From Episode 16 (Season 3)

This is pretty powerful imo and really true .. I love quotes that make you think and/or realize things, so here we go:
sh shh, ju- please just please, let me finish stumbling through this, i’m almost done, i promise.
what im saying is that i think maybe the best things, the richest things, aren’t supposed to come easily
and that sometimes the moments that make the most sense happen when everything else doesnt
and, well, i think you deserve more than just popcorn tonight.

(that was from listening and then I saw hulu has closed captioning)
Shh!
Just please let me finish stumbling through this.
I’m almost done, I promise.
[exhales]
What I’m saying
Is that I think maybe
The best things, the richest things,
Aren’t supposed to come easily.
And that sometimes
The moments that make the most sense
Happen when everything else doesn’t
And, well…
I think you deserve more than popcorn tonight.

Shit. I haven’t posted in February at all. This is coming to be a once a month blog. I guess twittering replaced blogging? hoe well. Either way, I’ll keep updating this with noteworthy posts that require more than 140 characters.

I just got back from AMC’s Best Picture Showcase. Another event that may become a tradition for me. It’s the 5 Oscar picks for Best Movie. So for 2009, I just saw Milk, The Reader, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, and Frost/Nixon (in that order - and yes, all in one sitting). Believe it or not, I had only seen Slumdog before and it is still my favorite.

AMC did an interesting thing in going after the blogging/twitter crowd so I saw some familiar names like @adamjackson and @krystyl. I also met @scifi_guy and talked about the movies with him.

It was pretty fun but definitely a total day drain and extremely tiring (yes, for just sitting on your ass). I wanted to code some tonight but don’t see that happened. Instead I’m procrastinating and writing this post, seee?

so the last time I posted here was coincidentally on New Years. Today is the Chinese New Year .. I’m half celebrating :P. Gung Hay Fat Choy. That would be on whatholidayistoday.com but I haven’t even touched that domain. GoDaddy.com is probably making some good money parking it for me. I can’t - or shouldn’t even think about that site until after I finish advancescreenings.com .. what’s the update on that? There is none, I haven’t touched it to be honest. Let me tell you why.

- I’m lazy
- I moved to Menlo Park
- I’m working a full time job
- I’m still “new” to the area (yes, even after 8 months)
- I’m lazy
- I seem to stop working on things when it gets close to completion

Am I afraid of failure? Am I afraid of success? I dunno. The NSHN server is finally up and running smoothly so traffic has steadily been growing over there. I now have 800 followers on Twitter. On my way to my first 1,000! woot woot. But yes, I set up my desk in the new apartment so now I will have a healthy work environment to work on the other sites. I kind of want to buy a desktop … we’ll see. Maybe that’ll be my present after advancescreenings is up?

Anyway, I’ll try to start posting here more often, in the meanwhile, follow me on twitter.

Ron Franz from Into The Wild: “But there is some kind of bigger thing that we can all appreciate and it sounds to me you don’t mind calling it God. But when you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines through you.”

So while not working on advancescreenings.com, I’ve set up an automated blog http://notsoheadlinenews.com/. It aggregates weird, bizzare, strange, and funny news from a number of sources. I ran into a few problems but it looks like it’s running smoothly now. I have it tweeting to a twitter account at http://twitter.com/nshn where a majority of the traffic comes from.

Now that it’s operational, it may be finding too many stories. I might have to cut out a few feeds or limit the number of tweets so it doesn’t just become noise and people can actually use it. It does appear to be faster than other similiar twitter bots.

So I just scrolled down my page after updated to 2.7 and noticed I was in Jamaica 2 months ago exactly. (I really like the new WP calendar) Anyway, time is flying too fast, Ive been swamped at work and haven’t had much time on my own projects … Hopefully I can fix that this weekend.

Oh, btw, I’m moving again .. to Menlo Park (right next to Palo Alto).

Today is definitely a day to blog about. Thanks to a random status update on facebook, I learned about http://endthefed.us. I’m very into alternative thinking and exposing truths and going against the grain and have been learning a lot about the Federal Reserve Scam so this was a must go event for me. I swear, San Francisco has been turning me into a hippie. Either way, it was a nationwide rally so I went to the San Francisco one which was right by my office. I didn’t make it for the march because I had to come from San Jose and it was way too early (10 am) so I got there for the rally/speeches at noon.

When I first go there, I was a bit skeptical because there was hardly anybody there:

End The Fed SF (Before the march arrived)

But then finally, the march arrived:

End The Fed SF March

If you don’t know anything about this, go to YouTube and search for Federal Reserve Scam…there are plenty of videos and information about it.

There is ALWAYS something to do in San Francisco. After this rally, I went to YouTube Live! at the Herbst Theater at Fort Mason. It was a great event YouTube put on to showcase and celebrate what YouTube has done. In the beginning, there were just random things going on all over, jugglers, acrobats, break dancers, beat boxers, kung fu guys, capoeira, cup stackers, etc etc. Also, walking around were known YouTubers (I didn’t know most of them). After that, the real show was ready to begin:

Waiting for YouTube Live to start

The live show which can be seen again at http://www.youtube.com/live consisted of major musicians like Katy Perry, will.i.am, Soulja Boy Tellem, and Akon. Then there was MythBusters, Planet B Boy, the debut of League of Extraordinary Dancers, etc. And THEN there were the more famous YouTubers like Frank, the Will it Blend guy, the dude who sings chocolate rain, and Bo yo. It was a well put together event, ran pretty smoothly and was entertaining for the full like 2 hours (no commercials).

woooo, I haven’t been to a big stadium concert in a while. This was a great one to go to, the lineup was just top notch. The radio station over here (Wild 94.9 San Francisco Bay Area) seems to throw these twice a year, maybe thrice. They had one when I first moved over here with Danity Kane and Lil Wayne. The lineup for tonight was Kevin Rudolf, Shontelle, Ciara, Ludacris, Akon, Kardinall Offishall, E-40, TI, and special guest host Cassie.

So coming from San Francisco, there was an accident which made my friend late so we missed Kevin Rudolf and Shontelle which is ok because they both only have one song anyway. I would think Kevin Rudolf would be boring without Lil Wayne and Shontelle’s song is a girl anthem which would’ve been interesting because I think that crowd was 3:1 or even 4:1 girls to guys. (Yes)

Our seats were pretty damn shitty .. 2 rows from the back lol but it was straight cause it was free and the same view as the box seats. So we can just pretend I had box seats for now. Ciara came on and she was…Ciara lol, I wasn’t too excited to see her. BTW, if you haven’t noticed - half the lineup was from Atlanta. I thought she’d do her song with E-40, but no .. more on that later.

Next was Ludacris and I was really suprised they put him before Kardinall Offishall and I thought we had missed him too, but we didn’t ;). Luda was tight but I’ve seen him better … every time I saw him was better actually. My first time @ Tech where I was pretty close to the stage and then in Norway where I swore I was the only American in the audience. Lil Fate was by his side as usual but that was it .. he didn’t bring anybody else or do any collaborations. He also only did like 1 or 2 new songs off the new album. He was added last minute to the program tho so .. wasn’t really headlining.

Alright, next up was the bulk of the show. Akon. Akon is crazy, straight crazy…I didn’t think his live performances would be noteworthy after his whole Trinidad fiasco and then throwing a kid off his stage, but DAMN. Akon went nuts…he kept throwing himself into the audience. I’m sure a lot of girls got to cop a feel tonight. Akon brought on a new act from Kon Live, Flipsyde, which I just learned is from Oakland, CA…they should’ve played to that a bit more. Kon Live is really building up their roster quite well. If Akon plays his cards right, they’re going to be a huge label.

Akon then brought on the MAN, Kardinall Offishall. The crowd LOVED him. This is where the show started to get hype. Real Hype. Dangerous had the girls moving like woah. And then E-40 came out and did his song with Akon. I know you aint used to having real niggas like me around. The Bay Area LOVES E 40 and hyphy music. E40 did his set and I haven’t seen a whole stadium move like that before. It was pretty crazy. Akon said this was supposed to be the livest radio station concert and it may be .. They should’ve moved the chairs from the floor though, floors should always be open at concerts. Anyway, Akon took back the stage after E-40 and continued his shenanigans moving into the crowd and getting stuck in an audience that didn’t know how to crowd surf.

After Akon came TI and the King closed out the show. I thought TI switched a flip and was going to have a more positive attitude on everything but he still has a chip on his shoulder and did all his hard tracks. I guess Shawty Lo really got to him. He did his hype tracks too but didn’t do his songs with Luda…I couldn’t understand that. They each have a song which each other and neither did them. TI gave a nice long public service announcement to embrace haters and live your life (which was the last song performed) and then the lights turned on.

I enjoyed myself, as usual, I love live music but really prefer small venues or at least venues where its general admission and you can move close when you want or far when you want. So I’m looking forward to Youtube Live next weekend :).

I have really been behind on development of the site. A lot of it has been built out and started, but I need to start completing functions/sections, polishing up the front end, and put it all together. I keep seeing people talk about screenings so I know the demand is still there however I don’t know if users will post content and I need how to learn how to aggregate data from these new screening sources better. I should also look into scraping..but all these things can be thought out for future versions of the project. Really I just need to sit down for a few hours and bang it out.

I did actually create my logo since I couldn’t find any graphic designer to do it for me. Now I need to design the rest of the aesthetics and stylings of each page. This influences the way inputs are layed out and how some functions operate. Not to mention I haven’t even began to think about javascript and the behavoirs. *sigh* There’s a lot to do.

However, v1 is still just around the corner, I know it because this is not a difficult site…I’m just thinking too difficult. I can keep the data entry rudimentary and have multiple entries per screening, that isn’t too much of a problem and will look like the site has more content. I also need to write up the help section of the site and educational parts to teach users how screenings work and how to find them to post them on the site. This doesn’t take brains, just time.

Time is something I have, but am not utilizing wisely. Someone has hacked the G1 a bit and learned to tether it for internet, but I haven’t been able to install the app on my phone *le sigh*. With that, I could use the internet while on the train and yes, it’s alot easier to code a website while on the internet…but that’s no excuse. I should be able to do it locally. Right now, I think the problem is not having photoshop to make the design. I need to sit down with the big boy laptop at home but I am just so tired whenever I get home…

There’s the update. Hopefully this gives me motivation to work on the site when I get home tonight. I just wrote these last 4 posts on the train coming home offline and will post them once I get home. Someone make a wordpress app for the G1. *le sigh* so many projects.

Of course I have to write a post about the Presidential elections of 2008. Any election is history but of course this is a momentous one. My President is black and (if you’re in the US) so is yours. It was funny to see and read everyone’s reactions and views. If you know me, you know I don’t vote but that doesn’t mean I’m not political.

I do not agree with the political system of the United States (2 party system and beyond). I am very grateful the public chose Obama (both electoral and popular vote - which I think is very important (the electoral system is plain retarded - another flaw)) and we were saved from Sarah Palin who believed Africa was a country. Now, really, out of all of the millions of eligible people in the United States, we were left with these 4?: Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin. The system is flawed. And then we get into the amount of money that was generated and used for each campaign, ridiculous…all during an economic recession.

Anyway, there are many political blogs and journalists out there saying the same things and different things. My opinion is mine and I live by it. I don’t really feel like using this blog as a way to expose my political views, I’d rather do that in a discussion or debate…because you’re wrong and I need to show you the right way. hah