A Bit Eclectic

Design.  Every day I surf the web reading articles and trying new services. As I proceed on my journey I see sites that have amazing design.  Sites ranging from crazy, cluttered and creative to bare bones simple.  Every time that I cross paths with great design it creates a burning desire.  I want so badly to have the knowledge to mold my site how I see fit.

I love the theme I have.  It does a great job and my eyes don’t bleed when I look at it, but it isn’t mine.  I didn’t create it and it doesn’t satisfy my wants.  The problem is that I lack the knowledge and creativity to build my own.

My personality drives me to learn new things and tackle new problems.  Some day I hope to learn enough to create something that will satisfy my wants.  As of right now I just have too much on my plate* and must settle with a simple blog post.

* If you don’t believe me, you can ask those who are: waiting for my photos, wanting to hang out, suggesting I work more, etc.

I just finished watching Act 1 of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and had an absolute blast. Dr. Horrible is one of the latest projects by Joss Whedon, who you may know from Buffy, Angle, and Firefly (one of my favorites).

“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” is a web based mini series starring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible and Nathan Fillion as his arch nemesis Captain Hammer. You can view Act 1 (of 3) now with the others releasing on July 17th and 19th.

So far this is an excellent light hearted series. I hope this sparks some interest so we see more like this in the future.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Recently I started reading the blog Post Secret. The site describes itself best:

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.

Personally, I love how the site gives an unfiltered view to some of the events/aspects of people’s lives. The various postcards range from happy to sad, funny to serious, and moving to terrifying. Each Sunday you get a handful of new secrets to look at. Each postcard is unique with their own secret sprawled across accompanied by a drawing or photo.

Many times these secrets will touch a secret of your own or possibly bring to light a past feeling. The site has brought together such great ideas and art that it is no surprise that you can also purchase a book.

Head over to Post Secret to see the latest entries. One of my recent favorites is the Stoplights card pictured below.

I will (attempt to) match Gary’s style and review this show as he does wine.

It is important to note that I am talking about the new Wine Library Reserve videos. These are a condensed version of the regular Wine Library TV episodes that roll in around 5 minutes. I am a huge fan of Wine Library TV and here are my thoughts about the new Reserve.

Wine Library Reserve 2008, $0

To begin with, the show is very watered down. In only 5 minutes it is hard to get the full flavor of Gary. The “nose” on this show is really tight and it is hard to get much out of it. We lose one of the most important aspects which is Gary’s unique personality. You get small hints of the flavor, but nothing special that will blow you away.

Additionally, they tried to spice up the show with some new fancy animations. In the end it is way to synthetic and forced. I get these fake flavors in my mouth. It feels like they were placed there after the fact for mere WOW effect. I will admit that some of these can be useful (showing the grape and country) but overall it brings a bad finish.

Like Gary says, trust your palette. This show may not agree with mine but it may be right up your alley. You may like this shorter snazzier version and there is no problem with that. Either way check out both Wine Library TV and the Reserve and make your own judgement. For ZERO bones, either show is worth a taste.

A quick heads up for all readers. Firefox 3 was released today. This version dramatically fixes the memory leak problems and thus the application is much snappier. There are a ton of other improvements including a ton of interface enhancements.

If you haven’t used Firefox before, there is no better time. Head over to the product page to learn more and grab your copy.

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Although Firefox is an excellent browser, there are many others out there that do some amazing things. I strongly suggest checking out Flock (all platforms) if you are tangled in the social web (blogs, facebook, flickr, etc.)

A couple weeks ago I posted about the new Weezer video Pork and Beans. I really liked the video since it brought back memories related to the various internet memes.

This week I stumbled upon a site that has conveniently gathered most of the YouTube videos that influenced the music video. This is a great chance to see some of these for the first time, or even just re-watch them for old times sake.

Photo by the stella on flickr

Welcome to A Bit Eclectic. As you may have noticed, I have changed the name and URL of this blog. As part of the transition away from wordpress.com I wanted to get a new matching URL and name for the blog. Although I liked Eclettico I couldn’t obtain the URL.

Please update your links, bookmarks, and feeds. As far as I know this will be the last change to the URL. All of the old URLs should work for the forseeable future but I recommend moving to http://abiteclectic.net.