Smiles

Sometimes I get jealous of people with really great smiles.

This is probably why I dislike sharks so much.

How do they do it?

Halloween in New York City

This weekend we went to New York City for Halloween. Perhaps one of the most enjoyable things about the city is the sense of community and pride that fills people at these events. It's very easy to pick up a conversation with people very different from yourself, and I caught myself on more than one occasion sharing someone's excitement over some of the costumes. Conversations ensue and it is very easy to feel connected with others in that environment.

The parade still managed to impress with a 35% reduction in their funding and a shorter route. There were tons of people in costume - myself as Cosmo, one of the fairly odd parents.

 

Even without our bright green and pink wigs, children would scream (in a good way) at the very sight of us and exclaim, "It's the fairly odd parents!" At some point, an assumably drunk youth walked up to me with a scowl on his face and said,  "What are you supposed to be with that crown and those wings and the wand...some sort of...fairy?"

His girlfriend then exclaimed, "Oh my god, they're not just any fairies, it's Cosmo and Wanda!" After which he apologized emphatically.

So all in all it was a very enjoyable experience. We'll probably go into the city again next year.

And make Bean dress up as a lame vampire yet again.

Must Meme This

It's Not a Diet, It's a "Lifestyle Change"

The sedentary lifestyle that comes with working in an office setting is not at all conducive to staying physically fit. I have to admit that eating healthy and getting a daily amount of exercise (however minimal) was a bit easier with part time + freelance work. But I've been working my way up to running a 5K thanks to support from Suzi along with doing my old lifting regiment.

For cardio I'm working on the Couch to 5K program which is actually pretty good - it's a nice easy buildup to an otherwise arduous and intimidating 3 miles (the most I've ever done in my life is 2 in one run). I'm on week six, so this is how my schedule looks.

Day 1: 5 Minute Run/3 Minute Walk - 8 Minute Run/3 Minute Walk - 5 Minute Run
Day 2: 10 Minute Run/3 Minute Walk/ 10 Minute Run
Day 3:  25 Minute Run

Day 3 makes me

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Ender's Falls

Man - that new dedication to doing fairly regular blog posts died faster than a new years resolution. But I'm definitely overdue for an update.

In an effort to make Connecticut seem less mundane, it seemed like a good idea to go waterfall hunting in tandem with getting a good amount of exercise in by hiking to said waterfalls. The website New England Waterfalls has a fairly convenient guide with ratings, so we're using that as a basis for our travels.

This weekend Suzi and I headed out to Enders Falls in Granby. After getting lost repeatedly due to bad advice from Google Maps, we managed to get there in about 45 minutes. Below are some photos capturing a fraction of the six large waterfalls we came across. There were swimming holes, plenty of wildlife, and amazing streams through out the trail - definitely unexpected finds.

The photos don't really do Ender's Falls justice, but I really can't recommend this area enough for a non-strenuous walk through some of the best waterfalls in Connecticut.

This weekend coming up I'll be in Vermont...so more photos then!

Pesto Perogies

Pesto Perogies. I eat them because of the alliteration.

So today went fairly well food-wise, but I'm still lacking in the healthy diversity department.

Breakfast
Carnation Breakfast w/ Coffee - 250 calories

Lunch
Stacey's Pita Chips - 300 calories (perhaps the shittiest lunch ever)

Snack
Cheese and Crackers - 200 calories

Dinner
7 Pesto Perogies - 700 calories

Total: 1450 calories.

This is about reasonable... I don't think I can get away with eating much more than 1500 calories considering how sedentary office work is (unless there's a fire in the office or something). Tomorrow's goal is to fit some Cardio in somewhere.

The Competitor in Me

This year I ended up going to the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston. I didn't just go actually, I enforced which meant that I got to meet a lot of people responsible for organizing and running the event. It was a lot of fun meeting a variety of nerds with interests different from my own. We stay in touch with each other via a forum available to past and present enforcers.

Yesterday I came across a thread that announced a challenge: who could lose the largest % body fat by PaX Prime (September 3rd)? To say that I've let myself go this last year is a bit of an understatement. I've gained about 15 pounds and my goal is to lose all of it by PaX Prime.

Just to give you a little bit of a background, I used to look like this:

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How Gaming Will Combat Ad Immunity

 About two weeks ago I was exposed to an interesting presentation at the Design - Innovate - Communicate - Entertain conference that discussed how gaming has integrated with reality. "Design Outside the Box" is a lecture by Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell that explores how gaming, in the broadest sense of the word, has become an essential part to influencing behavior in the real world.

While I believe that the last few minutes of his lecture describe a future that I will not live to see, I think that the general theme of his argument, that games are going from influencing and evaluating in-game behaviors to real-world behaviors, is something that is on the cusp of going mainstream. He describes a car company that put what essentially amounted to a gigapet in your dashboard. When you drove appropriately, consequently saving gas, it would grow and provide immediate positive reinforcement for the sake of a desired behavior: consuming less gas.

The most relevant point to this post was Schell's reference to online advertisements and how gaming has a positive impact on their efficacy. "That's how it works," he said, "the games trick you into paying more attention to the ads."

As someone who grew up with the internet, I kind of wrote this off initially. While I had heard of the 40+ crowd doing their shopping through Google Adsense or banner advertisements, I sincerely doubted anyone around my age clicking on an advertisement for a Playstation 3 and purchasing it right there and then. A recent case study funded by Yahoo seems to back this claim, suggesting that younger people have a well developed immunity to online advertisements.

The research, conducted in partnership with an undisclosed national retailer, sought to accurately measure the impact of Internet display advertising across online and offline sales, by tracking people who had registered with both Yahoo and the store. The research found an approximately 5 percent increase in spending among those who had seen the ads–with 93 percent of those sales occurring in stores.

The potentially worrisome thing, however, was that among those under 40, the percentage was nearly zero. That could reflect the unpopularity of the particular retailer among that demographic. Or it could underscore a growing immunity to display advertising among the Web-savvy younger generation.

While there are certainly some confounding variables at work here, I seem to recall more and more articles cropping up about advertisement immunity, and the question any online media manager should be asking themselves is this: how do we combat advertisement immunity in a non-intrusive way?

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Good News and Promises of More Posting

After a year of searching for a company that matches my career aspirations and ideal work environment, I can stop the search and get ready to settle down with Cronin & Co. I will be working as an online media assistant full-time which requires working with multiple departments and projects simultaneously. I'm excited to be starting with a company I targeted back in October 2009.

This blog has been inactive for the last two months, but I hope to change that from here on out. You can expect a well articulated update every Monday and Thursday evening. I will probably post intermittently between these scheduled postings with things that I find amusing or have been thinking about but am making an effort to post something with a little more thought on those days.

Aside from that great news, I thought I'd share with you a new soundtrack I was exposed to from Professor Layton and The Diabolical Box, a Nintendo DS puzzle game that I hear is quite good. I haven't played it myself, but the music sounds pretty great.

This is an Exciting Week

That's really ambiguous, but more details to come.