Atmosphir: Spring 2008
Monday, October 29 at 5:01 PM
November 3: Live Performance!
Good news...I'll be doing another acoustic charity show on Saturday, November 3rd. Even better news is that Don, Jeff, and Andrew are visiting me that weekend, so there may be some Okay Samurai guest appearances during the show! I'm opening up the night right around 8, and then Shantytown will be playing for the remainder of the evening. All proceeds go to help out my friend Greg in raising money for the Lukemia and Lymphoma Society via Team in Training. Hope to see you there!
Tomorrow I head off to Buenos Aires for a week of Minor Studios stuff. I'm extremely excited as this is my first time down in Argentina...hopefully I'll have some exciting photos, videos and stories to share when I get back. See you in a week!
Friday, October 19 at 10:09 AM
Friday Notes
+ Lots of announcements from Nintendo this week...Super Smash Brothers Brawl is delayed until February 2008. But at least Sonic's in it and there's 4-player online fighting. For $20, the Wii Zapper and Link's Crossbow Training will probably be a good deal. Mario Kart will be out in the spring, have online races for up to 12 racers, and is introducing motorcycles. Mario Galaxy still looks gorgeous and will certainly be a holiday best-seller.
+ Vimeo just went HD. Video quality is going to get significantly better on the web overall in the near future (it's about time). I'm thinking I might need an HD video camera now...
+ Thursday night trivia at Elephant and Castle is slowly becoming a weekly tradition. Look out next week when Buckbeak and the Hippogriffs take 1st place. Just saying.
Friday, October 12 at 9:22 AM
Virgin America: IAD to SFO
Flying Virgin America for the first time yesterday from DC to San Francisco made the 5 hour trip go by a little better. Most airlines seem to have neutral cabins and a dull, sterile feeling better suited for a doctor's office. Virgin feels more like a modern nightclub or lounge, from the comfortable black leather seats to the subtle purple lighting. The best part is Red, the "(beta) interactive environment" touch screen attached in front of you. A small remote tethered by a cord clicks out of your armrest, and one side has video and volume controls, while the other has a keyboard and video game controls.
So I watched some TV (which was hit or miss, as it was through the Dish network and often flickered in and out or lost the signal), watched a few free short films (you could view full movies for $8 apiece), ordered a Coke via their screen-based menu (soft drinks were free, but they had all sorts of food and snacks to buy with a swipe of a credit card), played a few games (Doom and some casual puzzles), arranged a playlist and listened to music (covering everything from the Kronos Quartet to Hannah Montana), chatted via seat-to-seat instant messaging with April (although she was sitting right next to me and the novelty wore out in two minutes, and no one was in any of the plane chat rooms), and tracked the current flight information with a little Google Maps interface. At one point I think I tried to do too much at once, because a little "out of memory" warning kept on flashing up (luckily I somehow figured out how to reboot the system).
It was a great experience overall, and I would definitely recommend checking them out for cross-country flights. And since you'll probably save a few bucks from all their promotions going on now, maybe you can save up the $200K for a ticket when Virgin Galactic launches in a couple of years.
Monday, October 8 at 10:41 AM
iPod, DDR, Cut & Paste, Flying
★ I got an iPod Touch today (for "work" purposes, of course). So far, so good. Video podcasts are going to help the morning N Judah commute go by a lot easier. The lack of Flash support is sad...I would love to design little animated touch games for this thing.
★ My roommates and April talked me into getting Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party for Wii. This DDR adds the Wii remote and nunchuck for hand "shakes" in addition to the usual footwork. It's definitely a fun party game with a solid song lineup, but the graphics and presentation seem a couple of generations behind. It's also too bad for my roommates that I live on the third floor.
★ This Saturday evening was the San Francisco leg of the 2007 Cut & Paste tournament, so I headed down with a few friends to check it out. The best way I can describe it is like an Iron Chef for designers. Contestants have 15 minutes to photoshop/illustrate a piece based on a theme, and their process is shown in real-time on giant projector screens. Overall it was a fun event, although the judges' final decisions were questionable (Steve Ha got robbed).
★ My friend Russ is getting married this weekend, so April and I will be headed down to Roanoke, Virginia for the festivities. Russ and I used to play guitar in our first year dorm hallway, and we also performed in quite a few acoustic shows at bars and coffeehouses around UVA. We'll be flying back on Virgin America, so I'm excited to test their services out. Well, not really excited since I don't like flying in general, but hopefully it will be better than the average airline experience.
Monday, October 1 at 1:06 PM
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