Our family’s first self-purchased Mac. I learned Web Design on this bad boy.
3. Power Mac 8600/250 (1997) – The first PowerMac I actually owned myself. Bought it with my first credit card after I graduated high school. It’s painted black and sitting in my closet (with a half-installed Linux variant circa 2000)
4. PowerBook G3/233 (1999) – Bought it from an employee at CompUSA. I’m pretty sure he ripped it from them, but I needed a laptop and it was a steal at $700. Is currently lying in pieces in some box or other.
5. Power Mac G4/500 (2000) – My old workhorse. I even wrote a eulogy to it.
6. Powerbook G4/500 (2001) – Bought this off my first porno employer for the price of retouching 1000’s of “big cock” photos. Still have it, though it’s kinda beat up now. It will serve as my “guest PC”
7. PowerMac G5/2.3Ghz DP (2005) – My current workhorse. God I love this thing.

And so, joining the lineage of Mac wonderfulness in my life is my spankin’ new MacBook Pro. Ahh… the wonders of freeloading my neighbors’ WiFi while cruisin’ the net on the toilet. That’s what life’s all about, my friends.

I was actually quite surprised to find roughly 10 WiFi networks within packet-sniffing proximity here at my pad. Almost none of my neighbors have even basic security setup on their networks. I was reconfiguring wireless routers via web interfaces and no one was the wiser. For you kids at home – try typing http://192.168.1.1 into a web browser (that’s for LinkSys routers) or try : http://192.168.0.100 for D-Link routers. If you get a password prompt, try “admin/admin” or “admin” as a login and no password. You’d be surprised how often that works.

I’m also pleasantly surprised at the shear amount of fun little features Apple packed into this MBP. The built-in webcam, for instance, is actually a lot more useful than I thought it would be. Little details make the difference. For instance – to simulate a camera’s “flash”, the MBP blinks a full-white screen at the highest possible brightness, thereby lighting up almost everything within a 5-foot radius. And, it even has enough smarts to run auto-white-balance adjustments when powered up. Here’s a shot Nad and I took during Aural Salvation last night..

Not too shabby, eh?
(and I know your eyes are bleeding over Nad’s fuckin’ shirt. That thing is OBSCENE)

The only thing that’s marginally annoying is that the trackpad button (WHY STILL ONLY ONE BUTTON?? *sigh*) sticks up off the chassis of the machine, and it’s very sharp. So, while my big hands tap away at the keys, the edge of my palms keep getting knicked by the trackpad button. It’s not unusable, but seems like a bit of an oversight from Apple’s perspective.

That having been said, I’m tickled pink that I installed Win2k on the thing using Parallels and it runs fullscreen, at about 85% of the speed of what it would natively. That’s about as fast as I’ve ever seen Win2k run, considering it’s a dual-core 2.0Ghz Intel chip. Gotta try installing XP on there later today, so I’ll have a full suite of cross-platform testing setup. I wonder if running it fullscreen would allow me to sneak into a Windows-only party. Ya know, like when Eddie Murphy was made-over as a working white man for SNL and got a glimpse into life as a white man, and everyone confided in him their hidden racism (like not making him pay for his morning paper cause they “only charge the black guys”). I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen in the Windows world, but I wouldn’t know… I’m not “one of them”. Until… kinda… now. Muwahahaaa. I’M COMIN’ FOR YA, BILLY-BOY!

Okay, that is all for now.

Related posts:

1. A Geek and His Money Are Soon Parted
2. Jogging Mitcz : Take Two
3. Tough Pills To Swallow

1. I’m a total hardware geek. If it has lights on it, and/or makes noises – I’ll probably cum.

2. I’m an Apple fanboy. More on this later

3. Whereas some people will make a life choice based on their current situation, and later enhance it via technology – I tend to make life choices based on the cool new hardware I can geek out on and incorporate that tech’s usefulness into my lifestyle as a motivator.

4. Money matters very little to me. I live like a rich kid, but I earn like a middle-class guy. I don’t want to die with money in the bank, because that’s the sign of a life unlived.

5. I’m an unabashed consumer who will readily admit that shopping and buying new things not only relieves my stress, but I operate under the comfort lie of “new things” enriching my life.

My Love for Apple Products

In most areas of my life, I consider myself to be a “form over function” type of person. I don’t care how pretty it is if it doesn’t do shit for me. This applies to my social life, as well. I’ll take a “6″ who can deep-throat over a “10″ who complains about the taste of man-sauce and refuses to swallow. This doesn’t mean I drive a beat-up old truck because “this sucker gets me where I wanna go” – I actually drive a very nice, manual-transmission 2005 Nissan Altima 2.5s (with the “convenience package” and custom iPod integration upgrades). But it does mean, other than my aforementioned fondness for deep-throaters, that I will generally weigh in how something feels, or functions, over just how “purdy” it is.

That having been said, I have spent the better part of the last 10 years of my life as a web/graphic designer so I know a thing or two about “purdy” and if given the choice between two similarly-functioning items, I’ll choose the more attractive one. This is where my love for Apple has been near-undying and that Steve Jobs could probably sell me iCE Cubes and an iFreezer to keep ‘em in if I were an eskimo.

I recalled to a friend of mine not long ago that, when it comes to gadgetry that doesn’t immediately strike my fancy, I’d probably consider getting one if Apple made it. I’m not an out-and-out “everything Apple touches is gold” person, not by a long shot. But Apple does have a way to make things not only very attractive looking, but also incredibly functional, easy-to-use, and they’ll sell it in a way that makes me go “hmm… ya know I COULD use something like that after all”. For instance, I’ve never justified owning a PDA, but when I bought my first “real” iPod (the Shuffle hardly counts), I got all giddy about syncing contacts, iCal calendars, and little notes. I even carry the full text of the U.S. Constitution around in my pocket… ya know, just in case. Those are very much PDA-like functions. Though they’re of little actual use to me on most occasions (save for my iPod lighting up to remind me to make a car payment or call someone on their b-day), it’s a nice little bonus to have. I was one of the last people to jump on the iPod train, though. Until they unleashed the 60GB iPod Photo with a color screen and photo-synching capabilities, I didn’t really see a use for an MP3 player. Then, of course, Alpine had to go fuckin’ with me by saying “hey check out this $150 car stereo that directly interfaces w/an iPod and charges it while you drive!”. I’m now on my 3rd iPod, after giving Nad my old 60GB iPod and picking up a black iPod Video just a few months ago. Yeah, I have little use for a pocket video player.. but g’damnit, it’s black! Fuckin’ Apple. Got me again. Okay, and I really wanted Nad to have a decent MP3 player so picking up a new one for myself in the process turned out to be the best bang-for-the-buck decision I could make.

My Apple lust didn’t start with the iPod, however. They hooked me as a 12-year old when my mom brought home the school-loaned Macintosh LC II. I now carry 16 times the hard drive space that LC had on my keychain. Still.. my friends were using these bland PCs at the time, most of them running DOS and this sucker had built-in paint programs and text editors and.. ya know, fun shit. After tinkering around in Paintworks, and later Photoshop, I’ve now found myself 15 years later doing essentially the same thing on hardware that costs, inflation being accounted for, about the same amount. How silly. But at least it puts food on the table, right?

Recent Geek Splurges, and Reasoning

June 2005
1GB iPod Shuffle – Bought it to jog with. Wore it all the time until.. (see July) But only jogged once.

July 2005
60GB iPod Photo – I just had to get it. You understand

Alpine CDA-xxxx – I forget the model number, but it’s got the ability to “talk” to an iPod with a special connector.

Alpine KCA-420i – The special connector for the aforementioned Alpine and iPod.

Final Price : $800, after you factor in the install charges and all that shit.

August 2005
PowerMac G5 2.5Ghz Dual Processor, 1.5GB of RAM – this replaced my 5-year old G4. Don’t need much justification there.

Price : $3200 (roughly). But, it’s on credit. So Shhh…

September 2005
Best Buy informed me that I had a line of credit. Oh joy! So I bought a few things..
20-inch Apple Cinema Display – best display ever. And that old monitor was killing my eyes.
250GB External Firewire Drive – I needed more drive space.
160GB External USB 2.0 Drive – I needed more drive space, and it needed to work with MusicPlus’s front-room PCs which didn’t have working Firewire ports.
300GB Internal SATA Drive – I needed more drive space. I’m up to 1.2 Terabytes now. And I’ll need more soon.
iPod Charger – A spare to keep in the car, for overnight visits.
4-port USB Hub – It had an iPod shuffle dock built-in. That’s cute AND functional.
Canon Printer – What designer doesn’t have a decent printer?
12-inch Camera Tripod – So I can rest my Canon Mini-DV camera on my desk
10-button Logitech Wireless Mouse – It’s rechargeable and my old one stopped recharging.
9-port Card Reader – Cause what self-respecting designer can only read 5 card types on a USB 1.1 connection? Sheesh.

Final Price : $1500. Not too shabby. But…. it’s on credit and almost paid off.

January 2006
Bluetooth 6×8 Wacom Tablet – Cause my wired 4×5 Wacom was looking dusty and outliving its usefulness. I use this new one all the time, though.

Bluetooth Dongle – Cause what good is bluetooth without a dongle?

Final Price : $180. See? Sensible.

February 2006
60GB iPod Video (black) – As I said, I wanted to get Nad something really nice for his b-day and he’s still in love with that 60GB iPod Photo. And why wouldn’t he be? I sure was. Admittedly, I had contemplated this for quite a while but I’ll be damned if I can pass up an Apple Store on the way back from depositing money into my bank account without getting the urge “just to look”

iPod Universal Dock – Because what good’s an iPod without a dock?

USB 4-port hub – New USB toys = more USB hubs. I have 4 now. That’s 16 ports, plus 2 on the back on one on the front of my G5. I’m using 16 of them.

Final Price : $500, roughly. That includes tax, though.

March 2006
Samsung A940 Cellphone – The old phone was dying. This one’s got live TV, Bluetooth, Motion Sensing (I can actually play dice by shaking the handset), a business-card scanner, 2 Megapixel camera/video phone, speakerphone, and MP3 player. Rawkdafuggon.

Price : $180. Rebates and swindling, out the ass. It’s a $400 phone.

May 2006
Olympus VC-480pc Digital Recorder – I had a nice little sony recorder before, but lost it in Phoenix where it was later retrieved and my friend is holding it for me until I go there to visit soon. In the meantime, I needed a new digital recorder to make quick comedy notes into and I was holding out hope that I could transfer the audio files into my computer via the USB port on this one. Alas, Olympus dropped support for this fucker after Win2k, so even under emulation it’s near-useless. Gave it to Nad.
Price : $50, down the hole. Don’t buy from shady Hollywood mom-and-pop “high tech” stores.

Olympus WS-2 Digital Recorder – Smaller. Lighter. Works like a USB flash drive. The USB connection is built-in so there’s no need for cords, and it records better audio. All around better.
Price : $100. But you can’t put a price on timely comedy notes, now can you?

Norelco Bodygroom – Okay, they bought me by actually selling this thing as a ball-shaver on their website. Don’t believe me? go have a look for yourself. This thing shaves everything, smoothly, while in the shower, and it’s got a blinking light on the charging cradle. How fuckin’ badass is that?
Price : $50, mostly cause I wanted it before the weekend and was willing to pay extra shipping. These things are NOWHERE to be found offline, and I looked around for like 3 solid days, too. Well worth it, however.

So Why All the Prefacing?

Well, I pour out this shit cause Nike and Apple made a joint announcement today. Their new “Nike+iPod” campaign launched to announce that they’ve got this nifty little system that combines the iPod nano with a sensor and receiver and shoe, so you can jog along to music while the iPod tracks your time, speed, incline, calories burned and all sorts of shit which you later sync with your Mac or PC and can use to track the progress of your fitness program.

Now, the sensor is $29. That ain’t bad at all.
The shoe, supposing you can’t just strap the sensor to ANY shoe with some duct tape, is $100. That’s about average, or lower, for a quality lightweight running shoe.
The iPod nano, however, ranges from $149 – 299, depending on drive size. I’m thinkin’ I’d go $199 for the 2GB version.

So, let’s have a look-see at this shit before I start in on my geek fantasies :

You see that shit? Wireless live-information gathering. Sweet shit. Now, let’s look at the $100 shoes :

Not too shabby. Black. Red. Small. Lightweight. I can dig it. Nike… well, I don’t know too much about them but I’m assuming they probably make a good running shoe that won’t kill my feet. Fuck, the last pair of running shoes I bought (for $35) fell apart after a few months and I barely ever jogged in them.

From there, you’ve got the NikePlus.com website, where you can look over all the fancy stats and live bar graphs and shit like that. Ohhh… how geektastic. I love stats. I have a background program running 24-7 that monitors every song I play in iTunes and updates Live on the sidebar of my blog. Of course, you can delve deeper and check out all the songs I’ve listened to way too many times at the full site over here.

Okay, now you’ve got my sales pitch. My drooling geekery. The reason I bring all this shit up? Well, obviously I’m considering making just such an investment. To be fair, I was already planning on picking up a Nano for jogging anyway, though I was also gonna carry it around on me via the TuneBuckle (pictured below) at other times.

As I mentioned in the first part of this now-way-too-long blog rant : I often wait until a certain technology excites me before making the initiative to change my lifestyle. I know I should jog more often. I need to get out and breathe fresh air on a more regular basis. I’m not liking that my late-20s metabolism is starting to catch up to me and my former dietary (read : 98-percent fast food) habits are wreaking pure havoc on this once-resilient body. So, okay, I’ve accepted that I should work out. For once in my fucking life. Ya know, make a plan to do it. I figure the cheapest and easiest way is cardio work. The cheapest and easiest way to do that – jogging. Plus I live at the base of Hollywood Hills – it’s a beautiful and multi-cultured neighborhood to trek around in.

So here comes Apple, once again, with a beautiful and very functional solution to my problem. Hooking up with one of the world-leaders in fitness and athletics, so I feel like I’m being taken care of pretty well. The site you share your stats with is a community site, so there’s likely to be hints and tips galore shared between users on making the most of my jogs, and/or other workout techniques I might wanna try out. If you want to get me away from the computer, you’ll need to entice me to do so. There’s a few ways to do that :

- Offers of sex
- Naked titties that I can have a guilt-free (and wallet-free) look at
- Geeky technology shit
- Movies
- Live shows featuring bands that DON’T suck.
- Drinking around the company of people who may offer me one of the first two items mentioned.

It stands to reason, therefore, that if I’m going to be motivated to jog and/or workout in general (which could definitely increase my chances of getting more of the first two items mentioned), you’ll need to appeal to one of the other items. Believe me, if there was a place I could go to jog while looking at a live, endless supply of naked titties – I’d be a joggin’ fool. Barring that, I can be swayed with geekery. Stats tracking. Beeps and voice commands while I jog, like a computerized trainer in my ear. Oh joy! Seriously though.

I think Apple may have just saved my life.
(okay, exaggeration, but still.. cholesterol’s a bitch ain’t it?)

P.S. – If anyone wants to organize a daily meeting of women who would stand alongside key areas of a jog-able area around my homestead and flash titties as I jog each time I pass, I might consider that possibility as well.

Related posts:

1. Goodnight, old friend
2. New Mac Day
3. Let’s Talk iPad

Today, I was working on the beta version of the new MusicPlusTV.com v3.0 site. On the site, I’m using an extensive iframe system to allow full browsing of the site, without ever refreshing/reloading/losing the live stream. Pretty sweet, no?

However, there’s a few issues with that solution, and I’ve since made my own fixes for them. Last night, everything broke and I couldn’t figure out why. I’ll explain what I was doing, and how I fixed it.

First and foremost, the #1 issue with iframes is what? Deep Linking. It’s not impossible to deep-link to iframes, it just requires trickery. There’s actually a few things involved, such as..

1. How do you link to an iframe directly?
2. How do you ensure that users who somehow end up on the iframe are shown the rest of the site, so the content is within it’s originally contained iframe?
3. How do you provide the surfer with an easy, straight-forward and conspicuous way of getting the URL of the iframe, for deep-linking?
4. How can you either kill the scrollbars on an iframe – or make all content fit PERFECTLY within the iframe so the user doesn’t have the body’s scrollbar AND an iframe scrollbar to deal with?

My solution to all of the above was to dynamically generate a NEW iframe that floats over the source iframe, with a little text field, providing the URL of the underlying page. This tells the user “Want to link to this page? Use the following URL :” and gives the warning that “it won’t work otherwise” if they’re not using the URL in the text field. OnLoad of every sub-page, it triggers the floated iframe to refresh and fill its text input field with the URL of the sub-page. But how does it float? Using position: fixed. But what about IE? I found a Javascript hack to enable fixed positioning in IE.

So, basically, we’re loading a page that sends a command to load another page, filling in a variable text field with PHP and keeping it consistently floated over the very bottom of the page (so as not to interfere with the content on the page, if possible).

Furthermore, another script tells the browser to check the size of the iframe when it’s loaded and dynamically update the height of the iframe to match, thereby killing the iframe’s need to scroll vertically.

I know, a lot of scripts to run. However, it worked flawlessly in IE 5.5, 6, and 6.0 SP2 as well as every flavor/version of FireFox that I could get my hands on, every version of Safari, and Opera 9+. That pretty well covers just about everyone who’s going to hit the site (almost. but hey.. it’s close enough).

The problem I encountered was that on M+’s internal systems, the site wouldn’t trigger the Javascript. It worked fine on my 2 test systems (XP SP2 running in Virtual PC, and a bonafide PC running XP SP2 w/the latest IE6 w/security patches). I theorized that maybe it was M+’s usage of the Google Toolbar. Maybe the Alexa toolbar. I tried both, and I STILL couldn’t reproduce the errors that users at the M+ headquarters were experiencing. The only error IE could give was ..

Line : 11
Char : 6
Error : Access is denied.

Gee, thanx. WTF does that mean? After a little Googling, I found that it’s common to see that when, for instance, popping a javascript window that loads in content from another domain. Fair enough, but I wasn’t loading from another domain. Then it dawned on me. I somehow reproduced the error this morning, by accident. The only difference today than yesterday? I used “www” before the domain name. Removing that made the javascript work. Adding it – and IE6 thought “oh, another domain is triggering this javascript. No, sir”.

The solution? Rewrite a rule in .htaccess to account for it. To do this yourself, FTP into your server and see if you can find a file called “.htaccess” in the root directory. If it doesn’t exist, create one locally. To get around that most OS’s will hide any files that being with a “.” – I start a blank file called “_htaccess”, save it and upload it – then once it’s on the server, I’ll change the filename to “.htaccess”. Depending on your FTP app, this may be easier or harder than I just described. (I recommend the excellent Transmit 3 by Panic software).

At any rate, here’s the rule you want to add to your .htaccess file :


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !yourdomain.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.yourdomain.com
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://yourdomain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]


Just replace “your domain”, of course, upload and you’re all set. Now you can reference javascripts, et al from your domain w/absolute paths (helpful when using hidden directories and subdomains to build a site before pushing it live – then you only have to change one global variable that points to your “base url”).

Related posts:

1. ReLaunch : RevMitcz.com v3.0
2. Vivid.com : Goal, Completed.
3. New RevMitcz.com and MORE

Thus far, I’ve got Live Archives, Votes/Ratings on all posts, quick links to most of the popular social bookmarking sites inside each full post, latest comment/post listings on the side, recent tracks played via AudioScrobbler/Last.fm, Live Search, and the ability to do quick “asides” posts – which will mostly consist of MeFi-style posts to the frontpage. Not bad for version 2.0. I’ve just got a few things I’d like to spiff up here and there, but all in all I’m very pleased.

Welcome to Mitcz.com v2.0 and enjoy yourself.

Related posts:

1. Mitcz.com, Redesigned and Reworked
2. Behind The Desk of Mitcz
3. Vivid.com : Goal, Completed.

BellaVendetta.com

The Bella gig hit me ’round about mid-January. My photographer friend Michelle Collignon told me a friend of hers in New York, “Bella”, needed her porn site redone. I took a look at it, and uhh.. well, here’s what it used to look like :

Not too pretty. Kinda thrown together, navigation from hell, incomplete (and totally non-compliant HTML 4.01, at best) HTML code was actually throw into the MySQL DB tables (if you know what this means, you’re cringing right now) – all in all a complete mess. Not to mention – 924px wide! That’s just insane.

When you’re going about a redesign, you need to look at what the site is doing right now that needs to change. You need to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. That’s often much easier said than done. About the only thing the old site had going for it was its amass of content. Unfortunately, locked away in MySQL tables – it was of no use to me. Sometimes, as was the case here, you need to throw the entire “version 1″ away and start fresh. And so it was with BellaVendetta.

Personally, I like designing logos. I’m not altogether that great at it, but I like doing it. I feel like getting a good logo in place puts me on solid ground for imagining the rest of a given design. I can take from the feel of the logo, and I can see where to put the logo, and how the elements of a page can work with it.

Here are a few of the first-round logo treatments…

In the end, she liked this one best, so it became the official logo :

So, I had a beginning point. I had a logo started. I was ready to roll. I did what I always do with clients, I sent her mockups. She didn’t like a one of ‘em. They didn’t “feel” right. I agreed, but I couldn’t figure out why. Before I get into why this entry has any interest to a non-designer at all, I’ll show you those original mockups, then you’ll get the story of what happened next…

As you can see… kinda dark, but very “clean”. All the edges were smoothed, and/or rounded. There was a “gloss and sheen” to everything. Looking back, I see the problem immediately. BellaVendetta is NOT fuckin’ clean. Right. I get that now. I didn’t quite “get it” then. I work for Vivid, remember?

Something happened, though. A few somethings. Want a laundry list?

1. Mom called me to say she had cancer and might not survive multiple operations and months of chemo and radiation treatment
2. Girlfriend’s mother died and she broke off all contact with me to leave the state for a month and bury her, get away from it all, and “cope” with it.
3. The Scientologists, who owned the Celebrity Center directly behind my apartment complex, were moving us out. I had 2 months to find a place, pack everything up, and get the fuck out.
4. My workplace had denied me a much-needed raise after a year and a half of hard work.
5. …wasn’t getting sex from the girlfriend, but had to spend some 80+ hours editing frame-by-frame hardcore porn clips and making them “censored” by placing stars/obstructions over anything “pink” or nude on anyone in the span of 12 different 5-minute clips
6. Roommate had a busted arm, and couldn’t help move anything from one apartment to the next
7. I cried for the first time in 14 years
8. Girlfriend returned, unbeknownst to me because, as it turned out.. her mother was not dead. No, her mother was alive and helping her plan her wedding to her ex-boyfriend. In response, she said “I couldn’t tell you any other way”, once her friend accidentally tipped me off to the facts.

Most of that happened in about a week’s time. The last part.. about 2 weeks later, once I was just moved into my new apartment.

In making the site, I read the BV Manifesto. That was like a mantra to me. Don’t just get down and stupid about shit – fuckin’ get angry, fuckin’ channel that anger into your art. I was making BellaVendettaDOTFUCKINGcom. This wasn’t your mother’s pornsite. This was organic. This was real. This was borne of people tired of the mainstream, tired of shitheads bringing down the hammer, tired of being confined into society’s “safe” versions of our deepest carnal desires. This was the site without apology. Without censorship. I fucking owed it to Bella, to the site, to the models, to the viewers, to the fans… to the fucking world at large to put that energy into the site.

So I got drunk. Consistently. I was drunk for about 2 months straight. I tried drawing lines. They came out jagged. I said “fuck it!” and kept them (note the “bloody grass” at the bottom, that was me trying to draw straight lines). I tore apart the sides. I tore apart the interface. I added little hints of “classy” alongside the torn up remains of the once glossed-over lines, as a juxtaposition. It was to mock “happy” and “clean” by putting it alongside the ridges of whatever torn up shelter made it’s way into the shell of the side. Pink turned to the dull grey, and went dim and empty. Everything was cracked. Broken. Bloodied. Bruised. Like I was. I put my soul into that design, and into that site.

I owed it to Bella. She inspired me. She probably doesn’t know it, but she’s a hero to me. I sheltered my emotions, kept them locked up. I didn’t channel fuck-all into what I was doing before. She saved BellaVendetta.com from being “pretty” as I’d originally intended it.

The site took longer than I thought it would. It took.. all told, about 9 months. That isn’t straight work-time, however. I had to battle my personal demons. Bella battled hers. The models, some of them, dropped out or moved on or decided they weren’t “for it” anymore. I had to work long hours toiling over the battle between what was right for the site, and what was right for my sanity (and my sleep schedule). In the end, the site won out.

Here’s what I’ll always find amusing…

BellaVendetta.com is the most honest, uncensored, forthright pornsite I’ve ever seen and ever had the pleasure to work on. It’s a labour of love from ALL involved, making it the most intimate pornsite you’ll ever run across. Not a one of those models has been paid for their time. They love the expression, and the freedom. They’re all releasing their “Beautiful Revenge” on this society of cleanliness and “no, we don’t talk about that” people.

For all of our hard work, guess how many billing companies jumped at the opportunity to take Bella’s money..

Not a single fucking one.

So, she begged. She pleaded. She reasoned. She was completely ignored. Some of these billing companies had incest and rape fantasy porn – but said BellaVendetta.com was “Too Hardcore”. Did Bella buckle? Back down? Bite the fuckin’ bullet and say “ehh… people can do without necrophiliac menstrual art”? Not at all. Though the road was tough for her, and I spent many hours begging her to stay strong, for all of us, and toll on and move forth and for the love of all things with passion and integrity in this world just keep the fucking site up. Bella Vendetta was our pornographic martyr.

She lost what she considered a great lover (perhaps even two) in the process. In a time and place where she really needed that kind of moral support, they wanted to censor her and live a “normal” life with her. She could’ve given it all up, right then and there, and moved away to a small town into a house with a white picket fence and been done with it. While you might sneer at the mere thought of it right now, that idea becomes a lot more appealing when it seems the whole world is against you. She’s no stranger to struggle, but it gets tough to carry that ax for too long. Forced martyrdom, standing alone, isn’t a place I’d expect many people to relate to or deal with. But she did.

In the end, of course, she kept the site – all obstacles be damned. And, we finally found a billing company. She lost lover. I did too. I even went celibate. And Bella… well, she peed herself when that first member joined up. Knowing her, she prolly photographed it, too.

Welcome to BellaVendetta. Enjoy your stay. We’ve got a piece of your darkest secrets… just behind that door.

p.s. –
Bella..
Thank you. Hero.

- Love, Mitcz.

Related posts:

1. Notes To Self RE : NYC
2. Mitcz.com Redesign, and a new logo
3. Mitcz on your shirt – yes or no?