I’ve noticed that there are a few things that I stopped doing in my life that made me very happy. I like to blame other people for the stopping, but I have no one to blame but myself for the not starting, if that makes sense.

The Stuff:

• Photography
• Video Games other than Warcaft
• Biking
• Climbing

Photography

I used to do a lot of amature photography. However, I stopped when I started to hate my piece of shit camera. I have a 5 year old Kodak 2.1 megapixel camera that eats batteries and is just bad all around. I contemplated getting a new camera but decided that the idea was not feasible due to monetary constraints.

Now a days I steal Jenn’s camera when I want to take pictures, but her camera is not really what I’m looking for… I’m looking for a camera that is a little less “turn the dial to the scene you want” and more hands on, I don’t want the camera to think for me… well a little help wouldn’t be bad, obviously, but include me on the decisions.

I would like an SLR camera, I was thinking that Jenn’s camera is a great little camera for general use, but it doesn’t seem to fare well in low level situations without a flash, and I hate having to flash all the time, it makes people edgy and I like candid shots.

Since Jenn has a nice general camera, I’m looking for a more high end deal that’s not as portable, but will produce higher quality pics. Looking at flickr, the two nice options are the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi and the Nikon D80 I’ve not spent any real time looking in to this at all… I imagine this will be a lengthy search.

I also upgraded my flickr account to Pro, I hate gallery now. Stupid slow PHP piece of crap.

Video games other than Warcraft.

Money stopped me from playing video games other than Warcraft sometime around the time I met Jenn. I don’t really blame Jenn for the whole thing, but I blame Warcraft for being such a wonderful entertainment source for the buck.

I’ve been picking up a few games to get me more up to date.

First off was Bioshock which is an art-deco steam-punk anti-Utopian FPS-RPG set in Rapture, a city at the bottom of the pacific ocean, in the 1960’s. The game is great, and I normally shun these kinds of omg-whats-lurking-around-the-corner games, but I made an exception for this wonderful narrative. I’ve not finished it yet, so a real review isn’t really something I can do yet.

Then I snagged The Orange Box a compilation of all the HL2 games, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. I’ve never played Hl2, so this was a cool opportunity to catch up on the series (yes, there is one wanker who never picked the game up, so shoot me, I was poor and uninterested as I never finished Halflife (cue further shocked gasps)) I just finished Halflife 2 and I was impressed, the gameplay while very linear shakes things up a bit and wanders between pseudo zombie horror and sci-fi gun battles. The story is compelling and the acting well done. Highly recommended if, like me, you’re stupid and never picked it up.

On to Team fortress 2, I can’t think of a time I’ve played a game like TF2 (Class based, online, territory control, FPS) that was so well balanced. Every class has a niche, and a fight between any two classes could honestly go either way, it’s quite refreshing. No more, “Oh, I’m a medic so I’m a bitch when it comes to virtually every other class” or ”oh look I’m an engineer, which means I’m a free kill to everyone who looks at me funny!”. Now I play an engineer, and I’ll fuck you up if you’re not paying attention, ph34r my level three turret! I’ve been playing an inordinate amount of TF2 over the past few weeks, and encourage people to pick it up, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

Last but certainly not least, is Portal. Portal is quite simply one of the best games I’ve played in quite some time. You should feel bad if you’re a gamer and have not traveled down this veritable physics acid trip coupled with some of the best macabre humor I’ve seen in a game. While it’s quite short (3 hours or so) and not too hard, until you start beating the ancillary challenges, it’s well worth the $20 to buy it off steam. Besides, you totally get cake at the end. Trust me.

So I’m well on my way to getting back in to video games, and it’s really nice. I hope to keep the pace up. I got a lot of games to beat.

Biking

So Biking mainly stopped because I moved in with Jenn, and we live on the top of a hill. Biking around the neighborhood is fucking obnoxious, I coast downhill for like 15 minutes, and then wear myself pumping uphill for 10 minutes trying to get home, and end up walking my bike… lame. I quickly decided I hated biking in this area. However, Jenn bought me a bike rack, and so I will take my bike to campus and I will ride it around, and it will be good. The bike is in the shop right now getting tuned, should be able to ride it once things dry up around town.

Climbing

Climbing was something I used to do fairly religiously with Joe and Anami. I stopped when Melissa started acting like I shot her puppy every time I went out to hang out with anyone for any reason. I tried a few times to get back in to the swing of things, but trying to get a regiment going without a committed partner is kind of like running around in a circle, it’s exercise, sure, but it gets old and boring after a while. I’m going to start up again with Jenn, and we’ll see how that goes. She won’t be able to go very often so I might get in touch with a friend whose in my AI class and see if we can’t start going… might be able to make a go of things.

Here’s hoping I can get these things going, I think if I can start back up these four things and keep them going I’ll be much more happy in general, and that’s always good.

For now though, I’m sick, and this entry was a monumental effort … and I’m sure it’s nonsensical. But, who cares, I’m going to bed.