Lee McKusick

Once upon a time there was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he should hammer a nail in the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. But gradually, the number of daily nails dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the first day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He proudly told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.

“You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won’t matter how many times you say ‘I’m sorry’, the wound is still there.”

 - Unknown Author

I tend to read a lot of so-called “lifehack” blogs: Lifehacker, 43Folders, ZenHabits, etc. One of my favorites is The Art of Manliness, which has a ton of great articles that are useful and informative for men, from “Talk Like Frank Sinatra” to “Lessons in Manliness: Theodore Roosevelt and the Spanish-American War” to one of my favorites: “Bringing Back The Hat“.

AoM, along with similar blogs, has started something called the “Manival.” Oddly named as it is, it’s pretty awesome, as it brings together many great blog posts and articles that are useful for men.

The first Manival was hosted at AoM.
The second and latest one is hosted at AGoodHusband.net.

Go check ‘em out.

Classic. =)

Courtesy of bustedtees.com

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.

Flash Project 1

EDIT: It seems that there’s a bug or two left to work out. I’ll leave the links out, but beware.

Tags: flash, card, movie

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.

Tags: stove, confusion, weird, odd, day

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

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

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.

Tags: prayer, god, blog

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

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.