This is how I work when I’m at home, it’s the spot to get things done. I have a sweet setup at the difted space, but when I’m working from home, I’m here. It’s a little reminiscent of my old space back in Oklahoma. I’ve spent the past 3 weeks in “the hole” and it’s been highly productive. Anyone else have an alternative getaway spot or hole to work in?

You can now leave comments! It took me 1/2 an hour to find it, arrrrgh! But I killed the issue that was causing some browsers (particularly Safari and Camino) to hang or crash, but it’s all fixed up now! So bring back the commentary. So let’s discuss this video. Read the rest of this page »

I rarely promote these types of things, they’re close kin to those horrid email chain letters and myspace personality quizzes, but this is fun, and having fun is fun…so have fun. Leave your names in the comments…mine are in the list.

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I decided to organize my bookcase this afternoon, color coding my books after reading Blankenship’s post (fun idea, try it). What started out as a casual, yet borderline OCD, activity quickly turned into a two hour treasure hunt/trip down memory lane when I discovered a key I thought was lost in the move. The key, housed inside a hollowed out Treasure Island book belongs to my firesafe which holds the remains of my once large collection of sports trading cards. I hastily searched the garage, found the safe and cracked it open.

The smell of cardboard paper and molded plastic took me back to my parents house, to my bedroom where I would sit for hours organizing and filing cards into protector slips or binders to safekeep the valuable players and tupperware box everything else. At one time my collection of baseball, basketball, football and hockey cards exceeded 15,000 and at the center of my collection, my 1986-87 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan RC Rookie Card. I bought it for 10 bucks at a flea market in 1987 after my cousin convinced me that MJ was going to be the best. I kept the card safe and a few years later he called me, said to go buy a Beckett (remember those?) and look up the card…so I did… it was listed at $250!!! I freaked out, bought one of those $20 protector cases and sealed it shut.

In junior high I was a naive kid, a dumbass really and a little boastful, sometimes taking my entire collection to school to “deal”, bust mostly just for bragging rights. Then one day it happened, I left my locker unlocked and when I returned from lunch my trapper keeper of cards were gone. I remember the stunned feeling of helplessness that came over me as I stared into the empty locker. I could hear my mom and dad saying “I told you so.” and my friend’s laughing at me. What was lost? Over 1,000 of the best cards in my collection…gone. The MJ Rookie was not in that trapper keeper nor was my binder of Nolan Ryan cards, so I still had something left.

I found out a year later the kid who had stolen from me was one of the underclassmen in our circle of trading, Eric, a 7th grader that I never gave the time of day to, had duped me. He had been selling the cards and trading with the kids at school. I had planned to confront him the next week and my friends were going to back me up. But it never happened, Eric committed suicide that same week. His mom left his friends to divide up his belongings…video games, music, clothes, you name it, it was all for the taking…even my cards. I thought about how I felt when I realized those stupid cards were missing and how much worse Eric’s mom must have felt loosing her son.

I didn’t even care to try and retrieve what was mine. Eric’s suicide hit me hard, I didn’t really know him except that I thought he was a loser. I realized that I had been treating alot of people in our school the same way and that I needed to change. I also realized the meaning of true worth, it’s not material possesions, bragging rights or any of that. It’s about relationships based on trust, love, and respect. Eric’s stealing my collection of cards gave him short term popularity, an inlet with his peers, but it gave nothing of real relational value in his life.

This evening I stuffed everything back into the safe and locked it up. I’ll pass this stuff on to my kid when he’s older, he’ll think it’s all cool, “old school” but hopefully more than that I’ll be passing on a lesson of true worth, love, and forgiveness.

Say what!?! Yes. I’m totally bored and bothered with social networking to be quite honest. I have registered memberships at more than 30 social sites, it’s a monster!!! It’s way too easy to sign-up for social sites, stuff them into a bookmarks folder then call them up to surf the day away. It’s something I’ve been pondering for the past few weeks, a personal realization on how heavily focused I have become with being social more than being creative and productive.

Some of you may say this is backwards, being the trend is focused toward the social sites, throwing out little blurbs as opposed to actual full out writings and abandoning the traditional style of blogging through wordpress or blogger in turn for something that is already built out, no need for hosting, no upkeep, etc.. But I truly enjoy the traditional style of blogging, especially on something I have full control over in design and functionality, and would rather sit down and write out fully coherent thoughts or spend time creating something visual than getting preoccupied with twittering about my day every 5 minutes, or updating my facebook status, or checking my comments feeds, or… You get the point.

I’ll still blog here as usual and have a presence on Flickr for photos and Vimeo for videos. I’m just working to cut off some of the web 2.0 fat I have emersed myself in.

So, Here’s to no more kicking the day off with PopURL’s as my homepage, no more getting poked on Facebook, no more tweets from Twitter and no more bacn in the inbox.

Most of all, here’s to new vision.

Yours Truly - El Clinto.

The one liners in this trailer alone are AMAZING!

http://www.billyvssteve.com/

iLike, is a social music service that offers up what at first looks like another Last.FM stocked with personal profiles, playlists and artist profiles all hooked into your iTunes library. But unlike Last.FM, iLike raises the bar with an iTunes sidebar plugin that integrates with the iLife site, connecting you to other listeners with similar tastes in music while offering up a few more options to enhance your online-social-music experience. Read the rest of this page »

With the exception of the difted eletter recepients, I’ve waited on making any kind of official public announcement for the launch of difted.com. Partly due to some hangups with the store, but mostly due to the perfectionist in me constantly tweaking the site. I’ve realized it’s not going to ever be perfect, that it won’t impress everyone who comes across it and that there’s always room for improvement. So Check it out: [URL] - [pic]. She still has that new website smell. The store is up stocked with the Heart Support tees I recently mentioned here and the difted film series DVD’s. All of my work will be present there as well as the work of other graphic designers, film makers and photographers we work with. So check it out, throw down some feedback here on the blog and let me know if you need anything difted. Read the rest of this page »

Vimeo, Viddler, Youtube, Revver…you get the point. You have no excuses when it comes to showing off all your masterful webcam to iMovie creations. I’ve joined nearly all of them, and left a few. I’m currently using Vimeo for all of mine. The site usability of Vimeo is great, (although the latest redesign threw me off at first) it’s really easy to use and nice to look at (you’re not bombarded with advertisements). The Vimeo player is my fave of all the players thus far, coming in a close second to the VIRBº player. I love the new embed customizer, the thumbnail picker and the upload function which allows you to fill in the info about the video while your movie uploads. My only wish is that Vimeo would bring back the Flickr function that was present before the redesign and that you could organize your videos into groups.

There’s a player out there for us all. What video site do you prefer? Read the rest of this page »

I’m all about discovering new music and a sucker for the “Just for You” section in iTunes where I spend way too much time and cash on a weekly basis. Now, thanks to Simplify Media, there is another way to find and share music (legally and FREE) through the wonders of the internet. All you need is an iTunes library, the Simplify Media app (PC and Mac) and some friends to connect with. The application creates a playlist for each of your friends in your iTunes library, allowing you to stream music from your friends libraries to yours. I’ve already added a handful of artists to my iTunes wishlist because of this rad service. Read the rest of this page »