30 August 2009
26 August 2009
lab rats
22 August 2009
Adventures in Europe: The Movie!
Music video I made of my sister's and my trip to Europe during the month of May (see my travel journal posts a ways down). Fun!
Music by Cartel and Jack Peñate.
21 August 2009
It's about time...
17 August 2009
12 August 2009
Shadow Sk8rs and the Dying Life
As I sit here, dying of some inexplicable illness, I figure that I might as well write something, since I have nothing better to do, or at least no ability to do something better. Being sick makes me mad. I’m drinking soda, and I hate soda. [I wonder what percentage of the U.S. calls it “pop” and which percent calls it “soda” and which ridiculous percent takes the time to call it “soda pop.”] But I think the soda might actually be helping. I at least feel better than I did at 2:33 this morning, and definitely better than I felt at 4:30 this morning. There’s a blessing in disguise though… I did need cans to decorate my sister’s getaway car, and I was just going to dump soda out. But now I can use these!
This is a sweet find. I love graffiti. They designed these to make sense when the shadows are at certain points—I am amazed by the vision that some people can have… this has turned into a world of interaction, and I get pretty dang excited when someone creates something of which you can discover new aspects. Modern graffiti often accomplishes that.
Whatever happened to my writing days? I used to write all the time. Granted, it was often for school, but I still enjoyed it, and I didn’t feel like I was really being forced into anything. Writing essays sucked at first, because most teachers don’t know what a real essay is, and they teach you all wrong. My teacher of my junior and senior year was phenomenal. That’s when I really learned to analyze things, and now I intentionally overanalyze everything (including very specific definitions of feelings, experiences, perceptions, etc.), but I don’t really care. I enjoy it. Someday I want to start writing semi-analytical biographies. I write short ones in my journals or elsewhere, because it’s more interesting than mere descriptions of behavior, and I am sometimes curious… writing things out helps me work through things until I can come to a [n often not conclusive] conclusion.
(proof that I loved to write, whether I could spell or not)
Sometimes I start writing out notes on things that I wish to address. That’s how “On Atlantis and Hell” was written—I started taking notes while I was listening to Atlas Shrugged. A collection of meaningful quotations from the novel was enough to inspire my written “philosophy.” I should post that essay to my blog. I currently wish to write on the topic of self-reliance. I wrote an essay on it in high school, based on the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau, and I’ve decided that I should expand it, adding things I’ve since learned, and an entirely new aspect. I don’t know when I’ll get around to this—probably after my mission—but I will say that the most important consideration preceding the foreseen essay (the same consideration accompanying the original essay), is this: self-reliance is absolutely distinct from self-sufficiency. I think that people mistake one for the other consistently. I will leave that thought with you, and hope that you will consider it, and divine your own [not necessarily conclusive] conclusions.
06 August 2009
05 August 2009
Rocks Tonic Juice Magic
While I was in Idaho I spent TEN HOURS STRAIGHT working on it in the iComm office (felt like old times...), and got it to be exactly how I wanted it (for the time I had at least). It even put to the net correctly; I checked it on like 3 computers. So I was feeling great, and the next day, I wanted to look at it again, for the satisfaction or something stupid, and it was wrong. I don't understand. Only the homepage is wrong, and everything else is right. But the homepage links to all these other pages that I don't want up there. If you click on anything, and then click "home," that links to the correct homepage. I don't understand why the other page is up. Especially since I deleted all of the other pages--they don't even exist, but somehow they're still showing up? This probably doesn't make sense to anyone but me. I spent 3 hours doing everything I could to fix the problem, and I still don't know why it's happening. Whatever. People don't understand why I want my website fixed before I leave either. They think it's pointless, but hey I want my site as updated as it can be, you know? I mean it's out there, it might as well look presentable. I know no one will look me up while I'm gone, but it still bugs me. Anyway, if you happen to visit my website, just go to one page and then click "home" to get my reeeal site. Annoying. But I don't have time to fix it, and I've already done everything I can think of. But pssst I have favicons now! Yes!
Weddings... the hard thing about Mormon culture is that sometimes engagements stop being exciting. Actually, very often. It's hard not to think, "oh, another one." So many people get married (which is great, cool, essential to life, [but]) that I stop getting excited by it sometimes. I could even say that it's exhausting. Usually when it's someone close to me I get more excited, though. I guess it makes sense for me not to be excited for people I don't even know that well. I love it when there are two awesome people, and I love both of them, and they decide to marry each other. I'm like, "yes. Yes, this will be great." My best friend's brother just got married, and that was actually really cool and fun. They'd been dating for 2 years (call me crazy, but I get a lot more excited by a 2-year relationship than a 4-month one...), and he baptized her a while back and they waited to be married so that they could be sealed in the temple. It was a very happy occasion.
My best friend (I guess I have a few of those), a.k.a. other half and sister Debbie, is getting married in 9 days. It definitely hasn't hit me. At ALL. I've been doing tons for the wedding, I've seen her in her wedding dress (I had a 4 second teary moment that passed) ... it just really hasn't hit me. We haven't been together all summer since we backpacked Europe, and we're having fun now that she's home, but no matter how much I try to think about it, I can't picture her really being gone. I know nothing will ever be the same again. I don't know when it will hit me. Maybe in the temple on the actual day. It had better. Otherwise, I'll leave on my mission for 18 months, and when I get back, everything will be different. Baaah why can't it hit me?
There are probably more interesting things for me to write about right now. Remember when I planned on always contributing something to make my web presence more meaningful? I know. I kind of fail. But here's something cool. I mostly am excited that I know where Ljubljana is, thanks to my memorizing capitals endeavor.
<- click me!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?ggljub01.wav=Ljubljana (if you don't know how to pronounce Ljubljana)I didn't know that the online dictionary does pronunciations, but I think it's a fun discovery. So great!
Rocks Tonic Juice Magic - Saves the day it's just good.
