Jason Cosper

Blog

  • Movin’ On Your Left

    One of the nice things about living in North Hollywood is that I’m less than a mile’s walk from the Red Line station.  Because of this, I’ve been taking the subway into work every morning.  There’s actually a few benefits to this:

    • I get a nice walk at the start and end of my work day.  And I’ll still continue to call it nice until Summer hits and the Valley gets over 100° F at 9 AM.
    • Work pays for my metro pass.  Well, they reimburse me for it whenever I get them the receipt.  Still, the fact that they’re willing to pick up any of its cost is really nice of them.
    • I find that I’m way less stressed when I don’t have to sit in traffic.  Listening to a podcast or some music is way more chill when you don’t have to wonder why the guy in the other lane is drifting over for the nth time.

    I do have one gigantic pet peeve tho — people who stand still on the left side of the escalator.  Now I know that moving stairs are still a novelty to some, but most regular commuters know that the right is for standers and the left is for the folks who like beating those smug stair climbers out of the station.

    I know it’s pompous for me to assume that Los Angeles is listening — especially when I have access to my site’s metrics and I know that my traffic falls well short of the city’s population — but please quit being part of the problem, left-standers.  And for God’s sake, kindly get out of the way when someone says “excuse me”.  I really hate getting pushy, but I swear that I will if I have to.

  • Introducing LAWPUG

    Since a lot of my day job involves dealing with WordPress issues — which are mostly caused by 3rd party plugins or sites not being ready for the Digg effect — I’ve become really passionate about WordPress as a platform. Now I’m not to the point of being a hardcore zealot just yet, but I find myself getting closer and closer as each day passes. ;)

    Inspired by Joe Crawford‘s BOF at the last BarCampLA, I’ve decided to start a group for Los Angeles based WordPress users. The idea is to meet monthly for a meal and have a small, semi-structured talk (or Q&A) to get other folks who are passionate about WordPress to come together and exchange ideas.

    The first one is going to be a little more relaxed tho. We’re meeting for a nice Sunday brunch at the Los Angeles Farmers Market near Starbucks and Lotteria in the southwest corner (3rd & Fairfax) on April 6th at 12:00 PM.  We’ll use this meeting a chance to get to know the other people in the community before we start diving into the fun technical stuff at future meetings. All the important event info should be up over on Upcoming, so please try to add yourself there so we can know how many tables to try to grab.

    I’m really looking forward to getting this jump started and seeing some new (and old) faces from the LA tech community. Please feel free to spread the word if you’re interested in helping get this subset of the larger community going and drop me a line if you have any questions.

  • Time To Get Away

    Sunset at McWay Falls

    I realize how funny it is to be complaining about needing a vacation — especially since things have been so quiet around here the past couple months — but I feel like I need to get away for a bit. When things get silent here, it’s because I’m in head down, super concentration mode.

    I’ve got more than two weeks of vacation banked up at work and I’m itching to take my first real break in over eight years.  No conventions, conferences or unconferences.  No networking events or parties.  Just me and someplace quiet where I can go for a week and reset myself.

    The question is, where do I go?  Anyone have any ideas?

    Sunset at McWay Falls by kaiyen.

  • Jottings In An Old Notebook

    I’m purging a bunch of stuff that I’d rather not move with when a note from someone I used to hang out with circa 2004 fell out of an old notebook. I had no idea that it was there, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t downright inspired…

    Dew Be Due Bee do
    ERIS is Loki in Drag
    and of Course Lassie as The Beaver

    If I knew who it was from, I’d give credit — but now that I’ve cataloged it, into the bag it goes.

  • Is Fontsploitation Even A Genre?

    A spam just managed to slip thru my filters and into my inbox. While that’s a rare occurrence, it’s hardly news. The thing that’s worth mentioning is that the message was addressed as being from from “Helvetica Jones”.

    Now I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that’s the name of the greatest Fontsploitation movie never made…

  • True Love Won’t Desert You

    I just have to go on record and say that this shot for shot recreation of the video for Journey’s “Separate Ways” is seriously the best thing that I’ve seen all week. If you even sort of like Journey, you owe it to yourself to stop everything you’re doing and soak all of its majesty in right this second.

  • Wither Seven Grand?

    So last night I was informed that Seven Grand is going to enforce a dress code of “collared shirts on the weekends” for the dudes in the new year. I can totally understand why they’d do that — seeing as how it’s a really nice bar and you’d want to discourage the riff-raff from hanging out — but it’s a little dismaying nonetheless. Of course I say that because I’m pretty sure I’m the sort of scruffy riff-raff they’re trying to discourage. It also tends to make things a little less fun and a lot more pretentious.

    I mean, watching “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” while listening to the Cramps and drinking some whiskey doesn’t really lend itself to the whole “strictly enforced dress code” experience, does it?

    I guess Bar 107 just became my weekender when I’m downtown.

  • How Come You Taste So Good?

    Tamales have to be my favorite part of the holiday season, hands down. Unfortunately, I only seem to have gotten a grand total of two of them from any of my coworkers or friends this year.

    Oh well, at least the ones I had were downright tasty…

  • Wakey Wakey, Eggs And Bakey

    I know it’s not spring yet, but I feel like it might be time to come out of hibernation mode.

    While 2007 was okay overall — with a few highs and lows, just like most other years — I’m seriously ready for it to be over. 2008 is going to be absolutely massive tho.

    So long as I stick to the plan, I have a distinct feeling that my life is about to get way more interesting.

    P.S. There’s a new coat of paint on the blog. If you’re playing along at home, why not pay the site a visit for a change?
    P.P.S. Just so you know, “the plan” doesn’t refer to any sort of resolutions or anything like that. I’ve just laid out a fairly aggressive personal roadmap for the next twelve months, that’s all.

  • ZeFrank On Privacy

    Man, it sure is good to have Ze back — even if he is only updating once a week while the WGA strike is going on.