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Distracting Myself. | |
Posted July 19, 2007 - 16:00:47
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 Wednesday was incredibly eventful. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon on a work related conference call, but immediately afterwards a large contingent of extended family members invaded. This was, of course, expected. My Aunt Diane and her husband Greg weren't able to make it, but everyone else I mentioned last time was around the house. This meant that there were ten of us for dinner (my parents, myself, my brother, my maternal Grandparents, my Uncle Mark, his wife April, and my cousins Daniel and Adam). My Uncle Mark and his family live in San Diego, so I only get to see them once or twice a year. Hanging out with them was cool, but it's sometimes strange to think that my cousins are supposed to be the same generation as I am (Daniel is the older of the two brothers, and I'm more than twice his age... and I'm old enough to be Adam's father).
Very, very odd.
Anyway, the visit was very good, and I had a very good time with them. Afterwards, I went out with Chris (as it was his last night in town) and we headed over to Derek's place. We ended up talking a lot, along with firing many Nerf weapons at each other for hours, before switching to Lazer Tag - which I kicked some butt with by getting creative with my positioning. Chris may win with real tactical situations and weapons, but I still own with Lazer Tag - this I declare. Much fun was had, and there's a funny (totally alcohol free) story involving Chris which, while hilarious to me, he would murder me with a hammer if I disclosed here... so I won't... but trust me when I say it's very, very funny. I probably came home at 2:45 or so, and promptly crashed for the evening.
We put Andy (my 21 year old cat) to sleep today. I talked about it enough last time that I don't feel like going over it again (and really don't want to think about it) - so instead I'm going to talk about a bunch of other things that I'm using to distract myself.
First off, there's a very interesting article over on Slate from yesterday about the "Dark Side" of Youtube. I found it especially interesting, as I am a LiveVideo user primarily (look at my totally awesome profile there and subscribe), and not a Youtuber much anymore (although I am trying to get myself into mirroring content on Youtube again). The fear is that since so much video sharing is done from just once site that the democratic theory of online video isn't really what we thought it would be. I for one use LiveVideo primarily, which is having a few issues lately - which is too bad. LiveVideo can go one of two ways, either expand and get bigger, or implode and die. I'm hoping for the former over the latter, as I have 575 subscribers on LiveVideo, and only 33 on Youtube. I have hope for the LiveVideo launch though.
I also ran across an interesting essay from about ten years ago written about problems with people's bizarre definitions of "True Fans" in fandom. The essay is about Transformers specifically, but I think the lessons from it can easily be applied to most fandom circles I've run across - from Star Trek to Anime to Ninja Turtles. More often than not, when someone says "True Fan" they mean "Anyone who agrees with my personal opinion." On a related note, there's a rather funny related article on one of my favorite Wikis on the topic as well. Apply the lessons from this to factions of your chosen fandom liberally.
In a moment of "Amazon.com may want to repair there algorithm or at least pay attention to it more often," for a while today a cigarette dispenser shaped like a donkey was listed as Amazon.com's #1 Mover and Shaker in TOY category on their website. They corrected their error after it hit the blogs this morning, but I took a screenshot because of the bizarre humor of the situation. Apparently this thing is featured in the new Hairspray movie, hence why the collectors are hunting them down.
Apparently the Canadians have created an unbeatable Checkers playing computer program. Go figure.
- Traegorn
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