Happy New Year

Well, I guess those Mayan calendar December 21st 12/21/12 people have something in common with those Y2K doomsday preppers. Earth is still here! Assassin's Creed III had me really worried…

If you haven't seen it, I recommend watching the Showtime series Penn & Teller Bullshit. Enlightening and fun! Unless you're easily offended. But if that's the case, why are you reading my site?

Happy new year, friends and family. More real content coming soon. It looks like a few of my scheduled drafts never actually posted, so there'll be those, too, after I edit them a bit to make them more relevant.

And of course, stuff about apps.

It looks like Adobe canned their Touch Apps Collage and Proto, as well as Kuler. Damn. If it means that Photoshop Touch and Ideas are going to be better, however — maybe it's okay.

Hopefully you snagged a few discounted apps and games during the holiday — lots of cheap and free apps!

Status Update

Hi. I have a lot to cover here.

Also, please excuse the 2009-2010 layout/colors. I'm setting up a new one... it just takes awhile because I can't do it laying down (literally, laying down).

Note: this may not be interesting/relevant if you don't know me on some kind of personal level. Feel free to browse other things. Enjoy picture of cats in boxes, or look at this inkblog post. Or these assorted images including Hipstamatic iPhone 4 pics (more soon). And join Zurker, a social network you can own so we can become friends.

Miscellaneous personal stuff:

• I think the satsuma mandarin orange season is at an end. Thanks to Chow Lafayette, I've managed to get almost 30lbs of oranges per week since December. Luckily, California has a lot of raspberries!

• This crazy Bay Area weather has been giving me daily migraines. Sometimes lasting up to 20 hours, I haven't had much relief. I think my migraines have been triggered by barometric pressure changes.

• I've been studying/trying to play Chess. Until recently, I hadn't had much interest in the game, but I played Go, then Gomoku, and that led me to Chess.

• I dig Shortmail. Using their iPhone app and my Twitter, @bradtastic, I setup simplified email in one minute. This format is based on the Email Charter — principles to eliminate email overload — found here.

Blog consolidation; goodbye, TypePad.

I've wanted to like TypePad since using MovableType at AIS, years ago. I just... don't. I want to like it; it's got a good team behind it, some interesting features, but poor layouts and themes. I don't know enough programming to make my own, and with time constraints and constant pain, I won't be learning anytime soon. Learning programming isn't just reading, it's trial & error — and not accomplished easily on the iPad.

So unless SAY:Media or someone is willing to pay for my disability blog, I'll be moving the content here. This isn't ideal, but it'll be easier to maintain. It also means gaming info and iOS app reviews will be mixed together with information on my condition.

For now, I'll keep the domain names — they're paid for — I'll just point them here.

Squarespace vs WordPress

I've been reading some blogging guides about setting up WordPress and other things (including Posterous and Tumblr). I want to keep writing and sharing — it's therapeutic — but I also want to keep costs down. Some blogging concerns are stability, aesthetics, typography, and file management. My goal is to share my photography, illustrations and design alongside writing. I love Squarespace's themes and CMS, but I don't care for the blogging/editing UI — it isn't touch and small-screen friendly. I adore their customer service, however.

A real iPad blogging tool, Blogsy, by fomola.

I found this app called Blogsy — subsequently communicating with it's developer/owner — and am now convinced that blogging from iPad will continue to be viable, if not someday preferred. Blogsy doesn't support Squarespace yet, but I've been told that that's a planned addition. I've used each of the services that it does support, and I'm starting to question my Squarespace convictions.

I hope to continue learning about technology and tools while I practice and strengthen my writing. I've been reluctant to share my fiction attempts, but perhaps it's time for more change.

This is a big year with Olympics, elections and Mayan doomsday predictions myths. Hopefully I can learn to better manage my disability and life, and share some of that — you know, before the world ends.

Happy New Year! 2012

Kiss 2011 goodbye, welcome 2012. I think it'll be a better year. Still trying to deal with the disability. I'll try to be easier to reach in he new year; no guarantees, however. With the nerve problems, it's hard to "do" sometimes.

Talk to you next year!

Why blog at all?

I feel like I finally understand blogging; this is major, because although it seems straightforward simple, it's actually intricate and evolving. Journalism has been a mainstay of the civilized world for how long? Then somebody, maybe Al Gore, invented weblogs, and news media shows a new chink in its armor. Within a few years, it's adapt or perish; as publishing empires crumble, news organizations scramble to join the blog room blitz. Blog room blitz!

And the man in the back said everyone... kidding.

What I've come to realize (finally) is that everyone blogs differently, and the rules of the game are loose-fitting and malleable. "What's the point of a personal blog, my personal blog?" I seriously asked myself that, and concluded that "what's the point of" could be asked of just about everything we do, and there isn't always a great answer. Sometimes, even "what's the point of breathing," is convoluted.

I know that reading Andrew Keen's poignant but somewhat unimpressive and lackluster book The Cult of the Amateur had had an influence on me akin to that of the movie Super Size Me. I gave up blogging, just as the film had caused me to give up junk food. Why? Because, at that time, it seemed disgusting.

I was wondering what changed... what brought me back?

Anyone else noticing the strange weather? Recently, well... perhaps as far back as across the past few years, it seems like the weather's gone topsy-turvy on us. Like now; it's summer, yet most mornings — when the sun starts to break over the horizon and blinding light should pour through my useless blinds covering the south-facing windows, when instead, I'm greeted by the soft luminescence of lovely overcast skies — I feel a sensation that makes me think aloud, "Today will be a great day, finally," because it seems like it'll be dark all day.

Abruptly, at some point, the clouds lift — or fizzle, or dissolve or whatever — the sun lay its fireball beat-down, and I'm struck by the nasty, blinding realization of my wishful thinking. "It won't be that great; the damned sun is going to kill me."

Fortunately, that heated feeling fades as the sun sets — clouds begin to again blanket the sky — and for a moment, I could forget what season it's supposed to be. Overall, it feels like we're having cold summers and warm winters; that's wrong, on this side of the equator... right?

Perhaps this has had an influence; instilling in me new passions and desires, ambitions and motivations. Maybe it's all this worry over the economy; inflation, higher taxes, the weakening dollar: the state of our Union (and its credit rating), or the rest of the world — 2012 and the supposed possibility of a civilization-melting coronal mass ejection (that sounds kind of dirty). Maybe it's because of the IBC Cream Soda that I drank last week; I savored one for the first time in years, and oh-my-oh-my, it was fantastic!

I love the cold summer, but I also want my cold winter. What's the point of having cake if you can't eat it, too? There it is again, "what's the point of!" And blogging?!

I want to write, not blog, I'd think, until it reverberates for long enough that I stir, get annoyed and stop for awhile. "What the blog?!" comes next, in an introverted, furious firestorm of synaptic proportions.

"What the blog?!?" Am I insane? Short answer... dunno. Long answer? You're reading it, right now. Each entry, I've been answering that puzzlement.

I'm just doing... writing, blogging, sometimes ranting (because I'm either too old or too young for more tact, I can't remember). Now it doesn't matter much why, because byproduct of this process is profound — a collection of writing that I'm actually starting to like.

I'm starting to really like my own writing. I'm enjoying this, this... non-work work. I needed to write that. I'm staring at this text; "I did this... just now. Just because," and it feels amazing.

Blogging doesn't need to be about news, flaming, or whatever was for dinner. Blogging doesn't need to contain perfectly-proper writing. My blogging consists of written American English, occasional gibberish, images or artwork, and now? It's experimentation, growth, everything and nothing in particular, in no particular order, except maybe chronological, pedagogical, illogical, unnatural, and preferential... to state a few.

Change; the inevitable. In us, all around us.

My no-longer-superfluous blogging is starting to become exactly as it should be — should've been; my bradtastical journal and a shared, unspoken conversation. To mix things up. Like weather.