What's a Spacebar?
In the famous words of my friend Steve, "What's a space bar?" It's the thing that's currently stuck on my keyboard. Grrr. Maybe it's time for a new one. Bluetooth?
A New Backpack
I finally decided to move all of my personal projects out of Basecamp and into Backpack. I'm really getting into it and finding it much more relaxing to have some seperation between freelance projects and personal projects. Plus, we just started using Basecamp at work, so I'm getting my daily Basecamp fix that way.
So far, what I like most about Backpack is the reminders feature. It's already eliminated about a dozen post-it notes from my desk and makes me feel a lot more confident that I'll remember all of the little things that come up every day.
Move to Trash
Did anyone else notice that Gmail changed some of the wording in their menus? "Move to Trash" is now "Delete" and it's really throwing me off, especially since I'm all about email organization these days. I went nuts a couple of weeks ago and spent almost a full day moving 3,000+ conversations from my inbox into labled folders. It was a pain at the time, but was worth every minute. I've haven't had this experience before, so it's really refreshing to start each day with an empty inbox.
Brian Gets Published
Congrats to my friend Brian. One of his hockey photos was published in a major Danish newspaper this week. Check it out.
Should my kidneys be sore?
I think I'm sick with the flu. I didn't feel quite right this morning and by about noon, my bones really started aching and my kidneys were sore. They still are. I'm not sure what that means. Other than that, I just feel incredibly drained and unable to eat. I'm hoping to sleep it off tonight.
Back in Action
I'm up early this morning to head into work. I'm a little tired, but feel a lot better than I have the last couple of days.
Howard's Last Stand
Today is a huge day in radio. After 25 years, it's Howard Stern's last day on terrestrial radio before his move to Sirius. Yahoo is covering the event live from NYC.
I will subscribe!
The new post office down the street is finally open and I went over to get a po box yesterday. I'm so excited! The mailbox in my apartment building is so small that most of my mail gets mangled and getting magazines is nearly impossible.
For a long time I've wanted to get a subscription to RES magazine so I can get the dvd that isn't included with newsstand editions, but couldn't even consider it with the size of my mailbox. Well, now I can!
I buy about 3-5 magazines every month, so being able to subscribe to them should save me quite a bit of money.
I think I'll start with RES, Digital Photo Pro, American Photo, and possibly Juxtapoz.
The Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia
The Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia digital short on SNL last weekend is the best thing I've seen on the show all year. Boing Boing has a comprehensive post about it, complete with links to download the video. You can also check it out on the official SNL site.
I meant to post about this on Sunday, but have been caught up in a flurry of holiday shopping for the past few days.
Every dollar counts
Last week I discovered a money saving tip that I've been using with a pretty good success rate. You know those coupon/promo code fields that most online stores use on their checkout page? Well, before buying a domain name from Go Daddy the other day I did a quick Google search for "godaddy promo" and got tons of results. I had to try a few codes before I found a valid one, but finally hit one that gave me 10% off. Not bad.
Holiday Wrapup
I'm so excited for the holidays to be over and to get on with the new year. I like this time of year, but I hate what it does to me. I get so stressed out from the last minute gift shopping and running all over the state to visit people that I hardly enjoy it.
Next year will be different. It's totally out of character for me, but I've already started shopping for next year. My plan is to be done before Thanksgiving so I can just relax and enjoy the holidays.
As for gifts received this year, there's not a lot to report. I got the usual assortment of gift cards and cash, along with a few practical items, but the coolest gift has to be the Lomo Fisheye camera that I got from my girlfriend. I'm hoping to get the film developed next week to see what kind of photos it produces.
Yesterday I went to West Photo and spent a bunch of my Christmas cash. I picked up a bunch of film for my Lomo, a couple of large umbrellas for my lights, a Sekonic L-358 light meter, and a set of stands with a crossover bar to hold background paper.
The rest of the money will be used to register for a photography class at the local art college. I plan to focus (no pun intended) on photography a lot more this year. I've started working on a new photoblog with a new domain name and plan to shoot the equivalent of at least a couple rolls of film each week. I'll post my favorite shots and am toying around with the idea of posting the extra shots in a separate gallery or on Flickr.
I'm also planning to put a little bit of time each week into building my collection of camera manuals. I've been receiving a lot of positive feedback and support from visitors. A reader from Australia just sent a Rolleicord IV manual for me to scan and post that I'll probably get in the next couple of weeks.
Okay, that's all for now. I'm still not sure what festivities are going on tonight, but I'm hoping it's low key. This afternoon I'm going out to play Br?nnboll.
