Once again, after writing a blog entry about what I'd lost, I found it. It turns out it was someplace safe, but buried under all the other cards so I couldn't see it unless I took a bunch out of the box at the same time. I also found the foil Forgotten Ancient that I had aptly forgotten about. I now regret not going to the Mirrodin prerelease, as it'd be cool to have a complete Stuff of Kaldra set. Still, Ryusei's pretty nifty, even if he mostly wipes out my own stuff in the current deck he's in.
I can't find my prerelease Shield of Kaldra and Helm of Kaldra. I recall finding them someplace unusual a few months ago, and reminding myself to put them someplace safe... And I've searched all the safe places I can think of, now. Argh.
It seems that lately I've been accumulating undeserved relevance from Google. The name of a certain site that I will avoid naming here, when put into Google, returns one of my blog pages (which I'm deliberately not linking to now, for obvious reasons) as the first result -- not the site itself! I've put up a link on that page to the site, but that seems insufficient. I feel somehow responsible for hijacking that site's traffic, even though it certainly wasn't on purpose. My blog just seems to accumulate an unusual amount of Google Juice, which is especially strange as I haven't noticed a substantial links to it. Much has been written on the subject of Google and blogs, but as far as I know none of it really addresses my particular predicament. Any of you other bloggers (especially Blogger bloggers) out there have any advice?
I still don't have a cameraphone, but I'm practicing for one. I've started using the family's digital camera to take pictures of whatever I think needs to be photographed. It's a lot slower than a cameraphone, and isn't really the same kind of photography I want to pursue.
Relevant anecdote: My dad and I were preparing to go to the park with Phoebe, the family dog (she's half Border Collie and needs frequent exercise). This excursion is usually the high point of her day, especially when we ride bikes and she gets to run along next to us. We had put the bikes in the van, and were all prepared to go, but the van refused to start. (It seems that there's a problem with the battery.) On top of that, it started to rain. Dad and I decided that it wasn't worth the trouble to jump-start the van just so we could ride our bicycles in heavy rain, so we decided to take the car instead. Phoebe, though, misunderstood our intent and refused to leave the back seat of the van, while giving us the most sorrowful look we'd ever seen. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. It seems that the camera we have is just too advanced for some things -- the power button and lens cap and flash setting and zoom and focus all seem to get in the way of spontaneity. One misses out on all the images that were perfect in retrospect but seemed like too much hassle at the time. For the same reason, I usually get better pictures from a disposable camera than a fancy one. That's not to say the photographic aesthetics are better by any means; it's just that I can get the moments I want as I see them, rather than the ones that I have time for.
Anyway, my top three priorities in a cameraphone are storage space, camera quality (VGA as a minimum, I think), and efficiency of picture taking (dedicated camera button etc.). It also should work with Verizon, and compactness would be a bonus. If you have any suggestions, please email me.
Relevant anecdote: My dad and I were preparing to go to the park with Phoebe, the family dog (she's half Border Collie and needs frequent exercise). This excursion is usually the high point of her day, especially when we ride bikes and she gets to run along next to us. We had put the bikes in the van, and were all prepared to go, but the van refused to start. (It seems that there's a problem with the battery.) On top of that, it started to rain. Dad and I decided that it wasn't worth the trouble to jump-start the van just so we could ride our bicycles in heavy rain, so we decided to take the car instead. Phoebe, though, misunderstood our intent and refused to leave the back seat of the van, while giving us the most sorrowful look we'd ever seen. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. It seems that the camera we have is just too advanced for some things -- the power button and lens cap and flash setting and zoom and focus all seem to get in the way of spontaneity. One misses out on all the images that were perfect in retrospect but seemed like too much hassle at the time. For the same reason, I usually get better pictures from a disposable camera than a fancy one. That's not to say the photographic aesthetics are better by any means; it's just that I can get the moments I want as I see them, rather than the ones that I have time for.
Anyway, my top three priorities in a cameraphone are storage space, camera quality (VGA as a minimum, I think), and efficiency of picture taking (dedicated camera button etc.). It also should work with Verizon, and compactness would be a bonus. If you have any suggestions, please email me.
DDR: C on Cat's Eye (quite a hard song to read), B on Holic (the only really hard part is the odd phrasing). ITG: C+ on Flying High, ? (pass) on Bend Your Mind Easy, 76%(vague recollection - no memcard slots in this machine yet) on Hardcore Galore, 50% (fail) on Sisters (killed by the Blink on the fourth song - I can normally cope with Blink, but the skips and fatigue got to me).
Remember how I ranted earlier about branded geek clothing? Here's some truly sweet shirts, without any ads: errorwear. From their FAQ: The shirts are all about the errors, and the purity, the accuracy of the errors. To vulgarly slap an Errorwear logo onto the shirt somewhere would only muddy the message. Is that great or what? ThinkGeek, take note - I'm buying my next shirt from these guys.
Reconnect the old hard drive. I really need some of that stuff. Especially the storage space and GPG keys. Everyone who's not me can feel free to ignore this blog entry.
It depresses me when I realize just how lazy I can become sometimes, especially during the summer.
It depresses me when I realize just how lazy I can become sometimes, especially during the summer.
I was checking my web counter stats, and noticed a huge spike in visitors. (11 page hits in one day is a new record for me.) Apparently, I've won a Geek Of The Week award on a site that gives out such things.
It's really quite a nice change of pace from all the people finding my website on Google with irrelevant search terms. On top of that, I've become the number-one search result for Nathan McCoy on Google. (Or rather, my Wikipedia user page has, but the second result is for my homepage, too.) It seems that everyone suddenly starts noticing me as soon as I stop trying. Now that I have everyone's attention, I really need to get to work on the rest of my site. I had let my obscurity be an excuse to be lazy, and now I don't have that. Thank you, my anonymous fans.
It's really quite a nice change of pace from all the people finding my website on Google with irrelevant search terms. On top of that, I've become the number-one search result for Nathan McCoy on Google. (Or rather, my Wikipedia user page has, but the second result is for my homepage, too.) It seems that everyone suddenly starts noticing me as soon as I stop trying. Now that I have everyone's attention, I really need to get to work on the rest of my site. I had let my obscurity be an excuse to be lazy, and now I don't have that. Thank you, my anonymous fans.
Guess what I just found? On a random impulse, I decided to check behind the stuff that I store under my top-bunk bed. Besides all the cruft that tends to accumulate pretty much everywhere in a typical teenager's bedroom, I found two books, two bedsheets, two pairs of sweatpants, and three t-shirts - including the t-shirt. The very one I bemoaned the loss of in the previous blog post. I've heard about the beneficial effects of recording one's thoughts in a journal, but I've never experienced such immediate results from it. But then again, the Internet is a rather instantaneous medium.
A rather mundane summer has taken its toll on me, and this is exactly the sort of magic I needed to make me believe in myself again. And that's "believe in" in all of its myriad meanings. I've lately been having a vague feeling of universal doubt, like that indifferent fog we sometimes get out here in Western Washington, but it's just been completely burned away by this bit of 3AM sunshine.
Woot! Score one for the Universe. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go start winning at life again.
A rather mundane summer has taken its toll on me, and this is exactly the sort of magic I needed to make me believe in myself again. And that's "believe in" in all of its myriad meanings. I've lately been having a vague feeling of universal doubt, like that indifferent fog we sometimes get out here in Western Washington, but it's just been completely burned away by this bit of 3AM sunshine.
Woot! Score one for the Universe. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go start winning at life again.
I want a black t-shirt with glow-in-the-dark text that says "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." There's only one place I know of online that could print such a shirt for me (or rather a dozen such shirts - minimum orders are pretty much standard for screen printing). Are there 11 other people out there that would be willing to pay about $13 plus shipping for each of these? (And, more to the point, are any of them going to read this?)
Yeah, I know there's another company that makes shirts with that text, but it doesn't glow in the dark. And doesn't that sort of defeat the point? I mean, if you can't read it when it's pitch black... Plus, it's got their logo on it. (I've always thought that logos should make clothing less, rather than more, expensive. In some cases it does, such as the free t-shirts given out by some companies. Nike continues to baffle me - a successful company whose primary product is advertisements for itself.) The small logos that some websites put on their products annoy me quite a bit, because they detract from the design and don't accomplish much. Word of mouth will probably make many more sales than those irritating microscopic billboards. If someone is interested in purchasing a shirt from the same source I got mine from, are they more likely to ask me where I got it or lean over to stare at the tiny text? Sure I'm a geek but even I can manage that much social interaction. Or is the company more afraid that their products are so indistinctive that even the owner of the shirt won't be able to recognize where it's from?
In other news, my favorite shirt (the <GEEK></GEEK> one) is still missing. Sigh... I've been searching the house periodically for months, and still no sign of it.
UPDATE: It seems that many of you are finding this page by Googling for "geek fashion". You might want to look at this posting for more information.
Yeah, I know there's another company that makes shirts with that text, but it doesn't glow in the dark. And doesn't that sort of defeat the point? I mean, if you can't read it when it's pitch black... Plus, it's got their logo on it. (I've always thought that logos should make clothing less, rather than more, expensive. In some cases it does, such as the free t-shirts given out by some companies. Nike continues to baffle me - a successful company whose primary product is advertisements for itself.) The small logos that some websites put on their products annoy me quite a bit, because they detract from the design and don't accomplish much. Word of mouth will probably make many more sales than those irritating microscopic billboards. If someone is interested in purchasing a shirt from the same source I got mine from, are they more likely to ask me where I got it or lean over to stare at the tiny text? Sure I'm a geek but even I can manage that much social interaction. Or is the company more afraid that their products are so indistinctive that even the owner of the shirt won't be able to recognize where it's from?
In other news, my favorite shirt (the <GEEK></GEEK> one) is still missing. Sigh... I've been searching the house periodically for months, and still no sign of it.
UPDATE: It seems that many of you are finding this page by Googling for "geek fashion". You might want to look at this posting for more information.
GMail has replaced the innocuous red text that tells you that you have invitations to give away with a huge blue banner across the top of the Inbox that contrasts horribly with the pale interface. As a workaround, I sent my two remaining invitations to myself, only to get six more a couple hours later. That makes, I believe, 18 invitations this week. Anyone who wants them, please let me know at my GMail account (zrephel).