I Am a Patron of the Arts

Posted on March 23, 2009

A fellow I know through the local internet forum, Bryan Klopping, is about to attend art school, and to fund his ventures, he asked around if anyone would like to commission a painting. I thought about it, and quickly decided upon commissioning a portrait of the photo on the right this post for details of that night.) We were all very excited about the prospect of the painting. A canvas was quickly procured.

Bryan gave me updates over the next few weeks letting me know the status of the painting, and finally, last Friday, it was finished. I excitedly made my way over to Bryan’s apartment, and was in awe of the beauty held before me.

The painting now hangs in my office at work, that I share with Don. We’re very excited to have it, and the response from around work has been very positive. If you’re interested in having a painting done by Bryan, let me know, and I can hook you up.

Christmas Gift Brag 2008!

Posted on December 28, 2008

Well Christmas has done come ‘n’ gone. Hopefully we all got the presents we all wanted. I know I got some pretty sweet stuff. Here was my take for 2008:

Gift Cards!

Who doesn’t need gift cards? I got $15 for iTunes, $50 for South Pointe mall here in Lincoln, $50 for Best Buy, and $20 for Juice Stop (not pictured). All will come in handy for my desk project I’m working on.

Vodka!

Who doesn’t need sweet delicious vodka? This vodka comes courtesy of Hangar 1, where they make their vodka in an airplane hangar in Alameda, California. A very quality product.

An Ugly Vase!

Every year on Christmas Eve, my dad’s side of the family gets together at Grandma’s house. And instead of a normal gift exchange, Grandma visits the dollar store and picks up about $25 worth of stuff, to be given away as bingo prizes. And I won this vase. Woot.

A Banjo

I’ve been wanting a banjo for some time now (I think it’s at least partially Beerorkid’s fault). So, ma and pa went in and got me one for Christmas. It’s pretty rad; I’m looking forward to learning how to play it. I already know two chords (G and Am, represent!) I’ll be strummin’ and a pickin’ in no time!

What’d you guys get?

SWAOPcast #000

Posted on September 16, 2008

A while back, when The Superfluously Worthy Auspicious Order of the Peat was formed, there was talk of using a microphone to record order meetings. A test microphone was purchased, and subsequently returned, but at least one meeting was recorded, at the beginning of the summer. I finally got around to editing that audio, and until the SWAOP website begins in earnest (hopefully soon), I’m going to post the audio here. The microphone we used wasn’t very good, as there was no way to turn up the gain, and since then I’ve worked out what I hope will be a much better solution. At one point in the audio someone was fiddling with something on the table that the mic was sitting on, and so of course that gets picked up quite well, which bugged the hell out of me. I’ve got a boom stand now though so that’ll be remedied in the future too. The catchy little ditty up front is something I put together and I thought it was kind of neat so I’m using it for theme music.

Play or download SWAOPcast #000.

Woohoo

Posted on March 29, 2008

They finally released Wordpress 2.5. jwiltshire.org is fully updated now, after a slight hitch with one troublesome plugin that I stopped actually needing a long time ago (Disable Wordpress Widgets was the plugin, if you’re curious). I rather like it so far, it’s much prettier (though still too much soft blues, I think I remember seeing something about different color schemes for the backend, I’ll have to check) and the Dashboard is actually useful, chockful of information. One thing that kind of irks me is that in 2.3, when I went to write a post, there was a list of my drafts, that no longer appears in 2.5. I have to go to a separate page for my drafts. I’ll live though.

Oh and it’s my birthday. Free dinner tonight. Frickin’ sweet. Now to go upgrade MacFags. I should really get around to posting there too.

Birthday Wishlist

Posted on March 18, 2008

Since I’m coming up on 25 years (or “a quarter of a century”, as my younger friends like to put it), I thought I’d put together a nice little list of presents I would like to receive. Start saving.

• Lagavulin guitar – I posted this one on futurabolditalic the other day. It’s a guitar made from the barrels used to make Lagavulin scotch. There were ony three made, so it might be hard to track down. But it’s frikken sweet.
• Audi R8 – A badass German coupe, a monster of a car with a 4.2L V8 producing 414 horsepower, the Audi R8 isn’t available in the states until summer, so I’ll accept this one as a late gift.
• Nintendo Wii – Not much to say here, ‘cept I really want one. And whenever I have $250 laying around to spend on a Wii, nobody has one. It’s very annoying. Someday either Nintendo will ramp up production enough so that they actually have them in stores, or else every single other person will have already bought one and therefore will have no need of buying any more and I’ll be able to get one.
• An Asus eeeeeeeeeeeeeePC – I have no use for one really. I’ve got my iMac for home use. I’ve got my MacBook Pro for portability, and more and more for number-crunching-heavy applications. So I don’t really need an ultra-lightweight, ultra-compact laptop, but it’s just so keen. And it runs Linux. And so little, you can just throw it in a bag. A buddy of mine has one and it makes me jealous every time I sneak it away to play with.

I’m sure there’s some other shit I want but I’m tired and can’t think of any. Oh well.

Space Hottie Revisited

Posted on March 16, 2008

Fun fact: Past hottie of the week Dr. Yi So-yeon is going into space. She kinda got in on a technicality, because that dude she was up against broke some Russian space agency rules involving training manuals. But still, she got in. I’d like to think the vote of confidence from jwiltshire.org helped the cute 29 year old bio-engineer out. Though that’s probably classified by the FSB.

Nerdvana

Posted on February 10, 2008

I went to Sam’s Club today on a lark, and saw the exact same monitor that I had been eyeing at Best Buy earlier that day, for $75 cheaper. Couldn’t not pick it up. My desk is now 24″ more awesome. Watching the Front Row on it looks fantastic. I gotta say I’m happy with it.

Elsewhere… I got my Mac Classic to run. There’s not much to do on it, but maybe I should look into making it useful. It’s still pretty keen.

The banding on the screen isn’t normally visible, that’s just the camera’s image sensor picking up on the refresh rate.

Free Music!

Posted on February 3, 2008

Not from me, I ain’t made of money. But this is just a brief post to let you know that Rykodisc is doing five free downloads a month to celebrate their 25th anniversary. I found this out in an insert in the awesome new Joe Jackson album. It looks like they haven’t updated for February yet, but January’s free downloads are five songs by various African artists, including Ali Farka Toure, Taj Mahal, Toumani Diabate, and more. They’ve got some good artists on their roster, so the offerings should be pretty good throughout the year. Go get ‘em.

And soon… A real post. Probably about my new little camcorder. Or perhaps a guest column.

2 in 1!

Posted on January 17, 2008

Yes that’s right two posts in one! Went to a concert at Duffy’s Tavern last night to see the famous Loup River Band & Street Choir, along with friends Patrick Bradley and The Sleepover. There was dangerously bad snow out, so turnout was low, but Beerorkid was there, along with pints of very tasty 2 Below ESB for $2, so it definitely was a good time. The opener was Patrick “Motherfuckin’” Bradley doing a one-man set, complete with a singalong. That was followed up by a newer band, The Sleepover, which produced a great set. Finally, Loup River took the stage, and was fully awesome. It was guitarist/vocalist Jeff’s birthday, so happy birthday was sung, and cake was ate. How many bands give you birthday cake? Kickin’ rad. Pictures are at the Flickr.

Whilst at the show, I noticed a poster advertising “Feckin’ Irish Whiskey”. With a name like that, I was too curious to not try it. The bartenders were surprised that somebody was willing to try it. They had to hunt for the bottle, and it was brand new and unopened. Nobody knew what to charge for it, so we got it for $3 a shot (thanks Esteban!) So here’s another tasting review, for Feckin’ Irish Whiskey.

Nose: Very sweet, a bit of vanilla, almost no whiskey scent. A very mellow nose.
Flavor: Still very sweet. It’s a spiced whiskey, so it tasted more like rum than whiskey. The closest I can compare it to would be Captain Morgan, but with a bit of whiskey floated on top. It’s not a very complex flavor if I’m honest, and as I said, not very whiskey like. There’s very little barrel taste, and some vanilla flavor to it.
Finish: The finish was smooth and uncomplex, with almost no burn to speak of. As Steve said, it tasted better than it smelled. A couple of ice cubes dropped in served to mellow it a little.

It wasn’t a bad whiskey, but it wasn’t a very great one either, at least for an unwhiskey-like whiskey. If I were feeling more generous, I might be pushed to give it a 3, but as it is I wasn’t so much impressed as not horrified, so I’ll give it 2.5 out of 5.

Macworld Keynote

Posted on January 15, 2008

If anybody wants to know what I think about what Steve had to say today, head on over to MacFags to read my write-up.

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