What’s up my good people. Back in February, I interviewed the clothing label Dime a Dozen (click here for the interview). As promised, they launched their first official line of shirts just in time for the summer. I had the privilege of shooting some gear for their launch party. If you’d like to see more, check out their website http://www.DimeaDozenClothing.com.
What’s up everyone. We’re getting close to the end of a beautiful week and I’m looking forward to this three day weekend we have coming up. So I added a new category, yep, “Politics”. No, I’m not really into politics a whole lot. I know a few things here and there, but it’s a rabbit hole of information. You learn one thing, that leads you to the next, and to the next, and so on and so on. It’s like learning music all over again. HOWEVER, I did run across an article about President Obama being heckled in regards to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” topic on Yahoo News. I was impressed by his quick reaction. People can say what they want, but our President is a cool dude.
What’s up my good people, I hope today is treating you well. With my beautiful wife out of town for wedding “stuff” I had to fend for myself last night for dinner. After work, my original plan was to go home, walk my pup, then go over to a sushi joint down the street. However, after a little consideration, I decided to man up and make the sushi myself. I don’t know if anyone has ever checked my references in the field of culinary arts, but Christina will tell you the only thing I’m good for is breakfast (I can throw together some pancakes, bacon, eggs, and sausage like you wouldn’t believe). It was a bit of a learning curve, but for my first time, it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t have to throw away anything (which says a lot because I lost a lot of good pancakes in the process of perfecting my flip).
I went over to Mitsuwa out here in Costa Mesa, it’s a fine Japanese market with lots and lots of goodies. My shopping list consisted of:
I started off with my appetizers, a yummy batch of Mussels. I put a little bit of butter, salt, pepper, and I let those things sit on 375º for about 20 minutes. Ahh, amazing… just like in the restaurant. I microwaved my rice twice (about 5 minutes each time), and let it sit for a while to cool. I put my eel in the oven at 350º for about 20 minutes and then started putting it all together. Crab, eel, salmon and avocado. I don’t know what you call that kind of roll but it was pretty good. Came out kind of fat and the presentation wasn’t too nice on the eyes, but for my first time, I think it tasted wonderful. I set out to make sushi, and that’s exactly what I did =)
What did I learn?
With all that said, I’ll leave you with some pictures.
photos by jamescalvin
What’s happening my good people. So I know this is kind of old news but it’s something I felt worth mentioning. To me, there is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing a musician with record breaking history attempt to do a comeback, and fail miserably. Being a musician myself (not a very popular one but a musician nonetheless) it feels close to home for me. I watched this video (below) and it just broke my heart to hear one of the most angelic voices of our time sound the way it did. Houston hasn’t toured since the late 90′s and “rumor has it” she’s been using those illegal substances which overtime we all know can kill a beautiful voice (illegal substances can kill a beautiful anything). She said it was her allergies and sickness responsible for the voice breakdown, but people seem to think otherwise. My question is, if you’ve been out for a while, why on EARTH would you sing the hardest song on the planet (even though we know she’s responsible for the remarkable rendition of the original). I like Whitney Houston, she can get a little wild sometimes, but I like her, so I really hope that she can clean up her act and get the show on the road (pun intended).
Top of the morning to you all on this beautiful Tuesday. You know I like to keep my folks in the loop with things and yesterday I ran across the Dropbox website. To sum it up, it’s an online thumb drive that will allow you 2GB of free storage. You can get more if you want to pay, but 2GB is plenty space for me, especially since all I’m doing is sending music, images, and a bunch of nerdy program related pdf files. Another thing I like is that for every person you refer, both parties get an additional 250MB of space (you can end up getting up to 8GB of free online disk storage. You can read more about it and get an extra 250MB of storage by clicking here.
photo courtesy of Dropbox
What’s happening everyone? I hope this beautiful Monday finds everyone in high spirits. I had a little too much fun Saturday night which kind of slowed me down for most of the day yesterday and a little bit of today. Hence the reason this blog is being written at 4:00pm instead of my usual noon launch. But with my weekend festivities behind me now, I wanted to give a quick mention of an iPhone app that I’ve been using lately. It’s called Vlingo, and it allows a user to send status updates (Twitter/Facebook), emails, sms, map directions, and search the web via voice. I’ve been using it mainly for Twitter and Facebook updates, I haven’t gotten into the emails and sms messages because that costs about $10 and I’m being a little Frugal McFrugalton this month. I’d recommend folks to download it to try it out (it’s free) and if it’s something worth buying, try out the $10 version. I’m sure the email and sms features can come in handy for a lot of people.
photo courtesy of Vlingo
Good morning everyone, I hope this Friday finds everyone in great spirits. The sun has so blessed us this morning and peaked its little face through the clouds. Hopefully he can stay around for a bit. This week, I’ve tried something new. Even though I’m a programmer, I’m a little slow when it comes to keeping up with my social media. Try envisioning a Palm Tree standing right in the middle of the 5 freeway. All the cars breeze back and forth and the tree just sits in the same spot. Well, that tree is me, and all the cars passing by represent the various communications that cross me on a daily basis. Needless to say, I miss a lot of things. By the time I check my phone in the afternoon, a world of updates has just passed me by. I’ve been using TweetDeck on my iPhone as a way to post my status updates to Facebook and Twitter. It’s an awesome application for your phone, but who wants to scroll through their phone while trying to work right?? Sure I can pull up the applications on my browser, but nothing screams “I’m not actually working right now” like the Facebook or Twitter websites. You can spot that branding from across the room.
Like I mentioned above, I’ve decided to try something new, the TweetDeck Desktop Application is a great development. It’s an application ran from your desktop that allows you to quickly post updates to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Linked In. I only use it for Twitter and FB, that way I can stay connected easier with my peeps. This week I’ve been more up to date on the social networking side of things then I ever have before primarily because of the ease and speed of this desktop application. It takes me no time at all to check out updates (posting and replying). The ability to preview messages as they come in without pulling up the TweetDeck window is worth mentioning as well. Overall, it’s definitely worth trying out. I could go over all the features of the app, but why reinvent the wheel? Go to the website and check it out for yourself.
Photo courtesy of TweetDeck
Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. My in laws came to town this weekend (Mother and little brother in law) and in between watching movies, playing video games, eating, and drinking, we managed to get some iPhone gaming in. My brother in law Melvin introduced me to a game called “Words With Friends” by a company called New Toy Inc. which is (for the most part) Scrabble on your iPhone. Note that the the name of the game isn’t Scrabble, it’s just similar to it. I would have never thought in a million years a “Scrabble(ish)” type of game would be so fun. It’s one of those asynchronous games that you can play with someone over a period of time and you never have to actually play at the same time. When it’s your turn, you’ll be notified and the next time you have a break, or are standing in a line doing absolutely nothing, you can put some words together. One of the fun things about this game is that it gets your brain moving, thinking, and un-scrambling. It’s definitely a fun way to break up the day. It is however, extremely addicting so I’m just warning you now, you’ll go through your whole day looking at words and thinking what other words you can spell with it.
Photos courtesy of New Toy Inc.
Good morning everyone,
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I have a special week of blogging planned for you all. I have my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament happening next weekend (March 27th) so I’m going to spend this week focusing on health and fitness.
I ran across the Men’s Health fitness application and I was pretty impressed by the amount of workout demonstrations that were offered. It’s almost like reading any regular Men’s Health magazine but with a focus on exercising. Some of the features for this application include:
You can read more about this application by going to The Men’s Health Website. Download it, and give it a shot!
This is definitely something to stick into my “Interesting” category. Since I was a kid, I’ve always had a fascination with Jellyfish. I had a pretty vivid imagination (and still do for the most part), when I was in second or third grade, we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and I was so interested in the Jellyfish because they were like no other creature in any of the tanks. I used to think that there was some kind of spaceship that crash landed on Earth (in the ocean) thousands and thousands of years ago and all of the Jellyfish left the spaceship and were forever condemned to a life of endless floating. That’s what I used to believe. Sounds pretty silly right? It sure does, that would mean Jellyfish would have been floating around in the spaceship, I’m having a tough time picturing that right now. It makes more sense to think that they had another form and upon contact with the ocean water, the space aliens were morphed into what we now call Jellyfish. Yes, I think that makes more sense, just something to think about, which leads me into my blog post of the day.
The main inspiration of this post came from a current event I just ran across. Apparently, out there in the ocean there is a type of Jellyfish that can live forever. According to a blog post by Bryan Nelson of Mother Nature Network “The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth.” How on earth does an animal live forever?? Good question, and the quick answer is, through a process called trans-differentiation, the animal is able to transform it’s cells into different types of cells. Which means during it’s adult life, it can transform back into it’s first stage of life (imagine having the ability to turn yourself into a child again). This was a relatively rare species at one point but because they continuously reproduce (and they don’t die), they’re popping up all over the place now. James Cameron should make a movie about this. War of the Worlds II perhaps?? Attack of the Killer Jellyfish(es)?? There is no way The Hurt Locker would have beat out a movie called “Attack of the Killer Jellyfish(es)”. I left a photo below for your viewing purposes.
If you’re interested in reading more about this, Click Here
Photo courtesy of Peter Schuchert
Post inspired by Bryan Nelsen
