Prone to Wander

I love this girl.

This was a video that was done as part of a project for a class I took at Ga Tech on programming in Python. The film is meant to be a selection of James Bond scenes, opening with the famous turn/shoot/fade to red scene, then a frenetic car chase, then a torture scene. Storyline & Cinematography were not the emphasis of the project. Mostly it was hard to do because all the editing is done in Python, including the stop-motion video (car chase scene). All film credits to Sam Lawrence, Solace Collestan, Farzan Lotfi.

Jack Felker is turning 15 later this month. I’ve known him his whole life, and he’s trying to raise $300 for Not For Sale Campaign. These guys are an awesome group that we supported at our last Twestival event. They’re fighting to end child slavery and human trafficking, which is still a huge problem around the world, and especially here in Atlanta. It would really mean a lot to my young friend, and to me if you guys would check out his Causes page on Facebook, and consider giving. If not, please share the link around, and let’s try to blow his $300 goal out of the water!

Just click here to visit his Causes page on Facebook.

firmuhment:

rmpenguino:

rocketboom:

Metric vs. other systems via matadornetwork.cachefly.net

I don’t know where I found the link to this, but I was bored, so even though I normally avoid personality tests and games like the bubonic, I decided to go ahead and take this one, and it was actually quite informative and accurate.

I was surprised and impressed. If any of you would like to take the test yourself, the link is here:

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/the-long-scientific-personality-test

I actually was really pleased with my results, not only because of how amazingly insightful the result was, but also just what it says about me. I’d say just about 90% of the above summary is accurate about me, except that I don’t always process privately, I tend to get things out and think about them better by communicating to another person.

This bit is the science. I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t understand it, but I thought someone might be interested, so I included it anyway.

Can I be both?

sheatsb:

(via quote-book)

I’d rather be the artist.

While I commend anyone who wants to just give freely to help the people in Haiti, there are actually some interesting philanthropic opportunities going on right now that can be a win for you as well!

There are several businesses, bands, and organizations pledging to donate portions of their income, or 100% for a limited time from all the merchandise, product, or service they can sell within a window of time.

This might sound mercenary at first, but if you can ensure that 100% of the profit is going straight to the cause you support, I say why not derive some benefit from your timely generosity? At the end of the day, you can either give $50, or you can re-route $50, get something awesome, avoid the headache of getting the money to the cause, and help promote the work of an artist or developer at the same time. It’s a win-win-win-win!

I want everyone reading this to visit http://www.indierelief.com/ tomorrow (Jan. 20th). 100% of the money made from all the software titles listed will go to support one of a few charities doing amazing work in Haiti right now. There’s been an incredible response to the disaster from within the developer community, and it’s really amazing to watch our demographic respond in such a generous way.

To help you choose a title, and to plug some of my favorite developers, I wanted to tell you which titles (out of the many) I personally use (or have used) and recommend:

Acorn, Delicious Library 2, Instapaper Pro, Things, Tweetie, Twittelator Pro, & Twitterriffic.

I’ve also heard good things about RowMote and Flow.

If you’re not already using Tweetie, please do yourself a favor and use this time to buy this gorgeous, useful, and clean iPhone app.

Go visit indierelief.com, get yourself some awesome software, and help heal Haiti in their time of need. Remember, tomorrow (the 20th) only!

Strike!

This is me throwing the first strike in a team-effort Turkey at Becky’s Bodacious Birthday Bowling Bash, that we had at Midtown Bowl in Atlanta on Jan. 16th, 2010.

I’ve always enjoyed creative thought and a chance to get my ideas down on paper. I haven’t really written much in a long time, so when I learned about the NanoWrimo Project from @jros, I was really excited and decided to just go for it.

I seem to never have any time these days, but I’m also a lot poorer lately, and with @iheartpreston spending 2 weeks in Japan this month, I might just have the time on my hands to pull this off. I’m certainly going to try.

The idea is that by the end of the month of November, I’ll have a full-fledged novel completed. I’ll work on revisions and editing in the month of December, and perhaps by New Years will have some kind of a manuscript that I can consider a work of my own.

If nothing else this will be a chance for me to get some of the swirl of ideas in my head down on paper, as, indeed, is this very blog (I know nobody reads this thing).

At the link above (click the post title), you can track my word count progress (goal is 50,000), and I’ll eventually post up a description of the novel, as well as an excerpt once I find a passage that I like.

I like the idea and hope some of you do too, and might want to consider it for next year, and who knows, maybe I’ll be trying to sell you my book come Spring 2010. We’ll see.

I’ve been thinking for some time now that I really need to start my own business. I know the risks involved and the difficulties I’ll face, but I also know the potential opportunity that is there for me, and I’m sure if nothing else something to be learned is in it. A lot of people might call that hasty or irresponsible, but for me, learning something from what might be a mistake makes it somehow worthwhile.

So, coming soon, I’ll be handing out business cards with more than just my name on them. I already have a list of clients waiting on me to work with them, and a big network of people excited to work with me and see how we can all help each other.

Atlanta needs to learn how to work together. I will be calling on some of you, looking for your advice and assistance, but I hope you know that as my friends, I want to help all of us succeed, so please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.

We will all go further through community, collaboration, and communication.

When Jonathan Freeman (@widgetpress) blasted out the request for volunteers, I immediately jumped on the opportunity. Having been unemployed since April, I’ve loved being able to take part in groups and event like this, and it’s also proved to be a great networking opportunity for me. Over the past 2 years I’ve developed a strong interest in coding, developing, and marketing for and on mobile platforms. As young as I am, I sometimes feel like I’m late to the party, so big networking events can really help in keeping me excited and positive about my efforts.

The event started at 8:00, and we immediately began processing all the hungry attendees with name badges and t-shirts and sent them on their way to breakfast.

The sessions filled up fast, and everyone seemed to enjoy the topics offered. I got to meet some really cool people like @michaelmarlatt who I’ll look forward to working with again in the future.

I’d recommend events like this to anyone who’s young like me and trying to break into web culture and just doesn’t know where to start. I really have no claim to fame at this point in my career, but every time I go to an event like this, I just become so inspired and excited to see what everyone is working on that it keeps me going, and hoping that I’ll have something to contribute.

Snapped this photo yesterday in the parking lot of an A&W out near Loganville, GA. I thought it was so funny that the project (whatever it was) had just been halted, but that they’d taken the care and time to finish the paint job. And speaking of A&W… there are not enough of those in Georgia. A little research shows there are only 9 locations in the whole state!