Assassin's Creed

I beat MGS4 last Thursday Then again Saturday. That was fun. I still have a lot to do in the game, but I figured what the hay, and bought Assassin's Creed Sunday, since it was cheap. It's a lot of fun, being able to climb buildings easier than breathing air. I'm still getting used to the fighting, but it's fun.

Short post today. I'll probably repost something later when I actually have something to talk about in detail and at length.

TiVo, I miss you.

You may have read the headline and think that for some reason I no longer have TiVo, and that's not true. I still have it, it's just that I don't use it as often anymore. Why not? Cause over this past month or so I've realized that work takes up a large sum of your time. In fact, I would be willing to bet that I spend five times as much time at work than I do home (disregard the time spent sleeping at home, that doesn't count, I'm not awake!)!

Because of this, when I am home, I decide to do the things that I really want to do. Until recently, that was go home, grab something to eat, watch a TiVo'ed Mythbusters or something similar, and unless I run off to hang out with people, watch other things on TiVo. Now it's go home, watch a Mythbuster while eating, then play PS3 if I don't run off to hang out with people. TiVo must feel neglected. Aww. I guess I should watch it some more and play less PS3. But over all this week, I've only played it twelve hours. ...I guess that is a lot? I don't know. Cause I used to not have to go to work and I would have just stayed home and played it. I guarantee you that if I didn't have to go to work I would have played it over 30 hours by now. Crazy.

So one solution to this problem? Well, I usually watch TiVo'ed stuff while eating, cause I don't want to eat and play at the same time, cause that would get grease on my PS3 controller. So therefore, I must eat more! Then I will watch more TiVo'ed stuff. That's a good plan, right?

Nooo.. definitely not. I guess I'll just have to pick up all the things I've recorded once the PS3 high wears off. I don't know when that'll be. My TiVo will run out room soon. How much space is in those things anyway? It needs like a TerraByte (TB). That would be awesome. I guess it has something like a 250GB in it.. that's how much the S3 ones have. Series 3 for you non-technical folks. Huh. I don't think mine has 250 in it. I mean, I know I've recorded a lot of one hour segments, but still, I think I'd be able to hold a little more. A TB would blow the space I have out of the water. Most people understand how large a GigaByte (GB) is, but just in case, I'll explain. So if you know all that jazz, skip the next paragraph:

/* WARNING! This next part is nerd-tastic. Skip it unless you want to fall asleep. */

Space on a computer is dealt with like this. The smallest piece of data that most people learn about is called a Bit. Most of the time, it's either 1 or 0. Eight of these bits make a Byte. Eight bits, or one byte, make up different pieces of data. A combination of 0's and 1's is actually what the computer receives when I type this sentence. Each of these characters are made up of eight bits, or one byte, each. That's how the computer understands data. 1,024 Bytes, or 8,192 bits, makes one KiloByte (KB). Most smaller images and text files are a number of KB. Some GIFs are about 10 - 40 KB, while some large text files and JPG files are around 100 - 300 KB, usually. Then you get up to 1,024 KB, and you get one MB. To give you a scale, the size of most MP3s is around 3 - 5 MB. One episode of your favorite hour-long show is around 320 - 400 MB. 1,024 MB makes one GB.

That's basically 3 episodes of an hour long show. Let's do some math. If my TiVo is a S3 (which I doubt), then 250/3 will give me how many eps I can hold until my TiVo maxes out on space. The math shows that that's 83 with repeating decimal of 3 shows. So that means 83 one-hour shows and one ep of Robot Chicken. Yeah, I don't think I have an S3. I think at the most I've gotten around thirty to fourty at max. That's less than half the space. About 115 GBs or so. Maybe a little more.

Now, if my TiVo had a TerraByte of hard drive space, I could hold... 341 one-hour shows and a Robot Chicken episode. Why? Cause, (just like the others), 1,024 GBs is one TB. That's a lot of space.

/* All the talk of HDD (Hard Drive Disk) space is over now. You may return to your regular reading. */

So I am sad that I don't use it as much any more. I guess I'll just have to find more time to watch the shows I really like, or wait until I'm over this PS3 craze. Oh, and if I got something wrong about the way HDD Space works, and it bothers you to death cause I misquoted something, then Byte me. <-- NEEEEERD!

Different Music.

I've been listening to songs that I don't usually listen to a whole lot. Well, I guess just really one song that I never thought I'd really get in to. What song? Lovebug by the Jonas Brothers. I know. How strange. I keep thinking something like, "Isn't that the band that all the little girls love to swoon over and watch the Disney Channel all day long just so they could possible hear some of their music on the TV?" But, I have to admit, it's a real catchy song. So I guess thanks to Austin for introducing me to it a week or so ago.

I guess there's nothing wrong with listening to that music and liking it. It's just something I never thought I'd see myself doing. I guess that just proves that you can write music that almost anybody would like, even if you're a band that's geared towards a totally different group of people. I guess you just have to know what's catchy.

I've only listened to one other Jonas Brother song and didn't really find it all that great. It's that Burnin' Up song or whatever. The way his voice breaks after every line makes me unable to do anything but anticipate the next break, hehe. So, I guess in short, I'm not really a Jonas Brothers fan, I just really like that one song. But of course, there's nothing wrong with being a fan of them. It's just not my usual style of music. I still have a hard time listening to the parts in Lovebug where their talking or whatever. I also wish they'd repeat the chorus a little more when he plays the electric instead of the acoustic. ..and after listening to it again, I realize that I'm annoyed by his voice on the verses. Heh.

Cold.

I love cold weather. It makes me smile. Old Man Winter can be my friend any day. I'm a big guy, and as most other big guys, I sweat a lot and get overheated. I don't really mind sometimes, but other times I really want to cool off quickly when I'm like that. That's one reason I like cold weather. I can wear a hoodie and not get really hot. I can go stand outside for a hour without sweating.

Two really good things I can think of off the top of my head about cold weather a.k.a. winter:

1. It means there's football around somewhere. And I'll be honest. I'm not really a HUGE, MONSTROUS football fan. But I'll also be honest. I love football. There's something great about it that gets you all excited for the next game. It's knowing that in just a few seconds, the ball will be snapped, and you either cheer for your time to get ten yards or to give no yards. If they mess up and fail, you get mad, but then the snap will happen again in a few more seconds and they get to try again. I think that's the basics of a lot of sports. You get a chance to do something really awesome. That's probably why sports are fun. Anyway. Football is great.
2. Camping. I really enjoy the concept of camping. I like to be outside, despite what some people think. I really like to sleep outside. I love to be by a fire when it's cold. I love to smell like smoke. I like to go out and gather sticks for the fire. I think it makes me think of a lot of different things when I'm camping. One of them is that I think of what Jesus and the apostles went through when they were walking on this Earth. They had to walk all over the Earth, or at least Israel, (granted I don't walk all around Alabama), and at night had to pretty much sleep wherever. I'll bet that there were plenty of deep conversations that took place around a fire at night. That's what I like. There's just something about a fire, it being cold, and you being out in it at night. I love it.

I'll be honest. If it were to really snow heavily here in Alabama I'd be pretty excited. I doubt it will ever get really bad, but who knows? There was that one time in 93 when the Blizzard came... but I don't really remember much except for digging a tunnel in the snow to my neighbors house. Great times.

Here's to future hopes.

My Annoyance.

So, I think I've officially found the first thing that I can't stand about blogger.com. I don't know, though, I may just be retarded and not be looking in the right spot. Maybe someone else that reads this has had this problem and can enlighten me on how to fix it.

How the heck do you search for other people's blogs?

Seriously? I've been sitting here for the last ten minutes looking over all the links on the dashboard thing and the homepage, and I don't see anything about searching for someone else's blog. Is there a way inside of blogger.com to do this? I'm starting to think that you either have to find someone using google or that you have to go to other people's blogs who already know the URL of the wanted blog and just link from there. Anyone know how to fix this? Anyone have Joseph Kinnaird's blog? You would think someone who builds webpages for his job wouldn't be this retarded, but seriously, I can't find anything on how to find someone else besides just knowing their URL.

Camping.

I really want to go camping soon. Like right now. Ok, maybe not right now, cause that would be crazy, but still... maybe this weekend? Anyone wanna go? There's just something great about being outdoors and sleeping in a sleeping bag with thin piece of material separating you from the ground and the open sky. Building a fire, roasting marshmellows, just sitting around with not much light other than the campfire talking about different things. Being very cold. I love these things.

The few times that I have been camping have either been with the Boy Scouts or one of the adventures to Oak Mountain State Park, which only number to four times total. That's not a whole lot of camping in my twenty available years. I guess this means that I should go again very soon to up the number, hehe.

So really, the recent past times I've been have been at Oak Mountian. It's fun, though. Just being outside and sleeping in a tent with a sleeping bag, getting a fire going, knowing that I can just run down a hill to the car and drive to Pelham close by to get something to eat... these things are nice, but I guess they aren't really "camping." So, I guess I need to go somewhere new, eh? Somewhere where a Starbucks is not five minutes away, I can't hear Hoover play their football games, and where public bathrooms are extremely public instead of bath houses.

Ya know, I remember a certain someone who said he has a large wooded area where we could set up camp far away from a lot of things. Also a possible Sipsey Creature Hunt. He didn't mention that, but seeing as how he lives there and we'd be in the wilderness (I think), why not? Hint hint.

Hint hint hint SHAWN hint hint hint. :)

Seriously though, we should sit down with Jo and figure out a date to get something going, since it's starting to feel really good outside.

World of Warcraft

So I think I've officially stopped playing World of Warcraft (WoW). I canceled my subscription the other day, for the second time (I resubscribed a while back, just cause I really wanted to play and see some people, but after three days, didn't touch the game). The cool thing is that Blizzard, which is the company who created WoW and maintains the servers, will keep my characters and their many different records for all of time, hoping that one day I will return to the world of Azeroth.

Truth be told, I will. WoW is too fun of a game not to play. The only bad part is that is can getting tiring playing the same old stuff over and over again. So what do I do? I quit it for a while. Now I know that I have a lot of obsessions that I rotate, but eventually some of them will dissapate. Want an example? Geocaching. It's been nearly a year or so. Granted, now it's getting colder and gas prices are lowering and I have been wanting to go outside more often for a while now, I don't think I'll be getting back into the hobby too soon. Will WoW follow this same path? Hmmm...

I've got a PS3 now, so anytime that I'm not hanging out with friends or doing work or random other things, I'll probably be playing on it. Why would I want to go back to WoW when I can play all the cool games for the PS3? Granted, I say that now, and 6 months from now I may be bored enough to go back to WoW.

Some people may also think that instead of hanging out with them I'll be at home, playing the PS3. Now, while this may sometimes be the case, it will not be the majority of the time. Why you ask? What's the difference from when I played WoW instead of hanging out with friends and playing the PS3? There's one HUGE difference: Mostly, the PS3 are single-player, not reliant on huge number of players to have events and scheduled meetings and happenings. Since WoW is a MMORPG, (Multi-Massive Online Role Playing Game), when you play it, you reliant on others to do certain awesome things within the game. What does that matter? I can pause the PS3. I can turn it off.

With WoW, I had to let other friends of mine know that I wasn't going to be available to play with them on certain nights because I was doing other stuff. That's fine, but when they really want you to go with them through this really awesome higher-level place to advance your character (and you care about that kind of thing), you go. Whenever they schedule it. Which usually cuts off some hang out time. In short, you can't get away as easily on WoW, when with the PS3, you can.

The only way you can get away from WoW is to stop playing (obviously). Yet since you're not interacting with just AI, but also with other humans over the intrawebs, you hurt their feelings too when you no longer show up to play. I know, I know, you're thinking, "But these are your real friends! You can reach out and touch them! You'd choose internet friends over them?" And my answer is that it's situational. When they've helped me out in getting further in the game, I have to help them back out, or even just be around them for the heck of it. It's like an unwritten rule. I think it's called common courtesy or something. Besides, I see most of my friends at church stuff anyway.

The only reason that I wrote that last paragraph was to say this: I'm leaving WoW officially. I haven't really been playing at all since July (maybe a total of 5 hours). As of now, I don't really plan on going back anytime soon. I know that I may be tempted when Wrath of the Lich King comes out, but then again, not really, cause it's the same thing, just to level 80. I don't think I will. I have too much fun hanging with friends instead. And when no one is wanting to hang out, or I don't want to hang out, I'll play my PS3.

The only part about this that sucks is the fact that I'm hurting some people who I used to play with all time by not showing up. They're probably used to me not being there by now, but I know they miss me. I sit next to one of them ever Sunday in the Orchestra Pit. Don never rags me about not being around, cause, as he puts it, "I know you're young and you have a life, so go live it." But every now and then, he'll tell me how much he does miss me. And how much Shawn misses me. Shawn is a guy from Canada who I played the game with more than Don. He and I leveled our characters up from 15 or so to 70 (about five or six months worth of playing a good bit each week). So I feel for them. Maybe one day I'll come back to play again. I see Don at church, but I don't see Shawn, obviously. Pray for him, please. He isn't a believer.

So yeah, Goodbye for now, WoW! Hello $15 more each month!

Muwhahahaha.

Some people are upset that I spent so much money on a gaming console. Others don't really care. I just want to say that I still have plenty of money and I love the new PS3 I've bought. Wanna know the main reason I bought it? Look up. Metal Gear Solid 4 has to be one of the best games I've ever played. I haven't even really dug into the deep story behind all of it yet. I'm just now starting Act 3 of 5, and I'm sure that it's about to get even heavier and more exciting. From the moment I first fired up the console and stuck this game in I knew I was going to love it. I can't wait to figure out how it ends and then play it fifty more times, hehe.

If you want a run down of how the game goes or what it's about, don't listen to me, cause that would take too long and I'm too lazy to type it out when you could just read it from someone who's already wrote what it's about. <- Run-On sentence? If Joseph doesn't work tonight, I'll probably just go home and play this game till I'm too tired. I don't know, though, if someone calls I may end doing something with someone. Just depends I guess. I am pretty tired. So what will I purchase next? Hmm.. I'll probably end up saving my money up till I have enough to get the item pictured below, but of course make sure I have enough money left over to last. I may end up putting away $100 each paycheck or more towards it. Why? Just cause.

(Beach included)

Don't worry! I still have a lot of money saved!

I am a victim. I now will go home each night and spend a few hours glazing my eyes over my TV screen. Not watching a football game or a popular TV show, not even a movie or anything from any type of broadcast channel. I will be playing my PS3. That's right. I bought one. And though I say I am a victim, I am very happy. I'm pleased with it so far, and I think it'll bring me loads of fun. Too bad it cost a lot of money.

But, I have no real bills so pay, I'm not hurting for money, and I get paid every week, so I'm not worried about spending a lot of money the first few months of my job to get things that I've been wanting for the last few years. As long as I continue to put a certain amount away and not spend it like I've been doing, I'll be fine. I'm only going to buy things I really want when I have more than enough money to buy them.

PS3 rocks.
(And by putting it in bold, you can tell it really rocks.)
(Italics means it really really rocks)
(...you get the point.)

Boredom at work leads to...

So stuff goes by pretty slowly at work when you have no actual work to do.

So I did some Photoshop stuff:




This was a tutorial one that I followed.. just something to kill some time. I actually did it a few days ago, just now uploading it, though. I liked the example in the tutorial better than the way mine came out. The only thing I really liked from this one was the rendered astral clouds in the background. Those were fun to work on.




New logo for our student ministry service, Resonate. See? The o is resonating.. and the t is a cross. How clever, right? Errr.. yeah. this really was just a side effect of the below picture, which I did earlier today when I had nothing else to do.

This is a new picture for Resonate. I think I'll be making more and more of these when I don't have HTML stuff to do at work. And yes, this one was a tutorial.



This was my favorite of all the projects I've done so far. Probably because I didn't follow a tutorial, but just used elements that I've recently learned in PS. This will, as long as he doesn't care, be Jo's intro pic during his sermons from now on.

So tell me what you think of them. I really didn't enjoy the alien one, besides the astral clouds in the back, which you really can't see that much of. The logo ones were fun, but the one of Joseph was my favorite, just due to how it turned out, I guess. Let me know what you think.

More

More photoshop. Things are about to get good. I has a feelin.

Paychecks and Photoshop

Ok, so I love...

1) My new job (I promise I'll stop saying that soon)

2) Photoshop. Adobe in general.

I get paid every Thursday at 12:00 am. Direct deposit.. which every company needs, cause it's awesome for the employees. So I've been paid twice now at my new job, and it still has not hit me that I have the largest sum of money my bank account has every seen. I hope it never does, and I never go crazy and spend a lot of money without having a lot to fall back on. (Isn't that what a lot of people want?)

So, that being said, I will probably be getting a new computer very soon. Gaming computer. It'll cost a lot, but I have a plan and a budget. Actually the budget is my plan. I have a weekly budget.

Photoshop is awesome. I've found a really cool tutorial site which I am looking through. Using one of their tuts (which I think is intraweb lingo for tutorial.. I hope) helped me make this:

(Click to view it full sized)

More to follow.