What if I just re-started blogging after all these years, in small, insignificant ways?  Not everything should just be a Like in Facebook.  Not every personal-share is appropriate for public places where coworkers and family members frequent.

i am a food blog — this is worth exploring more, the kind i like with yummy photos and food.  and decently designed.  that still makes a difference to me.

fox in the pine — food, cats, photos and creativity. not a narrow blog but focused. nicely laid out and i love the small handwritten style font.

So, I finally have one, I finally have a D-SLR digital camera.  It seems like a reason as good as any other to resume quietly blogging.

The first thing to say is, “Damn, I am intimidated!”  It’s winter and it’s cold and I am not sure I want lug the camera outside or lug it to work.  The only hours of daylight are while I am work.  But this seems more the excuse.   I have what I have always wanted and now I have to prove to myself that I can produce the images I always said were not capable with the P&S.  Its interesting how baggage can come from the most benign sources.  Oh to have my brain in control.

But I have moved one step forward and relaunched a third year of the photoast photoblog.  Alas, will I get some photos onto it?  Time will tell.

I have also begun the browsing of photoblogs that have tips and tutorials and such.  I need to maximize this camera.  It is no longer about taking photos for an ethereal reason but a definite statement to return to creative statements.  I need to FOCUS on something and be enthused about something and actually WORK on something with energy and interest.

Ahhh the mode of a old-timey blogger with all the feelings and the emotions on the page.

so she asks me what i wants.  this is whats i wants.  She can also tell me mom and my sister and and and…

more added as they are noted.  updated regularly.  forever.

• T.A.R.D.I.S. USB Hub
• BaconBot Tee
• d20 socks
• Aperture Labs mug

Screw it; blogs are so 5 years ago.  And with the death of GeoCities upon us, I feel the need to recreate a Homepage, a relatively static page of ME.

Soonish…

No thoughts.  This might be it.  Might be all blogged out.

• LCARS theme for iPhone — Yes, a Star Trek:TNG based theme for your iPhone.  Its a little complicated assuming you have all the apps installed on your iPhone the same way the maker does.  The thing is that I always wondered about the secret society of ST — the designers.  SOMEONE had to come up with all those new mechanical, graphical and uniform designs that constantly changed throughout the series.  And they seemed to be quite the lucrative business considering the absolute massive amount of coverage they would provide.  The second generation, the original series that is, people were probably all retro-cool.
• LED Sheep — And here you thought that MIT kids playing Tetris and Space Invaders on the sides of buildings via computer controlled lights was cool.  Try using living creatures!!  Does that make the sheep dogs components in an object oriented programming language?
• 10 Stories that should have fooled you — To someone who had all the cool AP stories of the day emailed to me by a bored partner, these are not all that weird.  But they should have been used on The Onion News for a weird “true” April 1st twist.
• CupCakeCamp Canada — the “camp” idea, inspired by the BarCamp/DemoCamp idea where adhoc or loosely organized events happening in a relatively short period of time and are pretty much open.  But how about cupcakes instead of developer thingies?  There’s a cookieCamp somewhere, right?
• a new meme — Well, maybe not.  But the author of the post seems to believe it is inspired by weird bugs in Nintendo 64 Goldeneye games that cause the sprites to spaz out, seemingly dancing frenetically.  But someone how I think all those japanese kids recreating dances to a pop tune might have started somewhere else.  So it comes down to another weird thing japanese kids are doing.

Hee! No disposable pun.

Its friday and i haven’t worked much today.  Too many interruptions and a disastrous lunch (been a long time since a resto forgot about me) left me distracted and unfocused.  I think I might have to take The Beast (what we call our brand of T61s with 15.4 widescreens) home with me and … oh fuck, I didn’t bring my bag with me.  Oh well.  Sort email and answer things on Monday.

• Pocket Yoga — Speaking of Lenovo, this is a design concept for a “pocket PC” that didn’t take off.  The funny thing is that it hit the Interweb rounds at the same time I have been seeing ads about the Sony Vaio P, while not as small and sexy, is definitely along the same lines.  Lenovo should have gone with this instead of the “slide out screen” they seem to believe will be so innovative.
• Annie!! — Yeah, you would go vader on their asses too.  Spike might show cut to pieces versions of the three movies ALL … THE … TIME but at least they know how to advertise it.
• Doom: Fall of Mars — Remember original Doom?  The master of the old school FPS games?  Well imagine it reimagined as a isomorph game.  Heh.
• Augmented Reality Toys — A few months ago a demo app of a lil green monster was doing the rounds.  Essentially you printed a little square, ran the app and pointed your webcam at the printout.  And a monster appeared on your screen.  This uses the same idea but turns it into a game that would use goggles instead of your webcam.  FUN !!
• Birds Fly Away — Wow.  Not only is this a great song but the way she demos it in her kitchen, live mixing her music!!  Oh such sexy talented toys.  Of course, I went out and got the album right away…. maybe I should pay for it. (thanks wil)

Its spring, I can smell it, in the thawing dog poop and the unidentified scents as the ground thaws.  I can see it in the bicycles on the street and the scarf I left on my shelf this morning.  I can feel it in the afternoon above-zero temperatures requiring me to take off my jacket as the sun hits the west wall at work.  I love spring, I love its reboot of the year, I love the scents my nose can barely pickup (ok, i can live without thawing dog poop) and I love the sense of possibility it brings with it.

• Porch to Patio (pdf scan of magazine) — Marmy grew up with a porch, a porch she still years to have again and sit on it in the evenings and watch neighbours go by while sipping a cup of tea.  I grew up in the burbs and half way through my life we built a patio.  I was a BBQing place but little else.  My parents current house has a front end patio that is BBQing and entertaining in the summer and gives them a place to sit and greet people as they come up the driveway.  Not many walking neighbours in that rural area.  I sat on that patio and read books & drank beer when I last went to visit.  I now want a porch but I don’t realistically think I would ever say hello to my neighbours. (via jason)
• Anna the Red’s Bento Factory — No matter how annoying it is to others, Marmy and I are japanophiles, amused and fascinated by most of Japanese culture, the good and the bad.  Bento is just fun, like a child’s lunchbox all organized and sorted.  Bento designed to look like characters is just MORE fun.  Too bad I wouldn’t eat half the ingredients in an average bento lunch.
• Watchmen opening credits — I was one of the generation who was astounded and in awe of The Watchmen.  I didn’t read it in the monthlies but in the graphic novel format but I am not sure when i was first introduced to it; probably Mukey.  It showed me what comics COULD be, much like The Sandman, did but kept the ideas of superheroes intact.  It never occurred to me that a movie could be made of it, let alone be faithful to the feel, if not the actual panel for panel storytelling.  I have not seen the movie yet but these titles DO give me great enthusiasm, as I spent the last year just being calm & suspect of the project.  This was the perfect way to introduce the world and some of the flashback & newspaper stories in the graphic novel.
• The McGangBang — In my continuing tradition of repellant yet compelling fastfood choices that could possibly kill me if I tried them, I give you a McChicken sandwich inside a double-cheeseburger.  Its not as dirty as it sounds but it kinda is.  Neat blog too.  That said, i am losing my interest in the general topic blog, the personal blog that is more linky love and personal commentary and really being attracted to these subject-matter blogs.  I am taking a 180 opinion of where I should go with all of this, I guess.
• Cake of Resignation — Not all resignations are a bitter and nasty event.  Some are for good reasons with nothing but goodwill for all concerned.  There is no bitterness and therefore, cake is a perfect way to say goodbye.

So very very dragged out today.  One of those days where everything was distracting me and it felt like I did nothing and drama ruled over productivity.  I wish I was a drama queen so I could absorb it all and revel in it.  Alas, I am tired.  Dog tired.

• THRU YOU — Unbelievably well done remixes of You Tube videos, all music based and with incredibly high production values.  I bet it will be a for-sale DVD soon enough, once the royalties and rights will be worked out.  Then again, that may be impossible in this “GIVE ME” kinda world.
• Saturday Morning Watchmen — If you are old enough, click through to this hilarious version of The Watchmen, which I am yet to see.
• Pink Dolphin — A bubble-gum coloured dolphin swimming in a lake in Louisiana.   I wonder if the tuna made from this critter would taste like bubble gum?
• Fail Sticker — Can I buy an entire roll of these and put them all over my users?
• Ambassadors of Cute — Japan wants some kawaii girls to be international representatives?  I can understand them working in tourist booths in Tokyo but sending girls that look like hot highschooler fantasies out to other countries seems a little … kogal ?

I am reading The Living Dead, a zombie anthology edited by John Joseph Adams, but I am only two stories in.  I have started watching Burn Notice and my oh my, Gabrielle Anwar has had some work done.  We recently watched House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects directed by Rob Zombie; the latter was better but needed …. more.  I am twitting and shazam’ing on my iPhone.  I am playing Grand Theft Auto 4 and constantly being amazed at how much more detailed they made it; want more clothing stores though.  I just downloaded a few hundred issues of Dragon Magazine and I am very much enjoying the first 100 issues’ content.  I haven’t been eating very well lately but I am hoping to change that next week.  I just finished reading The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski– it was a ALOT of fun and I am looking forward to the next book.  I am listening to Does You Inspire You by Chairlift and a little confused at the line between cheesy and artsy it is straddling.  I also bought How to Fall Down in Public by Howie Beck, the third MP3 album I ever actually purchased.  I bought a gelaskin from Magic Pony for my iPhone; this consumerist concept of decorating my gadgets touches my heart.

Adding more randomness to the posting here.

The reading of two recent posts on gaming oriented blogs has my thoughts spinning.  I thought I would share.

The first started with my favourite Olde School Gamere, Jeff Rients, and an “edition wars” he started (well he didn’t but his post did) when responding to someone’s whining about randomness in an encounter.  The original post was “Keep Randomness Out of Your Encounters“.  Short story?  Good rolls on the DM’s behalf sicked a bunch of monsters on the players that their characters couldn’t handle.  They had to run.  They whined.  The jist of the post, as I read it, was that randomness was not a good thing.  “The module designer failed to account for the potential of the summoning happening nearly every round.”  But isn’t that always going to be a possibility in ANY game where dice play a part?  You could roll badly and the DM could roll wonderfully, IMO — in monsters’ opinions.  That doesn’t make the encounter unbalanced, just unfortunate.  It doesn’t matter if this was a Live session, where encounters are strictly planned to advance the game & players’ part.  This is D&D where things can go wrong and good players/characters prove their mettle by overcoming the bad situation.  Or they tuck their tails and return when they’be regrouped.

Read the rest of this entry »