Gloating

I apologize blog-sphere, but I am going to fill this blog post with shameless bragging.

Recently I joined an online community of poets in order to find a social group where being a poet doesn't equal being lame. Since most people, including immediate family, do not know or have never read any of my poetry, I felt that my poetry has been sadly neglected for many years. I decided to pursue finding a more public outlet for my pieces, and very soon after making this decisions I created a profile on allpoetry.com. Along with being able to publish my poetry, allpoetry.com also offers many contests every month. Since I had recently joined the community, I got an invitation to join December's new member poetry contest, and I decided to enter.
I had originally intended to simply enter one of the poems that I have already written, but after reading the rules for the contest I found that none of the poems I already have would qualify. I began writing a new poem, one which would fit the guidelines for the contest, and several days later, I published this poem in the new member's poetry contest.

Immediately, I began getting messages praising the poem I had written, and although I found this to be very flattering, I didn't think much of the contest after that. Much to my surprise, the next time I logged in, there was a message in my inbox telling me that I had placed third in the contest! There were over 100 poems entered into the contest, and I had won the bronze medal! Along with the prize, I found out that an anonymous site member had purchased for me a six-month gold membership to the site, a subscription which was worth over $80! The only thing he or she asked in return for the membership was the request that I enter at least one contest every month. I was ecstatic! This contest has been the only poetry competition I have ever entered, and I was very well received!

Overall, allpoetry.com has provided me with a new outlet for my poetry, and a new source of inspiration. I am extremely happy that I decided to join this poetry community, and I'm sure that it will continue to feed my creativity for months to come.

If you would like to check out my winning piece, follow this link: (December Bride)

515.6 Gb

I was recently inspired by a friend of mine who lost a lot of precious computer data to take a good hard look at how I am currently backing up the stuff on my computer.

And what I found was that I really don't have a very good system right now. As it stands, I have a 2 terabyte hard drive on which all of my photos, documents, videos and everything else is stored. If anything happens to that hard drive....it's just all gone. Because of this realization, I opted to invest in a good cloud backup option.

Now there are scores of services which allow for a subscriber to back up their personal data online, but the service I was looking for needed to have a few essential things. For one, it needed to be a long-term option. I will always have computer data to store, and as a photographer, I have enormous amounts of computer data. All computers will eventually die, and if the computer's death comes without warning, it could drag all of your personal data down with it. This is a risk I can't take. I want a service which is provided by a strong, stable company. I wanted a company with a good track record and a consistent standard for good services.

Another factor which is a necessity for me is consistency. I don't want a service which increases the price as the amount of data grows. I wanted to find a service which offers a standard, consistent rate.

The third factor which is very important to me is compatibility with external storage. If the cloud service will only back up my computer, but will not back up external drives which are plugged and un-plugged as needed, then the cloud is useless to me.

After days of comparisons and price checks I went with Crashplan. (here's a link to their website if you want to check them out) The reason I went with them is because I could buy a 4 year subscription for a flat rate which doesn't increase as the amount of data added increases. The plan I bought literally has no data ceiling at all. This means that for the same price I could back up any amount of data. 4 gigabytes, or 88 terabytes, it's all the same. Also, it does not put a limit on the file sizes either. Some services will not allow you to back up files which are over a certain size, Crashplan makes no limitations. Crashplan data, when uploaded to the cloud, is stored in three locations. On my hard drives, in the Crashplan cloud, and at Crashplan's off-site locations. Except for an all-out apocalypse where all computer data is destroyed, it is impossible to loose data stored in this way.

Unfortunately, the sum total of the data on my computer's hard drive plus the data on my external hard drive is upwards of 500 gigabytes. This means that the initial upload will take a LONG TIME. Now, I can, for some extra money, have Crashplan send me an external hard drive which I would then use to back up all my data. I would then send the hard drive back to them, and they would put my data directly into the system, thus eliminating the need for a long draw-out upload process. However, it would take about two weeks for the hard drive to reach me and then get back to them. At that point, there is an added 3-7 days for "data processing". The whole process would take between 2-3 weeks. And this is about the amount of time needed to just simply upload it. So far, the plan is to just upload the data directly, but we'll see how that goes.

Overall I'm pretty happy with my choice and I will be thrilled for 4 worry-free years of data security. If all goes well I can renew the subscription at the end of the 4 years and continue onward. The price was extremely affordable, and the company is very stable and friendly.
Anyway, I guess I'll just be thrilled when the whole uploading process is over...I'll keep you posted.

Tech Madness

Want to know how to drive an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist technology nerd crazy?

 Release a new version of software, and then create a dumbed-down tutorial which doesn't explain all the new features.

Sometimes iTunes can be so infuriating! Today I spent several hours trying to figure out how to drag and drop a playlist from my iTunes library into my iPod. Yea, I know this makes me sound like an idiot, but Apple's newest version of iTunes, 11.0.1.12, is significantly different from their older versions. iTunes is extremely simple if you just choose to let iTunes auto-fill your device, but if you like to do things manually, things get a little more complicated. I like to do things manually because I would prefer if all the music from my iPod wasn't deleted by accident. Auto-fill runs this risk. I would rather watch and control the process so that I know everything is going where it is supposed to go.

Technical know-how is something which comes easily for me. In many ways, technology is a lot like science. All the pieces are complex, and everything fits together to form a complete, well-functioning whole. It is interesting, engaging, limitless, and I love everything about it. This is why this problem with iTunes bothered me so much. I think the reason I was so obsessed with it for the most part was because iTunes is so simple. 

If you encounter a problem involving theoretical physics which you don't understand, you will likely just walk away. But if you encounter a problem involving simple elementary concepts which is baffling you, it is going to drive you crazy! This is the same thing I was experiencing. 

I have the utmost respect and confidence in the technical developers at Apple. After all, they have consistently created hardware and software which is useful, cutting-edge, and functional. Because of this, when I found a popular feature missing from the newest version of iTunes, I assumed that it was still present, and I just needed to find it. 

Finally, after hours of tinkering and surfing through forums I stumbled onto the answer. That moment when you have conquered a problem which has been plaguing you is one of the most rewarding moments known to man. I smiled, and everything was better. Poof! The problem was gone! (Just as a side note, here is a link to the forum post where I described the problem and then later posted the solution: link)

I then went back to posts of other people who had the same problem and told them the solution. I could imagine others finding the solution which I labored over for hours and feeling that same joy. What a wonderful way to spread joy! 

I suppose maybe my obsessive need to find solutions could be considered unhealthy to some. After all, I shunned everything else I had planned to do today in order to find an answer to my problem. But the way I see it, doesn't every advancement in society, every improvement in human culture require someone with an unhealthy obsession to find the answer? Ingenuity comes out of necessity, and every great success has beneath it a mountain of backbreaking work, and a circle of people who were just obsessively determined enough to keep working where no one else would. 

I propose that obsession is not a problem that should be cured, but instead, it is a tool which must be controlled and shaped. 

Happy New Year!!!!

A year ago today, I wrote a blog post at approximately the same time of day as this post for the purpose of welcoming 2012 and reCAPPING 2011 (yes, I know that pun was awesome). One of the main points I talked about in that post was how I usually learn things the hard way, and my resolution was simply to see an improvement between 2011 and 2012.

Now the percentage of people who are in their 20s in America who actually follow through and report that their new year's resolution was a success is a decent 39%. (Statisticbrain: New Year's Resolution Statistics) This percentage was actually higher than I thought that it would be, but the percentage drops steeply as those surveyed approach their 50s. According to statisticbrain.com, the percentage of people in America over 50 who keep their resolutions is less than 14%. (Statistics were calculated from 2011 data)

I'm happy to be among those who can report a successful new year's resolution. Actually, 2012 has been one of the best years of my life. (Although it is closely tied with the year when I was nine years old. That was an AWESOME year!)
2012 was a year of growth, achievement, and memories. I cannot quite put into words how grateful I am for the successes and triumphs I experienced in this past year. 2011 was a disheartening year. A year of failure, betrayal, and personal shortcomings. It is very hard to watch the people you love give up on you, and it's hard to see the disappointment you've caused others. But even more than these things, it's hard to explain how it feels to disappoint and give up on yourself. I was walking a fine line. A line where I had the choice between giving up, and improving. Fortunately, along with terrible eyesight and bad teeth, I also inherited from my family tree an unconquerable stubborn will. I was only a child when my family first noticed my bull-headed stubbornness. Maybe it was the way I doggedly learned to walk on stilts, or maybe it was the complex system of pulleys and tree limbs I used to launch trash bags into a dumpster, but at some point during my childhood it became painfully clear that I was a wild child with a temper and an aversion to the phrases "no" and "you can't". If my parents weren't equally as determined as I was, I'm sure I would have turned out differently.
There are so many factors which come into play when raising a child, and there are so many things which can go wrong. Children are environmental sponges, and each child is like opening Pandora's box. Human personalities are all different, and you can never tell what kind of a personality a child will have. Genetically, the odds could be tipped against you from the beginning.
But I'm getting off-topic. My point is not to promote my personal sentiments about having children or pro-life versus pro-choice. On the contrary, my point is to say that I have a very unique combination of personality factors. These factors make me very successful now, but all of these specific traits in one person presents a very contrasting inner atmosphere, and this can be very chaotic for an adolescent. I struggled with how strange I was in my own eyes. I knew that I had different opinions and viewpoints from the majority of my family and peers. I felt like an outsider in my own life.

Either way, whatever the reasons, and whatever the results, there were several years with varying levels of turbulence as I battled adolescence. 2011 was one such year.

This is why I went back and read the post I wrote one year ago today. I wanted to see the change. My expectations where mild. I simply wanted 2012 to be a better year. And a better year, it has been. I rocked another school year, learned to admire who I am, acquired a substantial movie collection, made new friends, reunited with family, and on 12/31/12 I danced Gangnam style with several million other PSYched Earthlings. (Side note: Psy's performance of Gangnam style [which you can view here] was epic on a global proportion.)

Overall, 2012 resolution achieved. And 2013's resolution? Non-existent, I've decided to give myself a year off from resolutions. I am honestly just so freakin satisfied with 2012, I can't think of anything upsetting enough to make a resolution about.

Terrible Movies

There was a time when simply sitting in front of a screen to watch a movie rendered me speechless. Everything I saw on the screen was magical, and I loved every second of it. I don't have any memories of watching a truly terrible movie from when I was smaller. I guess it just comes with childhood.

Often times when I revisit a precious memory from my childhood I notice that it is significantly less charming the second time around. We visit our childish Narnia and find that the fields are smaller and itchier, the trees are less exciting, and the mythical battles which used to be so prevalent seem to have disappeared (This is by no means an insult to Narnia, a suggestion that Narnia is for children, or that adults would find Narnia to be lame. Narnia is a real place and if you're telling me that Narnia isn't real or that it's lame, then life is not worth living anymore....sorry, I had to do that, I'm very protective of C.S.Lewis.)
We can't spend time mourning the death of our childish viewpoint. Although the world looses a lot of its charm as we grow older, it also looses a lot of its fences. We learn as we grow that every single human who is born on this planet gets a chance to make their dreams a reality. Growing up gives us more freedom, and the journey for self-actualization is an exciting one! Although we learn that life can be cruel, we also learn that life can be exhilarating. Those childish lenses were a beautiful and glorious thing! But we can never return to a moment we have already lived. Every point in life is a new stage, and although wonderful things from the past have to die, their place will always be filled by new wonderful things.

I was reading something online a few days ago, and I found this photo which basically summarizes all knowledge in the universe.

This last category, the things that we don't know that we don't know is the single most motivating mystery on planet earth. These things cannot be comprehended. It is our job to find them, and bring them into one of the other categories. When I read this summary of human knowledge, I immediately associated it with stages of life.
We cannot predict what a new stage of life will bring, that's what makes them so terrifying. They are an unknown unknown. Some may argue that they should be a known unknown because we are aware of our own ignorance. However, I would like to suggest that they are an unknown unknown. Although we are aware of our ignorance, it is not the ignorance which brings us terror. It is what lies within the ignorance! It is the actual constancy of this next stage in life. If a terrible car accident will occur in a week from now, and it will leave you paralyzed from the waist down, there is no way that you can have knowledge of this event. It is an unknown unknown. An unknown unknown does not have to be some revolutionary concept like another dimension or a new element, in this case, the unknown unknown simply exists because of time.
We must continue onward, because this is the only way we can bring something that we cannot comprehend into something which we can quantify.
The unknown unknowns are the things which bring us terror, but once we have conquered them, they will also bring us power. Time is not our enemy, it is our puppet-master. whatever we are handed tomorrow, we will have to take without argument. It is simply the way that life as we know it exists.

Some people see the unknown unknowns of life and are paralyzed by them. But the way that I see it is this: if you cannot change what is going to happen to you tomorrow, why should you waste the known knows and the known unknowns of today worrying about the unknown unknowns of tomorrow?

By their very nature unknown unknowns are.....unknown. We cannot be angry about their nature any more than we can be angry about the sky being blue, or gravity holding us down! Enjoy today! Let tomorrow be tomorrow.

Hulu+ or Netflix THAT is the real question Shakespeare!

If you're like me, you love the fact that for only $8 a month, the internet now offers you a plethora of entertainment. Whether it be a delightful full length movie, or a breath-taking plot twist on your favorite show, Netflix and Hulu+ now provide us some really affordable options. There's only one problem.

Both services have features which I love, and features that I hate! I LOVE the commercial free service Netflix flaunts, but Hulu has a significantly larger selection of shows! However, another downside of Hulu is that there's only the most recent season of any given show available. For example, I missed two seasons of one of my favorite shows, but I can't catch up on Hulu because I will have missed an entire season! That's no fun!

Anyway, my point is that I wish I could just kind of mesh the two. It would be so great to have the commercial free/ all seasons experience of Netflix, but with the selection and interface of Hulu+.
That's what I want for Christmas Santa! Come on now!

Apocalypse Eve, My New Favorite Holiday

So let me summarize. It's been an eventful night. My celebration of Apocalypse eve consisted of a long apocalypse movie marathon which is still going on as we speak. I have a collection of 6 apocalypse movies, and my goal is to finish all 6 before the day is over (assuming, of course, that the apocalypse does not happen, which is what I believe will happen today).

So why celebrate 12/21/12, you might ask? Well for me, this day is a significant historical landmark. This day has been an event of interest for centuries. It is, in essence, the 1 year birthday of the Mayan calendar. In another way, this is also kind of the death of the Mayan calendar. Either way, I thought it would be interesting to treat it as a holiday. It is sort of the Y2K event of the two-thousands.

I am delighted to report that the night has been a smashing success. This has been, without doubt one of the best nights of my life. I felt like I was celebrating history, in my own kind of geeky way, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I dove into the suspense, gasped with the heroes  and celebrated the victories. I let myself into every moment, as if it was happening from a window of my room, and the result was humbling and exhilarating.

I have seen many different apocalypse movies tonight (and also, as a bonus, I can now spell apocalypse correctly 100% of the time). Many of the more widely known apocalypse movies I have already seen. I am, after all, a huge movie nerd. I was aiming to watch new material instead of re-watching things I've already seen, so I went shopping and found a value pack with 6 apocalypse movies. I was sold.

The first movie I watched was "2012: Supernova". It was the least impressive of the movies I watched tonight. Mostly, I felt like the whole thing was too easy. I mean, by no means is a supernova a boring catastrophe, but pretty much all the things the team needed just kind of magically appeared. It seemed like they were too prepared for a phenomenon which is traveling at light-speed. How did they manage to detect it in the first place? The movie was all-right, but not impressive.

The next movie, "Storm" was a little more interesting, but still left things to be desired. The "natural disaster" was not one at all, but instead was a storm which people manipulated in order to direct and strengthen it. It was an interesting concept, but not really an apocalypse.

The third movie was one of the very best movies I've seen so far this Apocalypse Eve. It is called "Catagory 7: End of the World". Despite the melodramatic title, the movie was amazing!

There were just so many plot twists and parallel plots all happening at the same time. The characters were engaging, and I liked them immediately. Because of this, I was drawn more deeply into the plot. The movie was extremely long. It had two parts. I liked that there was just the right balance of complete and utter destruction, and joyful salvation. There has to be enough destruction to make the movie feel like the entire world really could just disintegrate. However, there also needs to be a long-shot plan which results in some sort of victory. This movie had all of these element, balanced perfectly. I genuinely applaud the directors of this film, it was truly well done.

Needless to say, after the previous masterpiece, the next movie had big shoes to fill. I was worried that all the rest of the movies would be downhill from there. However, the next movie was equally as good. So good, in fact, that I can not decide which I like better, the third or fourth movie in this marathon. The title is "10.5 Apocalypse". I think that perhaps both the third and fourth movies in this marathon were directed or produced by the same person or company. Both movies have the same sort of balanced parallel plots and engaging characters. Also, both movies have two parts, making them both extremely long.

Anyway, 10.5 Apocalypse was different because it featured a sort of chain event catastrophe sequence where each catastrophe was partially caused by the previous one. Also, only in this movie did I see such a wide variety of destructive forces. In most of the movies, one or two focused things cause the apocalyptic event. In this movie however, there were earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, sinkholes forming, tidal waves smashing, volcanic acid eroding structures, buildings collapsing, and at one point, there was even an impending nuclear accident/fallout which would kill millions. Overall, just when I thought that the suspense couldn't get any stronger, something else would happen which would push the whole situation higher. Great movie! Great movie indeed!!

The fifth movie might possibly be the worst movie I've ever seen. The title "2012: Doomsday, didn't seem too much different from the others. But it was comically dramatic, the acting was terrible, and the plot was heavy and laborious. The entire movie was also filled with this overly dramatic background music which made every scene just as sickening as the last. It was crammed full of mismatched religious traditions and prophesies. The goal never seemed worth the amount of drama required to reach it. For example, the brave trek featured in one part of the plot was all so that a statue could be returned to a temple. The statue looked like it had been made hastily and then covered with gold spray paint. It was.....pathetic. Anyway, you can't win them all. On to the last film.

The final movie in this marathon was simply named, "Apocalypse". This movie, although it seemed like a blockbuster in comparison with the last one, was fairly strange. The apocalypse mentioned in the title was less of a natural disaster, and more of an inter-terrestrial terrorist attack. The terrorist was a mentally ill woman with a fetish for word play and puzzles. The vessel was an ancient spaceship which everyone assumed was abandoned. There were some charming things about this movie, some of the characters were engaging, but overall this movie isn't one I'll watch again.

So there we have it. I have officially watched somewhere between 10-12 hours of apocalypse movies, and it is now close to noon on 12/21/12. Happy apocalypse day everyone! I'm going to go get some sleep!