ChasingLilly.net

I promised myself I wouldn’t write any more blog posts during or the days before finals week in order to study. Well that week has come and gone, and so has the next. And here we are today! I did pretty well in my classes this past semester, and just transferred to “Transitional Housing” on campus because I’m staying here in Fredvegas all Summer!

What am I doing down here, you ask? Well I got a job with the campus IT Department and have for the past week been working the Help Desk phone line. So if you called for help and got a steamy, lucrid man’s voice on the other line… it was 100% most definitely my lungs breathing hotness upon your eardrum by way of my good bud Alexander Grahmcracker Belt. I don’t know why he likes being called that, either, but he always insists when I blog about him that I use his nickname that his wife uses. And no, I don’t know where that name came from, and I probably don’t want to.

Anyways it’s been pretty good so far, though it’s a bit daunting answering peoples calls like that. In terms of computers, I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy. I wouldn’t know a quad-core from a pelican, or even a Super AMOLED from a pelicula. But I can tell you the subtle differences from Adobe’s CS4 and CS5 packages and use all of them proficiently. There’s another group of people who got hired who are working on capturing, photoshopping, tutorialing, and blogging how-to’s about our new “social” education platform we’re replacing Blackboard with for next semester. And they keep asking me for help with photoshop, wordpress, or whatever else. Why couldn’t I be there? *Sigh* Maybe I’ll talk to mi boss ’bout it.

In other news: as of next Sunday I’m homeless, which is pretty weird. First, it’s super weird spending my first Summer away from home. And to add, I have nowhere to live here, either. I had a housing contract to live in Eagle Landing for Summer, but I didn’t get into the class (photography) that I wanted to, so Res Life is saying I can’t live in campus housing. See, in the agreement you have to check that you will be attending classes, otherwise you’re on your own. The only exception they’ll make would be if my boss tells them the IT Dept is “sponsoring” me to live on campus, which would involve them paying for my meal plan. It’s all just such a big hassle that my parents and I finally decided it would just be better if I got my own apartment that I could keep for the Summer and then maybe room with someone next semester. Today my dad and I were out scouring the Fredscape for apartments and we found some surprisingly good places! This leads me to my next point…

My good friend Williamson McDungheap (AKA Will) got into Mary Washington! Now I don’t know if he’s going to choose here, but that’s super cool for him. If he comes down, who knows? Maybe he’ll end up being my roommate next year. Time, patience, talking, thoughtfulness, and flatulence will only tell!

I can’t think of anything else at the moment… they didn’t clean up Eagle Landing any before they moved us in… I found peoples’ clothes in my drawers, for instance. The third episode of Neature Walk was released from vicscrappyvideos! Woohoo! IT’S A BEAR. I THINK. I’ll post more about ideas and projects coming up soon…

I’m thinking of getting a Canon Rebel T3i (600D), that would be the most amazing thing ever. Either a Rebel T2i or T3i… though the swively screen is neat, I’ve heard the T3i is a little better with video, which is what I really want from my first DSLR camera. Now I just need money I have no doubt all of our videos would be a billion times cooler if we had anything better than the DV camcorder. Not that the hardware makes things automatically cooler, it’s just hard to find inspiration worth being reviewed by people with that thing. Bleh. We’ll see. (pictured is the T2i, of course)



Happy Trails,
Sam.



PS – Here’s a picture of an alien colony I took:

“Man, whatever happened to chasinglilly.net?” The quiet, dust-ridden man standing at the bus stop asked his counterpart bus-riding partner to his right.

“I don’t even know, Carlisle.” The counterpart whispered, weeping. “I miss it. The classiness, the perfect English, the family-friendly atmosphere, the…”

“The praise-worthy morals and enlightening zingers!” Carlisle piped in.

“Exactly. By the way, blog readers, my name is Brad Whistlessly.”

“Who are you talking to?” the Carlislian man enquired.

“I was just thinking it would be a lot easier in this conversation if I had an actual name so Sam wouldn’t have to keep typing ‘the bus-riding counterpart’ over and over again. Do you understand now, Carlilse, dear friend?” Spake Brad Whistlessly unto Carlisle.

Carlisle was confused to say the least! However, before he could form a question with his oral cavity, a large-set, wealthy businessman entered the scene with quick footwork. He was a domineering figure. He wore an entirely snake skin suite/underwear combo, held a wolf-fur briefcase, and chewed whale blubber. He also had golden dollar signs nailed into the enamel of his teeth, so everyone he bit would have a dollar sign imprinted upon them. His coat had the name ‘Bennington McLardbelly’ branded into the collar.

“Top o’ the morn! What are you ugly *$#%@!ers talking about, eh, Captain?” Bennington asked gruffly.

Confused at being called ‘Captain’, neither Carlisle nor Brad responded. So Bennington left.

Then in walked in a golden-yellow lab. The dog was panting with massive amounts of saliva dripping from his gums.

“Whaddup y’all, my name be Corbin Ratwell!” the lab said bluntly. “Did I hear you talkin’ ’bout Sam Rodgers’ ol’ webspace?”

“Yeah!” Brad screamed. “Why doesn’t he update it as much anymore? I miss his angelic humor and untimely handsomeness!”

Corbin spit in Brad’s face angrily. “MAAAAAAAAAN! Why y’all gotta talk ’bout that jank!? It’s time to move AWN! Get a new life, you ain’t no bamf posers, crackers! You fool no one! Sam’s never comin’ back fer y’all!”

Carlisle sat quietly for 30 minutes. Darkness engulfed his every thought. He was in despair. “I believe in Sam. He’ll come back one day. Just watch, Corbin. Nothing can last forever, not even a hiatus. My first eight marriages taught me that.”

“That’s the spirit, Brad!” Carlisle whispered quickly five times. He then looked at his watch. “We’ve been here for eight hours. Did we miss the bus?”

SUDDENLY their bus sped by at 50 miles per hour without stopping. And to everyone’s amazement Keanu Reeves was driving it. They began to cheer! That is, until the bus sped out of view and the whole congregation of bus riders realized they were all actually part of an elaborate prologue segment to the 1994 hit action movie Speed. And everyone knows how that movie ends…

*Credits roll*

(20th Century Fox Home Entertainment absolutely probably did not endorse this)

While the above scene is fictitious, it represents a very real conversation that may be happening at bus stops the world over! Don’t worry, my hiatus of not posting more than my evil arch-nemesis Will McCarry is at an end! World domination is back! Horrah!

Happy Trails,
Sam.

Bandcamp.com. It’s the new rage. All the music peoples are doing it. I recently changed the rather boring/lame/stagnant violentblue.net band website to redirect to our Violent Blue bandcamp site. Bandcamp is pretty cool. It’s free (for 200 downloads), has a really clean layout, and is really easy to get setup. You can see the homepage below.

Violent Blue homepage

So bandcamp sets up your account by album and then by song. You can set prices (all ours are free), setup creative commons rights, lyrics, artwork, etc. Will and Billy also recently got their bandcamps setup. Will was able to put up his wonder-making albumian intro into album-world, In Flight. Billy put up some old stuff and a new single, Almost Reversed (which is awesome).

I’ll be working on a different main violentblue.net site, likely just a hub where you can choose between our bandcamp, blogs, and various forms of communication. But for now bandcamp is where it b at!

Go check out our stuff at violentblue.bandcamp.com or just violentblue.net, either way! We only put three songs up at the moment, but all our stuff is free, and we love feedback!

Don't Fall Asleep download

Happy Trails,
Samwise.

I’ve been helping some people with their blogs lately. The three I’m specifically mentioning here are Will, Billy, and my mom.

Will really liked my LOST theme I did here for my blog, so I told him a while back that I’d make him a Fringe theme for his blog. He’s a bit of a “fair-weather blogger” (all credit and royalties for that just-coined phrase you can give to me personally), but lately he’s been pretty good about posting. He posted his lengthy review of the LOST video game, Via Domus (Will’s right, it’s so terrible), some stuff about McGrimmys, and even some of his favorite videos. With all this text flowing forth from his fingers, I figured it was time to upgrade his theme. You can go check it out at http://www.violentblue.net/willmccarry/! It’s pretty snazzy, and is obviously Fringe-based.

A portion of Will's theme

My mom was having problems putting up posts. She got a fancy new iPad for Christmas and has since been blogging from it about her experiences at work at Hancock Fabric. Some pretty interesting and funny stuff happens there, so go check it out. Thankfully I got her blog all sorted out! You can check her blog out at http://renerodgers.wordpress.com/.

Of my friends I pestered to blog, Billy was my last holdout. I even hacked him up his own awesomely/obnoxiously cool theme to try and coax him into posting. After nearly a year, he finally called me yesterday and asked me for his user info! Horray! He put up his first post today and he tells me he has a few more he’s cooking up, so go check his “Blog of Wonders” out at http://www.violentblue.net/billybacci/

Happy Trails,
Sam.

Just a few days ago I set up a blog for my good friend Billy Bacci. He’s in our band Violent Blue, so I set up his blog on the violentblue.net domain we got. You can go check it out at violentblue.net/billybacci. It’s actually a pretty simple modification of the Silent Film theme you can find on wordpress.org.

The original theme

It’s pretty funny and cool looking in my opinion, and it got Will McCarry jealous as to why I “made a cooler theme for Billy than for me! Mine just has a weird cat thing in the header!” That combined with my previous mention of how I wanted to hack some other themes got me actually wanting to do it. So I am.

I’m currently making a Star Trek theme and a theme for Fringe. I decided (after much intense debate) that I’m going to give the Fringe theme to Will. I mean, really, he can have the Fringe theme, I have the LOST theme, and LOST is better. So anyways I’m basing the Fringe theme off a pretty popular theme right now entitled Aqua Blue, and the Star Trek theme off a theme I’ve previously used entitled Inanis Glass.

Aqua Blue for Fringe	Inanis Glass for Star Trek

I see exactly what I want to make each of them, though I have a feeling both of these themes are gonna be kinda hard/confusing to make. I also don’t know exactly how I want to go about implementing the theme, because I kinda want to keep the LOST theme up. If there were a way to select a theme at the homepage or something, that might work. Though that might involve making separate blog directories, and then I’d have to worry about RSS feeds and page views and links matching up and other stuff… blehh we’ll see, I’m only just now starting to work on them. I’ll keep ya updated!



Happy Trails and Namaste,
Sam.

PS – If you’re wondering what happened to that home page project I had going a while ago, well… it’s still being worked out. Once I get some serious free time from homework and classes I’ll be able to really sit down and start dat der coding for it.

http://bit.ly/thishasmuchr

My best bud Will McCarry is just now releasing his long-awaited debut solo album, In Flight. He’s been working on it for quite a while, and it really shows. It’s an awesome selection of songs, and you should all definitely pick it up. Yours truly even makes an appearance on at least one song. Right now the only way to get the whole album is from him, though I’m working with him on a way to put it up online for free. Maybe I’ll even host it here on ChasingLilly.net! You can, however, check out some of the songs at either his Facebook Fan Page or his Myspace. And while you’re over on Facebook, be sure to become a fan!

In preparation for the album, our quite good friends Mel Kobran and Nathaniel Tonelli worked on an album cover for the CD. You can see the finished back cover/cover (respectively) for the album below. They did a really great job, and Mel did a great job putting it all together in Photoshop. All the elements are real, from the hand drawn planes to the coffee stain (which is actually an orange juice stain, but who needs to know?). As always, click to enlarge and by doing so, enjoy.

While they worked on the cover, I simultaneously worked on designing the inside of the album booklet. I finally finished yesterday at 4 AM, and figured I could share a few of the pages with you. But I won’t share them all, some surprises should be left for when you get your hands on a copy of the album!

In Flight booklet pages 1 & 2

In Flight booklet pages 5 & 6

I think it turned out quite well, but then again I am a bit biased. So far the response has been positive, though, so that’s a good sign. Regardless it was a lot of fun branching out into the design of album art. The awesome photos from the booklet were taken by Mel as well. She’s a photography major at VCU, so go over to her flickr or some place and support her. Another friend of mine, Billy Bacci, is also releasing an album soon (he claims next week) and has asked me to do something for him. I can smell another late-night-team-album-art-creating venture coming! Where’s my album? It’s coming…

So go pick up a copy of In Flight from Will, and I’ll keep everyone else updated on where they can download a copy of the album on the interwebz. Soon, very soon. In fact by tomorrow. No joke. I know, it’s crazy how much I’m suddenly blogging. And yes, I realize I’m just having a conversation with myself at the computer.



Happy Trails,
Sam.