out of the blue

I have discovered a new awesome author. The other night, I ran across some article talking about who Neil Gaiman has been influenced by in his writing, who he admired, and on that list was some guy named Lord Dunsany. Now, this sounded pretty interesting, so I looked him up. Apparently, Edward Plunkett (who wouldn't rather be named something as awesome as Lord Dunsany?) was an Irish author who lived from 1878 – 1957, and wrote a lot of fantasy stories. So, I looked on Gutenberg and found a lot of his works which were past their copyright dates. I began reading, and was amazed at his rich prose, and how interesting his stories were. I particularly liked a story titled "The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap." If you're at all into fantasy, I'd suggest reading at least that one story and seeing if you get hooked.

The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap, by Lord Dunsany

If you like him, I'd also highly suggest the Loot of Bombasharna, also in The Book of Wonder.

Last night, I played a lot of ultimate frisbee–three games in a row. The first was about 50 minutes long, the second 25 or 30, and the third lasted over the limit, clocking in at 60 or 70 minutes long. We started on the hour each time, so I was playing frisbee most of the time from 6:00 to 9:10. (During the longest break we had, Aaron and I threw the frisbee around for nearly all of it.) I quite enjoyed the games.

We lost the first game 8-10, won the second 10-2, and won the third 10-6.

I'd still say that the third game was the most difficult, even though we didn't lose like we did in the second. This was due to the other team holding us off from scoring for a long time–some points lasted five or ten minutes (from my skewed judgement of time while playing).

All in all, it was a great night, and our last game was a satisfying victory. The first game was essentially our first practice session as a team, and by the end of the night we were playing a lot better. I'm hoping we'll continue to get better and better, even if we don't win the tournament.

After playing frisbee, Aaron and I (after showers) watched Gandhi, the movie. Brilliant film, thanks largely to how awesome the man himself was. That was about 3 hours long, and we were quite ready to sleep by the time we returned to our room.

I have been meaning for a while to take some pictures of the campus at night. I was inspired in this endeavor by the beautiful sight of the lamps shining among the blossom-laden cherry branches, casting a pleasant glow on many of my late night walks. I finally got around to it last night, when over the course of about an hour I took 168 pictures with my digital camera and shiny new tripod. The prime cuts of the trip can be found on my site. To entice you, here are my favorites:

In accordance with my desire to increase the quality of communication on LiveJournal, I am going to try something. If you want, you can post this in your Journal and ask people to do it.

Oh, and Kudos to the decent "meme" type things. I approve of this one especially: "Comment in this post with your name, and I'll tell you something I adore about you."

Anyway, here is a test:

Think of one of your friends, who isn't the person you got this meme from. Write their name down. Now, view the rest of this post.

The Question:

What about this friend that you have chosen is the most meaningful to you? Is there something that they have done for you that has changed you? Tell why they are important to you.

Remember, this question is meant to be meaningful, so don't just give a shallow answer. If you can't think of something, then think more, rather than changing the friend you are talking about. There must be a reason they are your friend. If nothing else, work off of that.

I will be answering this one in a little while, but I don't feel up to thinking really deeply right now, because I should be doing work.

-The Movement for Meaningful Memes

Do you ever get annoyed at the surveys that people do that ask all the same questions, and only a few of them are meaningful to the person? I think it would be much better if people would every once in a while write something about themselves that means a lot to them. Or, write something about someone else that means a lot to them. I intend to start doing this, in order to counteract the evil of surveys. I'd encourage anyone who feels like telling people things that really matter to join me in this movement. Honestly, who cares whether or not someone has kissed someone of the same gender, or whether they have run away from home? Those sorts of things only matter to a few people. I'd say at least 50% of the questions are completely pointless. So, I'm going to do this.

Join me?

I sold my first piece of art!

The transaction was finished today, when I recieved a check from Kenlyn. She bought my Sunset Over St. Al's painting, and as the first buyer she got a nice price break. However, any of you who want to buy it will get an arbitrary price that involves work and price of printing, which may not be constant.

Anyway, it made me happy. Yeah, I'm a money-earning artist now! So, it's time for everyone to line up and spend their hard-earned money on my hard-crafted paintings. :)

I'm excited.

Peace!

Over the past two days I did something that I've been wanting to try for a while. That is, Use JavaScript (or something) to make a time-sensitive web page, whose color scheme changes based on the time of day. After a lot of work, I finally got it to be functional, and to look pretty good, if I do say so myself. There ARE a few differences between browsers, but for the most part it's pretty consistent on Firefox, IE, and Opera. There are a few issues I'm working out, but I'm done for now. Anyway, take a look:

( Time-Sensitive Javascript Site )

Today, a nice package I've been expecting came in the mail. A few days ago, I ordered a camera tripod from Amazon.com, for about 1/4th of the list price. So, for 15 dollars, I got a $60 tripod. I've been wanting a tripod for a while, so that I can cancel out the blurriness that my stupid hand makes when I try to take a picture, and now I can. The first thing I did (nearly), was taking a series of pictures around my room, and then piecing them together in Photoshop. I think I did a fairly good job of it. Tell me what you think!

Panorama of Smurf's Dorm

Lots of entries recently. A lot of interesting things have been happening, though. This is a two-subject entry, so I'll try to be brief.

Tonight was frisbee, from 10:00 to 11:00 in the dark. Only eight people showed tonight, so we had a nice game of four on four ultimate. And believe me, it was quite fitting it's name! Devon, who is (I think) the most experienced person who was there tonight, said that he couldn't remember playing such an intense game with that many players. I had a few awesome plays, and I think I did pretty well on defense for someone who hasn't played more than a few times since November. It made me happy.

On another note, Aaron is trying an interesting experiment. I'd try the same thing, except I like talking to people during the day. You see, Aaron has been staying up later and later recently (I was too, for the past week), and he realized that he gets much more work done late in the night, because nobody is up to distract him. So, he's going to try being nocturnal for a little while, and see how it works for him. This has a few downsides, like not being able to get dinner at the Cog, and having to set our dorm aside mostly as a sleeping chamber, but it ought to be interesting. I'll tell you how it goes.

On another note besides my crazy last post, something amusing happened this morning. I had just stayed up until 3 reading Lit, and then I woke up about an hour before my 8:00 class, for some reason. So, I got three hours of sleep. (I suppose you could have done the math, but the idea of journals isn't to think, right?) Having very little sleep often does very interesting things to my mind. So, I'm walking back from Physics, and I go through the outside doors into Crosby. The first thing that greets my sleep-befuddled eyes is a guy holding a bagel, walking towards the doors. For some reason, my mind understands that the guy is about 3 feet from me, but fails to realize that his food is attached to him; it manages to assume that the bagel is somewhere around 10 or 15 feet away. This caused me to see, for a fleeting instant, a bagel about the size of a basketball. That quickly changed from confusing me to amusing me in about half a second. It was quite fun.