Author: blueZhift

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General

A Universal Christmas

Tomorrow is the day that many Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus, which we believe marks the entry of God into the world to effect reconciliation with humankind. But there are many, if not most, in the world who celebrate Christmas for largely secular reasons, it’s just plain fun!

The trappings of Christmas, the lights, trees, ornaments, and music, are a pleasure to behold. And the giving and getting of gifts is a lot of fun. I can think of no other holiday, celebrated anywhere on earth or in as many places that does the same. There are many Christians who lament the so called secular Christmas. But I think we should all rejoice instead because these Christmas celebrations around the world are a time when more people that any other time of the year stop a moment and really think about the other guy. Christians and non-Christians alike make an extra effort to help those who are less fortunate than themselves. And even though the holidays can also be a time of stress for many, on the whole I think the season raises the collective spirit of humankind.

An Invader Zim X-Mas
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General

A Stray Thought

Sometimes horribly irreverent thoughts stray into the mind. When I saw the news that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his leg skiing, my first thought was, well I guess they’ll have to put him down! Isn’t that terrible!

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General

Ants in the Pants

I think I officially have Holiday Season Ants in the Pants Syndrome. As the holiday approaches, staying in the office is becoming  a less and less desirable thing to do. Not that work is bad, progress has been pretty good this week. But now I just want to get out and away for a little while.

Categories
Anime, Manga, Etc General

Jelly Booty

After spending the weekend and several days before that laid up with the flu, it felt really good to get outside again and feel the air on my face. I first turned my sites on the nearby Borders as the first destination for my lunchtime walk. I’ve become quite addicted to my favorite manga, so I was hoping that some new volumes would be out. I was only slightly disappointed that Day of Revolution vol 2 wasn’t out yet since it is due this month, but the first volume was very very late too. But more than filling the void were new volumes of xxxHolic, Chibi Vampire (aka Karin), and Fruits Basket. Since I’m trying to hold down spending, I only bought xxxHolic, since I’ve waited a long time for volume 8, and Chibi Vampire because it appears to be a relatively small printing run, so it could sell out quickly. Onto that I stack a 30% coupon and a few holiday savings bucks, so I got off cheap.

From there I decided I would stretch my legs, but perhaps not too much having just been ill, with a trip to Corner Bakery for a chopped salad. After getting up to my usual quick pace, I was surprised I was able to move so fast after having been so sick. It was like some bottled up energy was being released. It felt sooo good. The chopped salad proved to be well worth the trip too. I hadn’t had one of those since I started my diet four months ago. I was surprised at how big it was and wondered how I could ever manage to eat so much food, which was proof enough that not had I been successful in losing weight, but changing how I looked at food and how much I really needed. Yayyy!

This time of year usually brings with it assorted Santa Claus-like figures, often with the canonical jelly bellies of lore. I didn’t see any of these on the way back to work, but I did spy an attractive black lady with a seriously round jelly booty. We’re talking some serious sphericity here! This one guy did a total rubber neck to get a better look. As I passed by, I could only wonder how the jeans were keeping it all in. It wasn’t that it was too big, but it had an almost liquid quality to it. To get any more data would have required physical contact, which, alas, is generally not permitted!

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General

You are Person of the Year, and You, and You, and You Too!

Time Magazine has chosen the 2006 Person of the Year, it’s You! They wax somewhat poetically about how individuals around the world through the likes of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, open source software, etc., are sticking it to the man and wrestling control away from the powerful. I don’t dispute that there is something to this, and I’m happy that the rise of global collaboration via the web is getting some recognition. But like all cool things, getting recognized by the mainstream press is generally the kiss of death. Will MySpace still be cool when everyone’s grandma and big corportation is there too?

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General

Kaiju no Keitai

Between coughs and sneezes yesterday I was able to set up another aStore shop. This one, Kaiju no Keitai, focuses on cell phones and related accessories. With so many cell phone options out there now, this site should prove useful to anyone who wants to see comprehensive reviews of various cell phones without having to hunt for them all over the internet. I didn’t even know that Amazon was selling cell phones until yesterday! The site also displays a news feed of cell phone technology related stories. Enjoy!

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General

Bomb In The Head

I hate being sick! Today I’m home with my girls, who are also sick and my head feels like it is about to explode! Worse, lying down makes it feel worse, so no rest for the weary. This started last night which made rest impossible, leading to many hours of late night Anime Network and Ripe TV viewing, and don’t forget about Something Weird! All I’ll say about that is, Comic Party Revolution, well, sucks! But Trashy Girls gets a thumbs up on Ripe TV for, well hate to say it, seeming to keep it real with a lot of corn. Ugh, the depths illness will sick one to!

As for real work, forget it! I’m just worried about dying right now!

Categories
Anime, Manga, Etc

Art In The Head

It is a terrible thing to have something in the mind’s eye that you just can’t get out on the paper right away! I’ve been working on art for my mangaKabob site in between taking care of sick kids. And boy am I rusty, but it is still quite satisfying to be able to just pick up a pencil and draw!

I still do it the old fashioned way. First I do a sketch with pencil and paper and then scan it into the computer. From that point I generally trace over the sketch in Fireworks and start dealing with things in layers. It can take a long time, but is quite a lot of fun for me. I really need to do this more often. Since I haven’t been able to spend too much time at the computer with sick kids about, I’ve had a chance to leaf through many back issues of Newtype USA for challenges and inspiration. I’m thinking of trying to do a drawing a day, just to get back into practice and to show the kids that their old dad still has it!

Categories
Anime, Manga, Etc

Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl Is Out!

It felt like Christmas came a little early when I saw that Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl vol. 1 was already out in the State Street Borders. This is another of those weird gender bending stories, only this time space aliens are responsible for initiating the gender confusion. This is another one of those manga niches that has become rather popular in Japan, and despite the puritanical origins of American culture, may be gaining some traction here as well. At least someone, namely Seven Seas Entertainment, felt it would be popular enough the take the risk of selling it here. Well thank you very much Seven Seas! I think I’m going to enjoy this a great deal! :3

Categories
Anime, Manga, Etc

tasty grilled mangaKabob

This morning I woke up thinking, I’ll create a little manga and anime aStore! Thus mangaKabob, a tasty shishkabob of manga and anime was born. Creating these Amazon aStores is so easy and addictive that I imagine there will be a great increase in little Amazon powered boutique web storefronts soon. I still have some original artwork to add, but most of what I had in mind is there, a variety of genres build around things I’ve read or seen, and breaking things out into categories like shonen ai, yaoi, shoujo ai, and yuri. Finding yaoi was relatively easy, so I wasn’t expecting as much trouble as I had trying to fill out yuri from the Amazon catalog. I guess yuri hasn’t quite taken off yet, at least not enough to be listed as such.

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General

Goodbye James Kim

Whenever I hear stories such as the one of James Kim and his family becoming lost in the Oregon wilderness, I’m filled with dread at the likely outcome. Nevertheless, after hearing of the rescue of his family, I was filled with hope that somehow he would be found alive. But that hope disappeared when the most probable outcome, given the circumstances, materialized yesterday with the discovery of his body by search teams.

There’s no point in debating the wisdom of what he did. All I’ll say is that there are no better ways to lose one’s life than in the protection of your family or others. Goodbye James, rest in peace, your family is safe.

Categories
Tech

booting up reBootzu

Winter in Chicago often brings cold winds with a chill to freeze an unwary soul. But it does have its upsides. For one, fashionable, sexy boot season begins downtown! So in honor of this wonderful time of the year, and Amazon’s aStores coming out of beta, I’ve begun work on reBootzu.

reBootzu is an online boutique of sexy women’s boots. The boutique was built using Amazon.com’s latest storefront API, the aStore. The new API makes it very easy to quickly set up an Amazon affiliate storefront with very little html required. Calling it an API isn’t really accurate. Storefronts are set up using a wizard on Amazon.com, almost anyone can do this, but like most things on the web, those with more web design experience will get the best results.

I had a lot of fun looking picking out boots for the site. But for me the real fun was in building something new. In this particular case, I want to see just how much I can do without resorting to PHP scripts and in as little time as possible.

Categories
Games and Sports

Kill Like A Christian: Left Behind Eternal Forces

Oh boy, you just gotta love the irony of a violent Christian-themed video game coming out in time for Christmas. Left Behind: Eternal Forces has been roundly criticized for its “convert the heathens or kill them” gameplay. Despite this, it will likely have pretty good sales, presumably snapped up by many of the 63 million or so people who have bought the Left Behind series of books. Many of these are the same people so quick to condemn games like Grand Theft Auto and Bully for in game violence. Well, I won’t condemn such a game without seeing it, but I can say now that I don’t agree with its theology. I cannot ever conceive of Jesus commanding His followers to convert or kill non-Christians or approving of such action. That’s just plain wrong.

Categories
Tech

Let The Lunch Eating Begin! India 2.0

When the big outsourcing to India craze began in earnest, I would often rant about how U.S. corporations didn’t seem to realize that they were essentially giving away the family jewels and growing their next great competitors. Now it looks like the chickens are beginning to come home to roost as described in India 2.0: The new garage culture on Mercury News. From the article,

“We are not scared of multinationals. Let them be scared of us,” said Rajjat Barjatya, chief executive of Rajshri Media, a start-up spinoff of the venerable Bollywood entertainment company, Rajshri, that is creating content exclusively for mobile phones. That’s the attitude.

There are a lot of smart and ambitious people in India who are not going to be content to work in call centers for U.S. corporations for very long. And this is good, I like competition. What I don’t like is the short sightedness that I think has led to the gutting of future IT potential in the United States. Young people are staying away from tech careers in droves because they see those jobs going overseas. And don’t let anyone get away with the lie that the jobs left because of a poorly educated populace. Those jobs left because someone somewhere else would work for a lot less money. And now that formerly cheap labor is getting into position to eat our collective lunches.

Categories
General

Under The Hard Blue

Today’s walk to work was greeted with what I like to call a hard blue sky. It’s the kind of clear blue sky that tells you it is freakin cold outside. And indeed, this morning was pretty cold. But I was happy because it took my mind off of other troubles for just a little bit. I think the purely visceral things that come from physical existence will always do that for you. Nothing like being cold to yank one’s mind back into the reality of reality.