You can eas­ily get in touch with me by sim­ply fill­ing out the form below. I can hon­estly say that I answer all of my emails, no mat­ter the situation.

Please note that I am cur­rently using knowspam.net as my spam pro­tec­tion ser­vice so you will receive an auto-reply to ver­ify that you are a human and not a spam-harvesting robot bent on world dom­i­na­tion. No one likes that, espe­cially me.

I’ve offi­cially begun the beta test for Ubi Soft and Cyan, Inc’s URU : Ages Beyond Myst. From what I’ve seen so far it is indeed a beau­ti­ful place con­sist­ing of lush envi­ron­ments, ambi­ent music and on the spot envi­ron­ment immersion.

While I can’t dis­cuss what this game has to offer, I can say that reveal­ing any­thing of the sort would “unbal­ance” the oth­er­wise organic flow of the game. True to it’s Myst roots, the puz­zles and inter­ac­tions in the game are abstract but fit into the world in a nat­ural and cohe­sive manner.

I look for­ward to what this game has to offer and so far it’s truly been an inter­est­ing and unique experience.

Rat­ing:  

Bran­don Lee, son of mar­tial arts expert and actor Bruce Lee, was grad­u­ally fol­low­ing in his father’s foot­steps in mar­tial arts and in Hol­ly­wood. From his ear­li­est begin­nings train­ing under his father’s guid­ance to the tragic end­ing to his life, Lee was devel­op­ing into an action star much like his father was back in the late 60s and early 70s.

The tragic end­ing to Brandon’s life occured dur­ing the film­ing of a scene in Alex Proyas’ film ver­sion of the Crow.

Accord­ing to the Bran­don Lee Library;

“At about 12:30 in the morn­ing on March 31, cam­eras began to roll on a scene in which Lee’s char­ac­ter, Eric, car­ry­ing a gro­cery bag, comes through a door and is shot sev­eral times. Alex Proyas, an Aus­tralian music-video direc­tor mak­ing his first Amer­i­can fea­ture, had cam­eras cap­tur­ing two dif­fer­ent angles on the scene, as well as a video cam­era record­ing the action for quick play­back. Actor Michael Massee, who played Fun­boy, was sup­posed to fire his .44-caliber revolver at Lee from a dis­tance of about 15 feet, at which point Lee would det­o­nate a “squib” (a small explo­sive charge) planted in the gro­cery bag to sim­u­late the rip-and-shred effect of the bul­let. As risky as that may sound, it was noth­ing com­pared with a scene that had been filmed just a week ear­lier in which Lee had been shot — and “squibbed” — about 50 times per take. The Crow’s special-effects man, J.B. Jones, had years of expe­ri­ence deal­ing with weapons on the TV series Miami Vice, and stunt coör­di­na­tor Jeff Imada was also on the sound­stage and had attended rehearsals of the scene, offer­ing advice. How­ever, since all the work involv­ing semi-automatic weapons on The Crow had been fin­ished days ear­lier, the film’s weapons spe­cial­ist had already left the set.

As a crew of between 75 and 100 peo­ple looked on, Massee fired the gun, the squib in the gro­cery bag det­o­nated on cue, and Lee fell to the ground. Not until the scene ended and Lee failed to get up did any­one real­ize he had been shot. “It didn’t really appear to the peo­ple on the set like any­thing was wrong,” said one eyewitness.”

? Read more about this tragedy at Bran­don Lee Library: The Brief Life and Unecce­sary Death of Bran­don Lee. 

This Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day, I’m look­ing for­ward to this movie; Big Fish (directed by Tim Bur­ton). Ever since Beetle­juice, Edward Scis­sorhands and Night­mare Before Christ­mas I have been a big fan of Burton’s on-screen visions. To me, they remind me of elab­o­rate fairy tales meshed with con­trast and vivid imagery.

The premise to Big Fish is as follows:

“William Bloom (Crudup) tries to learn more about his dying father, Edward (Finney), by piec­ing together the facts out of the var­i­ous fan­tas­tic tales and leg­ends of epic pro­por­tions he’s been told over the years (with McGre­gor play­ing the young ver­sion of Edward in these “retellings” of his sto­ries). Edward was a trav­el­ling sales­man, often far from home, and it’s those jour­neys through­out the South that are the seed of his son’s tales. There are four sep­a­rate tales told, each fan­tas­tic and wild, of Edward’s life, with each end­ing then with him at his deathbed, as William tries to under­stand his father’s great deeds, and fail­ures. The titles of the leg­ends (in the book) are “In Which He Speaks to Ani­mals,” “How He Tamed the Giant,” “How He Saved My Life,” and “His Immor­tal­ity.” Oh, and as you might guess from the title, one of them has a giant fish.”

Look for Big Fish to hit the­atres this Thanks­giv­ing holiday. 

Accord­ing to WCCO (Twin Cities);

“Four-year-old Shira Rabkin wanted to ask just the right ques­tions, so she thought long and hard. “Dear Mr. Lit­tle Guy,” she finally scrawled in big let­ters across a sheet of paper. “Do you like mints?” After some more pon­der­ing, she added, “and going to Camp Snoopy? Love, Shira.”

Mr. Lit­tle Guy was nowhere in sight this early August evening, so Shira stuffed her let­ter behind his door at the base of a hol­lowed out ash tree. It’s always open, and always full — of let­ters, pens, flow­ers and coins.

The elu­sive elf has enchanted Twin Citians ever since the 6-inch wooden door appeared eight years ago, just off a walk­ing path around pop­u­lar Lake Har­riet. Dou­ble takes led to mes­sages, and mes­sages to answers — and some­how Mr. Lit­tle Guy keeps up, respond­ing to the queries in typed notes half the size of busi­ness cards.”

Meet Mr. Lit­tle Guy. 

Super Mario Broth­ers (1, 2, 3 and so on and so forth) were my favorite video games of the past. If given the chance I would play them not only in the con­fines of my room but within the walls of the local arcade which was encased in a build­ing that looked like a cas­tle. The arcade was appro­pri­ately named Cas­tle Park and included (dur­ing the mid to late 80s) the coolest arcades this side of the world.

Here are a few of my favorites;

Drag­ons Lair - Don Bluth and Gary Gold­mans’ excel­lent and some­what novel game star­ring Dirk the Dar­ing. The great­est achieve­ment in regards to this game was it’s use of full-motion ani­mated sequences cou­pled with time-reaction game­play. To play you had to pay atten­tion to your flash­ing sword and hit a but­ton in cor­re­spon­dance for an action. (ie. swing your sword at the ten­ta­cle beast, jump to a spe­cific area, etc.) It was truly one of a kind.

Pac­man (clas­sic) — Every­one knows the power of this sim­ple game. Con­trol Pac­man to gob­ble lit­tle energy tablets and in the mean time avoid the ghosts. The smaller ones had no affect on game­play other than attain­ing points while the large tablets changed the ghosts into “edi­ble” ghosts. This way you could switch your direc­tion and give those ghosts a taste of their own med­i­cine. Let’s not for­get the cher­ries and other fruit varieties.

Mario Broth­ers — This was the orig­i­nal Mario game. Instead of the game being split into sev­eral worlds (like other Mario games), this game con­sisted of a hand­ful of lev­els where Mario and Luigi could bat­tle eachother using their adver­saries or you could work together to beat the chal­lenges. I can remem­ber the spiked ene­mies and the infa­mous Goom­bas. Good times, great gameplay.

Holo­gram Time Trav­eler — Cre­ated by Rick Dwyer, the man behind the tech­nol­ogy for Dragon’s Lair, this game was some­thing never-before-seen and while the nov­elty lasted for merely a few months it still remains an inter­est­ing con­cept. More­over, the game was more fun to watch than it was to play.

It was the first Holo­graphic arcade game uti­liz­ing the now cliché’ mir­ror Holo­gram effect. I can remem­ber try­ing to actu­ally touch the inter­ac­tive char­ac­ters in the game (namely the cow­boy and Princess Kyi-La).

For even more Mario Broth­ers fun, check out this cool Flash ani­ma­tion. 

It’s been revealed that Ohio is to blame for the recent New York/Canada power out­age that took place a few days ago.

Despite this claim, my the­ory still stands. 

Comics Sherpa, a ser­vice for “undis­cov­ered comics” pro­vided by Uni­ver­sal Syn­di­cate, Inc. allows what would be oth­er­wise con­sid­ered an under­ground comic to flour­ish or gain a readership.

Scott Kurtz (of PvPonline.com) explains:

“Uni­ver­sal Press Syndicate’s web­comic host­ing ser­vice, Comics Sherpa has had some new light shed upon it.

The ser­vice is actu­ally $9.95 a month or $99 for the year. But that’s not the only thing, there’s a kicker.

Appa­rantly, and I’m try­ing to con­firm this, if you sign up for Comics Sherpa you do NOT sign away the rights to your comic, but you DO agree to give Uni­ver­sal Press first right of refusal on any offers you get.

Mean­ing, if a syn­di­cate or web­site likes your comic and wants to make you an offer, you have to give Uni­ver­sal Press Syn­di­cate a chance to match or beat the offer.”

Lost Sheep (by car­toon­ist Dan Thomp­son) is a hilar­i­ous comic about a sheep who has decided to leave the herd and go off on his own. His adven­tures and encoun­ters along the way pro­vide the hilar­ity to this great comic.

Rat­ing:  

Could this have been the cause?

We’ll never know. 

Every­thing at work has pretty much been a suc­cess. I’ve been work­ing exten­sively the past few days on a project for a local law firm; tak­ing a crack at it with my trusty HTML whip.

In all hon­esty, I’ve learned more in the past few months from just trial and error. Yet, that’s how it usu­ally is for our species, we learn and suc­ceed by fail­ing. At the same time, we some­times need to take a step back and ulti­mately see how things will shape up on their own instead of try­ing to please everyone.

As Bill Cosby once (or twice, or three times) said:

“I don’t know the key to suc­cess, but the key to fail­ure is try­ing to please everybody.”

If you think about it, Bill couldn’t be more truth­ful. There are many times in life where we feel we’ll only suc­ceed if we please the masses. If you ask any stu­dent of Psy­chol­ogy, he or she will explain that we attain per­sonal achieve­ment by allow­ing our­selves to only achieve at the expense of some­one else’s opinion.

Rather, we should look to suc­cess as a seed. One that needs a bit of com­fort and care to even­tu­ally grow into a tree and in time branch off into other great avenues.