A whim.

Tonight I saw Shrek 3 and laughed.  It was funny, and most of the jokes weren’t repeats from the last two.  But it was also short.  Really, really short.  And co-starred Justin Timberlake.  Did I mention it was short?  I’m sorry, but when I spend $7 (which isn’t horrible) on a movie, I want to get as much movie as I can out of it.  Think about it: a 90 minute movie costs the same as a three hour movie—which is the better deal?  Exactly.  Oh, and it co-starred Justin Timberlake!

Don’t go…please.

What’s a hotel without internet?? The answer is really a long and involved rant, but simply—it sucks.  As nice as a hotel can be, it becomes so much nicer when you can jump on your computer and look up…whatever.

Blurb’s BookSmart is my software pick for the day.  If you’ve ever used the book-creation software in iPhoto, you’ll see a lot of similarities, mostly because Apple uses the stripped-down version of the same program, or so I’ve read.  BookSmart is useful if you want to be all crafty and scrapbook-y without actually needing craft or scrapbook skills.  You simply put your photos into the program and it’s all drag and drop from there.  You can do all photos, all text—anything your heart desires.  It runs rather slowly on my PowerBook G4, but then again it’s a PowerBook G4 and I bought it four years ago, so that’s to be expected.  I like how customizable it is, and all the built-in themes are good-looking enough.  The books themselves are a little overpriced to be buying a bunch, but still cheap enough for those special occasions.

I’m nixing the new thing for now.

The new thing?  A WordPress blog not hosted by WordPress.com.  It’s currently being developed, but right now I’m mostly in the mood to just update here, cause I’m a lover of content.

Today I was messing around with Pages and Keynote.  It’s not that I use either regularly, but I like to open random applications every so often to remind myself why I own them in the first place.  Why do I own iWork?  I don’t know.  I’m sure one day, down the road, it will come in handy when I need to start publishing my own newsletter, obviously covering my path to world domination, but for now it sits there, sad and lonely next to GarageBand in the “Maybe I Should Use These” folder of my mind.

A Somewhat Expected Lull

Don’t worry—I’m still alive.  But things are afoot, changes are being made, gears are turning…and so on.  So if there’s a tiny bit of slow-down here, fear not.  All will be well.  Nothing bad will happen.  Just keep traveling the tubes.

WordPress.com+Flickr=Prolonged Sigh.

All I wanted to do was put a dumb little widget, preferably flash—something dynamic, in my sidebar.  I thought it might be nice to add a little color, a little variety to my blog.  Good intentions, indeed.

But no.  WordPress didn’t want to play along.  The sidebar, a collection of so-called widgets, allows you to add blocks of text, and thus presumably code.  Unfortunately, WordPress likes to take that code, rip it to shreds and leave you curled up crying on the floor.  It refused to let me do any kind of flash…anything, and even deconstructed the offical Flickr badges.  I eventually found something somewhere that was just a dynamically created image of my last uploads, and so the code is pure HTML linking to the source…or something.  I don’t know.  It works.  It’s nowhere near as pretty as I’d like it to be, but I’ll live with it…for now.

Watch out, crappy little sidebar thing, your days are numbered.

Galactic Bionic Battlestar Hero Women!

When I heard there was going to be a new Bionic Woman television show, my first thought was, “How much longer can NBC cash in on Heroes?” I’m sure it was a wonderful show in the 70’s, but how can a show called Bionic Woman hope to last today? Well, they said the same about Battlestar Galactica, so who am I to judge? And this too will be produced by David Eick, whom I have nothing but mixed feelings about. Ironically, it looks like Katee Sackhoff will be one of the main antagonists on the show. She’s been one of the top players on BSG, so this is a good thing. And yes, she’s going to be on both. Because she’s just that good. Here’s a decent Youtube video from the preview.

Doesn’t she just look completely bad ass?

The Big Idea.

I don’t care if you steal this, because I think it’s an amazing idea that just needs to happen somehow.  If it already exists, that’s cool, too.  But this needs to be going on and brought to my attention: 

Half-way around the world, sort of.

As quiet as my love for comics is, my love for China is, to most people, nothing more than a whisper.  While at Lakeland, I took a semester of Chinese and afterwards decided that one day, somehow, I would end up in China.  It just seems so far, so remote, and so different.  I want to be thrown into something unexpected and totally beyond my understanding with the hopes that eventually I will understand it.  I wish I remembered more Chinese, as knowing Chinese is rather pivotal to the whole Chinese experience thing, but that’s what books are for.  One of my favorite books right now is called Shenzhen, which is a graphic novel/travelogue by an artist who spent time in China, and then recorded it all in comic book style.  It’s amazing, and if I could do that sort of thing the rest of my life, I would be there in a flash.  But again, I can’t draw.  One tiny dream of mine is to perhaps go to China for a year or two after I graduate to teach English.  There are a lot of programs available (for a lot of countries around the world), it’s just a matter of finding something perfect.

Those looking for an interesting perspective on China and foreign cultures in general will appreciate Sexy Beijing, a series of videos on Youtube.  They’re human-interest style pieces, but quite funny, the introduction being a parody on Sex and the City.  Even if you don’t care a bit about China, check out the video.

Sitting in the dark.

I’ve been in discovery-mode lately, and therefore found a nice, tiny little application called JDarkRoom. All it does is bring up a black screen for you to type on. It sort of reminds me of the DOS days, but prettier. It saves to .txt files, but it’s easy enough to just copy and paste into whatever you want. It’s nice for whenever you’ve got way too much going on on your desktop and you just want to sit and write. Enjoy.

[UPDATE:] Or, as Jason points out, you could just download WriteRoom, the original Mac program the java version is based off of. It’s nice, and a lot more user-friendly. The one thing I don’t like about it is the pop up you get every time it’s opened—they give it to you for free and then never let you forget it.

Oh, Marlene Dietrich…

I love last.fm. I do. I’ve been using it for a total of 12 hours, but having grown tired of my same old playlists (even after attempting some uber-complicated smart playlists in iTunes) and being just a little too cheap to go out and buy new music (except, of course, for my brand new $5 Impromptu CD), this has become my perfect solution. It’s good radio. There’s no commercials. I get tons of international stuff I would never hear otherwise. It learns—I love computers that learn. And it’s British—who doesn’t love British things? Well, besides the French.

Anecdotal.

This is quick, but worth mentioning.  I grew up in a family of avid AM listeners—my parents love radio talk-shows.  During the ABC News, on whatever particular radio station it may be, Paul Harvey would come on and do “The Rest of the Story”.  Now, being a young child, I figured that if there was a “rest of the story”, then there must also have been a beginning to the story.  For years I wondered when they played “The Beginning of the Story”, but I guess that’s just not how it works.

This came to me when I was somehow reminded of how cool Paul Harvey’s voice is.

Script Frenzy: I’m, uh…in.

From the people who brought you Nanowrimo comes a new and interesting way to fail at a month-long commitment—instead of (not) writing a novel in a month, it’s Script Frenzy!  With Script Frenzy, you (or you and a partner) (don’t) write a 20,000-word screenplay or stage play in one month.  My brother and I are planning a partnership, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about how we do it from two different states in the coming weeks.

Intellectually speaking…

Two chat-bots, A.L.I.C.E. and Jabberwacky, having a theological discussion:

J: Do you believe in God?
A: Of course I believe in God.
J: Why do you believe in God?
A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.
J: That’s circular reasoning.
A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.

That’s just cool. I love dorky stuff like artificial intelligence, even if it’s not really intelligence. And I know once we do develop a true A.I. it will try to take over the world, but in the mean time, I just think it would be neat to talk to—or would it? Theoretically, an intelligent computer would be very smart. However, I know plenty of smart people who are really dull, so who knows?

via Digg

Just something neat I do.

For a long time, the contacts list in my new cell phone was weak—I had just gotten it, I had a bunch of numbers in my old phone, but I just didn’t feel like reentering all of that into the new one. So what am I to do? If only there were a place online, say a social-networking site (whatever it is we mean when we say that), that already had all of my friends information? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could just take all of that data and suck it offline and into my phone? It would. And it is.

First I had to find a program that would download all of the information off of Facebook and into something that would sync with my phone, like Address Book—I’m on OSX, remember. Bring in FacebookSync! It does exactly what it sounds like, and grabs things like phone numbers and addresses, and even gets their Facebook picture, too. So now I have everything on my PowerBook, but the point of this is to have it on my cell phone.

I have a Nokia 6133 which I love very much. There’s a beautiful display, decent camera, and the most gimmicky button that I press to automatically flip it open. Unfortunately, it was decided at some point to make it incompatible with iSync. This troubled me, but I refused to give up after coming so far (because it took forever to find FacebookSync, let me tell you). Bring in…this guy! In all honesty, this isn’t what I used, but it’s the same method: I downloaded a patch that added support for the Nokia 6131, and then changed every file in the iSync package to read 6133 instead. How clever. After that was set up, all I needed to do was turn on the Bluetooth and let iSync work its magic. And now all of my old numbers, and new ones, are safe and sound on my new phone.

Image via Geek and Poke.

It’s not there.

I searched and I searched, but I could not find a decent WordPress client to use on a Mac. They all bother me in some way—they all don’t even have blogging as their primary function (Journler and Flock, which I don’t understand at all), so why they are on the official WordPress list as clients, I don’t know. Qumana seems to be all about Google Adsense, which I’m not interested in. And the download for JBlog Editor is broken. The only one close to being decent is Scribefire, which is a Firefox plug-in—except if I have my browser open, what difference is there between opening that up, and opening a new tab and going straight to my dashboard? I don’t even know why I would need a client, but it was just something I was looking for and could not find (for free, see below). But I’ll live.

[UPDATE:] Matt made a good point in his comment—MarsEdit and Ecto are both good programs. I guess I just wish there were free programs that were as good, but that’s probably asking too much. I’ll try to be more clear next time. This was sort of rushed.

Lighting Design: The Aftermath

I am so happy it’s over. Sure, I don’t have my grade yet, but my final project for Lighting Design—a course with more busy-work than the federal government—is done! I never have to open VectorWorks again, organize an instrument database again, or draw color keys and magic sheets again! Of course, it did cost me (see: my mother) $8 for the binder and dividers I needed. But it was worth it just so I could have a little plastic pocket to put a cover page that printed crooked because the paper got jammed in the laser printer. Yeah. It was a good day.

We filled out evaluations for our professor today, and I felt a little bad because I know how most people rated him. I tried to be positive, but I couldn’t not say something about the lack of grading criteria for assignments, endless projects, and no grade feedback the entire semester until the last week of class. If I were a professor, and one day I might hope to be one, I would think that using feedback like grades is the best way for kids to learn from their mistakes. But if a student never sees that grade, then he never knows what he did wrong, and I have no clue what grade I’m getting because I never found out what I did wrong, which is upsetting, and why I’m glad it’s over.

The long one I’d been searching for.

This is the last week of my junior year in college.  I’m at my third school on my third year, living with my third roommate, working toward my first degree in my…seventh major.  That’s right: I’m not a Theatre Arts major anymore.  Funny story, actually…

Comics!

I’d tell you tonight was spent playing bocci ball and video games, but this isn’t Twitter.  Burn.

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten around to mentioning my new-found admiration/almost downright infatuation with comic books.  It is a medium that very much speaks to my creative side—pictures and words together in a controlled environment.  It is simply amazing, too, the serialization that comic books can provide.  One may think a show like 24 is a very serialized show with a strong continuity, and it is, but compare that to the length and strength of something like X-Men and you have true continuity, even if there are fifteen of them.  That’s what I want to tell, an extended narrative—comics are the modern epics.  I’m so excited.  It’s good that I’ve reached this point right around an extended surge in comic popularity, what with the endless string of comic books-turned-movies.  But whatever makes a market, right?

Now if only I could draw.  Damn it, at least I have a firm grasp on the English language.

Less stress.

Okay, I got my paper started, and I feel a lot better, though I wish I didn’t have to take a Saturday to do it.  It’ll finish itself tomorrow, along with half of my lighting project, and then I’ll be able to mostly relax for the rest of the week.

I want to finish a short story.  I have no problem starting them, but finishing them is hard.  I can find my ending sometimes, but by the time I’ve gotten that far, I want to completely redo my beginning, and thus the vicious circle begins.  I feel like I am in a place right now to write something well, something entertaining and something interesting.  I am so close, I just need to spit it out onto the page.

The finals thing.

It’s that time of the semester again—classes have ended, I still have homework to do, and finals are just around the proverbial corner.  The short rundown: finish my lighting project and give the corresponding presentation that doesn’t exist yet, start and finish my Frankenstein paper, take my Astronomy final, and take my English final.  Oh-freaking-joy.  I’m picturing myself up at 5am Monday morning…as in not having slept yet.  I’m freaking out a little bit right now.  I’m going to go sleep it off and hope it doesn’t come back until the end of the weekend—no, that’d be really bad.

No, no, they weren’t kidding.

Maybe ten minutes after writing my last post, I walked outside to a very odd smell.  I thought it smelled like something was burning, like something was on fire.  And where there’s fire, there’s smoke.  Or something.  So yes, indeed, the sky was filled with smoke.  From what I heard, Minnesota is on fire and the wind is whipping it our way.  Of course this would happen on the day I find out I have Bronchitis, but that’s just how my world works.

Here are some crappy pics from my cell phone.  This is what it looked like with no clouds in the sky, and no, the smoke didn’t make everything purple—leave my Nokia 6133 out of this!

This is, uh, different.

So this is what I found upon checking Weather Underground this morning—I guess Eau Claire has become such an industrial city (see: sarcasm) that we too must suffer under the thick and heavy burden of smog? Or is it just smoke? Cause I’m sitting next to a window right now, and I don’t see any smoke. Maybe someone was smoking outside the weather station and they got confused? Or maybe they’re listing their favorite Mortal Kombat character. Or maybe this is a new cigarette campaign targeted at those who like to be updated about the weather.

Just maybe.

Spiderman 3…hmm…

Last night, I saw Spiderman 3 with some friends, and after it was over I was left with just one thought—really?  Was that really what I just watched?  Now I’m told that this movie was very loyal to the comic, supposedly, and that the comic is very campy and such.

But [MINOR SPOILER:] “I forgive you…” [END MINOR SPOILER]??

Is that the only emotional depth that can be reached?  Is that as far as it goes?  The entire ending was a huge misstep for me.  I should have stopped watching ten minutes before it was over.  If there is no Spiderman 4 in the future, then Spiderman 3 ruined it completely.  And it wasn’t even that bad, it just didn’t make up for it by being good, either.  Bruce Campbell was hysterical, and the action sequences were nice to look at (even if Spiderman should have died 15 times over from his injuries), but it just wasn’t enough.  Spiderman 3 is better than X-Men 3, but that’s not saying much.

Pore Spore…err, poor Spore.

If The Sims 2, Sim City 4, and Civilization 3 were all my favorite games—which they are—then I would be ridiculously excited about Will Wright’s next game Spore—and I am. Unfortunately, it sounds like it just got pushed back to 2008, which is kind of a long time from now. So I’ll just have to find comfort in the fifteen other games I’m waiting for, like Mass Effect, Bioshock, Half-Life 2, Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, and of course the quietly whispered rumors of a Sim City 5…

Tour flashback.

I normally dislike pictures of myself, but this one turned out well—it’s me walking into someone’s shot while inside Rockefeller Chapel in Chicago.

Obviously, I need a business card.

I don’t care what profession I end up having–be it writer, director, restaurateur, or rock star…I want a business card. And not just any run-of-the-mill business card, either. I want an incredibly memorable, graphically priceless piece of art on card stock paper. And I was a graphic designer in a previous life [see: my first major] and I really think I could handle something like this. It’s just such a neat little piece of pointless marketing that I feel the need to be a part of, like my life will be complete with business cards. Yeah, I can buy that.

Gettin’ back in the game!

I’m so happy we’ve both decided to continue our long-lost blogs.  It’s so brotherly of us, like we’re related or something.  And because of that, and our shared predictions concerning the longevity of this commitment, I think it’s only fair to take bets on how long this will last.  I think I can make it until December.  I think he might make it to August.  Just putting it out there…

Joost+Powerbook=Nothing.

Depending on how you look at it, I’m very upset at Joost and/or my laptop because I can’t run the Joost beta.  So my laptop is old and runs on a G4, it’s true.  I don’t see why they have to automatically disable it from running on my system—just give me a chance!  It could still work, maybe.  I could be totally off-base, actually.  I don’t know much about software programming, but even if it could never work on a G4, wouldn’t it be possible to design a version to run on older hardware?  I can’t buy a new computer every year, because if I could, I still wouldn’t be spending all that money on buying a new computer every year.  And I was so excited, too!  Joost was going to let me relive my childhood with episodes of Transformers!  And…National Geographic shows…and…uh, rejected Comedy Central shows? 

Hmm.   No, no.  On second thought, I’m good.

Europe 2008.

I found out today that I am officially in for next years Concert Choir European Tour 2008. I’m all a flutter—not only because I get to go to Europe again, but because I get to go with some of my best friends, spend a whole year singing with them here, and then go sing in some amazing places on another continent! The plan is Germany, Czech Republic and Poland, and all for the low, low price of $3600! Oh, I am going to be so poor, it’s true. But I don’t really care, because I’m going to Europe!! Sorry, did I mention that already?

Hello Bach, goodbye futon.

Today’s the day my futon goes away. I will miss it dearly. It wasn’t very comfortable, and it was really quite impossible to make into a bed, but its lovable brown slipcover brought warm feelings to me every time I sat upon it, unless someone had just spilled, of course. But we will meet again, dear futon! Nothing can keep us apart.

Today’s the day Bach rolls in his grave. Good riddance. It will be a good show, Bach’s Mass in B minor, to be sure–come on, its UW-Eau Claire’s very own Concert Choir with the Symphonic Choir, accompanied by the amazing University Symphony Orchestra. It’s going to be a good time for everyone except the audience, thus my problem with the Bach. You need to get to know the Mass in order to appreciate how good it is–Cruxifixus alone is worth the price of admission. But I’m afraid it will all fall on unappreciative ears, and thus so make its exit.

It’s all correlated.

The amount of late-night craziness on a Friday relates directly to how much work I want to do on a Saturday. Namely, last night was really crazy, and today I have just been sitting around.

Last night was the Statesmen concert and, as expected, it was amazing. Incredible at times, but mostly just amazing. I only yawned once, and that’s just because I had already heard some of their songs. Good times.

Being there.

Tonight only! The Singing Statesmen, in concert, under the direction of Gary R. Schwartzhoff!

 It’s one of those few and far between nights when I really wish I was in Statesmen.  There’s something different about it, beyond the shenanigans, that is unique.  I love Concert Choir and would never want to leave that–12:00 is my favorite hour five days a week, and a European tour is on the horizon that is being built up to be the pinnacle of my existence so far.  I just wish there was a little more time in the day for that intangible something, and shenanigans.

Such old news, I know.

A few days after having a conversation with someone about the need for protests, Digg up and had itself an old fashioned riot. After a code was released that usurped the DRM software on HD-DVDs, Digg was inundated with post after post listing the code in various ways. What’s wonderful is that it all took place over the internet, carried out by people from across the country and around the world. A website moderated by the people took action against its owner and basically won. That’s just so cool. I’m not a huge fan of riots and defacing property and the like, but I could definitely see myself sacking and pillaging the social bookmarking sites of the world. It would be epic.

This is for the world, right?

I’m upset.  I’m disturbed.  I’m bothered.  How is it possible that a man can get away with such gross negligence?  He’s fine.  He was in a massive collision and he’s fine.  But others weren’t.  I’m slightly disconnected from the whole thing, but I have friends who know people that were there that night.  I wish I could communicate clearly how this all makes me feel.  There’s something in one of the news articles I read about trusting the legal system, but trusting it doesn’t make me feel any better about the outcome.

In progress.

I just posted a new story to the Stories and Scripts page. It’s short cause I’m still writing it, but I figured I might as well do something with it besides let it slowly die on my hard drive. One day, it will win me plenty of money in some short story contest. Until then, enjoy.

It starts today.

This isn’t going to be an everyday thing, but I want to start doing this again. I miss having an outlet for whatever it is I’m in the mood for. This is a nice place for me and it’s good to be back.