The room is a national disaster area. Pepsi cans, several years of Newtype and AX magazines strewn all over. Speakers blasting something from THE MATRIX soundtrack. The sound of a grinding hard disk as Photoshop goes through dozens of images.
Can you get to the development server? Roger roger. Did you receive that last-minute article yet? I repeat, did you receive that article ... Nothing. Bounced email, server trouble, bits lost in transit. Fixed the glitch, shift-reload the page to confirm. Connection is flaking. Wait, don't do that while Photoshop is ... gah! Too late, blue screen of death. Restart, flop back on futon, take a deep breath. Get up, HTML Knife, get up!
The doorbell rings. "Did someone order Chinese?"
Chopsticks in one hand, mouse in the other, balancing cartons of rice and broccoli beef in my lap. The Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" blaring from the speakers now. Put in the images, run the page linking script. Things are running too slow, need more RAM in this Wintel box. Where's that Q/A! Check those pages again! What do you mean, access denied? Fix the file permissions! Did you check the files into CVS? Can't access the production server, the connection is lagging. Apricot Systematic is down? Apricot never goes down! Upload, damnit! We're already behind schedule!
Files are up. Images are up. ZIP file has been archived. Announcement email's on its way. Another issue shipped. The CD has stopped spinning. Silence. Quiet. Too quiet. The HTML Swiss Army Knife flops face-down on the futon and reaches for a can of Pepsi. Empty? Damn.

* * *

Next Issue:

For the final issue of the year, the EX staff unveils its picks as top anime gifts for the 1999 holiday season. (But don't look for any "end of the millenium" stuff because we know how to count). And a lot has changed since our first DVD article appeared, so look for a follow-up article complete with what you can expect on DVD in the year 2000!

Still clutching that empty can of Pepsi...

Keith Rhee
The HTML Swiss Army Knife

Disclaimer: the words on this page represent only the opinions of the HTML Swiss Army Knife, and not those of EX. Comments about this column, both good and bad, should be directed to pckit@slip.net.