A blog about my life.
I upgraded the site to Wordpress 2.5. From what it looks like, there isn’t anything broken. I would appreciate any feedback on if the sit is acting weird or if something isn’t working. You know, the works.
Gotta say, I’m liking 2.5 so far.
I will upgrade Lexy’s site tomorrow. Also, be sure to congratulate her on her new iPod Nano in green flavor.
Well, that’s all that I have for right now. I have to get to bed. 
I’m sure a lot of you are tired of watching more Mario Kart Wii videos, but here are another couple. These are official from Nintendo themselves. The first one is in Japanese, but offers a lot more visual information than the European one on the bottom.
I am in the midst of another project for Audio I. This is a two and a half to three minute newscast. Take a listen and let me know what you think of it. I have another week to work on it, so any advice you guys give me, I will probably implement next Monday during my lab time. Please, let me know what you think of it. PLEASE.
Gary Vaynerchuk has just kicked me in the pants of my brain. Does that make any sense? Nah, but the visualization works, right? Well, watch this video and we shall discuss.
Ok, so what did you think? Not bad, eh? It is a great philosophy if not a little… self-sacrificing? I don’t know. Maybe because I have been so me-centric that I see all of the ways that people could take advantage of you using the 80/20 Rule. Then again, if you do that with most everyone you have a relationship with, it would probably balance itself out. Some would give you back that 20 (maybe less), but others would give back upwards of 80 right back to you. Then you have about an overall 50/50 return on your relationships. Makes sense to my fancy brain.
As I watch/listen to more and more podcasts, my creative side starts yelling at me to do something. Creating and distributing a podcast would be a great experience and I think a fantastic opportunity to really reveal my view on a lot of issues. I’m not talking political-type stuff, but how I feel about video game companies, tech companies, whatever, and their moves into the market. The problem is that my interests lie in so many different areas that condensing them all into one show would be difficult. Then that begs the idea. Should I create a network like TWiT or Revision3? Have many shows that are each about their own little thing? Then if I decide to go ahead and produce a podcast, where do I get the money for bandwidth and production? Though, I could definitely host it on sites like YouTube, Viddler, or Revver until the show gets popular enough (ha) that advertising can pay for the bandwidth for a site.
Then again. Why don’t I just do it? Of course, I need to evaluate why I would be doing this. Am I doing it for me? Just to see if I can? Shouldn’t I be producing a show more for those people who would be watching it than for myself? In that case, what could I give to the internet community? Of course, I would be giving myself to them, but there needs to be more than that. There needs to be something about the show that provides the viewers or listeners with something they either can’t or wouldn’t want to get any where else. Gary is right, the fact that there are people that visit your blog out of the billions of awesome minds, ideas, and content on the web is pretty dope.
If I decide to go into the podcast producing arena, I will need partners. Some of you have already expressed interest in this, but I am getting closer and closer to an actual want and desire to get this project started. Who wants to be on this train?
I finally found it! A WP Plugin that will allow pages to link to external sites. Now my “Photos” page (up thar at the top) goes directly to my Flickr photos. Try it out. Crazy, eh? I like it.
Oh, and I’m killing my poll plugin. It pretty much sucks and there isn’t a good place to put it in the super crowded sidebar.
In other news, I had to replace the front door handle because it came off in my hand on the way out the door. That’s how I found out that those fancy handle door handles are super expensive. On the order of $70 to $100. So, while at Lowe’s, I grabbed the $20 Kwikset Cameron knob that has the nifty new SmartKey system that will key the lock to an existing key you have; thus I keyed it to the house key. Super convenient. I wish I had had the mindset to take a picture and show you just how broken the door handle was; though in the future, I will make sure to take pictures of things.
Anyone notice/recognize the new favicon for the site? 
I realize that recently that I have been talking all about my recent adoption of sixteen trillion different micro social networks. Well, how about if you want to go to one site to see what your friends (like me!) are up to on all their other sites? Well, guess what I found? Yep, a site that does just that. It is called FriendFeed. There, you can be my friend and see all the sites I Stumble, Digg, post on Twitter, Pownce, etc. They have 28 sites that they can import your info from. Pretty cool, huh?
I have a long, involved discussion to start about the future of podcasting and how it will effect current medias like television and radio. The rant/discussion will go into how I want to be a part of it before the online explosion of media happens. The time doesn’t feel right yet. I have more personal reflecting and detailing to do first. Soon. My thoughts on the matter will happen soon.
—————-
Now playing: Jonathan Coulton - SkyMall
via FoxyTunes
Well, it appears that the release date for Mario Kart Wii has been set at April 27, 2008 for North America. Today, I found an article and video outlining the Battle Mode in the game. The video shows three Battle Mode courses, two of which are from previous Kart games. I am excited. Also, the amount of players you can race in a Battle Mode match is up from four. If you go online, you can play with up to 11 other people, for a total of 12 karts in Battle Mode. There is also another type of Battle Mode race called Coin Runners. Here, you race your fellow Battle Moders and try to collect coins. The racer with the most coins at the end of the battle wins.
I’m thinking with all the people Lexy and I will be playing along with online, we might have to set up a Skype conference call or either a TeamSpeak or Ventrilo server. Playing with your friends online is fun, but being able to talk to them while you play them online is even more fun.
So, c’mon. How many of you are excited about this game? Why are you excited about it? To me, it’s my Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It’s the Nintendo game that I’ve been looking forward to for so long. The original is and will be the best, to me. Mario Kart 64 was good, definitely a step in the right direction. Double Dash was a pile of steaming crap. This new one looks like it will be a ton of fun and I hope that using the Wii Wheel will add that little extra pop to the game that I’m thinking it will. I actually hope that it tops the original in my mind. It will be a tough fight, but I really hope it does.
So, for a bit of nostalgia, here is this:
And for something coming out on April 27, watch this. Amazing how far we have come in 16 years.
I’m not really going to talk about things that have been happening to me because, really, I’ve been on spring break and sitting at home doing nothing. Having no friends really sucks.
I will talk about a game real quick. Dave, two days before he left for Kosovo with no Wii, purchased Super Smash Bros. Brawl. This Wii game is essentially a shit-ton of Nintendo and other characters in a fighting game. Really, it isn’t my cup of tea and I sucked hard core at it. Playing as Link and unlocking Snake was fun, but really, beyond that, I didn’t have a ton of fun. Granted, I can see how this game can be a lot of fun if you like doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. Not for me. At least, not for me in a fighting game.
Other than playing the on and off game here and there, I have mostly been focused on setting up collections and such. I went over how I cataloged my DVDs, games, and books. I finally finished tagging and deleting my music. I deleted a good chunk of music that I don’t listen to or was severely confused as to why I had it in my collection. The tool I used was Mp3Tag. This program will read the ID3 (or other type of) tags on your media and give you an opportunity to change it. The super convenient part was re-tagging whole folders. As I have my music organized by artist and album, it was easy for me to load up a whole album, look up that album on the internet and have Mp3Tag import that information and apply it to the files. Some of the tag sources will even import cover art for the album. When it was all said and done, I had three or four albums that the software couldn’t find cover art for. I looked these up on the web and imported it into the program and boom. Then, I imported all of the files into my iTunes library and now my iPod has cover art for every album and song in my collection. Everything is all organized and makes me a little happy on the inside.
I’m sitting here trying to think up other things to write about and really, I don’t have a whole lot. I think I need a hobby or something that will take my mind off of my friends or lack thereof or how they have been influenced by the actions of others. Something I did notice is my friendships with Adam and Steve have both changed. It’s ok with me. I just keep thinking about how would I go about making new friends. Really, I have not idea and the nature of people in the Broadcasting degree field is MUCH different than the nerdy geek that I happen to be. Maybe when I start my crusade against the lack of mobile learning and/or converged access to information, I might meet some more people with the same interests as me. Though, I think the biggest problem is that I think older and am older than a lot of the others I attend class with. Maybe because I’ve been going to college for too damn long. Maybe I should get into more extracurriculars. I don’t know. It’s tough for someone who is socially awkward. I really do think that if I get a position at the Apple Store, things will change.
You know. With my interest in video and computers, maybe I should combine the two. I mean, still focus on video production, but also add computer science. I think I will change my minor to computer science. I’ll start at the beginning of the minor and make no presumptions that I know what I’m doing. Hopefully I will learn something this time. I’m not expecting to be a hardcore coder, but at least I will have a good idea of what would be possible with code and a direction to start going with it until I find someone (like my brother-in-law) with the proper skills and drive to help me bring my ideas into fruition. Yeah. That sounds like a great idea.
I found a couple of sites that I find helpful in keeping my daily life organized.
The first is Shelfari. This site is fantastic for keeping track of your books. You can add books to your library, discuss books with friends or really anyone, even customize which edition of a book you have. The only thing that I wish it had was the ability to keep track of what books you loan to who. If this site is interesting, add me as a friend.
The second site, was shown to me by Kody. This is DVDSpot. This site is to keep track of your collection of DVDs. It also has Blu-Ray and HD DVD titles in case you own any of those. This allows you to keep track of movies you own, you’ve seen, you want to own, you have ordered, but haven’t received yet, etc. You can even keep track of what DVDs you loan out to what people. I found that entering your DVD collection in by UPC number was by far the easiest over trying to figure out which version of a title I had. I did have to do this with a couple of my DVDs, but really the database this site has is very expansive. I was actually surprised by a couple of them. If you use this, friend me up or just check out my collection.
Finally, I am using Gamespot.com for my library of video games. It is a little awkward to use for a game library, but it is also where I get a lot of my game reviews and is generally the final nail in deciding whether I buy a game before I play it.
I would definitely welcome any better suggestions for the sites I have suggested, especially for games.
Oh, and for any Mario Kart fans out there, the release date apparently has been set at May 1, 2008.
I found a game via Zero Punctuation’s video game review. Really funny and oddly similar to my own tastes, btw.
Anyway, the game is called TRILBY: The Art of Theft. It is a platformer that is oddly fun and extremely challenging. It is that kind of challenging that you want to keep trying rather than getting pissed off and quitting. Give it a try and let me know what you think of it. Oh, and a warning, it is deliciously old school.
