I haven’t posted any pictures yet, though I certainly will in the next day or so, check out www.rosenbaugh.com/photography for some of my work.  I’ll eventually be learning Photoshop to compliment whatever photography skills I’ve accumulated, but for right now I will be trying to do all I can to master the camera itself.

New Year’s Resolution: Blog more frequently so that Jason doesn’t have to pester me into doing it…  Not that Jason’s pestering isn’t welcome, because that’s how I remember to do most things, but I should be better at doing it on my own…

As for a life update:

• I work at ExxonMobil and I love it.
• I’m still single and working on it.
• I still enjoy movies, literature, video games and the occasional comic book (though I admit I don’t read comics or play games as much as I used to, which is probably entirely appropriate).
• I bought an iPod Nano and a Nike+ with my Safety Money I received for surviving a quarter at the largest refinery in the United States – thus I’m hoping somethinge encourages me to run (please Nike!!!).
• I’m throwing a New Year’s Eve party.
• I’m still sexy.
• I still think the best movie line ever is, “Come with me if you want to live…”  Actually, I really just think it’s the most believable line that MUST BE ADHERED TO, even in real life.
• Travis is getting married on January 17th and it’s the best/worst/greatest news ever.  Only worst because it means I have to get spousal approval to kidnap him now…  And him visiting me in Houston became a tiny bit harder.
• I make the greatest Gingerbread known to man.

The End!

I may even rename the blog, give it a sexy new title.  That will be the major secret of the unveiling of whatever theme I develop.

Anyway, I’ve gotta get back to work on figuring out how to grab stuff off my TiVo and make it edit happy on the Mac.  I may or may not have to pirate software to figure it out…  (Don’t worry, if I find a solution I like I will pay for it, but I don’t wanna blow a ton of money on something I end up hating.)

If you have any good tips on theme creation, offer some support – jeff at rosenbaugh dot com.

I’ve been playing with stuff the last week to get all of my good software and such installed on the Mac, and here’s the list of what I would call essential:

• NewsFire – best RSS reader in life… SO GOOD! It’s really simple and it makes life pretty easy for me since it’s not integrated and messy like some other RSS readers. I should have gone with something like this a while ago.
• Transmission – super simple and nice BitTorrent client. Azureus had me messing with settings for at least 30 minutes to get all the encryption and everything I wanted setup, this came with the best setting pre-done and without all the stupid bloated code in the program. Simple and clean!
• Adium – THE best chat client I’ve ever used – ever! The only thing it lacks is video chat capability, which I can load iChat up for on the random occasions when I want to do that. Seriously though, it incorporates every other chat protocol I have ever heard of with the exception of Skype, which I hate anyway. I need to figure out some of the plug-ins and such (haven’t messed with it yet), but it’s great already… AND they’ll be adding Facebook Chat support in the next release (doesn’t quite work in the beta), which I think is hilarious and cool.
• Camino – kills Firefox in almost all respects other than themes and add-ons (which I really didn’t use other than IE tab, which doesn’t matter on a mac) – I do have firefox for a couple random BYU sites that don’t render in Camino (which makes NO sense but I just didn’t bother uninstalling firefox before I went with Camino, so I just use it since it’s there). Anyway, I really like it for it’s clean look and OS X keychain support.
• AppDelete – Most effective uninstall prog I’ve seen. I know you just need to delete the executable, but this deletes any random settings or libraries that install with your install prog. I was suprised when I used it the first time to see what I was missing in my normal uninstalls. (There is a $5 donation required after you use it a certain number of times – but it’s definitely worth the $5)
• Caffeine – makes me happy because I can avoid my computer going to sleep when it should be downloading. Plus, it runs on the tray (top of the screen) and makes turning it on and off pretty easy.
• Cyberduck – I like it for ftp, cause it’s pretty simple and easy to use… You may have another preference, but it makes me happy that it is simple.
• Handbrake – great for ripping movies to the iPod, PSP, or other things. Pretty fast actually!
• Jomic – BEST comic reader other than CDisplay, but CDisplay is windows only (sadness of my life, trust me).
• Alarm Clock 2 – I have my computer in my room (I’m at college and can’t do much else since everyone else will complain I’m taking over the living area), and I thought having an alarm clock that would bring my computer out of sleep and play some wake up music would be GREAT – thus Alarm Clock 2.
• VLC – goes without saying, but it’s a million times better than Quicktime. Besides, I swore off Quicktime in the 90′s, and I don’t wanna disappoint myself at this age.

Anyway, there are a ton of others that are “required” such as VMWare Fusion and a Boot Camp partition of Windows, but those should go without saying. Let me know if you’ve got something else I should try!

I don’t think I want to build a fancy, schmancy Nintendo Controller Coffee Table like the guys in the above video, but there has got to be something I could spend some time mastering and enjoying. I could always try photography again, but if I do I will need to talk with some others who are really talented or start reading a bunch of books (which only slows down the process of me getting involved).

Web development and things like that are totally out of the question, since I essentially hate programming. With that in mind, I’m always up for playing with new technologies, I just wonder if I really have the money to invest in things like that. Building computers makes no practical sense, and it also screams NERD pretty loudly. I would much rather find something universal that I can enjoy with or without a bunch of money, and something I can do with other people.

Anyone have any good recommendations? Seriously, I could use some help… :)

Hopefully this humors the rest of you like it humored me!  Seriously, who spends the time and energy is takes to do something like this?  I guess I won’t complain though since it does make me smile…

Few examples:

LDSJournal.com runs much faster because it doesn’t run on the silly platform that Pyxlin uses!

Pyxlin:

LDSJournal:

As you can see, posting on LDSJournal is very similar to posting on your blog. I don’t have to worry about the silly typesetting thing that gets really annoying.

You can also use Firefox spell checking (see above picture for red squigglies), which you could not do in Pyxlin… You were instead forced to use their retarded spell checker.

LDSJournal also allows for footnotes (images and such) as well as journal addendums that can be time stamped differently to show that you went back to old journal entries and had thoughts that you wanted to share. This could be really neat for reviewing your journal at the end of the month or end of the year. You could go in and explain how certain thoughts became really important to you as the month went on and how different experiences may have shaped what you decided your next steps in life to be.

I also don’t have to have silly chapters and things in my LDSJournal. Everything is associated with a date (see the calendar on both the image above and the one below that lets you know when you’ve made an entry), and when I decide to print something (the functionality for that is forthcoming, but I’m faithful since I’ve already seen development since I moved to their service) it will be set chronologically without hassle. Apparently they are also working on the “tag” feature I would really like, which would allow me to print a different journal just based on entries with spiritual experiences or confessions of love (cheesy!).

I also like that it tells me right at the bottom what my most recent journal entries are and the dates associated with them. This just makes it a little easier for me to keep track of my progress with an actual idea of what I wrote about based on the entry title.

Anyway, this is my new recommendation! Certainly check it out (it’s FREE). I encourage everyone to keep a journal for a bunch of reasons:

1. It helps you process what you did during the day
2. It is great for thinking through whatever you are experiencing in life
3. I often have my “A HA!” moments as I’m writing in my journal, and those really help shape my life
4. It’s sort of recommended by the Prophets and Apostles…

The biggest downfalls I’ve seen to previous services like this have been that they don’t provide all the functionality I want in their web service (a full text editor and the ability to upload my photos however I want) nor do they provide much of a way for you to get a hardbound copy of what you have worked so diligently to keep… Well, those are two things that Pyxlin definitely gets right! Keeping an online journal sure is convenient since you can access it from anywhere and flake out during class if you’d like, but finally I can get my journal in a book at the end of the year to keep on my book shelf.

I like to see when people do technology the right way… Too often people try and digitize your whole life, but for the majority of us there is a strong feeling of nostalgia for the things of the past… I LOVE having hard copies of my journals. Can I tell you how much I love that? I LOOOOVE having hard copies of my journals. It’s nice to pull it out once in a while to see what I was feeling and thinking about a while back… It’s really great if you want to share some personal thoughts that you wrote about your girlfriend when you first started dating… Seriously, it’s a big deal to me, and to see someone respond to that type of user requirement (I know I’m not the only one who feels this way) is really impressive.

I recommend you check it out and take a look at a pretty neat product. I don’t know anything about the guys who developed it, other than that they were/are apparently BYU students – thus why the Daily Universe covered it, so I don’t want anyone to think I’m recommending you check out something a friend built (though you should definitely check out RateMyApartments.com).

There is a site charge (something like $20 a year if you pay annually), but you can do a 7-day trial for free. Let me know what you think! I get excited about people using technology intelligently like this – it’s a big step up from the non-innovative ideas I often see.

So, the big gift from me this year is a big ol’ blanket.  Seriously, they’re pretty simple to make, though relatively time consuming.  All you do is pick out some felt (or something softer) at your local fabric shop and then follow the directions!

1. Purchase approximately  2 1/2 yards of fabric.  I hate throw blankets because they’re always too short, so if you’re making your own make sure it’s nice and long!  Also, the blanket will be more fun if you buy two different patterns/colors and tie them together.  It’s also warmer, and it allows you to have felt on one side (usually where you have a fun pattern) and something softer on the other side like fleece.

2.  Line up the fabric so that both pieces are overlapping well and then cut slits about an inch thick, and long enough so that you can tie the fabric together.  One tip is to make sure you take into account which sides of the fabric are stretchy…  You won’t need to cut strips quite as long on the long edge of your blanket, thus not sacrificing overall width.  The corners can be tricky but you can either cut a square off the corner of try to do a diagonal tie at each corner.  Either way works.

3. Make loop ties, tying the strips from both pieces of fabric together.  It’s pretty simple – you make a loop and stick the ends through the loop and pull…  ’nuff said.

4. Once you’ve tied all the strips together going around the blanket, cut the ties so that they are even going all the way around.  You probably won’t do this perfectly, but that’s OK.  Just cute the ends so that the strips from each piece of fabric end up being even.

And you’re done!  It’s really a pretty simple process, but it’s fun to make and I don’t know a single girl who hasn’t gone “awwwwwwww….” when their manfriend has made one and given it to them.  I know I won some pretty good points this Valentine’s Day!  haha…

Anyway, I should take some pictures of stuff that we made at Color Me Mine last week.  And apparently Lauren is finishing up something pretty neat, so maybe I’ll take some pictures and post those as well.  I kinda like spoiling people, so Valentine’s Day with a womanfriend is always a good time of year.  :)