Warm Winter Weather & Withdrawal January 31, 2013

Two days of warmth and happiness amid two months of ice cold pain and suffering.
I hate winter. With a burning passion, so hot that you would think it might keep me warm. But alas, winter is so desolate and dead and bitterly cold that fire of my hatred toward it is rendered ineffective.
However, I realized recently that there is a part of winter that I greatly enjoy. That is the rare but guaranteed flirt with springtime. These lovely little bursts are the closest I come to appreciating the contrastive benefit of Winter. Most people say that spring and summer would be worthless without something to base them off of. I think this is a load of crap, in the (paraphrased) words of Hazel from The Fault in Our Stars, the existence of broccoli in no way effects the taste of ice cream.
I don’t enjoy Spring because I’m comparing it to winter, I enjoy spring because it is accelerating to the greatness of summer. However, these occasional bursts of warmth are not leading up to anything. They are enjoyable almost exclusively because they are better than the alternative. This past day was 65 degrees, and the day before was warm and sunny as well. Last week was so cold that sodas we kept in the garage were filled with ice crystals. Immediately following this harsh cold and the snow accompanying it, was a lively and heated pair of days. I took runs and bike rides to enjoy them and even took this pretty picture which won me a post on my friends blog.

And now it rains through the night, signifying those days’ end. It will soon be cold and snowing once again, and we will commence with February. Which no matter what all the calendars in all the world say, is absolutely the longest month of the year.

Nobody’s probably reading this, but I can pretend. November 7, 2012

Want some unrelated web links?

Beautiful picture on mars, taken by Curiosity Rover.

cdza Opus No. 13 History of Misheard Lyrics cdza puts out another masterpiece.

How are Justin Bieber, Franz Liszt, and Jerusalem comparable? – PBS Idea Channel  This is a really cool video dealing with how our concept of adoration exemplifies itself in peoples obsessions with celebrities, and certain works of art or other things which prompt intense emotional reactions.

With all this election talk, what if the electoral college is tied?

One big raindrop. XKCD’s What If  segment continues to entertain.

Fantastical Bond Gadgets which are now Readily Available to the Public. Perhaps people will look back at the Nolan Batman movies like this, “Oh yeah, I totally have a city wide sonar map in my garage”.

 

My (horrible) poetry. Did I mention that it was bad? May 25, 2012

I am not a poet.

However, sometimes teachers force you to be. This results.

[Disclaimer: Like most teenagers, I am terrible at writing poetry. Just thought I’d warn you, my poems are very awful. Seriously, it’s worse than Vogon Poetry.]

Title: Mechanical Mice and Men

Type: Free Verse

There once was a scientifically minded mouse

He was so lonely that he built a wind-up mouse toy

Not for the company, mechanical mice can’t speak

They could not become friends

He built it so it could get cheese for him

 

This wind-up toy was skilled at fighting cats

One day it got a tasty little triangle of cheese

And when the mouse tried to claim his prize

The toy mistook him for a cat trying to steal the cheese.

Farewell, scientifically minded mouse.

 

Title: The Epic of EPIC

Type:  Epic

In the City of the Great Port on the Day of Saturn a spectacular ship sailed in.

On the bow of this great vessel stood a man so tremendous that enemies trembled at his feet

As the people awed and adored, he spoke with a voice that could blow down a mountain

“Hello people of the great city, I am here to amaze, and all shall gaze at me, for my name is EPIC.”

 

At that time three drunken sailors came out of a pub and challenged the EPIC man

They proclaimed “Your ship may look nice on the surface but it is rotten to the core! And you smell of putrid cheese!”

EPIC was filled with rage and leapt from his ship onto the port, and with the strength of many men, he beat the drunkards senseless.

His ship was left unattended, and crashed into the port, it seemed that he had displayed folly but that was not so.

 

The hull of his sailboat had the strength of iron, and while it utterly destroyed the pub, it was completely unscathed.

He then ran with the speed of a horse to the citadel, where the king dwells.

When he arrived at the proud city’s center he climbed the king’s tower with bare hands and broke the wall into the hall of the king

With EPIC force he tore the king from his throne and threw him out of the hole in the wall. As he did this he cried out for the whole city to hear “Your King is now EPIC!”

 

Title: The Poem about nothing

Type: Lyric Poem

Poetry is a curious thing

Poets rhyme from Rome to Beijing

But some poets are terrible

For instance, my poems are absolutely unbearable

 

I wish I didn’t have to do this assignment

But I do not intend to be defiant

So three poems I shall write

Maybe one will have something about a kite

 

Kites are really great

The fly in the wind, and have little weight

You throw them up high

And in they soar in the sky

So, yeah. The first one I was actually trying to be serious about, then I was like “Yeah, this isn’t gonna work”. The two others are just jokes. I got a 15/15 on the assignment. Yes, I actually sent that note about the Vogons to my teacher.  She commented saying some cheesy inspirational bit about how if The Little Engine That Could could do it, I could too. I may be slightly exaggerating the contents of her note, but the rest is truth.

Hashtags 101 March 2, 2012

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to be a rant on how idiots misuse hashtags on the web, but an informative post, meant to educate those idiots. I am hoping that people who are ignorant to the purpose and use of hashtags are the people who misuse them, and that this post will convince them to change their ways.

What is a Hashtag?

#breakingnews, #oscars, #thatawkwardmoment, and #fail are all examples of hashtags. A hashtag is one word following a hash mark, that, when used on Twitter, act as tags which you can click on and see other tweets with that hashtag. Hashtags only exist on Twitter, and came into common use among other social networks when services would redirect tweets and post them on other sites, such as Facebook and Myspace. These eventually were adopted as some sort of internet trend by people who are naive to Twitter.

Crashtags

I call hashtags on other sites than twitter “Crashtags”, as they do not function as hashtags(Twitter may not be the only site to use hashtags, if a site has support for them, then they are not considered crashtags). Crashtags are literally pointless and mean absolutely nothing. On twitter, you use a hashtag as a tag to other tweets, if it does not serve this purpose it is a crashtag. DO NOT EVER USE CRASHTAGS.

Crashtags are only acceptable if you redirect your twitter to another social networking site, and you have no power to prevent it. However, I would consider avoiding this scenario at all costs, this only increases the likelihood of someone misinterpreting them and becoming a crashtagger. (note:I use crashtags in this post due to pure necessity)

How To Use Hashtags on Twitter

1. Only use a hashtag if you are sure that other people also have used this before. If you post a hashtag, and you’re the only person who ever used it, than it is not serving its function as a tag.

2. Do not use a hashtag in every single tweet. There are certain people I follow, who I am quite sure think that they can’t tweet something if it doesn’t have a hashtag. If you do this, it is not required, it’s just annoying.

3. Remember that a hashtag ends after one word. By this I mean that a hashtag ends at any punctuation. You cannot hashtag bible verses for this reason; if you post “#john3:16” the hashtag will be #john3.

4. Don’t use hashtags on common words in sentences. “His eyes were #red and I was #soscared” is an example of a hypothetical annoying tweet, this is verging more into opinion, but I’m just trying to prevent you from looking dumb. Try “His eyes were red and I thought he was going to kill me. #scared” (although, that hashtag is borderline needless).

5. Use capital letters to indicate different words. Hashtags are not case sensitive, but if you capitalize a letter, it will still show. #FAIL and #fail lead to the same pages. If you use a hashtag with multiple words, #ThatAwkwardMoment looks nicer and makes more sense than #thatawkwardmoment

What Can I Do to Prevent Crashtags and Misuse of Hashtags?

1. Do not use crashtags. Crashtags are a contagious problem, if you don’t have the disease, you can’t give it to others.

2. Avoid tweet forwarders that turn hashtags to crashtags by posting them to Facebook. If I see evidence that a crashtag on Facebook that used to be a hashtag, I forgive that person, because it is not their fault.  (If you know somebody who could make a tweet forwarder that detects hashtags and deletes them, or if there is already one that does that, let me know)

3. Kindly inform crashtaggers. If you know people who are naive to the truth about hashtags, then make sure you let them know without calling them an idiot. Try sending them this article!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes! February 28, 2012

1. Okay.  GOTD is no more. You probably already new that. I am not good enough at Gimp to make something every single day. I should have come to this decision months ago. I will still post GIMPs here, just not every day just without the daily goal.

2. Weekly posts. I will post something here every week. The quality and/or interstingness of that something will vary depending on my laziness and availability that week. This post does not count as my something for this week.

Thanksgiving is over, it’s time for friggin’ Christmas. November 25, 2011

For Thanksgiving we had one of the best Thanksgiving dinners ever, my mom brined the turkey like last year, a process which made it amazingly juicy. In short, it was good, but now that turkey day is over, we need to make way for Christmas.

Today, Black Friday is unarguably the first day of the Christmas season. So I’m already listening to Christmas music and hoping for snow. My brother (http://clifflewis.wordpress.com/) just released a new Christmas EP, download or stream here, and check out the Tumblr here. It’s pretty awesome, and I don’t just say that cause he’s my brother.

This year also has one thing over every other Christmas in my lifetime, I never really got into Sufjan Stevens apart form in the past year, so this will be my first Christmas where I get to enjoy Songs For Christmas.

 

Merry Christmas!

Like, actually make. November 1, 2011

NEW POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSTTT!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, you know wordle.net? No? I’m talking to myself?

It’s awesome. It makes these things:

What is it? It’s a big word cloud of the words I use the most on this here internet blog.

If one actually, like, makes posts.

Speaking of making posts, you can expect me to start doing that more often…

Your project: Comment with your favorite combination of words that made it on there. like “five three” or “ice sidebar random”.

Gimp of the Day Special edition: Michael Vick Meme September 17, 2011

What if Michael Vick…   was the moon?

^{Even whiter than the competition!}

For those of you who are completely lost right now, this blog post, and this KnowYourMeme page will help. If you are too lazy to do that, here’s a short summary: ESPN posted an image on their website and in their magazine that was a facial re-rendering of the Philadelphia Eagle’s(my team) quarterback Michael Vick, where he was white. It wasn’t long before the internet replaced his head with everything from the face of Steve Urkel, to a chocolate ice cream cone. As an internet nerd who uses GIMP, I am obligated to make one. I might make more and upload them to flickr.

Countdown August 10, 2011

So I’m Probably the only person who noticed a funny thing on my website. That is because nobody actually reads my website except a few random strangers,  probably only like 5% of my twitter followers(not counting the people I know), and a few people whom I actually know. Not to mention only like 75% (probably) of those people read regularly, and only like 10-15%  have actually looked extensively through my site. Even less have done this recently enough to have noticed this.

So, anyway, Here it is, the thing I have been trying to talk about this whole time and have ultimately failed to. It is from my sidebar, and this is actually not what it looks like when you’re reading this. Basically it’s different because there will be one more for August. Do you see it? April, May, June, and July. Well, maybe not July.  If you don’t see it, let me explain it. In April I posted five posts, then in May, four and in June three.  Five, four, Three. It’s a countdown! They’re using our own satellites against us! So, March doesn’t count because that was only a partial month, but how come July and August are defying the pattern?! Well, we are starting a new pattern, five, four, three, four… well, we haven’t gotten there yet. My hope is that it will count down and then back up and then end because I don’t want it to countdown again. It’s actually kind of funny, because at one point (which actually lasted a little while) July only had 2 posts, so it was a solid, 5… 4… 3… 2… countdown.

So, here’s to 5 posts in August, which, actually is a failure. I am supposed to make one Gimp image a day. So I shouldn’t be getting 4 or 5 posts a month, I should be hoping for mid to high 20s(depending on how many weekends there are). If I successfully post 5 posts, than I have failed to make a daily Gimp image, yet if I make a daily gimp image, I’ll mess up the pattern. It’s a lose-win either way. Stupid… whatever it is that I am mad at.

Gimp of the day #12 August 5, 2011

Another wallpaper. my best one yet, if you ask me.

^{It’s space invaders!}

This is partly an experiment with pixelization, so it may not be the best it can. I pixelized one half of the image, and the opposite half of the person, and vice versa. For a Yin Yang effect, which worked on it’s own, but was far too simple. I decided to use some 8-bit sprites, and Space invaders was the most memorable monochrome 8-bit game I could think of. Enjoy!