Architectural designer and avid fan of gaming and technology who lives on the web. 
Is Avatar A Must See Movie
Lately you can’t watch anything on TV or visit many websites without being blasted with some type of ad or trailer for the movie Avatar. In fact I have mostly ignored all the hype and noise surrounding this movie since I first saw the trailer last summer. I remember thinking to myself in the theater “here we go again. another CGI action fest”. The only thing that made it stand out a little was its release date of Christmas instead of summer when most of these type films are released. I was also confused because I first thought this movie Avatar was somehow related to the Japanese anime series by the same name. After seeing more trailers that theory never matched up. Finally, last week I broke down and decided to do more research. The results of which I will share with you now.
The weather is cooling, the leaves have changed colors, there is less daylight and the holidays are right around the corner. You know what that means. Gaming season is here. Everyone is familiar with the blockbuster movie season that typically starts in May around Memorial Day weekend. From that point through July 4th most of the major blockbuster films of the year are released. Why is that? I don’t know but that is just the way things are and the way they have been for as long as I can remember. As long as the movie studios continue to rake in the dough with these business practices I’m sure that release cycle will continue for years to come. For those of us who are gamers we know the video game industry works very similar. From mid-October through December many of the years biggest games crowd the store shelves at once. The problem with this is games take much more time to play than a watching a movie and they cost much more money. For this reason many games get overlooked temporarily or sometimes forever. There should be a better system for releasing games.
Its been a very long time since I have made a blog post. In fact it has been 5 months since my last post. Since then the site slowly started falling apart. Over the years I have leapfrogged from one free blogging service to the next. The last one I was using went under and closed up shop leaving my blog out in the cold. I guess you “get what you pay for”. Rather than quickly jumping to another free service and risk the same fate I chose to take a few months off and search for a better solution. Thanks to Wordpress I have finally found that solution. Let me take you on a quick tour of all the powerful new features of my new site.
A few weeks ago we took our first trip of the season to the beach. We stayed in Atlantic Beach for the night. After some delicious seafood at The Sanitary restaurant we took the dog for a walk on the beach before calling it a night. This was Peppers first experience with the beach. She wasn’t sure what to think at first. The next day we spent a few hours enjoying the sun. The water was way too cold to get in. We learned that Pepper is not very fond of the waves at the ocean. Not sure if she is scared of the sound or the way it moves or both. Nevertheless she still enjoyed digging tons of holes in the sand and then laying in them to stay cool. That black fur gets hot in the sun pretty quickly. The main purpose of the beach trip was to visit Lauren’s grandparents who live in that area. It had been a while since we had payed them a visit. After spending a couple hours visiting with them it was time to head home.
A few weeks ago I realized Mothers Day was around the corner. I decided to get serious about finding a way to scan all these photos and turn them into a Mothers Day gift this year. After more research I ran across this company simply named ScanMyPhotos.com While their website design was not very impressive their resume was. They had been around since 1990 (yes before digital photos existed) and they had glowing reviews from reliable sources like David Pogue at the NY Times. What really sold it was their ultra cheap $0.03 per scan price. I decided to give them a go. I followd the instructions and shipped the photos out the week before Mothers Day. I paid a little extra for shipping to CA since I was short on time. 2 days later my photos arrived at their headquarters as I received a confirmation email from them. Before I left work that same day I received another email that my photos were done scanning and the whole package with digital photos were being shipped back to me. I got them before the weekend and just in time for Mothers Day. Total cost under $100 including shipping. Needless to say when I shared this gift with mom and pulled up all the photos on the computer she was blown away. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in saving their photos.
Lauren's Blog