Day 3 of 365: The Magazines Move Forward, Goal Tracking, James Bond Modernized, Tomorrow, Again

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][custom_headline type=”center” level=”h2″ looks_like=”h2″ accent=”true”]The Magazines I Own[/custom_headline][text_output]One of the things that started in 2013 and is moving forward in 2014 is two magazines I bought:  Fear & Trembling Magazine and Residential Aliens Magazine.  I’m also planning a third magazine, Indie Game Life, and part of that plan originally started (and paused) in 2013.

A little background on my involvement with the magazines:  Lyndon Perry founded Residential Aliens (usually just known as ResAliens) quite a while back, and brought me on to do the website.  Later, he bought Fear & Trembling from it’s founder, and again I did the website.

In 2012, Lyndon had to put the magazines (and the entire ResAliens Press) on hold, with the intent of coming back to it.  This year, he god ahold of me to see about shutting them down.  I instantly had an idea, and a plan starting to form in my head:  if I combined my plan for Indie Game Life (which is part of another project, The Save Ferris Project) with the two magazines, I’d have enough stuff to approach someone about doing distribution.

Unfortunately, even with the Jumpman Forever Kickstarter campaign success, I wasn’t really going to have enough money to market it, and wouldn’t have enough time to do the marketing anyway.

The Jumpman Forever Kickstarter ended up helping both of those problems:  I ended up with connections for someone to do marketing, and, I ended up talking with someone about backing the magazines.  Nothing is final yet, and until there’s a check in hand it’s hard to declare a success for this phase of it, but we’re almost there.

This project ends up bringing to fruition The Save Ferris Project – a plan to help give a friend who’s disabled a chance at a new field, and eventually, a real paycheck.  That’s the next three phases: relaunch, expansion, and paychecks. 🙂

2014 is shaping up to be amazing already. :-)[/text_output][custom_headline type=”center” level=”h2″ looks_like=”h2″ accent=”true”]2014 Goal Tracking[/custom_headline][text_output]OK, one more update on the 365 Project, and I’ll shut up about it for a while.  I decided I wanted to be able to visibly see what my progress in various areas was.  So, now, the front page of the site as multiple trackers (and I can add more if I really want to) for workout goals, eating goals, revenue goals, smoking goals, and of course, the 365 Project goals.

The only downside: they don’t auto-update, I have to update them from time to time.  It’s not a really big deal, but, I’m sure I’ll eventually get annoyed with it and write a plugin that pulls data from the posts and populates the bars on the front page (actually, I HAVE written one before, though it doesn’t do any caching, so it would be searching through about 1k posts every time someone hits the front page. Not exactly CPU or memory friendly.)[/text_output][custom_headline type=”center” level=”h2″ looks_like=”h2″ accent=”true”]James Bond, Modernized[/custom_headline][text_output]I watched something tonight that was a weird combination of surreal and cool, all at the same time.

Kat and I ended up visiting friends (the Brubakers) tonight for supper and a movie.  Good dinner, good conversation, and a classic movie:  the first James Bond flick, Dr. No.

Except, it’s not like I’ve ever seen it before.  I’ve probably seen all the original Sean Connery Bond movies half a dozen times each, if not more (same goes for Roger Moore Bond movies, but it falls off after that.)  The quality of the film of the oldest movies is always the same: not horrible, but, never particularly great either.  Lots of grain, saturation problems, and they always seem like they came from a poor replication of the master, with some fuzz around the edge.

Well, Brian’s copy wasn’t from that particular lineage – it was a nice, digitally restored copy of Dr. No.  Cool!  No grain, the saturation was good, and overall, it was a great copy.

But, here’s where it gets weird:  the movie was filmed for movie screens, not TV’s.  Which means it’s filmed at the standard 24 frames per second, which results in a slight disconnect with the brain that tells us there’s something off with it.  The world has gotten used to it, no big deal.  TV works at 30 frames per second (well, 29.997.  Go fig.) displayed at 60 Hz here in the US.

Brian has one of those big, fancy TVs that does the neat tricks that produces a middle frames based on previous frames and the next frames.  Suddenly, I’m seeing Dr. No as if it was filmed in the modern era.  Honestly, if someone would have decided to reboot the Bond films and start from the beginning again, and be sure to keep all the 1960’s styles, this is what it would look like.

I can’t say I’m going to rush out an buy a big honkin’ TV that does that anytime soon (maybe in 4 or 5 years – even if I hit my revenue goals, that doesn’t mean I’ll have money to toss around), but it’s really interesting to see a classic suddenly appear as if it’s a brand new film![/text_output][custom_headline type=”center” level=”h2″ looks_like=”h2″ accent=”true”]Tomorrow, Again[/custom_headline][text_output]Well, my plan to start my workouts today failed.  Dang it.  Tomorrow morning I’ll be doing Torah study food (for the las time as part of the kitchen crew – sort of the end of an era for me, after doing it for, what, almost two years?)  After that, I’m pretty open.

So, I’ll do my weigh in, and my first photos.  Yes, I’m going to take some pictures, about once a week, for progress.  I’ll probably throw them on here, but, it’s for me – I want to be able to see what my progress is like over time.  The first couple of weeks of workouts are always encouraging, I always make some quick progress at the beginning.  Then, it starts slowing down, even though I’m working out harder.  Part of it is body dimorphism (basically, body image issues: the more fit I get, the more unhappy I get with how I look. Not because I don’t look good, but, because I don’t look as good as I think I should.)  Having the pictures allows me to go back and get a better grip on  where I was when I started, giving me a better perspective to work from.

I will be doing weekly weight-ins, but, those really aren’t that relevant as a whole.  Weight is only one factor involved with working out, and bouncing up and down the scale is common.

I’ll be sure to give people with sensitive stomachs a warning when I post pictures of myself ;-)[/text_output][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][line][custom_headline type=”center” level=”h2″ looks_like=”h2″ accent=”true”]Today’s Stats[/custom_headline][text_output]

• Workouts:  0 (dangit!)
• Cigarettes Smoked: 20
• Healthy Eating:  Skipped breakfast, decent lunch, healthy supper (made by Brian and Ching Brubaker 🙂

Projects Worked on:

• Worked on info for Residential Aliens Magazine / Fear And Trembling Magazine distribution
• (Still Un-named) Android / iOS app
• Jumpman Forever Ouya integration work

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