The Column

Motto: I need to lift more. This post is being written almost entirely to share a video I just made. You can find this video down below, in the Top 5.  Some pretext to the video: I worked from my place today. It's the snowpocalypse outside and I had computer work I could do all day, so I decided it was appropriate. At 9pm I realized I hadn't left my place all day. I looked outside and saw a big bank of fresh snow and knew what I had to do. Before the Top 5, though, I have two things to talk about. KU beat Iowa State in overtime. I watched this with my three buddies I often watch games with. It was maybe the second best comeback I've ever seen (nothing will ever top 2008's National Championship game). There were some questionable and some downright wrong calls... but those can go either way - and I'll take a win, regardless. The other thing - Microsoft started putting out negative ads against Gmail. They warn that Google is going through every word of you...

Motto: For your treatment I prescribe several highly concentrated doses of life. I did an experiment concerning confirmation bias. As it turns out, everything I expected was true. #jokesthatsuck. That joke about confirmation bias comes to you from when I was driving earlier. There was an overly aggressive vehicle weaving in and out of traffic, doing his best to go as fast as humanly possible. when he passed me, he had a bumper sticker for a musical artist from a genre I despise (who it was isn't relevant). I thought to myself "that person WOULD drive like a jerk, he listens to that crap." Then I thought, if that person hadn't had that bumper sticker, would I have noticed how jerkishly he was driving? Then, in the middle of traffic, I realized confirmation bias was back-seat driving me towards false conclusions. On a possibly related note: If you listen to Tech N9ne, there's a good chance you suck at driving like a normal person. Since my last update, I have be...

Motto: Labeled, Segregated, Categorized, Classified, Sorted, Filed, Tabulated, and Designated This column has been a couple of days in the making... it may be on the long side. You can glance down to get a peak of what you're in for and decide for yourself if it's worth it or not. You know it's worth it. This first bit bounces around some. I had a lot of small things I wanted to say that don't gel so well. I went through and retroactively applied labels to ALL the previous columns. To celebrate, I'm going to add everything to this column that I need in order to give it ever label I plan on using. You can click on any of the labels and see all the columns that are tagged with it. Cool? Cool. As an electrical engineer, I'd like to take this opportunity to celebrate my 100,000th column! I want to see a game of Scrabble played between two people who make crosswords for a living. That would be intense. Pandora, the internet radio station that everyone ha...

Motto: Original, Please The first thing I'd like to talk about in today's column relates back to Column #61 - Movie Mode. It concerns creative output and it occurred to me when I was driving down the road listening to Modest Mouse. Basically, I have been impressed with their music for the past couple of months now. It's creative. It's clever. It's catchy. Lately, I have been thinking to myself "why are these other people so creative and clever, and most of what I think or do kind of sucks?" Then I started thinking about Mike Birbiglia, a comedian I like. His jokes are clever and creative. Recently I watched a movie he made called "Sleepwalk with Me" - it's available on Netflix. Although I liked the movie, I have to say I was disappointed by it. It was basically just all of his previously existing standup jokes presented in movie format. Then it hit me. All at once. All of this clever, creative geniusness that these people have made a livi...

Motto: Aesthetic, Aesthetic, Rho, Owe, No, Gary, Me, Larry, Larry, Ewe, Site, Pneumatic, Me, Ewe I have a plan for this post, so it might be more coherent than my last one. If not more coherent, at least more entertaining. Here’s the plan: Thoughts after leaving Facebook for a couple of months. A very confusing phonetic alphabet. A cool sense of pride. Then one line about Google. It’s been two months since I deleted my Facebook. I wrote about deleting it November 30th of last year and I deleted it later that night, if my memory serves me. I’m now going to answer the bolded questions that I had a friend make up for me (thank you to Danielle for this one): How do you look up personal info (email, cell, etc) of those obscure people you sort of know and randomly need to contact? I haven't had to do that so much just yet. Generally, I know of a way to contact someone who knows of a way to contact them. If not that... I don't know. Good questions.I don't contact people whose...

Motto: Throwing Everything Possibly Deep at a Wall to See What Sticks This weekend was dedicated to me. Aaron took a weekend for Aaron - probably undeservedly so. I need to be doing things for other people, being selfless to use say something selfish and play it off like it's rare. I took a weekend to do exactly what I wanted to do, and it was great. But that happens most weekends lately.  This weekend I finished my second videogame since Melissa left. That puts me at one game every 10 days or so. Considering each game is supposed to take ~12 hours to beat, that's, what, 1 hour 12 minutes a night? I guess that's not as bad as I thought. Uncharted 2 is the best game I've ever played, by the way. I know nobody who reads this cares, but I wanted to take that one sentence to say something about the 12 hours I spent over the past week or so. I sat down today to do something I don't do much anymore. I sat down with a pen and a few pieces of paper in front of me to...

Motto: 6 Months Down, Six Months to Go I have a lot of time to kill before I can put a wrap on this post. I just started the render for the updated version of my second-a-day video. This post is being created specifically to showcase the video because, as of this writing, I am exactly 24 1/2 years old... which means my video is exactly half finished. In an hour and twenty minutes, I'll upload it to YouTube. When that upload gets done (probably another hour, at least) I will put the video right below this line. For you, it's been there this whole time. This has truly been the longest I've ever worked on some project that was "just for fun". Unless you count skateboarding. I did that for 7 years. Some people are professional skateboarders after 2 years. Took me 7 to get somewhat competent. Skateboarding, though, is what introduced me to making videos. As you may know, all real skateboarders have to be on camera so they can be seen skateboarding; otherwise, w...