Day 15 - Your Favourite Blogs

It is actually kind of bad how many blogs I read: as of this moment I have something like 620 unread posts in my Google Reader stream. There are just so many people out there blogging who have interesting perspectives on the world and lots of interesting things to say. That is, after all, the purpose of a blog - to get fresh ideas and perspectives out to whoever is interested in listening. Here are some of my top blogs:

The Personal - Broken, In Repair

Just a guy being healed by Grace

It may embarrass Hansen to be mentioned - again. But I actually appreciate and read his blog quite a bit. He writes with brutal honesty about personal issues and struggles, as well as successes and joys. He approaches his blog with the same kind of openness which he helped me foster when he was my leader at camp, and that I appreciate.

The Tech - Gizmodo & Engadget

These two rivals share space as my favourite tech blogs. I read Engadget for the long list of new and shiny tech invading the world, as well as for their excellent coverage of the Windows Phone 7 plateform, aka the phone I own, which Giz has more or less annoyed much to my annoyance. The only thing that really annoys me about Engadget is the commenting community which more resembles YouTube than anything particularly useful. Flame wars abound and there are often more admin-deleted comments then not. That is where Gizmodo steps in. Like any tech blog, they have their fair share of trolls and fanboys; that said, they do a better job then most at keeping them in line. Giz is also my source for tech news that falls outside of the realm of personal gadgetry: it collects the gamut of gadgets as well as essays on gadget culture and the science behind the tech. Note: as much as I love Gizmodo, it is best viewed with the t/not:NSFW tag appended to the end, unless of course you are in to reviews about sex toys. In which case, fill your boots!

The Awesome - io9
My favourite blog of the lot and the one I follow the most, io9 is a must have for any geek's reading list. They bring together sci-fi and fantasy fandoms into a crazy mix of books, comics, tv shows and movies as well as covering cool scientific breakthroughs and just keeping you well informed of the things geeks love to know. Add to that probably the best community online for respectful and engaging discussion and you have one of the absolute best blogs on the web.

Day 14 - Your Earliest Memory

To be honest, I'm not all that good at reminding time frames to begin with. Ask me a question about something that happened in a book I read or a show I watched years ago and I can probably answer that; ask me a question about myself... chances are not as great. That said, I do have some hazy memories from when I was younger, albeit with no particular concept of a timeline and the only marker distinguishing them as the earliest being my place of residence at the time.

Is it strange that all of my early memories are tied to relatively unimportant events? No birthdays or Christmases; maybe Thanksgiving - but those have a serious tendency to blend together. No, I can remember playing Lego in my bedroom closet, my brother bloodying his lips rubbing them on his crib, losing my boomerang on the playground, and playing Pluto in a class play on the planets (back when Pluto still was one). I suppose on the important side you could count my Kindergarten graduation, though it really doesn't count as my earliest memory. If you asked me to order the others, however, I couldn't do it in a million years.

I guess it just speaks to the enigma that is our brain. By what arcane methods and arbitrary criteria does it chose to store and remove certain memories?

Day 13 – Give Pictures Of 5 Girls Who Are Famous Who You Find Attractive

Figures this would be on Friday the Thirteenth (day). I have no idea really how to properly gauge the fame-level of people these days, especially since my interests fall just a little bit outside of the mainstream. So regardless of how famous the following five may or may not be, they make the list in my eyes. And hopefully I don't get into trouble ;D

... please?

In no particular order:

• Summer Glau
  
• Felicia Day
  
• Scarlett Johansson
  
• Amy Lee
  
• Emma Watson
  

Day 12 - Bullet Your Day

Maybe I should have tweeted this as I went along and then collected them here: I don’t use Twitter as much as I might like.
Then again, lets take this one thing at a time.

• 8:45 – Woke up and showered
  
• 9:00 – Morning routine: eat breakfast, check email and RSS, survey Ogame empire
  
• 10:00 – Counselling appointment
  
• 11:30 – Had lunch with Emily and chatted about life, the universe, and youth work
  
• 14:00 – Class! The Wenjack makes me sleepy
  
• Apparently Freudian Psychoanalysis is a plague (says Freud himself)
  
• 15:30 – Ghosting the corridors of the OC, my old haunt. Check up on my fleets, again.
  
• 17:00 – Class! Again! Developing for the Web though, much more interesting
  
• 19:00 – Walk out to my truck to discover that my headlights had been on since I got there. Hooray for dead batteries! Now to find someone to boost me.
  
• 20:07 – …aaaand no such luck yet. Call Seana to see if she will come and rescue me :D
  
• 20:40 – Help arrives, and my dead battery adventure is over.
  
• 21:20 – Home, and dinner. Chat with my mom about the day
  
• 22:10 – Call Seana and catch up on the rest of the day
  
• 22:30 – Dad get home and we rock the freezer, getting it loaded in the van.
  
• 23:10 – Bed time! No, wait. Blogging time!

Day 11 – Put Your Zune on Shuffle

 And Write 10 Songs That Pop Up

Yes, that says Zune - its what comes on my phone. And I suppose I should have specified the first ten, but here we go!

Day 10 - Discuss Your First Love

Ah love, you come in so many forms. You take us to heights and depths, always an adventure. The subject of poetry and song, tv shows and movies, and everything in between. We seem to live in a culture that loves to love (thankfully) more than it loves to hate. I myself have fallen prey to Cupid's arrows, and have been the better man for it. However, much as I would like to wax eloquent about my romantic love, she is not in fact my first love (sorry dear). No, that title has been reserved for a love affair which has continued since childhood: my love of books.

As far back as I can remember, my life has been immersed with books. I can remember my dad reading The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit to my siblings and I before bed. And any time we would spend time with my Poppa and Dearma I would always have tonnes of books at my disposal. I must have read through every Hardy Boys adventure during those summers, not to mention my Dearma providing me with the Arthurian legends to spark my imagination and have a huge impact on the way I live.

I love books. I love to read them and explore the fantastic worlds that authors have put so much time into creating. Science Fiction and Fantasy are my particular genres of choice, though I enjoy a great mystery, thriller, or whatever-the-heck you want to label Douglas Coupland's books as. I enjoy reading the classics, not just because they are great stories, but also because of the rich heritage they lend to the full breadth of literature. I only really read Homer because of Dante, and only read Virgil because it tied the two together (though I just looked over to my bookshelf and noticed that my copy of Il Commedia is missing, and now I shall have to go on the hunt to find it). My parents recently acquired a bookshelf for me because they were sick and tired of seeing them on the floor, and it is already filled to overflowing. I love the feel of a book in my hand, the weight of it, and the smell of paper - whether it be the fresh scent of a new book or the slightly must smell of an older one - is one of my absolute favourites. I love walking into a room and just seeing stacks of books; it makes me happy.

My (current) bookcase:

How High is the Rent?

Not a new video, but I just. Can't. Stop. Watching it.



That is some impressive facial hair, I'm just sayin'.