For what it’s worth, I went and edited it a bit, removing the music visualizer stuff and just making it spin according to your mouse position over it. Fun stuff. Check it out (P.S. Get Flash 10, Now!):

My business partner, Chris Tingom, came along (he rode in the other balloon) and he took a video of the experience, and a few photos. I took a video as well, but he beat me to the punch in getting something up online, so I’m just going to show you his stuff for now. At some point, I’ll eventually get mine all edited and up online for viewing, but that could be a while.

Now, I just want to take a moment to emphasize the fact that I’ve never been a good bowler, probably only bowling a couple of times a year (if that). Even with my best attempts, I have never really averaged more than around 115.

I *do* enjoy bowling, though, so I was pleasantly surprised when my Aunt Pam bought me a pair of bowling shoes as a gift. They are extremely comfortable (maybe even more so than my normal shoes), and fit me perfectly. Bowling shoes usually rent for $3-5, so bowling just got that much more affordable.

Since receiving the shoes, I have gone bowling a couple of times and have been amazed by what a difference they made. Each time I bowled, everything just seemed to click… Literally overnight, my average game went up over 20 points!

At any rate, last week I went bowling with my two buddies, Brian Shaler and John Murch, and I bowled a 201!! Now, I know that a lot of people out there bowl around 200 all the time, but for me that was a big deal (the highest I’ve ever bowled). I even got a print-out of the scores (upon Brian’s recommendation) as proof!

So, yeah. Go get yourself some bowling shoes!

100 Facts About Literally Anyone

Basically, you put in someone’s name, and it returns 100 (funny) “facts” about the person.

Let me know what you think!

The way I see it, it’s practically a guaranteed sale…

“Sorry, we’re not interested in whatever you’re selling! In fact, we hate door to door sales people!”

“Well in that case, you’ll love this sign!”

The best part about it is that if they don’t buy the sign, you can just come back every week until they do. After all, they don’t have a sign saying you can’t!

If someone paints a picture by number, this is not art. They are not “creating” something from nothing. They are only following directions in the same sense that your printer might follow instructions from your computer. Would you call your printer an artist? No. It’s just a machine following instructions.

If a young piano player presses the keys on a piano in exactly the manner he/she is instructed to and hammers out a musical sequence, this also, is *not* art. It would *only* be “art” if the student were to connect with the music on some level and create a *new* song or variation using their imagination.

So when you ask someone what art is, why do you get so many different responses? Why is there so much ambiguity in the overall definition of the word? If you ask one person if a trash can is a piece of art, they might say “yes”, whereas another person might promptly reply, “No!”

I believe this problem arises from the way how humans arrive at definitions in their mind largely from context. They see an amazing painting and they hear it referred to as “art”, so they assume that “art” is defined only as “an amazing painting”. Another person might hear a piece of music or poetry referred to as “art”, so they come to the conclusion that “art” is defined as “music and poetry”.

As a result, if you stick the two people together, they might hem and haw and argue for days about what “art” is and what it means. Eventually they might arrive at the conclusion that “art” is defined as “amazing paintings, music, or poetry”.

The problem is quite simple. They’re failing to look at the true underlying concept that all these items share: None of these things would have been possible without human imagination and creativity.

So what about all the other paintings? You know, the crappy ones that never make it to a museum? Are they art? The people that created them would most certainly argue that they were! After all, many of the most famous paintings weren’t given proper credit until long after the artist was gone. It appears that “amazing” isn’t necessarily a requirement for something to be “art”.

You see, there are many different kinds of “art”, some of which are fascinating and amazing (the Mona Lisa, etc…), but there are countless other day-to-day creative expressions (an email written to a friend or a new spin on a pastry dish, for example) which are largely ignored.

However, just because a “creative expression” is ignored as “art” doesn’t make it “not art”. All it means is that it’s not intriguing or amazing art. It’s boring art. It’s every-day art. Or… something.

At around 45,000 miles, I noticed that my car had developed a “ticking” sort of noise in the engine during acceleration. However, once the engine got warmed up the noise went away, so I didn’t give it much thought. My extended warranty wasn’t going to expire till 60,000 miles and I figured that if the problem got worse I would just have to make sure to have it checked into before then.

At around 55,000 miles (a couple of days ago), I finally decided to do something about it (that warranty expiration was getting too close!). So I drove the car up to a local Nissan dealership, where I left it overnight (so they could hear the cold engine ticking the next morning). At first, they couldn’t replicate the problem, but I persisted, and they were eventually able to hear it.

Turns out, my engine had developed “piston slap”, where the pistons were hitting the side of the cylinders when they went up and down. The compression in cylinder #1 was only 90 PSI, when it was supposed to be 175 PSI! Not only that, but there was scoring of the metal where it had been rubbing together, and there were metal shavings in the oil. So yeah, not pretty.

So they gave me a new engine.

How do you like that? 5,000 miles from warranty expiration and my used car gets a whole new lease on life! I hope it lasts me a long time, because I still owe a small fortune on that darn car.

Just this last Friday, we landed a job with Warner Bros. Records, revamping a multi-media CD for Green Day. The deadline was Tuesday, and we actually managed to meet it (although I had to work practically all weekend). Then, out of the blue, they referred *another* project to us, a multi-media cd for the Gipsy Kings. The deadline for that CD was Wednesday (today), and we managed to meet it, too! So yeah. Things have been pretty crazy lately.

In other news, I re-vamped my living room last week! I got a new entertainment center and a much-needed coffee table that I’ve been wanting for a long time. I’ll have to post some pictures or something.

eNTj:
“Fieldmarshals will usually rise to positions of responsibility and enjoy being executives. They are tireless in their devotion to their jobs and can easily block out other areas of life for the sake of their work. Superb administrators in any field — medicine, law, business, education, government, the military — Fieldmarshals organize their units into smooth-functioning systems, planning in advance, keeping both short-term and long-range objectives well in mind. For the Fieldmarshals, there must always be a goal-directed reason for doing anything, and people’s feelings usually are not sufficient reason. They prefer decisions to be based on impersonal data, want to work from well thought-out plans, like to use engineered operations — and they expect others to follow suit. They are ever intent on reducing bureaucratic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion in the workplace, and they are willing to dismiss employees who cannot get with the program and increase their efficiency. Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing its goal. Fieldmarshals root out and reject ineffectiveness and inefficiency, and are impatient with repetition of error.”

eNTp:
“ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue–both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills. They tend to have a perverse sense of humor as well, and enjoy playing devil’s advocate. They sometimes confuse, even inadvertently hurt, those who don’t understand or accept the concept of argument as a sport.

ENTPs are as innovative and ingenious at problem-solving as they are at verbal gymnastics; on occasion, however, they manage to outsmart themselves. This can take the form of getting found out at “sharp practice”–ENTPs have been known to cut corners without regard to the rules if it’s expedient — or simply in the collapse of an over-ambitious juggling act. Both at work and at home, ENTPs are very fond of “toys”–physical or intellectual, the more sophisticated the better. They tend to tire of these quickly, however, and move on to new ones.

ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they tend to become extremely petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they tend to regard as challenges, and tackle with determin- ation.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, if not charming, when not being harassed by life in general.”

However, I *have* at least managed to play around with something new today: Adobe After Effects

Check out what I made after about 3 hours of tinkering (click the image to view the video):

Wow.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. You heard me. Skinny boy is getting chubby on the edges. My pants no longer fit me correctly, and the six pack is long gone.

Therefore, I have undertaken a new hobby: Getting back into shape.

Keep in mind now, this is no easy task. However, I have been preparing myself mentally for this moment for a long time and I know exactly what I have to do to attain my goal. Lack of fitness knowledge isn’t the problem as much as my inherit tendencies towards an unhealthy lifestyle are.

The treadmill in the workout room at my apartment complex is starting to get used to my old tennis shoes. Yesterday I walked 2 miles. Today it was 5 miles!

Here’s one of the tools I’m going to be using to attain my goal: Traineo

If you want to watch my progess, check out my traineo page!

And now, for Thomas Chapin’s fitness tip of the week!

Two words: Green Beans.
Yeah, you heard me! Green Beans. Preferably french-style (without strings!), for best taste. A can might cost 50 cents, fills up an entire bowl, and a serving size only has *20 calories*.

So next time you get that empty feeling in your stomach, instead of reaching for a bag of chips, do the following:
1. Grab a can of french-style green beans, open it, and pour it into a bowl.
2. Microwave for 90 seconds.
3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Munch.

Do you realize that your body would have to process over 50 cups of green beans in a day before you reached the recommended daily average of 2000 calories? Trust me, you’re not gonna gain weight with this stomach-filling snack, and you’ll be getting some of your daily veggies while you’re at it.

The down side is all the sodium…

Now, this is a real problem. I mean, what would I do if a cop pulled me over for an impromptu alcohol test? I can imagine it now, “Mr. Chapin, please stand on one leg, touch your nose with your index finger, and recite the alphabet backwards for me”. To which I would reply, “err… uh… but I can’t!”, and would end up in jail even though I was sober as could be.

These are the kind of thoughts that go through my head whenever my body is inactive and my mind refuses to shut off (usually when I’m either attempting to go to sleep, or when I’m taking a shower). Yup. Some of my best insights take place while I am washing my hair.

So anyways, I immediately set about to teach myself the alphabet backwards. To make it interesting, I resolved to do it all entirely in my head without using a piece of paper or writing device even once. This may be ridiculously easy for some of you, but I’m one of those people who can only recite the alphabet in sing-song. Take away the song, and I’m lost even when I’m going forward! Whenever I’m indexing things in alphabetical order (like a file cabinet, for instance), I end up singing the alphabet song in my head every time I need to figure out whether “e” comes before “f”. This usually means that the alphabet song gets sung in my head a couple hundred times before I’m finished.

Ah. The dangers of learning things in sing-song…

Here’s the method that I contrived and used to re-teach myself the alphabet both forwards and backwards while I was laying in bed:

1. Sing the alphabet in my head to find the first three letters, “abc”.
2. State the three letters in my head to myself again, but this time in normal tone, “abc”.
3. Reverse the three letters and state them to myself again, “cba”.
4. Mentally draw the shapes of the letters in forwards order.
5. Mentally draw the shapes of the letters again, but this time in reverse order.
6. Repeat until it feels “natural”.
7. Repeat steps 1 through 6, over and over, making three letter sequences for all the letters in the alphabet: abc, def, ghi, jkl, mno, pqr, stu, vwx, yz
8. Practice chaining together the first couple of sequences in my head, “abc, def”.
9. Practice chaining together the same sequence, but this time in backwards mode, “fed, cba”.
10. Repeat until it feels “natural”.
11. Repeat steps 8 through 10 to chain together the remaining sequences.
12. Haltingly practice saying the alphabet backwards, one sequence at a time, “zy, xwv, uts, rqp, onm, lkj, ihg, fed, cba”.
13. Repeat over and over until it feels “natural”.
14. Speed up recitation and attempt to find the sing-song rythm, “zyxwvut srqponmlk jih gfe dc b and a”.
15. Go to sleep and let my subconscious mind ponder the changes to my brain.
16. Wake up in the morning and recite the alphabet forwards and backwards while taking a shower.
17. Recite forwards and backwards both before sleeping and after waking up, for an entire week.

The biggest thing that gets people all excited about the idea of time travel is Einstein’s theory of relativity, which basically states that, well, everything’s relative.

For example, there’s no way to measure how fast the earth is moving through space because that depends entirely on your viewpoint. If you are standing on earth, it seems like it’s at a stand-still. But if you’re standing on an asteroid that is zipping along at 1,000 miles a second past the earth, then the earth looks like it’s moving really fast.

People have taken the concept of relativaty where it applies to movement and they have mistakenly tried to apply it to time. The reason why they do this is because humans identify and measure the process of time according to the movement of things (i.e. movement of hands on clock, movement of planets and stars, etc…). Technically, if all movement ceased to exist, there would be no way to measure time, so it would appear to have come to a stand-still. However, time would still be moving along at it’s normal rate, even though nobody would be able to measure it. You can’t change time by moving things any more than you can go back in time by moving the hands on your clock.

Here’s another thing that confuses people about time travel, making them think it’s possible: The speed of light.

Light travels at 186,282 miles per second, and the distance it travels in a year is called a “light year”, or 5,878,625,373,184 miles.

The most distant galaxies that our human instruments can detect are at least 10 billion light years away. Some people would say that the fact that we can see this light is evidence that the universe is at least 10 billion years old, because the light had to take that long to get here. Others say that God just flicked a switch and made the all the light from those distant stars just “instantly” travel the distance to earth when He created it.

There’s no way to know for sure, but we at least know this: Light generally takes a long time to travel over long distances.

We also know that humans see using light. Light bounces off of things and hits the back of your eyes, where the resulting signals are interpreted by your brain.

Now here’s the interesting bit. Look up into the sky. If you were to see a star that was exactly one “light year” in distance from the earth, you would effectively be seeing *into the past*. The light hitting your eyes has been travelling that distance for an entire year and is just now reaching you.

When scientists look at a star 10 light years away and they watch it explode, that is an explosion that actually took place 10 years ago! Crazy, huh?

Let’s say we figured out how to travel faster than light, and we flew 100 light years in distance from earth. Then, using an amazingly powerful telescope, if we were to focus in on earth, we would be seeing light that was 100 years old. If you zoomed in a little closer, you might even see people walking around in 1906 clothing, doing whatever people did in 1906.

Does this mean you “travelled back in time”? No! All you did was change your perception of it! It would basically be like rewinding a video-tape to see previous footage. Can you interact with the footage? Nope. It’s just light.

On that same note, you should be able to understand why you can’t “move forward” into time. You can’t change your perception to something that hasn’t taken place! The best you could do would be move close enough to the object in question so that you could see it in the now, instead of merely distant light from the past.

Hopefully now you understand what all the fuss was over time travel and einstein’s theory of relativity, and the speed of light. You should also be able to make sense of all the time travel nonsense that Hollywood puts out. Or at least I hope so…

Sprint IP Relay (http://www.sprintip.com)

Basically, you can type in the phone number of someone on the web site and a relay operator (real person) will call them. The relay operator will tell the person on the phone whatever you type. You can literally carry on a completely anonymous phone conversation (for the most part) with anyone of your choice, over the internet. For free.

This service is meant mainly for the deaf and hard of hearing, but my curiosity got the best of me and I tried calling myself with it. Sure enough, my phone rang a couple of seconds later and a real person was on the other end ready to read off whatever was typed over the internet. I typed a couple of phrases to myself like, “Hello!” and “How are you doing?”. It was really creepy hearing a stranger read it back to me over the phone.

After I saw it was real, I didn’t want to waste any more of the operator’s time, so I disconnected. In retrospect, I wouldn’t recommend wasting their time like I did. So yeah. Don’t do that.

One of my best friends is deaf, so I’ll probably tell him about this service since he always has a hard time understanding people over the phone. Now he can talk to them by typing on the internet. Cool!

For those of you who want to try a different flavor of webpage-to-phone calling, check this web page out. You can make up to 10 calls to any phone number, from any phone number (fake caller ID), complete with a selection of computerized voices to read your typed message. Entertaining. I used it to call my fiancee and she was pretty freaked out.

I tend to be somewhat random at times, so I suggested to Samantha that we should go to the Grand Canyon. Neither of us had ever seen it and we figured it was about time. Technically, it’s only a 3-4 hour drive from Phoenix, so there wasn’t much of a reason not to. 30 minutes later, we were in the car and on our way!

While we were there, I attempted to take a couple of panoramic photos using the Autostitch method (see the apartment image in one of my previous entries for more details).

I ended up snapping a grand total of 300 photos, which I then pieced together to form the following larger photos. Click on a photo below to view the larger version.

And last, but *definitely* not least… A 360 degree panoramic image which I took while standing at the edge of the canyon. This is a must-see!

I also took a bunch of other photos, which I will attempt to put online in my photo journal here soon.