A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Well, JoJ #14 is up and done. Now I just need to worry about #15, I swear it never ends. :: BASIC6 is still being worked on, but it will be released before August 1st if everything goes smoothly. I'm almost done and am just overhauling the video portion of the visual window. :: I don't think I have any other big projects I'm working on to talk about. I'm actually in a bit of a lull, and I like it. Oh, but I have started collecting footage for my next juggling video, but it won't be released for a while, seeing as how I just let out JoJ14, plus I'm still collecting good footage.

R2150's Reviews For The Intelligent Human
Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix - 8.3
Much much darker than all of the previous ones, and I think it's why a lot of different people I know who've seen it have very different opinions about it. My sister for example, is a fan of slashers and horror films and she thinks this was the best Harry Potter yet. Personally, I'd rank this as the 3rd best HP movie, right in the middle. It was a good movie, but it wasn't anything completely spectacular like the Goblet of Fire was (which is my personal fav). I liked how in every movie prior, there was a period of relaxation and comfort, where all was right with the world for a few minutes before thrusting back into chaos, usually this happened during Quiddich, which was absent from the Order of the Phoenix. I know a lot of people would hardly notice it, but Quiddich was one of the best parts of all the movies. But enough comparisons, on to the movie itself.

*Possible Spoilers* The plot of the movie is that, Voldemort is back, and a war is coming. Noone else wants to believe the obvious however, and everyone but a small group of wizards believes that the Voldemort story was a story conjured up by Dumbledor in an attempt to seize control of the Ministry of Magic. Harry's patience and emotions are pushed and tested throughout the film, and there is a falling out. The main body of the movie consists of how the newly recruited defense against the dark arts teacher, Umbridge, turns out to also work for the ministry and is a complete megalomaniac hell bent on controlling Hogwarts and does not allow for practical methods of learning spells and charms. Therefore, Harry has to start his own underground class where the students can learn everything they need to know to defend themselves in the upcoming battle. *Spoilers Over*

Like I said, this movie is so much darker and out of control than any of the others, and this is apparent everywhere from the fight sequences to the general feel of the movie. It's a ride that burns through in what feels like a matter of minutes, and you sure as hell won't want to leave for anything. That being said, I was kind of let down for this very same reason, as I had a hard time remembering everything that actually did happen in the film. Thinking back, it's like one random event, followed by another event, followed by a lull, followed by a fight sequence. I mean there are literally at least 8 different places the movie takes place throughout the course of the film, and that's major locations, not to mention the countless other places that are visited. It was a bit overwhelming. That's why I didn't score it so high and why I didn't exactly feel it was as good as the others, but what am I to expect from a movie that's made from a novel with how many pages?


Annual Rant: Windows Media Player Skins
Ok, I know I've stopped skinning for a while now, but what the hell happened? Where have all the good skinners gone and even the bad ones? WMP is not that hard to skin, one of the easier players in fact. I put frickin games into a skin it's that easy to skin for. But that's besides the point.

My point is, and it was brought about by the fact that only two people have submitted any new skins since Febuary 1st, and one of the two blows monkey chunks. I'm not normally this pissed off or aggressive, but have you seen the iPhone skin? Cheap skins like that give WMP a bad name. I mean, if the preview image shows me correctly, he hasn't even cleaned up the edges properly before uploading it. C'mon, even I did that when I made my first horribly sucky skin in MsPaint, and people that know me will testify that I'm horrifying with graphics, but at least I do them properly.

Also, can we have some f'n originality please? Nobody wants a skin that looks like a CELL PHONE! I've been seeing these f'n phone skins since early 2004, they were shit then, they're shit now. The iPhone could make a good skin if someone does it right, but so far noone's even done it for any other player right yet either. If you want to make a skin shaped like your personal cell hone, by all means go and do it. But if it's not able to compete with anything else in the gallery both graphically or codingly, don't upload it and make WMP look bad. I've made about 4 skins since BASIC5 released 2 years ago, have I uploaded any of them? NO. Because none of them were worthy of people's time, much less able to compete with anything worthy of being on customize.org It's been about 7 months since I saw even a hint of an original idea for a skin that wasn't based on a band, funky new coding element, or desktop theme.

I'm sure noone even cares about my hatred of complete crap skins that are driving everyone away from WMP skinning and over to WinAmp (Who in the hell wants a skin shaped like a box with exactly the same aspect ratio for EVERY SINGLE SKIN!?). So do everyone a favor everyone, either finish your skins before uploading them, make better skins, or don't do it at all. I know this isn't the way to spur activity back into the WMP category, but I'm just tired of seeing crap skin after crap skin, after cell phone skin, after band skin, after crap skin.

To show that I'm not a complete hypocrite, I will be releasing BASIC6 on July 31st. And hopefully another skin sometime after that.

Daily Life:
Well, nothing horribly eventful at work, so I'll talk about what happened today, on my day off, or what was supposed to be such. First thing is that I wake up at 9:00, and am forced into cleaning my room, which I don't mind doing, it's just that it's 9:00 AM. Then after a quick thing of that, I get sent to mow the lawn. A job that I absolutely despise and I'll explain it one day, perhaps in the next blog entry, but either way. So I work on the lawn and finish the front, and today I have an appointment with the principal of my elementary school where I'm to perform a show at, and thanks to my parents making me do the lawn, I almost missed it. Either way, I successfully got 2 shows that I'll now be performing on the 13th of August, and I'm going to rock them because I'm getting paid $200 total for it.

So I come back and finish the rest of the f'n lawn, and as soon as I get back in from the heat, it's time to replace my entire bed structure. How wonderful. I still believe that I did not need a new mattress, box-spring, or foundation and that it was a waste of time and effort to drag everything upstairs from the basement and mount it all, and then having to rearrange everything that was anywhere near my old bed, especially after I'd just cleaned up everything not a day ago. So that took up another hour or so, and by now it's around 4:00, and I'm free for the rest of the night, or so I thought. We then head over to Walgreens to get my passport photo taken. Both me and my sister are getting passports now because homeland security decided to not let anyone board airplanes, even within the US, without a passport. I love HLS. SO either way, we spend an hour there because they wanted to go shopping around the store, and I'm there just looking for objects to manipulate to keep myself entertained. Of course as I'm doing so, my mother insists on treating me like I'm 10, telling me to either put down the ball I'm finger-spinning or the pool-noodle I'm chin-balancing. I tell you, those objects have been used in much more juvenile ways within the store. Besides that though, we get home at 6:00, and my legs I'm just realizing are covered in mosquito bites from wearing shorts as I'm mowing the lawn, and then I remembered why I gave up on wearing them 3 years ago. But now she needs me to update my checkbook, fill out the passport application forms, and I haven't even marked my new performance on my calendar yet. I love my life...

Juggle This:
I forgot to mention at WJF4, that I nailed 2 tricks that had been eating at me for the past 2 months. And I got them all on camera. I got a 66661 back into the pattern for a qualifying run, 8 catches of 7 balls, and I finally found someone to do box passing with. I had the idea for box passing back in April, but I never had anyone able to try them out, and I got a kickflip pass back and forth, and a box-tower steal. Both of them are in JoJ14, so go check them out. I finally exacted revenge on my props.

Oh, and I also got my ass a new set of rings. 5 yellow (what else would they be) Airflite rings. I've already adjusted to them, and am starting to realize just how crappy and wide Duncan rings really are. But they're what I've always practiced with, and they're still great for grinds, so I'll see what happens. And now for your viewing pleasure, a few more WJF4 pics with me in them.







A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150