Guess What Time It Is?

It's almost November again, and I am gearing up for NaNoWriMo once more. This will be my third year participating, and hopefully my third win. I've been fleshing out a plot and main character to start writing about next week when November begins.

This year I promise to not promise to keep this blog up to date on my writing progress. After two years saying I will and then not doing it, even I know I'm lying.

Still Alive

Still alive over here. Not too much has changed. I'm still very into Star Trek. I've watched The Original Series and the first 4 movies (as well the Star Trek XI). I've watched all of Heroes now and enjoy it very much. My love for Zachary Quinto is still strong. As is my love for Leonard Nimoy. I just finished watching an older show called Jake 2.0. It was very cute. A lot like Chuck.

Work's going really well for me. I've been working 6 day weeks, but it's okay. I like the job and I like most of the people.

My New Desktop, and the Wallpapers I Am Currently Using

My big birthday present from my parents this year was a desktop computer. I bought myself a fancy new monitor to go with it as well.

I am using the wallpaper below on my new desktop and bigass monitor. It was made by someone NOT me.

The wallpaper below this one is the one I made for my laptop monitor. I love it very much.

If you see some kind of theme with these wallpapers, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't have a crazy new obsession. Whatever.

Zachary Quinto, Why Are You So Cute?

The following video is of Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto on Saturday Night Live. They are on to speak about the new Star Trek movie, which I loved. Also, Leonard Nimoy is pretty full of awesome as well.

Another Blog...Really?

No, not really. I don't plan on using it. I swear. I made a blog at Posterous (this one is mine: http://gotnothin.posterous.com/) to see what it was like. The layout of mine is apparently the only one available. I really like it though. It's very clean and neat. It's something I may emmulate when I finally redesign Excited-Geek again (which hopefully will be soon).

Well, I have to work tomorrow, though I'm not sure when. So I'm gonna check my schedule and turn in for the night (or do some of the reading for my class at least).

The 12 Days of Christmas

I thought I'd posted this video weeks ago when I heard the song for the first time, but apparently not.

Watch more MySpace videos on AOL Video

Psych, Leverage and Dollhouse

I tried to find Psych on USA's website and also on Hulu last night. Then I finally gave up waiting and found it through surf the channel. The episode was spectacular. I spent the entire episode with my heart thumping wildy, eyes glued to the screen. The second time through I didn't the same rush, but it's still one of my favorite episodes of television ever. Everything about it is spot on. The writing is great. The acting rips your heart out in a totally good way. James Roday just nailed EVERYTHING. I've watched it two and a half times, and I cannot find any faults in his performance. It's a very good episode and a good season finale. I think as a season finale they could have easily gone for a cliffhanger like every other show that's on the television does, but they didn't and it was more surprising than seeing what they could have tried to think up for a new exciting cliffhanger. I think this non-cliffhanger works as a season finale. It leaves the viewer angsting with the characters and just glad that everyone's alright, and also a little off balance wondering what will happen next season (if there is a next season, I'm not sure if that's been announced. I hope so. I really enjoy this show).

I watched the first two episodes of Dollhouse tonight. I like it...a lot. It's cool to see Eliza Dushku on the television again because she really can do anything, and this is a great role for her to show off how versatile she is as an actress. It's a cool concept and the first two episodes grabbed me in a way I really wasn't expecting. I'm a little afraid that Fox is going to kill this show like it did to Firefly. Only two episodes so far and I don't want it to go.

I'm catching up on Leverage. I watched the first three episodes when they aired and then missed everything after that. I've watched the fourth episode now and I'm working on the fifth. I really like how intelligent this show is. But at the same time it's still a lot of fun.

It Worked.

It actually worked. After I finished writing that post I ended the emo time and had a great time at Ryan's Dr. Horrible Pot Luck. I discovered that there are Wiccan subtitles on the Dr. Horrible DVD. They're not very substantial, though we didn't watch them all, only like five minutes.

I Hate Being Down

I'm feeling really down right now, and it sucks. I hate feeling like this. Tonight is my last night visiting here and I want it to be awesome. But instead I feel like I'm about to cry.

So I am declaring that now is the end of emo time. As Barney Stinson said, "When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story." Yeah. That's how I'm rollin'. Now I am awesome...because I say so.

In the 802.

So, now I'm out of the 207 and back in the 802. I missed it so much here. I'm staying with my friends in room 607. Two of them are Melissa and Carissa (formerly the 303 girlz, though I haven't changed the tag here. I like it as it is). We're hanging out and watching Chuck. I'm shadowing Mo in E-Commerce tomorrow morning, so I should get to sleep pretty soon. I just don't want to go to bed yet. I want to stay up and spend as much time with the girls in 607 and my other friends here as I possibly can.

Oh Man! I Love This Story!!

I managed to knock my summerwrite story down to 44 pages. I'e just finished printing it and I need to go through and put page numbers in. I forgot to but them on before printing, so I'll just write them on. I skimmed itas I went through and fixed all the indents. And oh man! Why did I stop writing this. All the characters are likeable. They're all different and have stories. There's a plot and sub plots. There's character growth and change and introspection. There's a setting and the word usage is good. They speak more formally, but it's very consistent. I even remember the twist I was planning. I stopped writing just after introducing a character that's been living in the same manor, but has never been actually met because he doesn't leave his room. He walks in and goes. "I need to talk to you." And my character is like, "who are you?" And he goes, "I'm Quinn, and I need to talk to you." And I'm like, "damn girl, you did good." So i probably stopped because I have no idea why Quinn needs to talk to Jasper. I still know how I want it to end, but there is a lot of build up that needs to happen, not only with my main characters, but also with all the people in the country thing they life in. 'Cuz there's gotta be some kind of social uprising for the twist to work right.

Oh man. I've totally used that phrase three times now in this post and title. It's still applicable. I'm going to read some (most likely all) of this story (I have no willpower, so stopping myself probably won't happen). Before I do I'll start a load of laundry because I leave for Vermont tomorrow and I need clean clothes to pack for the trip. I'm going to visit all my college friends that I miss very much and I'm super excited.

New LJ Community That Excites Me

I've just found a new LJ writing community. There are many, but this one is new and small and it's making me really excited to write. Here's the link: http://community.livejournal.com/crack_that_muse/.

Thinking about writing, I have no idea where my summerwrite story is. I'm gonna go find it. I wrote a bunch on it, maybe I'll see if there's more to add to that, or I'll post bits of it here.

EDIT: I've found it. It was saved on Buzzword (http://buzzword.acrobat.com/). It's 86 pages long double-spaced and I stopped writing just when it was getting really good. I'm going to shrink down the spacing so that it's shorter and print it so that I can read through what I have find out where to go from where I am.

COLORS!!

I got bored, so I changed the colors. I was playing around with this fun toy (http://colorschemedesigner.com/) and found some colors that I liked to together.

Finally found out what the song played in the Astrosphere at Funtown is. It's called "Fire on High" by ELO: Electric Light Orchestra. Here's a YouTube video of the song.

The F-Files

Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

A parody of the X-Files.

Sims 3 People...WHY?! *cries*

I read this (http://thesims3.ea.com/view/pages/newsItem.jsp?item=1183392783) earlier and I am sad. Why must they push the date back?? I was so excited about it coming out on February 16th and now I have to wait four more months. It'll be warm then. It's winter in Maine. I feel like it'll never be warm ever again, and that makes it feel like longer. I was really excited about getting to play it soon. I'll just have to keep playing Sims 2. I'm glad I'm not one of the people that uninstalled all of Sims 2 to have space for Sims 3.

No Writing, But Yes Reading!

Haven't done any more writing (I suppose I'll do a little before I go to bed), but I have done a bunch of reading. Tonight was another night of going through post after post of blog about design, web design, fonts, logos, creativity, work spaces and more. I also watched The X-Files 2: I Want To Believe. I liked, but I may need to watch it again (with out my laptop) so that I actually know what's going on. And maybe it would make a bit more sense if I stopped procrastinating and just watched the rest of season 9 already.

So, yeah. That's my life for now. I'm starting a short Photoshop class and a short Illustrator class on Thursday (I'm taking them, not teaching them). I'm fairly solid with Photoshop (I use it all the time), but the classes are free and I might as well take it to brush up on the less icon and wallpaper oriented features and to learn how to use some of the ones I don't know about. Illustrator I'm less good with (and by that I mean quite terrible). I took a Photoshop/Illustrator class at Champlain my first semester, but I didn't like Illustrator and my teacher didn't really show us the cool things that could be done with it. I've seen some great vector work now and delved more into typography, so I'm more excited about understanding how it works and being able to use it proficiently. The thing I found most frustrating about Illustrator when I first starting learning it was how similar it was to Photoshop and also how different. It's just different enough that it gets me all confused and messed up.

Yay for Writing!

I watched the Super Bowl and did some writing. I even updated my word counter on the side. I have a character and some conflict now. I didn't write much, but it's more than I've written in a long time and I've missed it. I really need to learn to balance design and writing, and not do one until I really miss the other.

I told Jennie about my favorite hobby today. When I get really bored I like to get onto YouTube and search for a song title and then the words "me singing." So I pick a song, like "Apologize" and search for "apologize me singing" or "me singing apologize." It's fun because a whole bunch of people put up videos of themselves singing popular songs. And sometimes I find some really talented people and other times I find people that are really terrible. But it's great fun for me, and it's a great way to procrastinate.

I'm gonna do my YouTube thing for a while, then play the Sims a bit before going to bed. I work from 6pm-9:30pm tomorrow night, so I have to tape Chuck. That way I'll get to see it right when I get home and I'll be able to see it in 3-D. We already have the 3-D glasses for it, but I'm not sure if it's going to be in 3-D on Hulu so I want to tape it and watch on the television.

I Needs To Do Some Writing

I love NaNoWriMo, but it only comes one month a year and I find that I do barely any writing in the other 11 months of the year. So I think I'm going to try a NaNo type thing in February. That's right. Starting today I'm going to attempt to write 50,000 words. I don't have characters or a plot or even an inkling of an idea, but I'll make it work. I'll keep you guys updated with a bar on the left sidebar. There's no official site for people attempting 50k in February, so keeping my numbers updated here will have to be good enough.

My Newest Wallpaper: It Goes With One of My Newest Fandoms

I've had a Stargate Atlantis wallpaper on my desktop for a couple weeks now and in all honesty, it was terrible. The picture wasn't good enough quality to be a wallpaper on it's own. I found a tutorial tonight (the text version is here and the video version is here). I did the tutorial once with the picture the tutorial maker used, then decided to use it to make a wallpaper with. The result is definitely not what I was planning, and that is a good thing. I love how it turned out.

I'm using the one with text for my wallpaper, but I wanted a copy without text. This took me about two hours to make. And I've had Erin come out a few times and look at it with a fresh set of eyes. I'm really proud of the fonts I chose and how well they work together. I've been reading a bunch (like two books and hundreds of websites) about typography, so it's really nice to actually do something with all the stuff that I've read.

For anyone who cares here some random information about the pieces of this wallpaper.

Fonts used:
For the big script-y "Mulder" and "Scully": One Fell Swoop, size 60pt (color: white, opacity: 100%).
For the big script-y "&": Mutlu, size 200pt (color: black, opacity: 50%).
For the quote text: Mongolian Baiti, size 16pt (color: black, opacity: 50%).
For the "Mulder" and "Scully" to mark who said what in the quotes: Impact, size 18pt (color: white, opacity: 100%, space between letters: 200).

Smoke brushes: The smoke brushes were made by falln-brushes and downloaded from http://www.falln-brushes.deviantart.com/. The link to the smoke brushes is in the text version of the tutorial listed above.

The original picture: Located here. I'd post the full address, but it is a long and disgusting URL.

Three New Tags

I realized in my last post that I did have tags for design (or web design, WHAT?), color, or typography. It's possible that this is because those we're things I was really looking into much. Now I am. A lot. So I thought I'd share some of the things I've been looking at.

My Delicious links under design are here.

My Delicious links under web design are here.

My Delicious links under color are here.

My Delicious links under typography are here.

A lot of the links will be in all of the catagories or most of them because I've been looking mostly at how color and typography are used in good web design or in good design.

Delicious Links

I've bumped up the number of my newest Delicious links display from 7 to 17 (yeah, I like the number 7). I've been reading so much about design, typography, color, and basically anything web design related that I can find and I link to the things that I find interesting or don't have time to read. I've been reading and linking so much that I wanted to have more displayed for the reader(s)of this blog.

EDITED ON APRIL 1, 2010: It has been bumped back to 7 links. It was taking up too much space on the side, and I haven't been using it as much, so there haven't been as many new links.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir: They Rock!

I maanaged to stumble across the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the interwebz. Yes,I have heard of them before and I've heard them sing (not in person). Tonight I flipped through some YouTube vids, and came across this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYLNvhF79OM. I would embed it so you could wath it without going to YouTube, but embedding is disabled and I'm to lazy and tired to do it anyway. The song they are singing in that video is "Battle of Jericho." I searched for that song specifically because Chamber Singers at my high school sang it when I was a freshman and it was amazing. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir does it better, but Chambers didn't slaughter it.

Way to Go!

I just watched the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, and I am so proud that I voted and I'm excited for the future of our country.

More David Duchovny: The Marathon Expands and Continues

I've given up on finishing the X-Files before moving onto other things with David Duchovny in it. Here's what I've watched since my last post.

The X-Files
6.12 "One Son"
6.13 "Agua Mala"
6.14 "Monday"
6.15 "Arcadia"
6.16 "Alpha"
6.17 "Trevor"
6.18 "Milagro"
6.19 "The Unnatural"
6.20 "Three of a Kind"
6.21 "Field Trip"
6.22 "Biogenesis"
7.01 "The Sixth Extinction"
7.02 "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati"
7.03 "Hungry"
7.04 "Millenium"
7.05 "Rush"
7.06 "The Goldberg Variation"
7.07 "Orison"
7.08 "The Amazing Maleeni"
7.09 "Signs & Wonders"

Californication
1.01 "Pilot"
1.02 "Hell-A Woman"
1.03 "The Whore of Babylon"
1.04 "Fear and Loathing at the Fundraiser"
1.05 "LOL"

Marathon Progress

Even before typing this I know that this list of episodes is either going to mae it look like I'm awesome, or like the really have no life (most likely the no life one).

The X-Files
4.06 "Sanguinarium" - SO, SOOOOOO GROSS!
4.07 "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" - I accidentally wathed most of the second half of this episode before the first half, but I totally loved it anyway. Cancer man is a very cool and complex character.
4.08 "Tunguska"
4.09 "Terma"
4.10 "Paper Hearts" - Great concept, really well done. One of my favorites.
4.11 "El Mundo Gira" - Very much like a telanovella and I don't like soap operas. Not a favorite of mine.
4.12 "Leonard Betts" - I loved this episode until he had to be the bad guy. It would have been so cool if he'd ended up just a guy who could regenerate (regrow parts of his body even his head) and could tell when someone had cancer, and not been a monster.
4.13 "Never Again" - Really cool concept. Loved it.
4.14 "Memento Mori"
4.15 "Kaddish" - I enjoyed this episode. One of David Duchovny's best performances that I've seen.
4.16 "Unrequited" - Very cool.
4.17 "Tempus Fugit" - Pretty great episode.
4.18 "Max" - Good conclusion to the episode before it.
4.19 "Synchrony" - Odd. The time travel in this is a bit of a reach.
4.20 "Small Potatoes" - Great episode. Another great performance by David Duchovny.
4.21 "Zero Sum" - I don't like bugs.
4.22 "Elegy" - Cool plot. Well done.
4.23 "Demons" - Loved it.
4.24 "Gethsemane"
5.01 "Redux"
5.02 "Redux II"
5.03 "Unusual Suspects" - Awesome! The Lone Gunmen are great.
5.04 "Detour" - This is the episode that got me into this show. Even watchng a second time with more backstory I loved it.
5.05 "The Post-Modern Prometheus" - Loved it.
5.06 "Christmas Carol"
5.07 "Emily"
5.08 "Kitsunegari" - Sequel to "Pusher." Very well done.
5.09 "Schizogeny" - Ava and Ash from Supernatural!! Not a favorite of mine, despite the guest stars.
5.10 "Chinga" - As much as I love Maine the only saving grace of this episode was the interaction between Scully and Mulder. The pencil gag at the end was priceless and woth rewatching. And as a side note: not all Mainers say "ayuh". It's a lie. We don't all fish, or die in fishing accidents either.
5.11 "Kill Switch" - Pretty cool.
5.12 "Bad Blood" - A lot like the episode "Tall Tales" from Supernatural, but this came first and was (it's hard to say this) even better than "Tall Tales". Great acting and Luke Wilson had a cool guest starring role.
5.13 "Patient X"
5.14 "The Red and the Black"
5.15 "Travelers" - I really liked this episode. Young Mulder is so cute, playing with his hair all the time. I like seeing Fredric Lane in things. I loved him on Supernatural as the demons and I loved him in this.
5.16 "Mind's Eye" - Great concept. I liked this episode a lot.
5.17 "All Souls" -I liked this episode a lot. The format and organization was really good.
5.18 "The Pine Bluff Variant" - Lots of twists and turns.
5.19 "Folie a Deux" - I liked this episode a lot.
5.20 "The End" - The kid in this is very cool.
6.01 "The Beginning" - I don't remember this episode at all.
I didn't rewatch 6.02 "Drive" because I'd watched it before and loved. I will rewatch it later, because it was very good.
6.03 "Triangle" - Loved it. I need to rewatch this episode and pay more attention because there was a lot of time stuff that I missed while I was watching the first time and playing WoW.
6.04 "Dreamland" - Love it!!
6.05 "Dreamland II" - Scully should know by now that if MUlder invites her over and attempts to seduce her, then it's not really him it's an imposter. I loved the end with Mulder checking that it was actually his apartment he'd walked into.
6.06 "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" - I love this episode. SRSLY!! Very well done.
6.07 "Terms of Endearment" - Very weird.
6.08 "The Rain King" - Kinda cool. Cool concept.
6.09 "S.R. 819"
6.10 "Tithonus"
6.11 "Two Fathers" - I wasn't really paying attention, so I should probably rewatch this episode.

Chuck - No notes on these episodes because they kind of run together in my head and I love them all.
1.01 "Pilot"
1.02 "Chuck Versus the Helicopter"
1.03 "Chuck Versus the Tango"
1.04 "Chuck Versus the Wookie"
1.05 "Chuck Versus the Sizzling Shrimp"
1.06 "Chuck Versus the Sandworm"
1.07 "Chuck Versus the Alma Mater"
1.08 "Chuck Versus the Truth"
1.09 "Chuck Versus the Imported Hard Salami"
1.10 "Chuck Versus the Nemesis"
1.11 "Chuck Versus the Crown Vic"
1.12 "Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover"
1.13 "Chuck Versus the Marlin"
2.01 "Chuck Versus the First Date"
2.02 "Chuck Versus the Seduction"
2.03 "Chuck Versus the Break-Up"
2.04 "Chuck Versus the Cougars"
2.05 "Chuck Versus Tom Sawyer"
2.06 "Chuck Versus the Ex"
2.07 "Chuck Versus the Fat Lady"
2.08 "Chuck Versus the Gravitron"
2.09 "Chuck Versus the Sensei"
2.10 "Chuck Versus the DeLorean"
2.11 "Chuck Versus Santa Claus"

Stargate Atlantis
5.19 "Vegas" - I loved this episode. It took me a couple minutes to deal with the fact that we were ripping off CSI completely, but once I got over that I loved it. There were many reasons to love this episode: John Sheppard in civilian clothes, John Sheppard the civilian, the badass wraith dressing up as human, Shep whump. I loved it. I can even deal with the end.
5.20 "Enemy at the Gate" - I watched this episode last night and it got me several times. WAY TO GO SHOW!! This episode only worked as well as it did because it was the last episode of the series. Where I would usually be like "Oh but it's okay because Sheppard's gotta be back next week." This time I was freaked out. I yelled at the screen a few times that I would not be accepting heroic deaths.

Firefly - I wanted to continue the Adam Baldwin marathon.
"Serenity Parts 1 & 2"
"The Train Job"
"Bushwacked"
"Shindig"
"Safe"
"Our Mrs. Reynolds"
"Jaynestown"
"Out of Gas"
"Ariel"
"War Stories"
"Trash"

I also got my Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog DVD in the mail and watched both the commentaries and all the special features.

I also watched Mamma Mia and Hancock with mah Jennie. Mamma Mia was good, but I like Across the Universe better. Oh right! We watched that too.

When do I do anything but watch television and movies?? I did work though. Like 12 hours this week. And I've got a couple more than that next week. No work tomorrow though. I plan to sleep in.

Wow, I fail!

So, I've been kinda busy, but not really. I started back at work and I'm in season six of The X-Files now. I also watched all of the first season of Chuck and I'm almost caught up with the episodes of season two that have aired. It's such a cute show.

I've spent the better part of today watching Chuck and The X-Files (I switch back and forth) while working on the redesign of my portfolio. Once a year or so, I completely redo the site and then I ignore it until I redesign it the next year. It's just how it works. I finished the design and I'm working on putting the content in now. I'll post again tonight (if I remember) with all the episodes of show I've watched and how I've felt about them.

Erin and I watched the Christmas episode of Doctor Who. I liked it. I'm glad that guy's not the new Doctor. I've seen the guy they've chosen for Eleven and I'll give him a chance. He's really young, but he's still like eight years older than me (so still out of my age range).