Obama Inauguration on Flickr by John W.

Well today we ushered in a new era. I’m not sure exactly what I want to say about this, except that President Obama’s Inaugural Address was beautiful, as was the inaugural poem. I have stolen the New York Times transcriptions of these for safe keeping, but I’m going to publish my copies here.

• President Obama’s Inauguration Speech
• Elizabeth Alexander’s Inaugural Poem

Finally the above image was grabbed off of Flickr, which has a great pool of photo’s from the event.

• Flickr’s Inauguration Pool

Welcome to another four years.

/Nat

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Apparently I have a strange view of life. It’s not overly cynical, nor does show how to rule the world. It is not centered on video games, tools, food or technology. These views can be found elsewhere.

What I see is art. I don’t see art in everything, but I do see it in a lot of things. Today as I was listening to music, I felt that I should share that on my blog, because, where else do we share these sorts of things?

So what I want to talk about is Album Art.

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I just read an amazing article on Kotaku titled “I,Gamer”.

This article really spoke to me, because I find more often than not, I am more interested in the community behind a topic or trend then I do the actual topic/trend. It’s not that I don’t enjoy and love said topic, because otherwise I would never have initially gotten involved with the community.

Some examples of things this has happened:

Linux: first NBLUG then CPLUG

World of WarCraft: The diversity of people, guilds, and the forums. I’m more of a watcher of this community, mainly because I’m not nearly as hardcore as most, but I enjoy the culture non-the-less.

Jedi Knight II: O how I loved this game, in fact it’s probably the game that got me hooked on FPS, and I never beat it. Want to know what happened? I fell in love with The Jedi Academy. This was an amazing place that promoted teaching others cool things in the game. In my mind it was basically a never ending online Bar Camp.

Web 2.0/Social Media: Bar Camps, Twitter, the whole community behind it. Here’s to someday maybe getting invited to FooCamp.

Wordpress: This is what actually got me hooked on Web 2.0. Back when 1.2 hit I spent a lot of time on the plugin forums learning about PHP and helping others.

Case Modding/Computer Hardware: Let’s not even talk about this. I was very active in a few communities, namely Hardware Geeks, but I visited and posted on probably around 20 different forums and followed around 50 different blogs.

There have been a few other communities I’ve been active in, namely MegaTokyo and Penny-Arcade,  but my involvement there is similar to my involvement to WoW. I follow what happens in the community, but I rarely participate.

Anyways, I’d like to end with a quote from the article:

“it’s not because we’re gamers. It’s not even because we’re hardcore gamers. It’s because we’re such fanatical culturalists that we forget about the middle ground.”

/Nat

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So I was reading John’s Post and I started to think about my life plan. Needless to say, it’s not really a plan, but more of an idea. This idea being “make others happy, be happy, and stay happy.”

I’ve tried writing this post a few different ways, but I think John’s little list got me to at least make my own list, so I can avoid writing the epic novel that would be my outlook on life (not to mention the fact that it’s ever changing…). But none the less, john made a list, so I figured I would make a list.

This list is not in order in any sort.

• Develop a web-application that is used by 10,000 people
• Get my name in the credits of some piece of art (not sure if I want to include software as art, if so I’ve done this, more on that later…)
• Eat
• Sleep
• Hike the John Muir Trail
• Live in Boston
• Live in Europe
• Visit Japan
• Turn 21
• Be Happy
• Volunteer
• Become a Teacher
• Visit every National Forest in the USA

Anyway, that’s my list. What’s your list?

/Nat

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So I decided, with a little persuasion from my roommate, to do this Project 365 thing. The concept, is very simple. You take a picture of yourself once a day for a year. This concept, in implementation is much more than simple. Problems so far a) Remembering. That’s kind of a given. I was pretty sick right after we started, so taking care of myself took priority. b) Taking photos at night. Since I’ve been forgetting left and right a lot of my photos have been at night, which my camera does not handle well. c) Speaking of my camera, I love it, mainly because I can take it anywhere and it takes a beating like a champ, but I am starting to realize how much the image sensor sucks, which is annoying.

But whatever, I’m having fun. I’ve included a slideshow above of what I’ve done so far, and my three favorite photos, so far, below.

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I don’t want to turn this into a favorite video’s blog, but I really liked this one:

Portal - Still Alive typography from Trickster on Vimeo.

And this was also amazing. Apparently one of my co-workers used to skate this hill (although not in such a bad ass fashion):

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

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I want a band with me at all times now.

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I am not happy with my blog. I really have just lost enthusiasm with this whole domain really, so I think I need to reboot it. So here is what I’m thinking:

1. Switch to Habari. I’ve been a long time reader of BinaryBonsai and I’ve been following Habari’s development on and off. I think it’s reached a point where I’m ready to switch over.
2. Code my own Design from scratch. I’ve switched between hand-coded designs and using other people’s designs for awhile. I think when I make the switch to Habari will be the right time to do this. I’m looking for a mix between BinaryBonsai, Ma.tt, and Subtraction.com I think. I also plan on making natwelch.com simpler. Start having it pull from different content streams on this site and others. That way new posts here will fill in that site more.
3. Finish coding Ideaius. Seriously. My original plan was to release Monday, which is not happening. So I’m gonna aim for Christmas and pray no one makes something better before then.
4. I’m not sure how much of this site I’m going to save. After I lost all of my posts two years ago, I gave up writting on this site. I think if I commit to one good post a month and port just my favorite posts from here, I’ll be happy.

Anyway, that’s just a heads up.

/Nat

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Ok so a friend sent me a message asking to help her brother decide if he wanted to go into engineering.

Hey, if you guys are in Santa Rosa, my mom was hoping that you could come up to my house and talk to my brother and his friends about engineering and computer related majors. They’ll probably want to know stuff about classes and success. The usual. There are two dates up for grabs, either sept. 8th or 10th. There will be food provided, of course. It will take place in the evening. Please let me know which one you would prefer if you can make either. If you cannot make either at all, what would be one piece of wisdom you’d like to pass on to my brother and his friends? Thanks a bunch if you guys can do this!!

Here was my response:

I sadly will be unable to make either of those dates. But words of wisdom? Man, I’m full of cough shit cough cough wisdom. he he.
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The Top TV Shows on iTunes as of 7/19

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog is the greatest musical recently. Don’t believe me? Check out the screen shot of the iTunes Music Store to the left.

And while I loved the show and was thoroughly entertained with all of the great plot twists and funny songs, what really got me was the marketing scheme. When I say that the market scheme got me, I mean it reeled me in like a free bottle of beer and a beautiful brunette. Why does this series of three fifteen minute movies have me tripping so? Let me explain how I digest media.

1. Come across something cool,  let’s say a new movie. (Discovery)
2. I watch the trailer, listen to music samples, check it out on Wikipedia. (Research)
3. Digest. If the movie is new enough and I’m not totally broke, I’ll go see it. If the album isn’t from a band I have obtained at least two albums from before, or if the movie isn’t available for rent cheaply, then I will probably obtain it in less than legal means.

Now how did Dr. Horrible throw a wrench into this tried and true formula? He abused two simple facts about my life.

1. I had to leave for the train in fifteen minutes, and I still had to eat breakfast.
2. It was less than five dollars.

I clicked subscribe on iTunes and sync’d Act 1 to my iPod. Half an hour later I was watching it in my seat on CalTrain. It was amazing. I wanted more, but I had to wait a day for the next episode, which I had already paid for.

What can wanna-be producers and marketers take out of this? Joss Whedon explicitly said that working with iTunes was painful, but worth the effort, since he was offering it free online. Marketers, if you make something of quality (you need to care about your work, kinda crazy eh?) and let me consume it in whatever way I want, I will. My generation grew up with Napster and Kazaa. We know how to get what you don’t want us to have. So give it to us with an affordable price tag and we’ll buy it.

/Nat

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