I've been swamped. My apologies. And I'm not writing anything of note now, either (I know, I'm a slacker).

Instead, amuse yourself with the animations of this site. :)

Labels: amusement

I've been playing a new (to me) game on the GameCube the last couple of nights, one of the games that actually encouraged me to buy the Cube (no, not MarioKart, Lane). Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a game "inspired" by H.P. Lovecraft's work, and as a huge Lovecraft fan how could I pass that up? The game has a similar feel to Lovecraft's stories, with human protagonists thrust into dealing with sanity-destroying cosmic entities trying to claw their way into our world. Gameplay-wise, it's very similar in style to Resident Evil, with the added bonus of flipping back and forth through a variety of characters in different historical periods (e.g., you start out as a Roman Centurion, then jump to medieval France, etc.).

The part I've enjoyed (and dreaded) the most, though, is the incorporation of the effects of sanity in the game. In Lovecraft's books characters regularly suffer nervous shocks or go insane simply by witnessing the events in the stories. In the game, this is represented by a "sanity meter," which drops every time you see a creature. As the meter drops, the game changes. To represent your character slowly going insane, the game throws in effects ranging from soft whispers and footsteps to bleeding walls to enemies that aren't really there to statues with heads that twist to follow you as you walk by.

Here's where it gets really good. If your sanity drops too far, the game breaks the fourth wall and actually starts messing with you as the player. The game will pretend the controller is unplugged, mute or turn up the volume, give television error messages, pretend to turn the television off entirely, make fake "bugs" crawl across the screen and, my personal favorite so far, make loud banging noises that sound like someone is pounding on the wall behind the television (that's always pleasant at 2 a.m. in a dark house . . .).

Yay for interactive media. :)

Labels: amusement, computers

I cleaned up and posted some of the "fun" photos I took while in western Nebraska. Enjoy.

Labels: photography

As promised, a (low-quality to keep the file size decent) copy of the slide show I made for Jeff and Shandra's wedding. A high-quality copy will be included on the final DVD, for those of you getting a copy of that.

Labels: jeff, shandra

Spotted on my way to work today:

In the midst of a protest rally in front of the Mexican embassy along Dodge Street, a man holding a sign that read "Deport all illegal immigrants and their sympathizers" (emphasis mine). I was amused at the irony involved in utilizing one's First Amendment rights to suggest removing another group's First Amendment rights.

Labels: amusement, irony, social commentary

I wasn't actually in the room during the bouquet toss, and thus I was accepting events as relayed to me. Further information supplied by Linde suggests that "fair and square," as I claimed before, involved Linde stepping 15 feet away from the group at the last moment and waiting for Shandra to throw the bouquet in her direction alone . . .

Despite such dastardly tricks, it apparently worked anyway. I talked to Linde today to confirm that her favorite birthday present was, by far, the engagement ring she received from her boyfriend. Congratulations. :)

Labels: congratulations, linde

Excerpts from the wedding trip:

- I averaged 43 mpg on the trip by hypermiling.

- The wedding went off without any serious hitches (I think the most pressing issues were the non-dance-friendly nature of the bridesmaids' dresses, two of the three of which broke and/or came undone during the reception, and the near-unfortunateness of planning the reception for 200 people and having 196 show up).

- I was originally supposed to video from a second floor (through a window), but my previous scouting of the spot was done on a day when the air conditioners were *not* running; the proximity to those behemoth noisemakers made the recording location worthless, so I ended up recording from the side of the crowd on the main floor (an inferior viewing angle, but at least you can hear things . . .).

- It was nearly 100 degrees. October weddings, people . . . (I've been told that's "football season," whatever that is.)

- Certain unnamed culprits (of which I was not one) vandalized my brother's house during the reception. I don't have a complete list of insults, but apparently they involved removing all the light bulbs in the house, removing the labels from all the canned goods in the pantry, putting Icy Hot on the toilet seats, putting sugar in the bed, writing on the mirrors with deodorant, rearranging the furniture, toilet-papering the outside of the house and putting all of my brother's and sister-in-law's underwear in plastic bags of water in the freezer. There is some confusion as to why exactly my brother left his house unlocked, but there is no confusion about the fact that my brother quizzed everyone involved and is keeping a list of names for future references (none of the culprits is currently married . . .). He asked me for prank advice. I suggested an inflatable kiddie pool full of Jell-O and random objects from the house in the middle of the living room floor.

- I actually danced. Albeit only with people to whom I'm related, as there were no single unrelated women within 10 years of my age (either way) to be found.

- My mother refused to dance at the reception. So Haley and I requested my parents' wedding song (Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle") from the DJ. You can't really say no to your own wedding song.

- I prepared a 90-slide PowerPoint photo show for the reception (using primarily old photos from physical photo albums that I had to scan and clean up; how quaint). It was well-received. The Shakespeare quotes were less of a hit than the final Ogden Nash quote ("To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong admit it, whenever you're right shut up."). I may try to convert it to a video file later and post it (I'll have to do it eventually if I want to add it to the wedding DVD).

- I spent half an hour trying to fix my mother's EarthLink e-mail account before its user-unfriendly nature irritated me enough that I bought her a domain name (as an added bonus, now I can build my dad a Web site for his company, although he says he has so much work that I have to leave the contact info off . . .).

- Linde joked while setting up the reception hall about cheating to catch the bouquet (her solution was to tie fishing line to it and just pull it into her hands). When the time came to throw it, certain people (again unnamed) were vandalizing my brother's house and were not available, so the toss was put off. I wasn't in the room when it was later tossed, but I'm told Linde caught it fair and square. I'm also told Haley's boyfriend told her to sit down when she joined the group . . .

- I printed about 75 photos from my portfolios and put them in a photo album (not all of my family has the Internet or is familiar with Flickr . . .) and passed it around at the various events. It was generally well-reviewed. Several family members have expressed interest in hiring me to do (or guilting me into doing for free) their photography (senior pictures/wedding photos) in the future. There were several slight pauses from various reviewers, however, due to my inclusion of two pages of photos from my human studies portfolio (I picked photos that don't actually show nudity, but it's clear the models are nude). I took a lot of jokes for them . . .

- I encountered multiple people I had not seen in 10 years or more, including former teachers, friends of my parents and second cousins. It's interesting how some people change and some people stay exactly the same.

Labels: family, jeff, miscellany, photography, shandra

To Linde, my dearest older-younger sister, who turns 28 today. The number 28 turns out to be happy, so hopefully her birthday will be happy, too. (It's also a perfect number, so here's hoping it's a perfect birthday, as well.) :)

Labels: birthdays, linde

Pictures are finally up. I took about 800 while I was there. After you remove the several hundred I took that didn't relate to the wedding, the duplicates resulting from my photography style (taking bursts of three for any scene involving people), the out-of-focus and blurry ones and the ones I just plain didn't like, you end up with around 75. A few still need post-production work; the rest I loaded with minimal or no Photoshop tweaking. I was shooting mostly indoors without a flash, so the faster shutter speed and prime lens made for decent but still a little grainy photos. I'll have to buy more equipment (IR-controlled synched flashes) before I do any serious wedding photography.

Congratulations again to Jeff and Shandra!

Labels: congratulations, jeff, shandra

To my brother and his new bride on their wedding! Congratulations, Jeff and Shandra. :) (Pictures soon, I promise . . .)

Labels: congratulations, jeff, shandra

I uploaded this photo to my human form portfolio on Flickr some time ago. Shortly thereafter Cris commented on the graceful feminine curves of the image, which was pleasant feedback. Of course, it would have been nicer feedback if the image wasn't of me, and if the commentary on the feminine curves hadn't come in the form of "Dude, you have girl hips." Taking the teasing in its good-natured form, I laughed along and forgot about it.

Last week another Flickr "favorited" the image (in essense, adding a bookmark to the image to tell other viewers you liked the photo). When I peeked at this person's favorites list (the entire collection of favorited images), I found that every single photo (about 150) in the collection were of backs and hips . . . of women. Except for the picture of me.

[insert Cris's burst of triumphant laughter here]

I still maintain it's the angle and crop of the photo. :P But Cris wins this round.

Labels: amusement, cris, photography

Overheard two lines over at the DMV:

Unhappy woman: "I am not pregnant!"

Labels: overheard

New iMacs debuted today!

*counting pennies in his closet*

Labels: computers, cool

Although not a "normal viewer" by any standard definition of American television viewers, I've caught several episodes of Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" (for some odd reason the leading competitor to infomercials at 1 a.m. last week). For those unfamiliar with the show, it centers on NBC-sponsored sting operations, involving a camera-rigged house where suspected paedophiles are interviewed by the host after arriving to meet an Internet decoy.

The show itself is straightforward, while the social commentary is complex. I can't help but feel that, while the show leads directly to the arrest of sexual predators (which is, of course, a good thing), the hoped for secondary effects (the enlightenment of the general populace and a mobilization of resources to weed out the main problem) haven't and likely won't materialize. Perhaps it's the opinion of the cynic in me, but, although feelings of outrage, shock and horror are there, the primary emotion of the viewing audience is mostly likely to be simple satisfaction. We do love seeing people who have done wrong get called on it (and the host certainly plays to that angle), and the more they squirm and the more elaborate their excuses, the more we feel justified in judging them. It's a collective exercise in feeling superior. When the show ends, we feel good that the bad guy was caught, ignoring the thousands of other bad guys and the real work it would take on our part to help fix the problem (even writing a check to a charity for exploited children would be a good start).

There's also the social commentary inherent in the fact that paedophilia is classified by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder. While this in no way excuses the behaviors (the fact that there are victims involved warrants strong action), it does raise topics of conversation regarding society's handling of mental disorders. How effective is punishment versus treatment? Does public embarrassment help predators deal with their urges? Does our revulsion relate to the person's actions or the person himself? If there was surgery to remove the part of the brain causing the disorder, would we consider the person "cured" and ready to integrate into society with no stigma? Is it the focus of the disorder (children) that concerns us, or simply the fact that a disorder is there? In the long run, how effective is the method we're using to deal with the problem?

The above aside, the program does showcase a variety of disturbed individuals, and in that way functions as a warning to viewers (whether they grasp that message or not). Some of the men who fall into the sting engender as much incredulity as they do disapproval, including a seemingly random sampling of "respectable" people (teachers, firefighters, policemen, religious leaders, doctors). One man stripped naked in the garage before entering the house unannounced (and had his interview in a towel . . .) and then was caught the very next day after using the same online alias in the same chatroom to meet what turned out to be another decoy. Another had his sister drive him to the house and then wait (unaware of his intent) in the car with her two toddlers. Another admitted to meeting 15 other girls in the same fashion. But the most shocking had to be the man who showed up with his five-year-old in tow and then expressed impassioned concern for his son's welfare during his arrest, a sharp contrast with his intentions.

One would hope parents come away from the show with an awakening and a desire to monitor their children's online activities, although I'm afraid that message wars with the "it can't happen to us" mindset. We're creatures of habit, after all.

Labels: social commentary

Posted by a member in an "internet deals" forum:

Levi's Store 50% Off Sale + 25% Off Coupon: Women's Bottoms $15

I'll let my oft-remarked callipygian preferences provide the punchline.

Labels: funny

FYI: Yoplait's Apple Turnover yogurt is disgusting. Stick with apricot mango or peach.

Labels: miscellany

(Discovered through Cris's blog.)

Labels: introspection