Mingle² - Online Dating

This one really caught my eye, and is a nice reprieve from what has become the Facebook mayhem of donkey dung.
So rated PG. Shitty. But sure beats the hell out of G (HA HA Daejin)

New Toys

As some of you may know (I believe I've likely talked about it enough), I'll be going on a cottage trip towards the end of July (19th, to be exact). This is an annual affair that I haven't been able to attend in four years. Now comes lucky number 5 (?). This year's turnout promises to be pretty large. As such, TheWife™ and I went out today and bought a new tent. Tents have come a long way since the last one I had (when I was somewhere in and around 13). It so was super easy to assemble, and it also came with two sleeping bags, a light, a beverage cooler, and a convenient carry-all bag for all this camping goodness.
The wife has never owned a tent, and is very excited about the prospect of sleeping outside. So much, in fact, that she wanted to sleep outside tonight. I convinced her otherwise. We'll have our chance soon enough.

What's been keeping me even busier, and I hate to say this, is Second Life. For those of you who are blissfully unaware, I'll provide a brief explanation.. courtesy of Wikipedia.

Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007. Developed by Linden Research, Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab), a downloadable client program enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another.

This is actually the first time I read the wiki-blurb.. and strangely enough I drew a similar comparison, which is the strikingly similarities to the virtual world Linden Labs provides, and that which was written by Neil Stephenson in Snow Crash. It really is a virtual world with no real winners or losers. It's what it's name implies.
What's blowing my mirrored nature of it all. An exchangeable currency to the US Dollar, real estate, "live" entertainment and clubs, red-light districts. It's really an amazing effort and rather bedazzling. Move over facebook, I'm somebody else's bitch now.

Good stuff.

Like any good music store, the iTMS will have sales. I jumped on the opportunity and downloaded three albums. What seems to be most listened to at this point is Foo Fighters most recent offering-- Skin and Bones. The 15 tracks on this album are all live acoustic tracks recorded live at the Pantages theatre in LA. I've always been a fan of their acoustic work, and this album exemplifies it all. A good listen if you're a fan of the Foo.

I seem to get these random compulsions to upload a bunch of photos to Facebook. Just before I sat down here (I didn't really move.. I'm still in my decrepit office chair) I went through something like 25-30 pictures and thought I would share with everyone. It appears I'm still owned by Facebook. Any guesses as to how long it'll be before some major corporation buys them?

Hobbystar Marketing has taken TheWife's™ and my money, which means we'll be exhibitors for the Artist's Ally at the Hobbystar FanExpo 2007. This, for lack of better adjectives, is awesome. Sunflower is is super excited, as am I. We hoped to go last year, but all the tables were taken by the time I thought about it. It was probably better that way though, since we have that many more Anime Oil Paintings to display. We'd be thrilled if people came down to see us, but I guess it depends all on how much geekdom you can handle. Myself, I will be in my element.

I should put something here.

Listening to:
Tarantula from the album "Tarantula - Single" by Smashing Pumpkins

It's all about my personally felt obligation to put something on the blog. It's what brings me back here each time. Suffer with me.

There's actually quite a lot for me to talk about.
I downloaded the full season of Heroes, after the barrage of praise the show got from those around me who'd actually seen it. I'd never buy the DVD upon it's release, nor rent it, so I don't feel as though I've done anything wrong. If anything, it simply ensured that I'll tune in next year to watch it. Besides, I don't have any intention of keeping it on the hard drive, or backing it up. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

If Heroes was crack, I'd be a junkee. 'Nuff said.

***
I'd been wanting to pick up the book for a long time. I almost picked it up during a day trip to Hong Kong, although I was afraid of what might happen to me if I got caught bringing back across the border to the mainland. I saw it at Chapters @ 20% off-- I couldn't say no this time.
Mao - The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday is an unauthorized biography about Mao Tse Tung, the not so founding member of the Chinese Communist Party--one fact that you'll find within this books pages. Also within it's covers is some 150 pages of bibliographical references. I guess you could say this book was well researched.
Grindy gave me The Templars to read while I was off to China, but in all honesty, I don't think I got more then ten pages into it. This book, however, has me hooked. Likely because it's of a topic that's a little closer to me, given my time in China, not to mention my wife. It's powerfully written, although it's a little more than obvious that there's a little bias in there. Despite that, it's an interesting read. It'll be the first biographical/historical book that I've actually read. Heck, it made me put down "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. It's that good. If you're interested in modern historical reading at all, this book is definitely worth checking out.

A bit of a spoiler here-- Mao dies.

"Mao: the Unknown Story" (Jung Chang, Jon Halliday)

Is this a weekly thing?

It does seem that way, doesn't it? I actually get around to writing on the blog about once every weekend. Granted, that's about to change since this is my last weekend off for a while-- so maybe Monday's or Tuesday's? Ultimately, the goal is to write two or three times a week. A goal that seems to get stymied on a weekly basis by several mitigating factors ranging from time constraints to not feeling like it. I've become so apathetic in my blogging. This really should come as no surprise given that I was thinking about dumping it completely a couple of months ago.

I consider those around me who still maintain a blog, and what seems to make or break them. Grindy is relatively new to maintaining is own blog, and that alone gives him the fervour to keep it going. Daejin completely changed directions by creating and mainly focusing on his new venture, the more mainstream smallSHIFT. I think both Ross and I have hit the same unorganized blockage when it comes to blogging. We're oldskool, blogging in the old everything/nothing format that brought bloggers together at the turn of the century, when Web 2.0 was barely a murmur. Let's face it, unless you have a gift for telling entertaining stories, only those who are close to you will even glance at your blog. I think I used to be entertaining, but I seem to have lost that writing ability somewhere along the way. Strangely, I feel that if I were given a topic to write about, I could champion it and make it worth reading. It's my day to day blogging that seems to suck monkey pole.

As a whole, I guess it all depends on how much time I want to spend on my small internet pocket. I've had ideas for new directions (see current iteration, where I have failed to really incorporate my Chinese learning into my actual blog), but end up spending one short period every weekend doing anything with it. Subsequently, the old adage of only getting what you put into something. I guess it's all about zeroing in on something and, in my case, I'm almost completely overlooking LosRicos Presents.