nonpretentious

i know we keep changing the design

i want to make people feel comfortable with the site.

i’m taking everyone’s suggestion into consideration and tweaking the site over the weekend.

the plan:

use this basic format (which is similar to the last format but less busy & back to our original plan of newpaper theme)

change some of the css elements (perhaps make links red or titles to postings red)

trying to get rid of the “homepage” tab

coming up with a tag – the main title will state “nonpretentious.com” & underneath there will be a short tag.  some ideas:  “are you?” or “not a website, a lifestyle” (please vote in the comments or suggest your own)

sticking with this (very) basic theme, but writing code that is original but using something like this as inspiration:

we don’t have enough original pictures to do the full version of that right now…so, again, it’s simply inspiration.

let me know what you think as the weekend progresses.

(…this is the fun of working online…there’s no such thing as a rough draft…)

PS/ Just for you RustedJ, the comments are back.

And after many a summer dies the swan.

Today I received a disturbing email in my inbox. It was a technology tip from my employer’s IT office. I receive emails such as this occasionally, and though it shames me to say it now, I usually deleted them without even a simple glance. Now my shame has turned to guilt. The subject line of the email:

Technology Tip – How to automatically delete Technology Tips

I read this and it filled my heart with despair. Oh! The pain and loneliness of the technology tip email. What cruel irony that a being who’s raison d’être was helping office workers use Outlook more efficiently was forced to accomplish this task by transmitting the clinical details of its own execution.

Email is a fickle beast. It has traded the finite lifespan of traditional mail for an altogether more ambiguous form of immortality. Like Tithonus, however, eternal life has not brought with it eternal youth. A lively email from 1998 filled with dancing hamsters, flashing text, and the childlike naïveté of a society not yet jaded by 2 Girls, 1 Cup seems anachronistic now. Modern man looks upon it with scorn, like Eos seeing the white-haired Tithonus unable to move his limbs. 

Eos eventually turned Tithonus into a grasshopper; the technology tip email has no such luxury. Its fate was sealed by the Judas who suggested this tip. I won’t name his name, but I will secretly pray that his thirty pieces of silver bring him nothing but misfortune.

I suspect the technology tip email yearns for release, but I myself will hold off on implementing this merciless Outlook rule. But I can’t stop progress, and the technology tip emails will be destroyed before ever reaching my inbox, like so many electrons disintegrating into the æther. Who will speak for it then?

Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
“The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.”

notice: offer of ownership/consideration for contribution

…the offer of ownership in/consideration for contribution to non.pretentious.com, a division of Common Vision LLC, will be closed two (2) weeks after September 1, 2008.

proof of an officially accepted offer is:

1) a username;

2) a password;

and 3) submission of your mailing address.

Continue reading…

damn, i wanted to see Spiritualized

Instead, I got totally fixated on making the blog somewhat legible.

I’ve decided that I’m going to write on here about how this whole common vision thing came about.

For those of you who already received your invitation, consider yourself a part of common vision nonpretentious since the beginning. Therefore, feel free to disagree or agree with anything that commonvision nonpretentious posts on here. Also…just to make it a little more fun and confusing…there won’t be just one person writing the posts by commonvision nonpretentious. that’s a team effort. each member of the team has their own identity, their own purpose, their own voice, interests, and stories.

This blog is for all of us. We’re a part of a start-up and we’re sharing our story. We’re sharing the ups and downs of creating a website, networking community, ezine…so that we can look back and learn from our mistakes and see our progress.

It will also serve as entertainment to future readers who will definitely laugh at our mistakes, steal our good ideas, and roll their eyes again and again. No trade secrets. No barriers to entry. You get it all.

(No filter. Kinda like how I speak.)

So, who are we? Well, I think you’ve met our resident smut writer. Don’t underestimate his talent. His sentences are as delicious as a soft porn and will make you feel just as tingly inside.

We have some fashionistas, music junkies, beer brewers, poker players, financial experts, legal experts, critical race theorists, cynical optimists, leftists, libertarians, students, pretentious readers, comic nerds, artists, computer programmers, aspiring writers, and more.