2012

Here we are. The year is ending once again. What did this year hold for you? Think back to the beginning. What did you want to accomplish? What did you swear you'd do, or stop doing? What has changed?

I learned a lot this year. I got through the hardest, but most rewarding 9 weeks of my life teaching kids at a summer camp. I learned how to build a computer (and did it). I learned how to drive a car. I finished Geometry in school, which I've got to say was the most fun subject I've ever studied. I learned how to work for a political campaign and spend four days doing so. We lost, but that's OK.

2012 was a reminder that each year always tops the last one. We saw revolutions, innovations, democracy, and breakthroughs. We elected a president. Again. Some of us mourned, others rejoiced.
We watched athletes from all over the world come together and compete so that we could find out which ones were the very best at their sport. We laughed as the world didn't end on December 21st (at least, not that we know of.) We cried when disturbed individuals with guns killed innocent people for no particular reason. We stood with mouths agape as a song by a South Korean guy we'd never heard of was listened to by over a billion people on Youtube. We watched countries fight for independence. We saw the revolution in Libya. We saw floods and earthquakes and tsunamis. We helped New York recover from a hurricane.



2012 was a hard year, but...

We made it.

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Fake Stuff

Don't ask me why, but I've always had a strange fascination with forged documents. Passports, ID's, birth certificates and checks can all be forged. And while some people do use forgery for bad purposes such as theft, fraud or other social no-no's, others see forgery as a kind of art form. I can see the validity of getting good enough at faking something that it is passed off as the real thing. I made a fake press pass a while ago. It's not super-convincing, but there isn't much of a standard for press passes and I imagine that it would get past a barely trained minimum wage dude working security at a concert.

If you laminate it and stick it on a lanyard thingy, I'll bet it would work. You'll notice that I look a little different in this picture, that's because I heavily edited it to add a few years to my apparent age. The lower jaw is wider, and there are slightly more wrinkles. As I was doing my google-ing for this post, I found that the technical definition of forgery is "The creation of a false written document or alteration of a genuine one, with the intent to defraud." So I guess you could make an extremely realistic five dollar bill, but rather than using it as cash, if you were to frame it and hang it on a wall, then it wouldn't be forgery. It would be Art. With a capital "A". 

That's what a guy named J.S.G. Boggs did. He would make an amazingly accurate one-sided drawing of a bill, and he would buy lunch with it in restaurants  Only rather than spending it, he would sell it to the waitress as Art. So I guess, even though it wasn't actually currency, the "forged" $20 bills became worth even more than $20. Boggs was arrested in England for counterfeiting, but was later aquited of his "crime" because he was not trying to spend the bills. He sold them as Art pieces.

You can see the level of detail in this dollar bill. That takes a lot of skill and time. And when something requires skill and time to make, then suddenly it's worth something! 

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Les Misérables

It took me forever to get that little slashy thingy above the "e". I hope you appreciate it. I'm here to review the movie Les Misérables which I saw last night.

I'm not going to go into the plot much at all in this review. Let me just give a basic outline: Jean Valjean is a convict, he gets let out on parole, becomes a new person when he tears up his papers, and befriends a poor factory worker, caring for her daughter after she dies.

The beginning of the movie wasted no time diving right into it, I almost felt like it was moving too fast to make an emotional connection with the main character. They make up for that, however, by  the fact that the movie is really long. It's over three hours. The rating is PG-13, although quite honestly I would have given it an "R" rating. The fact is that certain suggestive themes are unavoidable parts of the story. To omit them would be to ruin the whole point of the plot. The factory worker, Fantine, gets fired from her job. After selling her hair and some of her teeth, she adopts... Another profession. There are two or three scenes in connection with that where you will find an excellent opportunity to go refill your popcorn. Yes, they were an integral part of the story, however they could have been done much more tactfully. That's Hollywood.

This movie is an emotional one, and it will wring the tears out of your eyes. One interesting fact is that all of the singing was actually recorded live, rather than dubbed over. The songs were great and I still have "Can you hear the people sing" stuck in my head. I especially enjoyed Daniel Huttlestone's performance as the young revolutionary Gavroche. He also played the same character in the Broadway production of Les Miserables.

Overall, I think this was a great film, stunted slightly by the several explicit scenes. This is not a family film, so parental discretion is advised required.


Just remember to bring tissues.

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Dancing

I've tried to dance. I'm not really good at it. I made a few illustrations to demonstrate:

In this picture, I'm standing still. I retain a slight "cool" factor in this manner. I'm not making a fool of myself in this picture. However, in the next picture, I am at a dance. I am attempting to dance. Note the fact that I am in motion, and thus making a fool of myself. The cool lights and cool fog don't mask this fact.

However, I can in fact retain the cool factor when in motion, as long as I am not attempting to adhere to any sort of rhythm. I can walk and still look cool. I can swim and look cool, in a drowning sort of way. I drive a car and look cool (although that depends greatly on what kind of car I'm in.) However when rhythm is applied, the cool factor drops to practically nonexistent. Here's a chart showing what I mean:

Note how the amount of movement increases dramatically as I realize how low the cool factor is sinking. This then causes the cool factor to bottom out altogether. I suppose the best strategy is to avoid high levels of rhythm altogether.

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Presents

I got some great presents this year. As I get older, I find myself enjoying giving the presents even more than getting them. Strange, huh? It's interesting how every year, after Christmas I hear about how this friend got an iPod or this other friend got an Xbox or a $500 guitar pedal. It would probably be pretty easy to be dissatisfied with what I got, in comparison to the expensive and elaborate gifts that other people get. But somehow, I'm not dissatisfied. I guess that, even though my gifts may seem simple and even boring compared to an expensive piece of electronics, there is something else involved. It's really about the thought that went into choosing or making the present, rather than the present itself. Here's an example. This year my sister made me a blanket. It's an awesome blanket. It's warm, it's actually long enough for tall people like me, and it looks good. It didn't cost hundreds of dollars. But she made it herself. She spent time on it. She knew that I am in protest against the ludicrous Wisconsin winters. She remembered that I am perpetually complaining about being cold. And so she made this blanket for me. I'm going to use this blanket for a long time. I slept under it last night, and it was nice and warm. It's actually draped over me right now as I'm typing. I love my new blanket!

Several years ago, when I was nine or ten, I desperately wanted an Airhogs r/c jet. It was a little ducted fan powered airplane, and it was nearly indestructible, being made out of foam. It cost $50. I talked about it every day for a long time, and saved up my allowances to buy it. And then Christmas came and I received some money, which was just enough for that jet. I went to the store and finally bought it, and I was thrilled. I flew it around for hours and hours, and within about a year it was worn out. I put it in a closet, and two years ago I threw it away. It's sitting in a landfill somewhere next to a banana peel slowly decomposing. After the plane had lived its lifespan, I didn't care about it anymore. What I cared about was the time I spent in the gym flying it around, doing loops and rolls. That was the important part. I spent hours with my grandpa flying it back and forth.
A few months after I got that plane for Christmas, my parents gave me a multitool. It's a pair of pliers with screwdrivers, knife blades, bottle openers, and wire cutters on it. It cost a little less than that r/c plane. But the difference here is that I still have my multitool. I just used it about an hour ago to repair the radio that sits in my bed. I used it 3 months ago to build my computer. Again, the tool itself isn't what matters to me. It's the things I've made and fixed and taken apart that I remember.

The price or value of the gift really doesn't matter. It's the thought and effort that went into choosing it and buying it that matters. So if you ever find yourself looking at your friends and thinking "Wow, I wish I got expensive stuff like that for Christmas," just remember that whoever bought or made the gifts you got was thinking about you when they did it. They were thinking about something meaningful to give you. That's what matters the most.

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Here

Hey. In case you haven't figured it out, I've moved. Here. And I think I'm going to be staying.
I was with Webs.com for almost 3 years. At the time, Webs was my best option, but it was clunky and stunted (those are two very underused words, by the way.) It didn't allow enough flexibility for me to truly customize my blog and let it grow. So now I'm here and it's looking promising. I will still be posting just as much as I did before (maybe even a bit more.)

So to welcome you to my new blog, here is a picture of a baked potato.

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