christopher's lives (v5.3)

ok then, it’s what, the eighteenth of february?

ah well…

couple new things again this month…
like last month, i have a folder of panoramic pics made with AutoStitch…
this month, there is a new folder called “WebCam” and it has a very few notable moments caught on my cam… this will continue from here on out, assuming there are things worth posting and i actually hit that little ‘archive’ button on my cam when those moments happen…
i have also done something that was much-needed and actually made thumbnails for the vids this time around…

i think that is all there is to tell, right this way to the January 2006 pics…

oh, btw, i am playing with the settings in JAlbum to figure out how complicated it would be to start posting my pics semi-live… see, it can generate an album and then, you can add more pics to it and it re-generates all the pages and such… then, i could just continually post pics throughout the month, rather than doing one huge batch every month… just not sure if that’s what i want to do or not…
we’ll see…

anyway, site news…

first, briefly, i’ve changed the way the photos directories display and you can now read the full descriptions of all the folders… that’s awesome, take my word for it… sooner or later all the people who have complained in the past will see it and will no longer complain…

secondly, since no one else is around to do it, i spend a lot of time cleaning up people’s computers, installing new software and such, and, on my usb swiss army knife i carry my “Christopher Pack” (if google and lifehacker can have one, so can i), so, this all inspired me to add a list of links to info about apps i cant live without… you’ll find said list on the sidebar, under Links, the list is called “Apps I Can’t Live Without”… now everyone can be as 1337 as me :P
ok, next, no, i never officially announced it in a post, but, yup, i gotta’ cheapy webcam here in my living room earlier this week… it’s on 24 hours a day, except when it’s not, refreshing every 10 seconds, unless i have it set for every 30 seconds :P :P :P
needless to say, there’s not much in the way of alwayses and nevers with it, but, it’s already been fun…
it sits atop my monitor (erm, the primary monitor, the one on the coffee table) and shows me and everything behind me… of course, it’s often too dark to see much… some day i may just point it out the window for the cool view… in the webcam folder of this month’s pics, you can see an example of the view i have in mind… for now, i’ve been having too much fun waving to people and putting little “hello!” messages on it… it has a quick access dynamic caption feature, plus i have it set up to show my foreground window as well as what’s playing on winamp… man, from decade-long recluse to webcammer…
anyway, over on the sidebar, under “My Stuff”, you’ll see a thumbnail image from it and you can click on it to get to the full webcam image view page thingy… also, i have inserted the chatterbox into it so people can leave comments and, boy have they… never had so many chatterbox comments in the three years or so i’ve had one…

(btw, as of feb14, i have been back on the internet five years, here’s a little post from a couple years ago about it…)

oh, almost forgot… huge thing here… i upgraded to WordPress 2.0 here a little while back and it has an import wizard… so, i thought and thought and thought and finally decided to do it, i imported ALL my posts from my old website… that caused me to jump to 170 posts, dating back to april ‘03… you can see a month-by-month list on the sidebar under “Archives”, which is right under my webcam thumbnail image… i still need to add category tags to all of them and that is a big job… (my “uncategorized” category grew immensely when i did the import…)
i wasn’t going to import the old posts and just leave the old site as sort of an old abandoned building to be explored by the venturous… i may still undo the import (if i can figure out how) and stick with that plan… BIIIIIIG difference between the christophercornelius.com website/life and the insidiousplots.com website/life and i have never thought it was a good idea to mix the two…

ok, anyway, one last thing, as you will catch hints of in the pics, i now have a new computer… the old one died a horrible death… i have a bunch of new pics of it in the upcoming february batch, it is integrated into the home theater system, with dvd, optical digital audio, and everything… i’m lovin’ it, it is so much better than my last one… you can check out more info about it than you could ever care about, i have uploaded the main page of my belarc advisor profile of it, it is the big bold link under “My Stuff”, the very first link, it says “Truman”… you see, i named the computer “Truman”… that’s my dad’s middle name and my dad is the one who got me started in computers when i was 10… he also gave me most of the parts to build this computer and much technical support… THANKS, DAD!

anyway, whew, what a long post, but, i think i’m done…

just a few links, not a comprehensive list… i was just going to add these links to the sidebar “looking at” list, but, they are scattered and there seems to be no one gateway point to get to all of them, so, i’ll put them together here…

most people know what i have to say on this subject, but, i will point out that it is important to remember that “video games” (i prefer something more like “the current generation of popular interactive entertainment“) are still growing up and the truly great artists are yet to emerge, even if we see a few pioneers… this is much like film was in the 40s and 50s, where many movies out there were trying to capture the stage experience on film, bringing broadway shows to those who could not go to broadway shows, for example… few people yet knew what to do with this “new artform”… but, flash forward to the late 1970s and we enter the age of the blockbuster… and today, there is no shortage of cinematic visionaries…
we will someday be at this point with interactive entertainment… and, even in the present, if one hears the phrase “video game” and think of a joystick, some bleeping, shooting aliens, or maybe munching blinking dots, they are at least twenty years behind in their understanding of the subject…

and i am now going to digress and move onto the links before i start getting into lists of examples :P

04 December 2005 – Next Generation – Why Ebert Was Right

rogerebert.com :: commentary
Dec6,2005 :: Gamers fire flaming posts, e-mails…
Dec8, 2005 :: The Art of the Game 2
Dec14, 2005 :: The Game of Art 3

blog: scanners :: Jim Emerson / January 23, 2006 > Kojima: ‘Games are not art’

Duke City Fix » Hiking to the TWA Wreck

Anyone who has taken the tram up to Sandia Crest has probably overheard a passenger or two asking about the ‘crash site.’ They are referring to the wreck of TWA flight 206; a twin engine Martin 404 that slammed in to the west face of Sandia Peak on February 19, 1955. Sixteen passengers and crew were killed. While all of the bodies were removed, the remote location and rugged terrain necessitated leaving the bulk of the aircraft on the mountain in the upper portion of Domingo Baca Canyon in area that has since become known as TWA Canyon. A hike to the site makes for a memorable, if tiring, day trip.