Insights of a College Jedi
Hello and welcome to beautiful Lee McKusick.
This past week, I finished my first project for Interactive Digital Media. It’s a Star-Wars themed birthday card. Click the TIE fighters to blow them up. The ending changes based on how many you destroy.
Let me know what you think.
EDIT: It seems that there’s a bug or two left to work out. I’ll leave the links out, but beware.
Posted on 26 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under RIT. 1 Comment.
Today was a day of exceptional oddness.
I think I’ll preface it by saying that yesterday was sweet. Small group is one of the highlights of my week, and this week’s, for some inexplicable reason, was above average. Maybe it’s just the fact that I get to hang out afterwards and chat with some awesome people. Who knows. =)
After returning from small group, I read for a while and fell asleep on the couch. I woke up around 3:30 and dragged myself into bed. Woke up again an hour later to Ryan and Evan talking in the hallway. Groggy and disoriented, I just fell back asleep.
When I woke up later on, I went to take a shower…
and noticed our stove in the middle of our living room.
Right from the get-go, I knew this was going to be a weird day. Apparently, in the hour window that they had, somebody had pranked us by moving our stove into the hallway, blocking it, and spreading our pots and pans all over the furniture. I have to give whoever it was props for doing it so efficiently and silently. How they moved the entire stove without waking any of the three of us up is astounding…
Looks like we’re going to have to make sure we lock our doors at night…
The other thing that was really weird was the fact that when I came home to change after fencing, my key didn’t work. It seems that I had the key for the exterior door (which is supposed to have a lock, but non of the exterior doors in Perkins have them…). The question is though: why didn’t it work then when it had been working all the time before?
Thus, most of my day was plagued by an intangible sense of confusion and of being unfocused. It wasn’t until late afternoon after I talked to Evan and got the full stove story, and after I finished my Flash project that has dominated my attention and spiked my stress levels, that I finally started getting a handle on the day.
It was then that I started enjoying the day, and everything it brought with it. The rain, the new knowledge from classes, the company of friends, and the little (and big) victories that came through the day.
Posted on 23 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Uncategorized. 1 Comment.
Have I mentioned I love Desktoptopia?
This is the image it just gave me:
I thought the HDR (High Dynamic Range, it’s what gives it the illustrated look) effect was really cool, so I decided to play my luck and see if they gave a link to the photographer. Sure enough, they did, and the guy, Trey Ratcliff, has a ton of beautiful HDR images.
His site, Stuck in Customs, has both his official portfolio, and a photoblog. It’s definitely worth a look.
Plus, most of his stuff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. Props to him for that!
Tags: photography, hdr
Posted on 16 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Blog, Music, Tv, Uncategorized. No Comments.
U.C. Berkeley student’s Twitter messages alerted world to his arrest in Egypt
A U.C Berkeley graduate journalism student was arrested while photographing a public demonstration. Fortunately for him, he was able to text the word “ARRESTED” to his Twitter account from his phone. By the next day, he had an Egyptian lawyer hired by UCB, and was out of jail.
His friends on Twitter saw the message and contacted the U.S. Embassy and the AP and other media. Unfortunately his interpreter is still being held, but the Internet is working to get him out too.
It’s this kind of thing that makes me love technology. This is its true purpose: to help people.
Tags: egypt, journalist, arrested, Twitter
Posted on 16 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Uncategorized. 1 Comment.
Ever wondered what other people are praying about?
Dear-God.net is a blog that posts prayers that people write in. According to them, “It doesn’t matter what your version of God is…Jesus, Allah, Buddha or simply a spiritual universal energy…” and goes along with the [scientifically proven] idea that prayer makes people “healthier, happier, and more resilient.”
It was started a few weeks ago, and I think it’s a cool idea, actually. People can leave comments on the different prayers, and most of the ones I’ve read offer encouragement and hope. Whether or not the original person reads it, I’m sure there will be other people who can identify and hopefully find some reassurance, or advice. No matter what the plight, there’s always someone who’s been through it before, as evidenced by the wealth of “That was me.” comments.
I think one of the nice things that go along with the “prayers” are the photos. People are encouraged to send in photos representative of their submissions, but if not, DearGod will find a fitting stock photo. It adds a nice visual touch to the message.
All in all, I think Dear-God.net is an interesting idea, and could potentially be a great resource for people. Even if you don’t believe in God, if nothing else it makes for a good read.
Posted on 15 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under God. No Comments.
I gotta give Lifehacker a shoutout for this one.
I’m the kinda guy who constantly shuffles around his desktop picture. I’ve got a folder in My Pictures that is dedicated to Wallpapers and has somewhere around 40-50 images in it. Some Star Wars, some LotR, Guild Wars, landscapes, etc.
So when I read the Lifehacker article about Desktoptopia I was excited, cause I thought it meant that I wouldn’t have to go in and do it myself, and it would automatically shuffle through my Wallpapers on a regular basis. Well, my friends, I was mistaken. It does not allow you to cycle through your wallpapers automatically.
It does one better.
On a given interval (I have mine set at 15 minutes), it will grab a random desktop from their database of wallpapers, and will set it as your background. You can pick and choose a number of different categories, like Abstract, Illustration, Photography, Film, Games, Architecture, etc. And the wallpapers are top notch. You can browse through them out at the Desktoptopia website. Also, there are next background and previous background buttons to manually cycle through them.
There is a negative thing I’ll point: if there’s a background you particularly like, and want to keep, that doesn’t seem to be an option. I could be mistaken, and there may be some sort of hack to save the image, but if there is, it is not obvious. However, you could always pause the rotation or quit the program to keep it for a while. Also, some backgrounds do have links to the artist’s page, where it may be available there for download.
So, all in all, Desktoptopia is a great application. It’s available for both Windows and Mac.
Happy wallpapering!
Tags: wallpaper, background, desktoptopia, lifehacker
Posted on 11 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Fun. 1 Comment.
Aha! After messing around with 1and1’s config menus, WordPress’s config menus, .htaccess files, and a bit of time spent being mildly frustrated, I finally was able to make http://leemckusick.com redirect to http://leemckusick.com/blog, and all it took was 1 line of JavaScript.
I feel like a dork.
Maybe I need to retake 409, hehe.
Posted on 11 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Blog. 1 Comment.
The [re]birthing pains seem to be abating, and one of the things that I’m really enjoying about Wordpress is the idea of plugins: the little modules that you can add to your site to increase functionality.
The ones I’m currently using are:
Admin Favicon – Automatically adds a favicon (The icon next to the address in the address bar.)
All in One SEO Pack
FeedBurner FeedSmith
Hello Dolly – Originally gives lyrics from Hello Dolly in the admin pages, but tweaked to provide select Shakespeare quotes instead.
Twitter Tools – So glad I’m able to pipe Twitter into here.
Any other suggestions?
Posted on 11 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Blog. 3 Comments.
So, I’m enjoying the new WordPress architecture. It’s a LOT more customizable than Blogger, and there’s just a lot more options, especially with plugins and all.
I still have a long way to go, including actually making the underlying site. (Although with the pages ability, I may not have to…)
You can definitely expect more updates to the site to come soon.
Cheers!
Posted on 7 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Uncategorized. 1 Comment.
I’m working on migrating this blog from being hosted on Blogger to being run from a WordPress installation on my own hosting.
The new link will be http://leemckusick.com/blog, so for those of you with bookmarks, or RSS feeds, you may have to update those.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but I think it’s better in the long run, and will serve a higher purpose in the long run.
Thanks,
Lee
Posted on 6 April '08 by Lee McKusick, under Uncategorized. No Comments.
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