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Word up, internets! I just completed my server switch and will now spend the next few days getting everything properly migrated and in working order. You’ll start to see things flash in and out of existence on my whim, but I’ll eventually get it locked down. /JL

I’ve hated my website provider for some time now, and as a result, haven’t updated the site much. Like at all. For some time now, my webhost wouldn’t update several crucial PHP and database functions, which have prevented me from doing cool stuff or even updating my ancient version of WordPress. I’m finally motivated to make the move, and get it all sorted out.

I have a decade of loose files, directories, subdomains and email archives that needed to be all logistically considered before making such a move. It’ll be chaos here for a few weeks, but by 2013 LLR will be back in action.

/JL

Now that the press releases have hit the streets and the word is going around, I might as well make it official. We are moving to Orlando (that’s in Florida). Wait. What? Yeah, Orlando. Our daughter has no idea just how much more awesome her life is gonna get living down the street from Mickey Mouse.


KyAnn and I will both be maneuvering into awesome, new jobs, working as ‘new media’ and digital content developers for a joint venture between Fisher Communications and The Daily Buzz. I even get a fancy job title: “Director of Digital Content”; my wife will be the “Vice President of Lifestyle Content”. You’re working with your wife? Yes, I’m working with my wife… again. How did this happen exactly? Well, we both previously worked for Troy McGuire, the mastermind behind this operation. He’s sorta like the mysterious Jacob on Lost, where somewhere in our pasts we each crossed paths with him and unknowingly became candidates in his vast, cosmic conspiracy. Even if KyAnn and I had never become a couple, in an alternate-sideways universe, we would still end up both moving to Orlando and working for Troy McGuire. Obviously, “the island isn’t done with me yet”, and I’m sure there are others out there he’s watching from his fancy, hidden lighthouse.

I don’t know if this analogy completely works – I’m still trying to make the ‘numbers’ fit into it. Anyway, I’m now taking questions…

Is it just me, or did you also recently think to yourself: “I can’t believe it’s already mid March!” Seriously. I can’t fathom where all the time has gone (except those hours unselfishly sacrificed to the altar of the TV God in my living room). In order to catch-up with y’all for all the things that I neglected to blog about, I’ve prepared this handy list:

1I’m a “Mac” now. That’s right, after years of being one of those dudes who would recite a rehearsed list reasons as to why I would only use PC computers (customization, computer gaming, etc), I’ve finally made the switch. Or “found my way” if you believe the Apple zealots I work with. Basically, after over a year of working in Final Cut Studio, and witnessing first-hand how much easier my Adobe products work in the Mac OS, I realized that I was having a much better experience than with my PC products. So now I have a kick-ass 27′ iMac, fully juiced and loaded with all the fancy photo/video stuff I need. I got it loaded with Aperture 3, and right now I’m dabbling around in the program to see if I like it better than Lightroom 2.

2I’m back in the MMO world. Yeah, so now that I have a powerful-ish computer again, I’ve decided to check out some of the online games that I’ve been reading about online (or attempting to play their terrible, low-res demos on my laptop). Right now I’m plotting a course for adventure in Star Trek Online (screenshots coming soon), and hoping to meet-up again with some of my old MMO pals in World of Warcraft.

3Lost is rad, as if you didn’t already know. I look forward to the new island adventures each week, but I’m also dreading the end of the series. I have a feeling it’ll be crazy right up until the final moment, but I’m hoping that there’s a little “breathing room” in the final episode (much like the BSG finale) so that we can properly put these characters to rest – some quite literally, I’m sure. Also, I’m hooked on Spartacus: Blood and Sand on Starz, and eagerly awaiting the return of Party Down.

4I’m getting back into the “social media” scene. After becoming somewhat of a hermit, and half-assed Twitterer/Facebooker, I’m finding my way back to the glow of the computer screen. Thank, my iPhone, I guess. I think I sorta had to take a step back after being overloaded with all these people I know suddenly surging into the ‘new media’ and driving me nuts – not to mention all the SEO and “Social Media expert” douches that are coming out of the webwork.

5I bought cowboy boots. I’m not really going to go into it, but I have a pair of “shit kickers” as I’ve heard them called by gentlemen at the rodeo store.

Anyone else having trouble updating their blog lately? It’s not that I don’t have any content, or random stories to share. I think that I’ve just become more adept at sharing them elsewhere (like the Facebooks and the Twitters). Sometimes I think I might just turn this thing into a Tumblr page and go mobile. Anyway, I’ve saved up enough bite-sized content for a regular sized blog post, so here goes:

1During a freak accident at a video shoot, my Blackberry plummeted several feet to its demise. All the more surprising, it actually wasn’t me that dropped it. I was forced to kick into “Operation Upgrade” several months early, and got myself an iPhone 3Gs (32gb). I no longer have all that “app envy” coursing through my veins. Quite the opposite. I think I need to download an application that will occasionally shock my hand, forcing me to put down the iPhone and pay attention to my surroundings.

2All these videos games are killing me. The crazy, pre-holiday momentum has really kicked-in, and I’ve done a great job of staying ahead of all the new Xbox game releases that I want to get. Which has been about one a week as of late. Thankfully, it’s over for me until the new year, and my real problem now is when to find time to play any of them. Currently I’m rocking: ODST, Borderlands, Dragon Age, Modern Warfare 2, and Left4Dead 2.

3I take too many photos of my toddler and robots (though rarely in the same photo). Looking to also break the mold was my friend Hangry, who invited me to start up a joint photography blog. I was going to wait until we had more posts going to mention it, but I needed more stuff to pad out this list. You can follow our semi-random photo-awesomeness at our newly minted site, Crop and Bracket.

4Somehow I’m still making time for television. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by V, considering that I’m crazy-possessive about the original mini-series. (I plan on writing a full nerdcore review of the show after the initial 4 episode run concludes.) Also, I’d like to give props to FX for awesome season’s of Sunny in PA and Sons of Anarchy.

Supposedly, Yahoo! my web provider, is going to do some database/wordpress upgrades this month, and I’ve been warned that it could be anytime during October. It hasn’t happened yet, and I’ve got all the plugins and theme customizations standing by, ready to go when it goes down. Without a doubt, it’ll happen while I’m in PDX on vacation and my blog will look broken for a few days. If you see anything ‘brokeny’ looking, that’s what going on.

Anyway, it’ll be a fun trip to Portland, seeing friends and family and stuff, though the real reason for our visit is soley to have fondue and beer at Gustav’s – everything else on our trip is a bonus after that.

I just got finished loading up my new office mini fridge with a case of Vitamin Water, leaving no room for anything else. Costco, man – it’ll do that. I just wandered around the station on this fine Tuesday morning, gabbing with various folks, coordinating video transfer details with master control, and stopping by the shipping office to see if any of my new The Office bobbleheads have arrived yet. I could use online tracking numbers, but I like to be surprised.

Last week I knew that a bobblehead was arriving for me, so I checked with the daytime security officer, Ricky about when the FedEx truck usually arrives. He was overly helpful and kept me updated throughout the day on the shipping patterns at the station. He later put the package on my desk. I kinda feel bad because he probably thought it was something terribly urgent or time sensitive, and I certainly didn’t have the nerve to mention that it was just a Toby Flenderson bobblehead.

Work is going well, and I’m starting to enter the finishing stages of another promo campaign while sorta planning for another. Presently I’m working on launching a new blog, finishing a book project, and doing some photography stuff. Mostly I’m playing Halo 3: ODST firefight mode with my Xbox crew. I’m always amazed how we can coordinate virtual death and destruction across three time zones. I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing how my still photos are incorporated into an upcoming Dr. Oz episode, finding out if I get an Emmy (Atlanta was a bust, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Dallas), and heading to Oregon for a quick, hit-n-run holiday.

Also, the above photo is a dead bird that I saw lying outside the employee entrance on Friday.

[The photo below is using Flickr notes, which when hovering over images, will hopefully work correctly on your browser.]

Tonight, I was organizing my camera bags, and thought I’d take a shot of my video-related camera gear before stuffing it all into a mini roller suitcase. I was waiting to take this photo until I got my Zacuto camera rig (and viewfinder) – which is pretty damn sweet.

Naturally when I took this photo, I forgot the tripod – which, if you know my video shooting style, seems about right anyway.

I can’t believe how quickly the past few years have gone by! Although, I think that being in a different state and having a kid since our wedding definitely help skew my perception of time now. It’s been a wonderful three years with my lovely wife, KyAnn (six, really).

I can’t remember if I posted this pic last year on our anniversary, so I’m pasting it here again (though it doesn’t matter since my blog was obliterated since then anyway).

Our wedding photographer wasn’t exactly the person we hired – she was a freelancer for the PDX wedding photographer we signed with. Though it doesn’t matter. I really liked her (her spikey hair fit right in with all our friends and family), and I think she did a fantastic job.
Anyway, when I uploaded this photo to flickr today I noticed the EXIF meta data embedded in the file and saw that our wedding was mostly shot with a Canon Rebel XT. No fucking way! I think she also had a 20D, but I didn’t even pay that much attention since my focus was elsewhere and everywhere.
Looking further into her camera settings, I’ve been able to reverse-engineer her shooting mode and setup. She locked the ISO, played it safe, and took some amazing shots. It really changes my perception of what gear I may actually need for some odd wedding photography jobs. For some reason, I didn’t even want to get into all that unless I had a camera at least in the tier above the Rebel series, or even go into a shoot with only one DSLR. But now that I have my 5Dm2 (and some serious glass), I’m thinking that my Rebel XTi – maxed out – might be a suitable secondary camera.
So now I’m thinking of uploading more wedding pics, just to look at the meta data. I can’t go back in time to chat-up the wedding photographer again, but this is definitely the next best thing. If you want to see more pics, our wedding video is posted after the post-break). Read More

It’s Monday and I’m back behind my desk at work, blogging getting caught up on stuff after a lovely, three day weekend. As I was going through the motions, it didn’t seem like a whole lot of interesting stuff was going on, but now that I look back – it was rather eventful weekend. Here’s the breakdown:

1. Picked mother-in-law up at the airport, soon followed by two rounds of watermelon margaritas at Pappacitos.

2. Played a ton of Gears of War 2 with my brother, and virtual meatshield, Tater. He might not always take cover when necessary, but he does a smashing job of covering my butt while I run to the ammo resupply.

3. Saw Tarantino’s brilliant (and charmingly historically inaccurate) Inglorious Basterds and LOVED it – especially the random David Bowie song in the soundtrack. There is no way that nazi guy won’t get a Best Supporting Actor oscar nod.

4. Went to Gospel Brunch at House of Blues on Sunday. Even as a non-believer, there’s nothing quite like having a full gospel chorus singing and dancing while you sway in your seat, gobbling-up sausage and bacon.

5. Went to Bollywood dance festival at Miller Outdoor Theater. They played that “Jai Ho” song only thirty seconds into the show; kinda like Skynryd opening with Freebird. We stuck around long enough to see the Bollywood tribute dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller – less zombies, but with more flair and unusual hand gestures.

6. Both my mother-in-law and I were violently ill with probable food poisoning late Sunday night (we think it was the pimento cheese), and spent much of the following day recovering, watching TLC marathons of Toddlers and Tiaras and Hoarders.

Okay, so I’m back. I’ve been on a blogging vacation – mainly to figure out what to do with my site in the wake of my two database crashes in the past year. I’ve been fearful of posting too much stuff, or working too hard on my template, only to lose it all again. Not to mention the fact that WordPress and my theme, Thesis are constantly pumping out new versions (though that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

I was toying with the idea of just converting my blog to a Tumblr blog (littlelostrobot.tumblr.com), but I’ll lose some functionality along the way. Also, Tumblr and Flickr haven’t exchanged APIs yet, which was the deal breaker for me. I think I liked the idea of going to Tumblr because it’s part of that whole ‘follow culture’ that’s going on right now….which is partly to blame in my lack of motivation.

I’m finding it hard to update my blog, and follow/comment on other blogs when everything is cross broadcast through Twitter and Facebook. Anyone else feeling that way? Well, I’ve decided to get back on the blog. I just have too much cool stuff to post this summer. I’m not sure about going back and restoring old posts though, but I’m going to syndicate all my WP posts to my Tumblr page so that I’ll have somewhere to go if everything implodes again.

Anyway, I’ll end this with a question to y’all. Do you still read blogs, or as many blogs?

The blog is back online, and I’m installing some excellent back-ups into my wordpress install (which I should have done back in August, but never got around to it). Whenever I get the chance, I’ll be adding some new gadgets and restoring some of the older ones. I save all my source code and customizations, so that stuff will happen much faster than I can reload the content.

Anyway, March was not my month, man. My Xbox blew-up, my eyeball got infected, the blog had a meltdown, and Battlestar Galactica was flown into the sun. “Beware the Ides of March!”

Indeed.