Beyond Occident

It’s that time of year! Now is when we all make a big list of things we want to do, tell everyone about them and then fail in spectacular fashion a month or two after New Years. But hey, who am I to hate on tradition?

1. Beat every Zelda game I own for the Gamecube. That would be Ocarina of Time, Windwaker and Twilight Princess. Somehow, I haven’t beaten any of these yet I’ve played them millions of times. How sad.

2. Make a fantastical website. Domain was purchased. Now we just have to build a sweet looking blog.

3. Became a master Photoshop ninja (and by Photoshop, I mean Gimp, because ya know, I can’t afford Photoshop).

Sometime around me coming home from school for winter break, something terrible happened. It began slowly, infiltrating sneakily, like a ninja sneaking up for a kill. My Halo 3 skillz were gone. For twenty days, I kept fighting however, and I still did good every once in awhile, yet it seemed overwhelmingly disappointing.

So, since about a week ago, I put down the controller and didn’t play. Ironically, right after I did this, the Xbox Live servers seemingly went through hell and just recently they were up running correctly again. But anywho, I took a break. And it is glorious. It was starting to get stale playing which may have contributed to my losses. But now, I’m ready to return.

And just to prove it, here is a game describing the depths to which I fell.

Just found this story over on the Consuming Louisville blog. The Speed Art Museum has commissioned Argentinean artist Flavia Da Rin to create 10 billboards to cover Louisville. Flavia Da Rin uses photoshop to create fantasy type artwork that is “enchanting and disquieting”.

What is even cooler about this is that the Speed Museum has integrated a type of social contest into it.  When you find a billboard you can text the keyword that appears on it to the Speed Museum to unlock the billboards on the internet. Then once you find all ten, you can enter a contest to get your own work on a billboard by the Speed Museum around March. I’ll be keeping an eye out for them when I head back down to Louisville next week.

This is cool. Grab your mobile phone and dial up 202.683.7002 to listen to Andy Carvin talk on NPR about mobile phones and Twitter, among other things. Here’s the tweet.

First off, some may notice that my background header has changed. While I’m really not satisfied with it (the dark background clashes with the header), it will work for now. The background came from an excellent photo from Thomas Hawk, and I added a couple layers of gradients to it. I sort of feel like I ruined the original picture by screwing around with it, but I wanted to make it work better with the blog colors.

I got a Kodak z1275 digital camera for Christmas! It takes HD video (resolution of 1280 × 720) and boy, for a $200 camera, does a darn good job doing it. I’m planning on using it for all the terrific movies that we’ll be making through college. Be on the lookout for the next Julius Incrediblus Stupidus film as we should be starting it in a couple days.

In regards to actually taking pictures, I would describe it as merely average for a point and shoot. I went to Zips, a cheeseburger joint in Cincinnati, with my family a few nights ago, and it was quite the low light setting. I fired up my camera, went into manual mode (unchartered territory for me) and started playing around with things I didn’t understand. My goal was to take a decent picture without any flash. The picture that follows, of my niece, is of ok quality. Definitely would of been better with the flash, but I hate the flash on cameras.

I’m an avid user of the excellent Google Reader app. It compiles all the blogs that I read into one source, aggregating new posts so that I can read them without going from site to site, searching for updates. Currently, I’m subscribed to 25 blogs and over the past month I have read over 1500 posts. Out of those posts, I can pick my favorites and compile them into their own RSS feed: My shared items. Indeed, just look for ‘Michael’s Shared Items’ to the right of this post, and you can start reading some excellent material.

A long time ago I joined Twitter (ok… less than a year, when Twitter was becoming quite the rage) and was terrifically excited to use Twitter as a tool to keep my friends and I connected via cell phones and texting. Alas, Cincinnati Bell (my mobile carrier) is a bully and doesn’t allow you to interact with applications such as Twitter, Jaiku or Pownce, through SMS. Twitter fell by the wayside.

Then, a month or two (or three) ago, my brother-in-law David announced that he was ‘twittering’. Ah, I thought, perhaps I can get on the bandwagon again? Alas, it was not in the cards. But a few days ago, for unknown reasons, I was drawn again to Twitter. I created a new account (complete with a stunning background I painstakingly designed) on Twitter and absolutely fell in love with it.

‘Microblogging’ is what all the cool kids are calling it. Many don’t think it will last for too long because it isn’t a viable business model. There appears to be no advertising that I can see so I assume it’s still running off of VC funding. Mad Dog in the Fog posts about companies creating profiles and littering your feed with info relating to their business. Already several all already on Twitter. Or they could just litter Twitter with ads. That’s dangerous as many update through texting from their cellphones or through 3rd party apps on the computer.

What happens if the money runs out? I dunno, but I hope Twitter finds a way to keep afloat that still preserves what makes it so special. It is sure darn fun to find new ways to spread my digital life to everyone.

The second annual Winter Bash Party at mi casa was completed a scant few minutes ago, and all in all, it was a success. We began with the popular Capture-the-Flag match fought upon our property. It seemed like a stalemate until Steve took our flag and proceeded to steam roll me with it. I was left with a nasty cut, a possible black eye and bent glasses while the Pink team walked away with a victory. How sad.

However, any sadness was soon wiped away with a cold glass of eggnog and a viewing of Stardust. Winter Solstice occured at 1:08 am this year, and we celebrated by waving our arms around and flashing lights on the ceiling. I felt so pagan. It was a great time.

I’m still surprised every time I note that Christmas is only a few days away. The final half of the year just flew by. I can’t wait to slip on my bathrobe and slippers and Christmas morn, gather with my family, open some presents and partake in a delicious Christmas breakfast.

So with that I leave you because it’s 3 in the morning, and I’m done icing my eye.  Since I’m sure my readership is quite diverse (all two of you), I wish you all a wonderful season, no matter what (or if) you celebrate.