This entry was created using iTunes 7.7. Well technically it was created using Wordpress, but the instructions given were based on iTunes 7.7. I can’t imagine a whole lot will change in future versions but if they do I’ll be sure to update.

I’ll admit to living a life of piracy once upon a time, but those days are long over. I had way more songs than I ever knew what to do with and since I had so many I never even listened to most of them.

My music collection is now a 100% Industry and Economy friendly stockpile at around 5,100 songs. Since I paid for them I can enjoy them, but at times I used to still get tired of listening to them. It’s not so much that I don’t like a given song, but I might just not be in the mood for them for whatever reason. Of course, you can just set your music library to play randomly, but most of the time Final Fantasy Piano music followed by Dragonforce Heavy Metal doesn’t really flow together well. That’s where iTunes really shines - with Smart Playlists, and I’ll show you how to make the most of them.

My iTunes library has a hefty collection of what I (and millions of others) call Tags. Tags are just what you think they are, like those on Delicious, Last.fm and other popular social networking sites. Unfortunately iTunes doesn’t support Tagging, but it does support some rather powerful Smart Playlists if you know how to use them.

iTunes Tagging is nothing new and many people have their own methods for doing so, but I’ve done it my own unique way and am going to show you how. The process it takes to do this is a little time consuming, but totally worth it. I’ll explain how my iTunes library is set up as a starting point for you. You can (and should) of course alter it as you see fit for your own needs. It’s going to be assumed that you have other non musical files such as Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows and other such wacky items, so we’ll also need to create a Smart Playlist that filters these out for your purely musical ventures. Fire up iTunes and let’s get started!

For each and every Smart Playlist that I ask you to make, be sure that Match (all) of the following rules is checked.

• First, create a new Smart Playlist by going to File > New Smart Playlist.

• In the Smart Playlist window that opens up, choose the following from the drop-downs in this order: Podcast - is false. Add the following as well by clicking on the + button for each string: Playlist - is not - Movies | Playlist - is not - TV Shows | Playlist - is not - Music Videos.
• Click OK and you’ll be taken to the new Smart Playlist. If the Smart Playlist isn’t highlighted for text input, single click on it from the left sidebar and wait a second until it lets you input text. Name this Smart Playlist Music Only.
• Create another Smart Playlist by going to File > New Smart Playlist.
• In the Smart Playlist window that opens up, choose the following from the drop-downs in this order: Rating - is greater than - (and click on the dots until you have) 3 stars.

• Now click on the plus button and do the following in order: Playlist - is - Music Only
• Click OK and you’ll be taken to the new Smart Playlist. If the Smart Playlist isn’t highlighted for text input, single click on it from the left sidebar and wait a second until it lets you input text. Name this Smart Playlist Top Rated.
  

For the most part, neither one of these Smart Playlists you just created will ever need to be seen by you again - but they are important to have. If you want these out of the way then you can go to File > New Folder and stick these in there, then collapse the folder by clicking on the triangle next to it in the left sidebar. This is not necessary to do however.

Now comes the fun part: Tagging your songs. Admittedly this has been an ongoing process for me for quite a while now, but think I have it down pretty much to where it’s as streamlined as possible. Like I said before, iTunes does not support Tagging directly so I’ll show you how to trick it into doing so!

• Create a new folder under, get this: File > New Folder. I’ll assume that by now you have a firm grasp on how to do these little things without so much explanation anymore so I’ll just keep it simple and clean.
• Name the new folder you just created Music Tags.
• Click on the Music Tags folder so that it becomes active. By doing this, any Smart Playlist that you create will automatically be grouped in the Music Tags folder, unless you click off of it.
• Okay, I’m going to assume that you have some songs that could be classified as “Tingly,” meaning that anytime you listen to these songs you feel all warm and tingly. Keep in mind that this is just an example and you may not have any songs that make you feel tingly whatsoever. Incidentally, neither do I but I’m just showing you how to get Tagging to work so for now we’ll just stick with Tingly as our first iTunes Tag. So take some time to find a song that you can classify as Tingly. Go ahead, take your time. I’ll what I’ve written for you will wait, so no rush. What, no song that you can define as tingly? Ah, well just pick one it doesn’t matter - you can change it later.

• Make a Smart Playlist with the following conditions: Comment - contains - ;tingly; | Playlist - is - Top Rated and make sure it’s under your Music Tags folder. Rename this Smart Playlist to Tingly.
• Perfect, now we have a song that we want to Tag as tingly. Select the song that’s going to get this prestigious honor and go to File > Get Info. Make sure that this song doesn’t have any rating (stars) by going to the Options tab from the Get Info command and making sure that you don’t see any stars where it says My Rating.
• Once you’ve made sure there’s no rating, go to the Info tab. To make Tags work we’re going to use the Comments field. There’s only one drawback to using Tags, which is to enclose each of them in a special character such as ;. Below is an explanation as to why you need to do this, but for now put ;tingly; in the Comments field.

• The reason you want to enclose your Tags with a special character is because if you don’t, other Tags may pick up on a partial tag from the Comments field and ruin the intentions of that Smart Playlist. For example, if you have a Smart Playlist that you have set up to show the Tag metal; it would also pick up on heavy_metal; if you had that Tag as well. If you make your Tags ;metal; however, it would not show up in the ;heavy_metal; Smart Playlist because now you have ;h instead of ;m.
• Go now to the Tingly Smart Playlist you just created. Notice how it’s still vacant. This is to be expected and in fact desired. Head on back to the song that you Tagged as tingly and give it a rating of either 4 or 5 stars. Now go back to the Tingly Smart Playlist and you should see your Tingly song in there waiting for you, just begging to be listened to. Not only am I going to make you an iTunes Tag Whiz, I’m also going to show you a magic trick. While inside the Tingly Smart Playlist, give your song a rating of anywhere between 0 - 3 stars. Bada bing, it’s no longer going to show up as a Tag. That’ll help you impress the ladies. The reason (they no longer show up - the song, not the ladies) is because if you take a look at the conditions in your Tingly Smart Playlist, you’ll notice that one of the conditions say that a song must be in the Top Rated Smart Playlist. The Top Rated Smart Playlist which you created back in the beginning in turn says that a song will only appear in there if the song’s rating is greater than 3 stars. This is a very powerful feature if you have an iPod or iPhone with it’s limited capacity, ensuring that only the best of the best songs get loaded onto it.
• Many songs in my library have more than one Tag on it. No Doubt’s Underneath it All have the Tags ;alternative; ;love; ;reggae; with each Tag having it’s own unique Smart Playlist. As I said before, this is little time consuming at times because of the need to create Smart Playlists for each Tag, but it DOES make your digital life a lot more enjoyable. A good habit to get into is to create a Smart Playlist the moment you create a new Tag, and to also keep a simple text file with a log of all the tags you use just in case a Smart Playlist ever gets deleted on accident.

Before you go crazy Tagging your library, keep these things in mind:

• You don’t need to use ; but it’s easy to hit from the home row position. You could if you prefer use !,@,#,$ and so forth. I must insist however that you use some sort of special character to do this, because down the line you may come across some bumps along the way.
• To keep good clean habits, all of my Tags are in lower case. If a Tag spans more than two words like “New Wave”, use underscores so that it appears as ;new_wave;
• When you Tag music that has multiple Tags, keep them in alphabetical order. ;lullaby; ;music_box; ;nintendo; ;zelda; is going to be a lot more manageable than ;zelda; ;lullaby; ;nintendo; ;music_box; Otherwise, you may find yourself with more than a few duplicate Tags.

That pretty much sums up how and why you would want to use Tagging in iTunes. Now whenever you use iTunes, just click on one of your Tagged Smart Playlists from the left sidebar depending on what you feel like. For a little added treat, set Shuffle and Repeat Playlist on. In the next iTunes Series, I’ll show you how to make your most of your iPod or iPhone with your new Tags.

In case you were wondering, here is the majority of the Tags that I personally use:
accordion, alternative, ambient, angry, anime, arabian, banjo, bass grinder, battle, bemani, birthday, blipp-blopp, breakbeat, celtic, chillout, choral, christmas, classical, club, collaboration, concert, country, covers, dance, dark, dialog, disco, disney, dixieland, eerie, electronica, emo, enka, euro, floorfillers, fluttery, folk, french, funk, german, gothic, guitar, hair_metal, halloween, hands_up, harp, heavy_metal, hip-hop, holiday, industrial, instrumental, irish, j-pop, j-rock, karaoke, japanese, latin, live, love, lullaby, mash_ups, metal, music_box, musical, nature, new_wave, night, opera, orchestral, passion, piano, pop, punk, r&b, rap, reggae, remix, renaissance, rock, rockabilly, sad, shindig, ska, toy_piano, trance, vaudeville, vocal, waltz, water.

The night Tag has songs that sound good at night, usually some hard dance stuff from Cascada.
The water on the other hand isn’t as easy to explain. Think harps and xylophones. Some of the stuff Tagged with this if you’re familiar with any of them are the Fairy Themes from The Legend of Zelda series, the Prelude from Final Fantasy VII and so forth.

It’s only important that your Tags make sense to you.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a job with this kind of a schedule, but after an all-hands meeting (how I love those) on Thursday, the Big Wigs said that they were going to implement the 9/80 workweek starting in the beginning of September.

For anyone unaware of what a 9/80 schedule is, instead of working 8 hour days 5 days a week you work 9 hour days for 4 days a week.. sort of.

Think of it as a two-week grouping kind of a thing. Week 1 you work the normal 5 days, but 4 of those days are 9 hour shifts and that Friday is an 8 hour shift. The following week you work 4 days, 9 hours each day. So the total hours for week 1 come out to 44 hours, and the week 2 hours come out to 36 hours. 44 + 36 = 80 hours, which is what you get if you work 5 days a week for 8 hours a day. So you’re still working* technically the same amount of time as a 40 hour week, but just working more per day so that you can get a day off.

I liked it when I had this schedule before, but this new place better not try to screw you out of holidays. They said during the meeting that if a holiday happens to fall on an off-Friday that it’s just the luck of the draw. No, that’s working for free guys and Adam Lawton doesn’t work for free. He is not opposed to getting paid for doing nothing however.

Still, I wouldn’t mind working extra during the week and just having every Friday off. Or working even more during the week and having every Thursday and Friday off. Or just working 24 hours on Monday and taking all the other days off. It’s people like me who abuse the system. Oh well, that’ll be the dream until I can find a way to be self-employed. Hey, click on some ad links why doncha!

*surfing the web, throwing random objects at other employees, wandering aimlessly around the hallways, etc.

After much deliberation, I decided I’m going to stick with WordPress. I’m now able to mold it into my own twisted vision, plus some of the posts here are already permalinked to other sites. I want your children’s children to be able to enjoy this stuff someday.

Also my application for Google AdSense was approved last night, so I’m going to pimp this site out with links to things you never know you didn’t want. I’m sure it takes some time to properly crawl a site, but so far the contextual ads don’t seem to be working as they should be, as you can see in the image. But hey, if you’re into that sort of thing then click away!

One last note: I’m going to be working sporadically on the layout and design stuff, so that should give you something to look forward to. You know, if you’re into that whole “Can’t Live Without Adam Lawton’s Blog” thing.

Thanks to a Security Update from Apple, the record has been stopped dead in it’s tracks.  Thanks a lot Apple for the patch, now I have to start all over again.  Who cares about security!  21 Days, 3 Hours and 36 was the final uptime for the impromptu record.  I make it sound as if someone’s died, but fear not - after the update I restarted and am ready to go for yet another 21 days.

But seriously, thanks.

I almost didn’t go to Kung Fu tonight because for some reason my knee started to really bother me out of the blue and I could hardly walk.  I was a good little cohort though and stuck around to give it my all.

I went up against this one dude that I usually slug it out with when sparring time started.  We usually end up hurting each other pretty bad but tonight took the Chinese Food.  Not cake.  Get it?  Kung-Fu.

Anyway he went to kick me but yours truly blocked it and countered with a fist in the stomach.. just barely.  My arm really hurt after that block from his shin, but his shin hurt pretty bad from my arm.  Yin-Yang baby.  I took a look at my arm and at first thought that I broke the bone because there was a pretty gnarly lump there.  I rubbed it out and finished the bout, but unfortunately after that him and I went to do some punch/block drills.  Yeah, that really felt great on my forearm.  I do hope it leaves a cool mark or something though.  The swelling in the pic is a lot less than what it looked like at first unfortunately.

On a side note, today is my first day with no medical insurance.  Ah the life of a Contractor!

About a month ago I decided to hop aboard the dot-com bandwagon and become a total sellout. I signed up for a Google AdSense account to try to defer some costs. No not server costs, just the costs of this life of excess that I lead. They said it may take a few days to be able to start using it, but after a month without being able to log into that account I sent them an email. Apparently the registration process never completed for whatever reason, so even though I technically had an account where I could log in it was unusable.

The wonderful folks (see how I’m selling out already?) at Google were pretty quick to respond back and said that they have reset my account so that I can try again. I haven’t done so yet, but when I do ohhhh you’ll know.

So next time you come here and see ad after ad after ad, fear not. Those are your friends, and as your friends they deserve to be treated like a real friend would want to be treated - by clicking on them. Or to put into real life terms, by poking them repeatedly.

In a record setting event that’ll change the way we as a species look at computing forever, my Mac has officially been up for well over 19 days without a restart. More on this story as time continues to tick away.

Early this year I bought the MacHeist bundle which included a copy of 1Password. I haven’t actually given 1Password the light of day up until about a month ago, but I must say I should have been using it a long time ago. Instead of using my same ol’ 8 character passwords, they’re now all in the 20-50 random character wackiness range.

With the *free* release of 1Password on the App Store now, it’ll be the perfect compliment to my beloved new iPhone.

So just for kicks I went to the 1Password website today to look at the changelogs of the newest versions. I decided to look at the awards & testimonials page to see what kind of lies accolades were there when I saw what other people had to say.

Now I respect that Agile Web Solutions doesn’t change any verbage on other people’s reviews (especially since it feeds from the MacUpdate comments), but still you think they might want to fix 1Passport into something they actually made like oh say, 1Password.

1Password Testimonials

After waiting (im)patiently for well over a year, I finally decided to take the plunge and get an iPhone, on release day no less.  This is huge considering how much I hate cellphones, but seeing as how my 5G iPod needs to be replaced anyhow I figured why not.  I went to bed at around 4am thinking that I would get up at 7, spend an hour or so in line and head back home for some sleepage. Yeah, wrong!

I got to the AT&T store at 8 am only to see a line wrapping around outside. Screw that I thought, and headed over to the Apple Store over at the Mall of Millenia. Yeah, as you can imagine that wasn’t much better.

After being in line for 5 minutes or so an Apple Employee made his rounds and said that the wait time would be around 4 hours, and this was at about 8:15 am. Needless to say I didn’t end up leaving until 6 pm, but it was totally worth it.  They wouldn’t say how many units they had in the back room, but I was around the 400th person in line and they seemed to have plenty left of each of the three different models. Apple was kind enough to be handing out free bottles of Smart Water™ along with some bags of chips and such throughout the day though.  Of course, the sexy Emo girls working at the Apple stores are an added bonus.  I feel the need to go to some of those free one-on-one workshops that they do.. you know what I mean!

I didn’t think I would be using this thing as much as I am - in fact, this entire post so far has been written on the iPhone. Everything (except wi-fi) works seamlessly as does syncing with iTunes, and with the App Store the work day goes by a lot faster.  I don’t really say this enough but the box it comes with is pretty nice too.

It was going to be a one or another type of thing, but when the MacBook Tablet comes out I may have to get that as well just after seeing how well the iPhone works.

Well it’s been a while since an update, but it’s not entirely my fault. I’ve been having some problems with Wordpress, and while it’s pretty good for the most part there’s just too much spamming and updating to the system required. The updating would not be too big a deal except that in order to do an update you need to delete files from the server and add new ones, not to mention back up your MySQL database should something go wrong (which of course happened.)

While updating the site, it basically doesn’t exist. So if you were to navigate to it you would run into a boring ol’ blank page. I know how much all of you love reading these wacky entries but newcomers who stumble upon a blank page while visiting for the first time would be confused beyond belief, encountering a vast nothingness on a site which all of their friends and well-wishers directed them to.

I’ve also been working on the new unannounced site and trying to get that to work, so that has been taking up quite a bit of time as well. Fear not however, for during the past month or so of my absence I’ve been keeping a log of more zany posts for your amusement. A lot has happened so once I can get everything working again prepare to be entertained like you’ve never been entertained before.* Movie reviews, new toys, a much better job with my kind of laissez-faire attitude - it’s great! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve some blogging tools to research.

*in a clean, wholesome sort of way.

Today I gave my letter of resignation, and here it is below:

Ahoy friends and fellow ship mates:

Kungfully Yours,
Adam Lawton

Sunday, The final day of The Wrath of Con. Obviously this was the worst day of the con, only because it marked the end until next year, but incidentally it happened to be the best.

Checkout for the room was at 11, so knowing that I would be pretty busy with no chance to go back to the room before the deadline I packed my stuff in the car, left the key with my brother and headed off to the con floor one last time.

The VIP Brunch was scheduled from 9:30 - 10:30, but unfortunately none of the guests were even there. Had I of known that I definitely would have taken Virginia Hey’s Meditation class.

Richard had his final QA Session up next, so I went to go listen to him. He talked a bit more about Battlestar Galactica both new and old, as well as some more personal topics such as his lineage. He’s also having a couple cruises, one of which is coming up this summer that’s sailing from Long Beach, CA and features most of the original Battlestar Galactica cast. In May 2009 he is also going to have a 7 day cruise over in Alaska which sounds like it will be fun.

Gigi and Virginia came in immediately after for their QA, and of course I stuck around for that as well. They’re just so adorable together it’s hard not to enjoy them. More discussion about Farscape, and Virginia mentioned her feelings about Homeowner’s Associations. When they were finished with their questions, we had a quick little impromptu photoshoot with the both of them.

***

After their QA, I went over to Gigi and gave her a big hug and thanked her for an amazing weekend. I went around the floor and said goodbye to everyone just in case I didn’t see them before they left. I saw my homeboy Rick Albritton and got a photo with him, and also saw Tim, West and Ian and got photos with them too.

I got autographs from my pals Jerry and Virginia which I promptly put in the car for safekeeping. I thought they would be safe anyway, turns out my brother didn’t even lock the doors from when he packed his stuff up. Way to go there buddy!

I didn’t even realize it was past 2 so I went back to the ballroom to go see Jerry’s QA, but no one was in there. Someone said Jerry stopped by but didn’t see anyone in there either so he cancelled. Fortunately though a few minutes later I heard his QA was back up and ready to go, so I staked a seat up front and center. No one else was in there though except for another person who came in a bit later. When Jerry and Andrea came in they were laughing at the turnout. Jerry was like “is this it?!” He then said “we should just do this up in my room!” So after finally convincing the couple other people who came in for the QA, we all went up into Jerry and Andrea’s suite and held the QA in there. I don’t know about you, but I never expected to do that!

After the QA was over, I asked my good friend Jerry if I could get a photo with him. “Anything you need man,” he said and called over Andrea to get on the other side of me for the photo op. Thanks Uncle Jerry!

By this time it was around 4 and everyone was clearing out. Gigi had already left and I saw Virginia packing up her last few items from her table, so I went up and thanked her for everything with my hand extended for a hearty shake. Instead she gave me a big hug, which was so nice.

As I was getting ready to go I bumped into Ian one last time, and he asked for a quick interview to use on their Podcast CIA Shock. When that was all said and done, I found my brother and we headed out back to Orlando for the 7 hour trip.

All in all what can I say really that hasn’t been said? I could not have wished for a better experience at the con. Well technically I could have, I mean it’s pretty wild up in this brainpen but the point is I had an absolute blast. A sincere thanks to Rick Albritton, the man responsible for throwing this little con together, and thanks to everyone who was involved and who attended. I will be doing one last “Wrath of Con 2008 Afterthoughts” to tie up some final thoughts, but again I just wanted to say how great it was.

At the time of this post I have a few videos that I still need to post, but for now you can check out the rest of the gallery on flickr free of charge.

Welcome to the Wrath of Con, Day 2 review. Before going further I would just like to add that the photos taken at the event have been uploaded to flickr.

The day started a little late for me, I got to the floor at around 11am I think. I went to another one of Richard Hatch’s QA Sessions, and it was pretty much a lot of what he said from the day before. He showed his trailers for Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming and The Great War of Magellan again, but on top of that he also had a gag reel from the new Battlestar Galactica’s Season 2. It would be really nice if they released those on the DVDs..

Jerry Doyle and Andrea Thompson were up next so I just stuck around. A lot of the beginning discussion was about politics, and although I hate politics I actually found it to be pretty interesting. He talked a lot about his radio show too which covers a lot of the kinds of topics he was discussing. He was then asked a question about what he thinks of Las Vegas, his current home. In his words, “it’s a very ugly city.” He told us a story of one night while he was outside a thief came up behind him and one of his friends at gunpoint and demanded Jerry give him his money. Jerry flat-out refused to do so, and the thief fired a shot right next to him. Jerry and his friend went to file a report to the police, who said that they didn’t have any proof of this happening. “You’ve got tapes, this is vegas. You’ve got tapes of the guys watching the tapes.” When the police again declined, Jerry hired an attorney. Long story short, this stuff happens everyday in Vegas. If you’re a star, whether an A-lister or a small one Vegas likes to keep this sort of stuff under the lid. “Had this happened at a time the Mafia was running the city, it never would have happened.”

Richard’s acting class was bumped from 2pm to 4pm on account of everything running a little late, and I really wanted to get a picture with Gigi so I figured this was my chance. If I had one complaint about the Wrath of Con it would be that it’s enforced too strongly that any photos taken with an actor be done by the on-site professional Photographer. I’m sure there are good reasons for this, but I like pictures that are taken in the moment rather than a pretty backdrop.

***

I also bought one of Gigi’s Blue Shift posters and she was sweet enough to sign it for me as well. I carefully carried it back to my room for safekeeping.

It was about time for Richard’s class, so I got back to the Saint Andrew’s Ballroom and was ready to give the performance of a lifetime. The class was very well done; informative and a lot of fun. We did the usual acting class stuff where you stand around in a circle and introduce yourself. If I had to guess I would say that there were probably 20 or so people in the class altogether. After the circle of doom Richard said to find somebody across from you that you didn’t know and partner up with them. This is when I officially met Zarina, who asked to get married (jokingly of course.. right…?). Turns out the skit that we were to do involved us being a married couple who found out that the other was cheating on them. I did a pretty bad job with it just cause I was laughing so much, but better luck next time.

We returned to our seats and did 4 or so improv sketches where we called out random scenarios. I volunteered for one, where another guy and myself were competing for a Chimney Sweep job in London.

Not too long later it was time for the VIP Banquet. More and more people were in their costumes at this point, so I got a few shots of some of those. Once the Saint Andrews VI Ballroom was opened for us I took a seat, wondering out of curiosity who the guest at our table was going to be. You know how they say that when you sneeze your heart stops beating for a moment? Well I didn’t sneeze, but that’s pretty much what happened. Before I knew it Gigi was sitting right next to me. I got to have freakin’ dinner with Gigi Edgley, how cool is that! It was definitely one of those times where you’re like “oh please don’t let this end so soon,” but of course it does. I’m not going to be forgetting that anytime soon though, that’s for darn sure!

Rick Albritton being the generous man he is had Froggy go around everyone’s table and have photos of us taken. Since Aaron Douglas and Tahmoh Penikett were unable to make it, Rick let each of us have a copy of our photo at no charge. That was so nice of him.

As far as the dinner went, and aside from probably having the dumbest looking smile on me sitting next to Gigi, the meal was very good. We had salad, bread, and our main course (that I chose anyway) was a sort of roasted chicken or something. Top that off with one of the most chocolaty German cakes you’ll ever have and it was a wonderful meal. The table directly behind us had Richard Hatch seated there, but unfortunately Virginia Hey was unable to make the event.

Once 8pm rolled around the hotel staff started opening the dividers that separated the ballrooms. The costume lineup was beginning to get underway along with the Wrath of Con afterparty. Everyone did a great job with their costumes and it was fun to watch them all line up.

Then came the music! Pretty much a lot of the popular stuff you hear on the radio - Timbaland, Nelly Furtado, Timberlake, Haddaway, etc. They played Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean, to which my brother started Moonwalking. Gigi and another girl saw this and were Moonwalking with him too which was pretty funny. Gigi gave me one of those pink glowsticks that you get at Disneyland (which of course I saved) and I got to dance with her a little bit too. Richard was cutting a rug, and since this was probably the only time I’d ever be at a dance with Richard I figured why not have a little fun, so I did one of those hip thrust moves behind him that all the cool kids do. He laughed but he probably wanted to deck me, haha.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t dance, but I was having a lot of fun doing so anyway. All of my moves were basically limited to random arm flailing and Dance Dance Revolution stomping. Realizing that I would soon lose my edge I decided to modify some kung-fu forms that I had learned, and surprisingly it actually looked pretty decent. Modified Fifth Form is going to “sweep” the nation, no pun intended.

People were starting to leave at around 11 or so, and I bumped into Zarina again who invited me over to the pool where some of us were going to swim. There were a few of us out there, including Gigi, and everyone was getting in their underwear and jumping right on in. Fortunately for me that day happened to be a boxers day, so I thought what the heck and jumped right on in myself. I was really cold though, so I was moving around a lot. After half an hour or so of swimming we went up to Jerry’s room for party numero deux, but unfortunately Jerry had a little too much to drink so we decided to let the poor guy rest. Some of the Wolfpack Elite gang down the hall decided to have their own room party, but Hotel Management ended up evicting them, although from what I hear they let them back in later.

I met Gadget from the Wolfpack Elite boards up in the hall where him and his friends were kicked out. He was extremely wasted so I helped the poor guy to the elevator and back to the con floor. The small handful of us went back to the original dance floor in Saint Andrew’s V. Gadget for some reason saw it necessary to have 2 bags of hot dog buns in his backpack and seconds passed when there were buns all over the floor. There were so few people at the party there and not to mention that I was getting pretty sleepy, so I decided to just call it a night. I ended up going to bed at 2am which is pretty early for me, albeit I was one happy camper.

Stick around tomorrow for the final Day 3 wrap-up, along with afterthoughts and all kind of other wacky goodness!

The day started out a little slow. By the time I got to the con floor which was around 9 or 10 there were a few people standing around, and the dealers were continuing to arrive and set up shop.

Not too long after Richard Hatch arrived and I was able to introduce myself. I got an autograph from him and he was kind enough to take a photo with me. He was also having an Acting Class the next day which of course I knew I had to attend, so I bought a ticket for that as well.

I saw Jerry Doyle wandering around a little later and he remembered my name from the night before. He gave me a big bear hug (one of soon to be countless) and asked how it was going.

Soon after both Virginia Hey and Gigi Edgley arrived as well. At one point a little while later I was walking by their tables when Gigi came up to me and introduced herself. She said she saw me walking around and told me her name was Gigi.. like I didn’t know! : ) Very nice and unexpected of her to do, she is such a dear.

Jerry came up to me again and asked if I was staying at the hotel. He said that he was having a room party later that night up in his presidential suite, took out his room key and showed me the room number. “Should be pretty easy to remember right?” he asked. Yeah, Jerry Doyle had just invited me to his room party..

WarEagle of the Wolfpack Elite boards also came up to me and said hi. He then pointed out Moshi whom I went and gave greetings to.

I went to some of the QA sessions, the first of which was Richard Hatch’s. He was talking about Battlestar Galactica, both new and old and his feelings for the new show. When he first heard that they were going to do a remake he was pretty upset, but once he saw what it was he was very pleased - along with anyone else who’s ever seen the show.

He showed the trailers he did for a continuation of the original Battlestar Galactica which took place 30 years later. Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming was the name of it, and though the graphics were a little on the hokey side it’s really quite good considering it was done around 1999. He also showed a trailer for a series he is currently working on, The Great War of Magellan. Richard is a big Sci-Fi fan, and he was talking about what he thinks of different studios in general. He made some really good points on how networks give the can to great Sci-Fi shows, Firefly being a prominent one that he mentioned, and pointed out how studios only focus on Neilsen ratings instead of merchandise and even DVD sales. Richard said as an example that if people could pay $10 a month for shows that they wanted to watch - rather than most of the shows on a given subscription-based channel most people don’t even care about - the show would still be on to this day. If a single episode of Firefly cost 2.5 million dollars to produce and only a million people paid $10 a month, well you can see that there is much profit to be made.

After Richard’s session, it was Virginia and Gigi’s turn. Even though I have yet to see Farscape (yes I feel horrible about it, but I will be getting the series soon) I wanted to hear what they had to say just because they are such great people. Though they did talk a bit about the show, they also talked about acting in general too which I found fascinating.

Later on was the VIP Cocktail Party. By this time it was around 6pm so I went back to my room to get cleaned up and sit down for a sec, then went out on the patio for the event. At first there was hardly anyone there, so a nice couple who I would later become friends with, the Ostenbergs, invited me over to their table. We were chit-chatting about the convention and sci-fi in general. It was pleasantly strange because a couple people came up to me and asked “oh you’re the guy with the blog right?” It’s always a blast when people know your name and you don’t know theirs. Just kidding! Not too long later Virginia came at our table right next to me and joined us. I forget how, but we started talking about computer security and Virginia told us that when Farscape was airing how “fans” would hack into her system for fun and move her cursor around and the like. Gigi and Virginia had to leave early for some reason, but later on Gigi came back - and then we went up to Jerry’s room for the party.

Again, not that many people were really there. I met Buddhaful and some others of the Wolfpack Elite, and also a pretty devoted die-hard fan of the new Battlestar Galactica who’s name escapes me at the moment. He was a Physician though and his girlfriend’s name I’m pretty sure was Andrea.

I was talking with Gigi again and she asked me why I didn’t have a drink. I told her that I don’t drink, and she really wanted to make me one. I mean, how can I say no to that? So I followed her and she made me a vodka orange snapple something or another, and I went back over to the sofa with her. I honestly only took a couple small sips, but just the fact that Gigi made me a drink is one for the books. She left after a while, and after partying for a bit I was really sore from standing all day. Uncle Jerry was on the sofa so I took a seat next to him, and the bear hugs were even mightier than before. He was pretty sloshed, and at this point I’m going to have to omit some details hehe. I really like the guy though, he’s very wise and has some great stories to share.

Richard was there too for a while and ended up spilling a drink all over the floor. He wasn’t hammered or anything, but it was pretty funny.

The party pretty much died down by around midnight and I ended up leaving at 1 or so. That was my amazing day, and stay tuned tomorrow for The Wrath of Con: Day 2!

Welcome to Part 0 in the Wrath of Con series! Part 0 because this takes place before the Con actually starts. There are a few stories, photos and videos that are going to have to be cut from this out of respect to the actors/actresses though.

I was really disappointed when I found out that Aaron Douglas and Tahmoh Penikett were not going to be able to make it out - not disappointed in anyone, just the way things turned out. I was bummed again when last minute replacement guest Lucianna Carro was not going to make it either, but c’est la vie.

My brother and I left around 9:15 am on Thursday, I figured why not get up there early. The 6 1/2, 380 mile drive proved my point. We got to the hotel at around 2:30 with me not realizing that there was a time zone change from central to northern Florida, go figure.

So enough of the non-con related stuff, who cares about that right?!

No one was on the Con floor. Since that was the case, I decided to roam around the hotel a bit and see what was there. 15 minutes and 2 rounds along the hotel area later I went back to where the con was going to take place and just relaxed on one of the sofas there for a while. Quite a while later Tim Riley who I assumed might have been Rick Albritton was going ballroom to ballroom scouting out and the like. Rick Albritton, Presenter and Head Promoter of the show came in the floor and recognized me from a photo at Megacon with Leah Cairns. Very good man, he really put his all into this con and it certainly showed. I also met Ian and West of the CIA Shock podcast, both of which are two cool gents. I was officially dubbed fan #1 for the Wrath of Con!

After walking around a bit more, I walked right past Virginia Hey as she was checking in. I didn’t say anything though because I didn’t want to be a bother.

As it became evening, head security Tammy and Chris arrived along with some of the dealers and authors. I hung out with Tammy and Chris hearing stories of some of their outings at other cons, which were pretty funny.

They left to go do some more of their surveying, and at this point I was relaxin’ on one of the chairs in the hallway when I saw Jerry Doyle walk by. He went outside to have a smoke break, and then came back in and sat down next to me and one of the security personnel. Jerry was talking about politics and how the “smoking playground” is becoming smaller and smaller. He got up to leave a little later, patted me on the back and when I said “it was nice to meet you Mr. Doyle” he said “call me Jerry, don’t ever call me Mr. Doyle again.” Very fascinating and smart man he is. Little did I know that we were going to become good friends.. at least I thought so anyway.

With more and more dealers coming in I decided I might as well do something and help out, so I did a little setting up with some of the dealers. It was around midnight or so when they closed up so I went back to the room, showered, and went to bed. I set my alarm for around 9 and ready for the con to begin!

**Also a free beauty tip**

I forgot to pack shaving cream, so I had to resort to using in-room body lotion/body wash. I only ever break out when I shave, which I knew was going to happen. In fact I was already getting bumps starting to appear, so remembering a helpful tip I’ve heard somewhere I put dabs of toothpaste on likely areas. Lo and behold, in the morning all was fine!

..wow. Even though this was only my second con, I seriously seriously doubt that any other will be able to top this one any time soon, if not ever.

I’m tired and bummed, but that’s only because I’m at work right now. Within the week I will be posting photos, (appropriate) video, and Better-Late-Than-Never™ bloggage about the greatest weekend in the history of great weekends.

I will be gone

for Wrath of Con

tomorrow until

Sunday yet still

it seems too short

with no Douglas or Penikett.. ort

Hopefully Lucianna Carro will be there.. or even Leah Cairns to make up for this!

With fuel prices the way they are, wouldn’t you think America’s most rowdy “sport” would be a popular target for all of us complaining about fuel prices? I mean we all know that Nascar is an exciting tour-de-force and call me crazy, but going around a few hundred times in a circle seems to be a rather waste of fuel if you ask me. At the risk of sounding unpopular I think that Nascar should be nothing more than a forgotten tale so that fuel prices can go down for chumps like you and me.

Dear George Lucas,
Please stop making movies. They were good 20 years ago when there was little to no CGI, but now they have become a huge crutch. You have ruined Indiana Jones and Star Wars, and I’m afraid that you’re not going to stop there.

Sincerely,
Adam Lawton

..a group of posers thought it would be a great idea to carjack my buddy Alex’s Honda. In broad daylight. By the time I ran out to try to catch them they were already gone, so we all hopped on a couple of pickup trucks in true Florida yee-haw fashion and gave chase.

We went through a wooded trail too, which was probably a bad idea since they may have had weapons. It sure was a rush though!

We didn’t find them but T-Dutt got their license plate tag, and it looks like the cops were able to pull some prints. Oh well, maybe next time we’ll be able to actually catch ‘em all!

First the bad. Tuesday night while dropping my mom off to pick up the truck my power steering goes out RIGHT as I’m turning into the place. I’m thinking sabotage, what else could it be? I called mini the next (wednesday) morning and made an appointment to get it fixed. Of course it drove perfectly fine on the way to the repair shop. As it turns out the pump blew and was out of power steering fluid, and the repair cost was a cool $1,044. Chump change, although now I can’t afford that ivory backscratcher I’ve had my eyes on. On the way home tonight (friday) too another mini motorist pulled up next to me and informed me that my right driving light was out. Gotta love the mini!

Now the good! Yesterday (thursday) I got a flickr add by some chick. I was like nice it’s all starting to come together.. but then it said that this person had marked me as family. On closer inspection it turned out to be my aunt! I haven’t seen her or anyone on that side in like 10 years. My wacky aunt is awesome AND a fantastic arteest. I found myself unusually happy, I hope that my cousins say whats up too.

I ordered the Canon PowerShot SD1000 last week as a replacement to my Sony Cybershot. Stay awayyyy from Sony cameras! Incidentally I will be selling my old camera on Amazon so if I were you I’d buy it off of me.

So far I’m pretty impressed with the new PowerShot though. It’s the top point-and-shoot seller on Amazon, and the price ain’t bad either for what you’re getting.

I really like doing photography now; it’s kind of a stress reliever in a way. I’m going to start learning more about basic photography principles so that I don’t have to futz around with each and every image in Photoshop, and am also going to be using the video recording feature quite a bit as well. You know, to break into cinematography. It’s not that I don’t like doing 3D work but it’s nice changing it up, and it seems like it’s a good skill to have.

So to sum up, after one day’s use I am very happy with the new camera. Most photos I’ve taken don’t even have flash on and they’re coming out much better than the Sony Cybershot ever did.

From now on my flickr page will be updated with 7.1 megapixel wackiness, courtesy of Canon.

What a day, what a day! Not only did I manage to wake up before the crack of noon but the world watched in awe as Mike Shipes celebrated his 39th birthday, an annual tradition dating back to roughly 39 years ago our sources say.

For those of you reading this post because you typed the word “awesome” into a Google search, let me enlighten you to the wonder we’ve all come to refer to as Mike. Mike is a good man, some may even dare say a great man. Self proclaimed Huguenot, Mike made the long and treacherous journey to the small province of Jernigan a place now known as Orlando. There he helped establish schools, medical facilities, gay bars, a clean water supply, and the local Elk Lodge - everything an aspiring family needed to survive the rigors of the evolving world.

Enter 2008. I had trouble making my way to this VIP and invite-only party as the Shipes residence was surrounded by reporters, paparazzi and fans alike. Hours later after fighting my way through crowds spanning several city blocks I found myself greeted by none other than Mike himself. Words cannot explain the caliber of entertainment to be had at this “gayla”. Instead, let the pictures do the talking and give you a taste of what you have missed. Videos for this once in a lifetime event will soon be available online as well.

Because many people were unable to attend this event, the photos will be available free of charge on flickr.

I’m wanting to get a HD Video Camcorder but am trying to talk myself out of it. You know, like telling myself how I’ll be saving over $800 and such. After long deliberation I have decided that while it would be nice having said HDCam, I probably wouldn’t get a whole lot of use out of it apart from going to Wrath of Con. If it were the size of a digital camera on the other hand, I would be all over it like a hobo on a ham sandwich.

Anyway I’m going to get a new camera nonetheless because my Sony DSC-S500 isn’t cuttin’ the cheese anymore. The quality is great.. in bright outdoor scenes, but otherwise it usually comes out grainy and or blurry. Here is some video at the highest possible setting, which is 320×240. After playing with my mom’s Kodak EasyShare V1253 I’m probably going to go with that. 9MP shots with 720p video, and the quality seems pretty nice not to mention the thing looks and sounds awesome.

But without any further ado, I now present to you “T-Dutt -VS- HR”. Check out some of the cool effects done later in the video. I uploaded it to my Mac and did some sweet effects. I was gonna enter it into some festivals but that’s not what this is about. It’s also the perfect way to test out video on flickr. Now that’s what I call being proactively active!

Alright, let’s see. Funny.. something funny..

Hmm can’t think of a thing. We went to Universal again today, this time bringing along Mike and Duvan, while dropping Alex and Puddy. Was it a fair thing to do? Perhaps not. But then again, perhaps so. If we would have gone + or - 5 it would not have been a balanced party and we would not have been able to do all the rides without getting banned. Ladies and gents don’t judge me too harshly though, let the photos speak for themselves.

We only went on 2 rollercoasters, or “things that go real fast and are over even faster” as I like to call them. I just made that up myself, can you believe it? I know. Instant classic. Next time we go though I want to just hit ride after ride till I get sick. It was pretty dog-gone hot, especially waiting in the line for The Hulk.

We did see a few shows though, most notably the Horror Make Up Show. I didn’t know what to expect going into it, but it was funny and well done. Poseidon’s Fury on the other hand.. well let’s just say that they did a phenomenal job with the d�cor, but they need to lose the show and turn it into a ride or something. All in all a good day though.

Universal Studios: April 14th, 2008 set on flickr.

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