Insanitorium of Smiles

Trying to decide on which background to use for my Springboard, which do you like most?

Brandon — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:39:32 +0000

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Trying to decide on which background to use for my Springboard, which do you like most?

via SimplyTweet

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ProSwitcher is pretty nice!

Brandon — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:46:07 +0000

via tweetie

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Guy Fawkes Masks

Brandon — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:11:41 +0000

Matt came over last weekend to watch V for Vendetta for the first time. I’d been telling him for months that he should rent or torrent it since it’s really good, but he didn’t. So we were both IMing each other about how bored we both were, when I suggested that if I could find my V DVD, he could come over and watch it. I finally found it after digging through our thoroughly unorganized movie shelf.

We watched the movie, he liked it. Later that night I suggested that we try and get some of the masks and before I know it, he’d ordered one for each of us off of Amazon. The masks arrived on Thursday, allowing us to wear them to school on Friday (The day before Halloween).

School Blows

I thought it was irregular that Matt hadn’t seen V for Vendetta before seeing it at my house, since I was under the impression that it was a well known movie; so little of my classmates knew what movie character I was referencing that I could have easily hugged anyone that knew the movie.

I asked a girl to the Homecoming dance

iPod Touch to iPod Classic

Brandon — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:07:56 +0000

If you didn’t know, I had been looking into acquiring a secondary iPod for some time. I say secondary because I absolutely love my iPod Touch, but there’s some things that I don’t feel comfortable doing with it:

Taking my iPod Touch out of the house – It would kill me if it got stolen. It’d be nice if I could have an older model iPod on the cheap.
Skateboarding – I really wanted to go out skateboarding with music and, though I trust myself and my abilities, there is always the risk of falling and breaking things in your pockets. It’s even more of a possibility when the device has a large, shiny glass screen.

I would find myself searching Craigslist and finding no results within my price range, or I would but then my Dad goes on to tell me that he doesn’t trust Craigslist transactions (Not too difficult to imagine my getting stolen from). I had also tried a few times to purchase previous models from my friends after they had upgraded, but the exchanges would always fall apart on their end at the last moment. :[

Finally getting one

Last Friday I asked a kid that took my bus if he had any extra iPods that he would possibly sell, since he had an iPhone. He had a 120GB Video that’s “pretty scratched up” but had no use for, and he said he’d sell it for $20. Now, I’m pretty sure that it was stolen—But when people on Craigslist are asking twice that for 4GB iPod Nanos, who cares! Thursday afternoon (He kept forgetting to bring it) I finally got it.

iPod Touch vs. iPod Classic

The differences between iPod Classics and iPod Touches are pretty amazing. Since the iPod Touch was practically the first iPod that I had every used, I supposed that I’m spoiled. The clickwheel used to be my favorite feature on iPods, but using one to sort through menus feels so weird after using a touchscreen.

The biggest difference for me is the dramatic increase in available space for media. I hadn’t noticed any issues with space before now, but it’s very difficult to cram more than two movies, my 4GB music library (Which is already small), Podcasts, and Apps into an 8GB iPod Touch. I currently have well over 100GB of space just sitting in my Classic, unused.

Because of the space differences, I’ve switched up how I use my iPod Touch. I no longer have any Podcasts on it, only include songs from playlists, and just watch movies on it. I’ve moved the watching of Podcasts, TV Shows, and my entire music library over to the Classic. And it all works beautifully.

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I asked a girl to the Homecoming dance

Brandon — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:51:22 +0000

I asked her like a month before the dance. She was all “I’d love to go with you, Brandon!”. The next day I ask for her number (She already had mine) to text her about our dance preparations. Later that day she texts me back, telling me that her BF ‘had been thinking about taking her’. Which I interpreted, and still hold to be true, that he felt threatened that I would take her, rather than him, so he said what he had to say. So I kinda drifted away from the plans, let him take her, didn’t want to jeopardize things with them.

Come to find out a week or two after, (I thought she’d been avoiding me during this time, but turns out she got sick after going to Homecoming) that they broke it off very near to the dance date. I was not told of such. She went with some other guy who ditched her after a short time of dancing with her, to be with other people. She was alone, save a friend.

So then our discussion goes like this “I wish I could have been with you! Did you end up going?” “No, I thought it’d be weird without a date..” “You should go to the next one in January! :D” (Sadies) Like the out-of-the-loop idiot that I am, I asked her to Sadies. My Mom later refreshed my memory that the girls are supposed to ask the guys. *GONK*

That asking business happened on Wednesday after school, as we were getting off the bus. Then there were Finals on Thursday and Friday, meaning no buses after school, so I haven’t been able to tell her what an out-of-the-loop idiot that I had been. (I tried on the bus ride to school on Friday, but that bus is so awkwardly quiet that my cute self-criticism would look off-base and weird.)

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Why do I care about all this crap?

Brandon — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:38:43 +0000

I just finished watching the movie Bulworth. Now, I don’t think it directly came from the movie, but right now, I feel motivated to ask: Why do I care about all this crap?

I’m a kid, a teenager. I feel like I don’t even identify with people, kids, my own age. I spend hours a day on the internet, practically doing nothing. Posting tweets I hardly ever get replies to, and for what? I feel like I must, I feel inclined to use these simple but powerful tools because they are there.

My blog has been sitting here, un-updated and dormant for months at a time. It makes me mad at myself for not updating it, but why? Why do I care so much about updating a blog that no one will read, no one cares about.

Hell, I’m sitting here going over that last sentence, thinking of ways to revise it, make it more juicy. Why the hell am I doing that? Who cares but myself? Sure, it will make me happy to see my blog stats jump from the measly 6 viewers a day to possibly 10,—Crap! I’m doing it again! I like what I had of that last sentence, but I don’t know how to extend it. Why. The hell. Do I care?—It’s time to move past my blog, for which I have made numerous excuses for why I haven’t updated.

Technology

I love technology! There are endless ways to follow developments in the worlds of Twitter, Web Design, and Apple products; believe me, I have a Google Reader account full of blogs that I subscribe to on such topics.

I used to struggle with myself to read all the articles and keep myself up to date. But sometime near the end of 2008 I let it all slip. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of making a chore out of reading articles wherever I was so that I could cut down on the unread count; Byline on my iPod Touch is the worst enabler of them all.

Now, the easy solution is to either Unsubscribe from all the blogs or hit the big “Mark All as Read” button. Yeah, um, I can’t get myself to do that. Why? Because I’d feel like I’m missing something interesting. I subscribed to lots of interesting blogs with interesting articles. In small numbers it was easy to consume, but now I’m subscribed to over 200 interesting blogs and there is no way to keep up.

Cutting Back

As I mentioned a couple paragraphs back, I let things slip. I now remember posting about my ‘nibbling’ (Started Nibbling) last December, so yeah, I cut back on my internet usage. I used to be, for lack of a better word, a ‘hardcore’ internet user. Yes, I did just say hardcore.

I used to visit tons of websites a day, many, doing.. stupid shit. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t continue to do stupid shit, because I know that I still do stupid shit, but back then it was Gaia Online and boring forums with little kids. Things like ‘GFX Design’ (Graphic Design) forums where little kids with pirated copies of Photoshop are all trying to 1UP each other making small, insignificant shit using pre-made brushes. I was one of them.

Now, I stick to only a few websites. Twitter, MySpace, and.. uh.. those are the big two. I’ve also started checking TechMeme, which gives me a dose of Tech news, but at a good, reasonable amount. I feel like toning it down has worked out for the better. But I still spend the same amount of time doing less stuff.

I feel like I was enjoying things more back then than I do now. But I need to evolve away from being a hardcore/power-user. I’m looking back over this post, at the points I covered in the first two paragraphs, yet haven’t covered in a good portion of the body.

I have been immersed in this crap for years, and it has distanced me from people my age. Now, I wouldn’t directly attribute my shyness to the internet, but the kids that I hang out with are not into the things I’m into. I could and have tried explaining to them tech news and why they should care, but they either become confused, or act confused to change the subject. Pretty awkward to try discussing a subject with someone when they aren’t interested in it.

So, I’m shy, and quiet.

July so far

Brandon — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:36:24 +0000

While I’d love to post an update that covers the entire time from my last blog post, it’s not happening. The opportunity to write about those times have passed. Not to mention that Summer has been boring up till July.

4th of July was fun.

I brought my friend Jabari with us to our family’s July 4th celebration at my grandma’s house in Sacramento. We swam, ate great food, and got to watch the Cal Expo fireworks from the driveway. (It didn’t seem like there were that many this year :[)

“Camping”

– This actually became such an extensive section for this post that I thought it’d be better to just make it a post of its own: "Camping"

17th Birthday

It was my 17th birthday on the 16th. My only plan for my birthday was to bring Jabari with me to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But Jabari didn’t come. & I couldn’t really contact him until 3pm because of Summer School. D:<

Skateboarding!

Though it has been really hot in California, I have been able to skate a decent amount. I’d like to say that I’ve improved on bowl skating. Much more consistent and confident with my tricks, and are now able to formulate decent runs.

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I entered the WonderKing graphics “contest”

Brandon — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:09:27 +0000

You can learn about the WonderKing graphics “contest” here: http://tr.im/q0ll

I haven’t designed anything in quite a while, so this is pretty big for me. Attached/below is a gallery of my 2 entries, followed by other color variations.

The image is a signature image for one of the Game Moderators, “[GM] JustWondering”, on the WonderKing Forums. I used one of the character art stocks from their Downloads > Concept Art page.

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Hath Jailbroken thyPod

Brandon — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:56:58 +0000

I jailbroke my iPod Touch the day after the jailbreak was released to the public. (Actually tried the first day but it would not work) This was my first jailbreak, so there were some problems along the way, but it all eventually worked out.

What happened to the cool JB apps?

Before the iPod Touch 2G jailbreak was released I’d read tons of stories about the latest and greatest jailbreak apps, exclusive to jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches. Now that I have my jailbroken iPod, they’ve vanished.
I guess that the the App Store success stories have convinced the developers to move to the official App Store. What a bummer.

My first Apple product!

Doing well in school

Brandon — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:34:05 +0000

This week has blazed by quickly, it’s been all about school and skating with my friends.

Since third grade, when I moved from Sacramento, I’ve preformed pretty badly in school. It isn’t that I don’t pay attention in class, I enjoy just about all subjects, it’s more that I have this problem with getting my work to the point where I can turn it in. Because of this, and my added health problems, you can imagine that I have been getting less than satisfactory grades.

But things seem to be changing.

My Progress Report arrived in the mail over the weekend (The weekend at the beginning of the week, not this weekend). It was the bad, misleading kind of Progress Report. The kind that only arrive when you have an F in a class and only list the F. No other classes or your progress in them, just the F class. That was an uncomfortable weekend. x_x

On Monday or Tuesday I got the actual Progress Report, with my 3 shining B’s, and the F. The B’s may as well have not been on the paper, because my parents still concentrated on the F: “You’re messing around again, aren’t you!?” “No wonder you say you have such a small workload, you aren’t doing anything!”. (I do most of my work in class..)

Anyway, by the end of the week I worked the F up to a C+ and should hopefully be a B- soon. I wonder what I’m doing right now that I hadn’t been doing before. My Mom suggests I’m getting more mature (I need a laughing emote for this).

Back to regular High School!