Photography - Beach Panoramas

These are two of my favorite beach panoramas. I think the Pano app on my phone degraded the quality, but they look pretty good at lower resolutions. I'm hoping to get even better ones this spring with my new camera.

Food - Interesting Cake and Cupcake

I randomly ended up at the Knoxville Cake Bake competition this past weekend, and there were some really original cakes there. Never before have I had such an urge to shove my face into baked goods. After perusing the floor, there were two that really stuck out. I was also able to sneak out of the cake judging area and get a picture of Neyland Stadium.

"Imagination is in the eye of the beholder" - Jocelyn #73

"It looks like you are judging a cake decorating contest. Would you like help?" - Katie #149

The Elder Scrolls V - First Movie of Trilogy Announced

My brother sends me a lot of images he has created with Photoshop. Most of them stem from conversations we have over AIM while he is sleep deprived. You might have seen the Fruity Pueblos cereal he made previously. Here is the chat log that caused this latest one:

World of Warcraft - A Giraffe Is Born

When Blackwing Lair was still a big deal in World of Warcraft, my guild and I spent a lot of time there. So much time, in fact, that we saw many weird bugs and glitches, but this one was the best. The final boss in the raid instance, Nefarian, has a crowd control ability like polymorph that changes players into random wild animals. Normally debuffs get removed when you die, but our guildy Cassanova was lucky enough to remain a wild giraffe even after being resurrected.

After defeating Nefarian with Runehammer, Cassanova went on to roam the Barrens for many happy years until he was killed by a lion on stilts. And lost his giraffe buff. He was last seen selling dairy products for commission at Trias' Cheese in Stormwind.

Counter-Strike 1.6 - Romeo and Juliet

Back around 2002 I made this short video from clips of Counter-Strike 1.6, clips from the movie, and photo-shopped images. Oh yeah, I guess the entire audio is from the movie as well. I really wanted to make a longer complete version of it. At that time though, my computer's processing capabilities and hard drive size made it impossible. So I ended it after the intro and tried to make it look like a trailer.

Idea To Make Driving Through Yellow Lights More Exciting

I usually drive my car when there are several of us at work going out for lunch. Near our work is this short length of road with 3 traffic lights. If you hit the first light while it is turning yellow and maintain your speed, you'll probably make it through all 3 traffic lights while they are yellow.

This past weekend I bought a gadget to play music from my phone through my car stereo. Though for the music to have a good effect, I'm going to have to start the music before the first yellow light even shows up. So I'm using the crosswalk timers as my early indicator of a potential yellow streak.

If I do end up timing it correctly, the music should hit the build ups, pauses, and traffic lights at just the right times. And the end of the music should be playing while I cruise through the last traffic light to my epic lunch.

I will not be speeding or driving recklessly. Safety is not guaranteed. I have only done this once.

This is the music I will blare out of my speakers:

All Points Bulletin - Crazy Times

All Points Bulletin was so effing fun when I played it. The customization was (and still is?) phenomenal. My brother and his friends started out as a hot dog vendor crew, but they eventually switched over to an unofficial Domino's delivery gang. While it might not have been very original, there was just something fun about role playing pizza delivery guys on a mission. "Papa John's is selling pizza on our turf.  Let's go f them up!"

Ultima Online - Pianos in UO!?

Back before they had all these crazy ass items in UO, you had to be creative if you wanted to decorate your house. I don't remember what I was looking for, but one day I came across a website with a walk through on how to build a piano out of random items you could get in game. The process the author described wasn't too complicated but was written in Chinese. I barely understood Pig Latin, so it took me awhile to decipher the few screenshots and Chinese words to figure out what was going on.

It ended up being quite profitable for me though.  I was charging people 20,000 gold a piano.  This was before we were millionaires in game, so it was very exciting.

And damn if that roasted pig doesn't still look delicious to me.