Archive for May 2005

It’s raising quite a stir…

What the article doesn’t explicity say (which is a shame) is that the Proposition 416 did not merely ban same-sex marriages. It also banned civil unions or any sort of non-religious manner in which gay couples could commit to one another outside of the church and still maintain the rights of straight couples who committed to one another. The precise wording is below:

Only marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or recognized in Nebraska. The uniting of two persons of the same sex in a civil union, domestic partnership, or other similar same-sex relationship shall not be valid or recognized in Nebraska.

At that point, I’m not sure Nebraskans should be surprised. It’s one thing for people to say that marriage needs to be preserved between a man and a woman (one thing I don’t necessarily agree with, mind you)… but another thing entirely to deny basic rights to gay people at the same time. I applaud this decision by Judge Bataillon.

Oh, and to all my friends from the more “liberal” states. I think we see whose home state is truly more progressive. =P

For some reason (I have no idea why or how), I got an ad in my e-mail inbox to meet other Christians. I’m not opposed to the idea of finding a significant other who shares my religious beliefs (could I really do that on this website? Maybe not), but apparently Christians are only allowed to date if they are 25+, heterosexual, and make more than $25,000. What is a lowly 22-year-old to do?

As my 12-hour meeting (no, it’s not a typo) drew to a close on Saturday, we started to get goofy (wouldn’t you?) and needed a break to relax and put things in perspective. We each took turns offering up an amusing / cool video that we’d seen. It worked remarkably well for a fun and entertaining break, so I wanted to share.

• End of the World (me)
• 30 Seconds Bunny Theater (Sandi)
• The Child (Jason)
• Big Bunny (Meghan)

The Child isn’t as high quality as I’d like, but I think they still do an amazing job using typography to convey meaning and motion. The others are just amusing, and varying in randomness.

Enjoy!

This post is dedicated to DePaul University.

In November 2003, I applied to the Masters CS program at DePaul with a concentration in HCI. My primary impetus was that the application required no essays and no letters of recommendation. Talk about an easy app! It made me feel gratified to apply to one grad school without breaking a sweat.

I was accepted (surprising, yeah?), and ever since, the emails have been pouring in from DePaul. To this day, in fact. The trouble is, DePaul doesn’t have a separate flag in their database to distinguish between potential students and actual students. They never even asked me if I intended to come to their school. I think the must assume, “Everyone who we accept must be banging down our door.” I guess I disprove that theory.

I know what you’re probably thinking. With a simple email, I could probably inform them that I’m actually not a student there and that they should remove me from their mailing list. But I find it humorous that their advisors email me every semester, like clockwork, asking me to set up a meeting to go over my academic schedule. They never seem to follow up when I don’t make the appointment though.

While I’d love to go into further detail about the breakdowns at DePaul (like how I couldn’t select my admission semester when I first went to apply because it wasn’t a valid option on their form…), I’m afraid I’m otherwise occupied. You see, I was invited to participate in Student Government Elections at DePaul today, and I’m very excited to voice my choice.

Kudos to Chaia for a nice graduation post. Irrespective of one’s religious views, the thing that clearly shines through is that she is ready to take on the world. Best of luck to her as she commences with her new chapter in life.

On that note, congratulations to all of my friends who are graduating. I was trying to think of the right thing to say, so I too will start with a definition of graduation:

A line (as on a vessel or ruler) that marks a measurement.

Haha, very funny. But stick with me, I haven’t really missed the point of my own post. It struck me, in reading this definition, that the various graduations we go through in life are critical points that we can mark, to measure not only what we’ve done so far but what we plan to do before the next point of measurement.

Read more…

It’s 1:15 AM, and I’m spending the fourth night in a row agonizing over my video sketch for IID. For those who aren’t familiar with the design class I’m taking, we are currently creating a video sketch to showcase the every day use of a digital music player designed for a particular demographic (Young Modern, in my case).

I figured, iMovie comes free on a Mac. I had used it to compress recorded video before, so why not use it to make my own? BIG mistake:

1. iMovie crashed on me a total of seven times through the course of making the movie. Once, it even disregarded saved changes, and I lost 2 hours of work.
2. iMovie mangles photos horribly, and no miracle compression setting can undo what it does to my teammate’s meticulous Photoshop work.
3. Beware of putting your own sketches or images as the first photo in your sketch. Merely editing your movie will cause iMovie to mangle your first photo (only if it’s hand-drawn), and you’ll have to replace it before publishing.
4. There are a handful of transitions that hook on to two photos instead of one (e.g., a Cross Dissolve that fades one photo out to reveal another behind it). Say I have a 10 second Cross Dissolve effect. iMovie takes 10 seconds from each of the photos the effect hooks to. See the error? If it takes 10 seconds from two photos, my movie is short 20 seconds. The effect only adds 10 seconds back. This is Math I was doing when I was 7, folks.

Don’t get me wrong, ever since I bought my PowerBook I’m quite the Mac enthusiast. But this experience has left the ultimate of sour tastes in my mouth. If I ever come across an iMovie developer, the red marker will come out with a vengeance.

I’m sure everyone and their tv station is blogging about the return of Family Guy. But since I needed a strong entry to start out my “Reviews” section, I figured what the hell. Family Guy - great. Glad it’s back on. Whoo whoo whoo.

I actually watched Fox’s entire “Animation Domination” last night, and I was a little underwhelmed. First, I watched two full episodes of The Simpsons without laughing. I think they are trying hard to tap into Family Guy humor by being increasingly random… but I think they aren’t being very successful.

American Dad has potential (especially since it’s another MacFarlane show). I’ve always been a fan of the “Take conservatism to the extreme and laugh about how ridiculous it really is” line of comedy, but I think American Dad isn’t doing as good a job at that as, say, South Park. I chuckled a few times at the news anchors who were also domestic partners (quite a few good lines there…), but I agree with the Post-Gazette reviewer that they can’t hold a torch to Family Guy’s news anchors and Asian reporter Tricia Takanawa.

In all, I think Fox went too far. We said we wanted Family Guy back. So, instead of American Dad, I guess I’d rather see two episodes of Family Guy. Yes… that, in no uncertain terms, would be awesome.

I’ll close with a quote from Asian reporter Tricia Takanawa: “Is Quahog in the grips of a serial arsenist? Police say no, but our producer says yes.” Priceless comedy.

I went to a party for Alex E’s birthday last night. Typically, I’m a little ashamed to bring alcohol to parties, just because I don’t really consider myself much of a drink connoisseur. In the past, I’ve looked up things on the internet with moderate success (on that note, next time you find yourself at a Halloween party, I recommend checking out the recipe for Mold).

Last night I decided to fall back on what I have now termed the Omaha Special: Mountain Dew with a splash of Peach Schnapps. This was a favorite back in undergrad, and it was really well received last night. I think I’ve got my new party drink of choice!