I like turtles...

apparently zombies do too.

(click here for you facebook and rss readers)

Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

Turtles are cool! Of all the animals I've seen in the sea, they are the ones I could follow and watch forever.

Of course, I suspect that I feel this way, because every other opportunity for me to see a whale-shark has been thwarted for one reason or another (e.g., bad timing, cancelled trips, living in Ohio)

But, I digress... back to the turtle.

Turtles are held in high regard, even sacred, in many cultures. In the Far East, the turtle shell (carapace) is seen as a symbol of heaven while the underside (plastron) is symbolic of mother earth. Some Native Americans believe that the earth on which we live was made from the mud found on the back of a turtle's shell. What ever the story is or what people believe in, you can't disagree that you're hit was awe when one of these majestic creatures slowly and purposely swim by you.

For me, the turtle embodies my thoughts of how one should live their lives. Turtles are thought to be slow creatures and are never in a rush.. they operate at their own pace, getting to where they need to be when they need to be there. What should we get out of this? Easy... go with the flow and be happy and content with the pace which life is taking you. Life is a journey, enjoy it as much as the destination.

In my magical world, turtles would be willing to share their secrets... because, chances are, they have many.

(http://www.explodingdog.com/title/nothinglastsbutnothingislost.html)

Here's my current desktop image that I've taken from explodingdog.com. It only relates to this short post in that there is a turtle in it.

And, for the record, I would never condone turtle servitude. I like to think that the turtle, pictured above, has taken it on himself to help his friend along his journey.

Here's some video for fun.

(For those of you that don't see the video, click here.)

I was looking through archives and I noticed about the same time last year, I blogged about turtle legend. I blame spring fever and my need to get some diving in.

It's not alright...

I thought it was funny, but may not be your cup of tea.

(no video?! click here.)

Three pretty cool words all in one movie title.

If you know me, I love movies. I mean I'll pretty much watch just about anything. Why? Because, I'm a loser.

Plus, throw in the the fact that Sherrie is normally my movie watching partner, chances are I'll have a pretty well rounded repertoire. Just so we're clear, Sher's the one to add culture and class to my normal movie line-up (e.g., "Shoot 'Em Up", "Time Bandits", and "A Time to Remember")

In 2009, there's a whole bunch of movies I would like to take time out to see; however, one has caught my eye enough that I couldn't help but highlight it here.

(pop-out, if you're seeing this through rss.)

I mean it has three words that'll get most any heterosexual guy pretty excited, i.e., "Lesbian", "Vampire" and "Killers". So, you know you can't go wrong.

The movie has already been release in Germany and is slated to be in the UK, on March 20th. When will it be in the US? I dunno, but I'm sure Google has the information somewhere in it's information hungry belly.

If you're a movie lover too, friend me on flixster, or if you're unfortunate to be my friend on facebook, check out our compatibility.

So today's the last day of Analog TV... NOT

The U.S. Congress set the TODAY as the deadline for broadcast TV stations to no longer send their signals across the analog airwaves; however, that deadline has been adjusted and the true and new deadline is now June 12th 2009.

What's that mean? It means that some of the full-power broadcast television stations have the option to terminate their analog broadcast, while others will execute their transition throughout the rest of 1st half 2009.

I'm spoiled having cable, so I never really kept tabs on the whole DTV thing. I do, however, enjoy fun and neat things that come as a result of change.

Included, herein, is The Simpsons New Main Title created in response to the HD change over.

Can you catch the subtle and fun little differences?

(Here's the link to the video.)

An adventure in stop motion video.

Last night we put together a little stop motion video made from legos and the kids' imagination.

Tools we used:

• Canon Digital Rebel XT Camera
• Mini Tripod
• Paper
• Crayons / Markers
• Legos
• iPhoto '09
• iMovie '09
• and unbridled imagination

Overall, we took over 200 pictures, but ended up only using 115.   

The process of using both iPhoto with iVideo (both within the iLife '09 Suite) was pretty straightforward and simple.

THE STEPS

Basically, I imported the images into iPhoto creating a new event, then I opened iVideo and created a new project.

I set the following Project Properties (found in File -> Project Properties... ) as follows:

Then, I opened up for the photo browser, selected the images and dragged them into the iMovie project work space.

Then using the Voiceover button (shortcut key "O"), had Sher and the kids do their narrative magic.

Lastly, added some titles, transition and published the darn thing.

THE RESULTS

The result is this video, which is the kids' version of how Spongebob and Patrick first met.

Enjoy...

The link to the video is here.

Drawing... with your voice

Here's a fun distraction, check it out. It's Zefrank's voice driven drawing tool.

It's a little flash application that allows you to control a brush with sound. A low volume sound guides the cursor counterclockwise; a medium-volume will straighten the line; and, a high volume sound will lead the cursor clockwise. It's actually kinda neat.

Eventually the whole family was howling at the computer trying to do our own vocal etch-a-sketch-like artwork.

Here's Vivian's masterpiece as it developed.

Here's what you get when you play Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter" to the tool.

You know, if you don't know Frank, you're missing out.

Follow him at http://twitter.com/zefrank and visit his site often for some happy distractions.

My current state of affairs...

This pretty much sums up how I feel right now.

"Why Am I Still Sick?" from explodingdog.com.

Do you twitter?!

I twitter. So, the first thing you ought to do is follow me at http://twitter.com/knightdiver. Why?! Because I have absolutely awesome insight and will keep you up to date with everything that is cool. Okay, not really, but it seems to be the thing to do is to solicit people to follow you on twitter. Now that this is out of the way...

What is twitter you ask?! My two second explanation: twitter is a microblogging tool that allow people to keep up with your short updates... if you're not satisfied by this explanation, here's something more concise from Common Craft that helps explain "Twitter in Plain English"

There's many tools out there to help "gauge" your twitter usage. What's it all mean? Who know... I'm just cataloging them here, just to do so.

Follow Cost
http://followcost.com/
Ever wonder "How annoying will it be to follow so-and-so on twitter?" Well, wonder no more.. you can have some straightforward statistics on how many updates are made per day, and how the last 100 updates have been. It also measures your performance in milliscobles.

Twitter Grader
http://twitter.grader.com/
Twitter Grader measures the power of a profile. How's this calculated? Some twitter voodoo and crazy number crunching you'll get a score relative to those who've been graded before you. The higher the score the better you are... can rank among the other "elites" in your area?

Mr Tweet
http://mrtweet.net/
Mr Tweet is your personal networking assistant. Using the magic of the internet, Mr Tweet will take statistics of your tweets and conversations and provide you information every two weeks. Information you'll get from Mr Tweet include people within your sphere of influence, people who you aren't providing reciprocal follows with, and general usage statistics.

Twitter Counter
http://twittercounter.com/
If you like numbers and graphs, you'll like this tool. This tool keep track of how many followers you have and predicts how many followers you will have in the near future. It's all about averages. And, from what I've gathered.... I'm pretty average.

I make a lot of Internet waste.

Between twitter, flickr, and last.fm (this is just to name a few) I generate a lot of internet trash.

How do I know this? Well, I "re-stumbled" across this site, Dipity.com.

What's the site about? What's the site do? Well, Dipity.com documents all social network activity that I've made it aware of and puts it on an interactive timeline.

To be honest, I forgot I signed up with it. It's neat that I did because rediscovering it has given me pretty interesting insight on what I've been doing throughout 2008 (which was pretty much nothing). What's crazy is that it has every little twitter I've made and references all of the images I've put up on flickr. I mean, a lot of internet trash. Really, it's a stalker's dream site.

Seriously, it's actually kinda cool. Here's my timeline:

Knight Diver's Timeline on Dipity.

Thanks for your support.

The Big Brother and Big Sister's 26th Annual Bowl for Kids' Sake fundraiser went well. From last I heard, they were getting close to their goal of $500,000, they had made quite a dent to the tune of $450K+. and internet donations had still to be updated. That's definitely a significant amount for such a great cause.

I would like to thank everyone who made donations as well as took the time out to come to the event. It ended up being a great time for old friends to catch up and to make new ones.

Some honorable mention I would like to do a shout out to are my bowling team mates who without their participation we would not have made our team fundraising goals.

Team "I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter":

Shane Foglesong, one of my very good friends who is a high school teacher with Virtual Community School (VCS) of Ohio. Shane helps shape the young minds of our future generation. That alone deserves a lot of kudos. He also loves to SCUBA dive, that definitely make him worth following on twitter at http://twitter.com/hola717.

Amanda (Mandie) Callicoat of Members First Credit Union. Amanda is the marketing manager of Members First located in Grandview, Ohio. If you're looking for an alternative to regular retail banking, check out your local credit union. If you're in Franklin County, call Amanda. You could also follow Amanda on twitter at http://twitter.com/amandacallicoat.

Amanda Callicoat
Members First Credit Union
1445 W Goodale Blvd
Columbus, OH 43212
(614) 462-6850
http://www.members1stcu.org/  

Dan Simon of Apex Title in Worthington, Ohio. Title companies are the unsung heroes in many real estate and re-fi transactions. When you buy a house or re-finance your mortgage, the title company are the ones that do all the work to make sure the money get to where it needs to and that everything that should be done actually gets done. To sum it all up, Dan does the deed. Did you know, it's also your right to request whoever you want your title company be? You can find Dan here:

Dan Simon
Apex Title Agency, Ltd.
445 Hutchinson Rd
Suite 620
Columbus, OH 43235
(614) 846-7890
http://www.apex-title.com/    

For those of you interested or are stalking any of us, here are some pictures from my flickr account.

Non-Newtonian Fluid: A Friday Activity

My business partner spends a lot of time surfing the web and finds the most interesting stuff. I don't know how; he just does. Sometime ago he found and shared videos about non-newtonian fluid.

So, this past Friday night, Viv and I thought we'd give it a try.

For those of you that don't know. A non-newtonian fluid is a fluid whose viscosity is not a single constant value, meaning that the relation between sheer stress and strain rate in non-linear.

HUH?!?!

Basically, in regards to our activity, our fluid acted like a solid when struck or abrupt force was applied. When left alone or little force was given it acted as a liquid. Check out this wiki entry if you're interested in more information.

Just in case any parents are interested in trying this, just know this:

• it's definitely a fun and easy activity to do at home,
• It's non-toxic,
• can be very messy, and
• skip the food coloring. Viv and Pxian's hands will be green for the next week.

The recipe we used was from this blog.

Here's the video from our experience.

Help me help them... Bowl For Kids' Sake 2009

Do you remember who helped you catch your first firefly? Or who told you as a young person that you could achieve anything? Thousands of children in central Ohio think of and thank their Big Brother or Big Sister when asked these very questions.

On Saturday, February 7, 2009 I am bowling in the 26th Annual Bowl For Kids' Sake, Big Brothers Big Sisters' largest fundraiser of the year. I need your help to ensure that this valuable youth service agency can continue its important mentoring programs which inspire at-risk youth to become confident, competent and caring individuals in our community.

This is certainly a lot to be asking, definitely in these tough economic times, but now, more than ever, Big Brothers and Big Sisters are in need of your help. Due to massive cut back and layoffs in Central Ohio a lot of mentors have been dropping out of the program.

Join me in making a BIG difference in the lives of children. Click this link to my personal online donation page to make your secure credit card donation. You will automatically receive a tax receipt via email. If you prefer to make a donation in my honor offline, please send a check, made payable to "BBBS/BFKS", to:

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio
Attn: Bowl For Kids' Sake
1855 E. Dublin-Granville Rd, First Floor
Columbus, OH 43229-3516

Be sure to add my name to the memo portion of your check so your gift is credited to my total dollars raised... and so I can thank you personally.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this I appreciate your support!

If you're in for a really fun time, you are also more than welcome to join us at the The Columbus Bowling Palace, our team "I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter" will be bowling at 4pm on Saturday afternoon. For more details click here.

Lastly, for your you twitter-bugs... follow me at http://twitter.com/KnightDiver I'll be sure to post some tweets and pictures during the event. @AmandaCallicoat and @Hola717 will also be there.

Hope to see you!