roadtorobusto

Quick posting break during a commercial break during Miracle to pimp a very different, but incredibly good, documentary about breakdancing:

Synopsis:

With compelling characters and vibrant dance sequences, Planet B-Boy
is set in the International world of b-boying – the urban dance more
commonly known as “breakdancing.” Weaving between the vivid backdrops
of Osaka, Paris, Seoul and Las Vegas, spectacular choreography frames
the intimate stories of dancers who struggle for their dreams despite
being misunderstood by larger society and their own families.

Check it out at www.planetbboy.com.  Kate and I watched it Christmas Day courtesy of Netflix streaming and it was phenomenal — the battle scenes were just flat out nasty and the documentary quality itself was sick.

I don’t think I’ve written about this before and now seems like as good of a time as any (waiting around for a video to finish producing), so here goes…

Last year, my family on my dad’s side decided to stop doing the “typical” Christmas.  Up until then we had always bought each other gifts; some years it was a bigger ordeal than others, but the holidays inevitably ended with me buying things for my wife, sisters, dad, mom, stepmom, stepsisters (all of whom we’re close with), and more.  I’m sure you all can sympathize.

On top of that, we usually were opted into another gift exchange where we’d draw a name from a hat and be “responsible” for donating to that person as well, for the more extended family.  It was fun, but I always left feeling like I got a bunch of things that I didn’t really need, and usually I ended up feeling like I had forgotten someone or bought something as a placeholder because I really didn’t know them that well.  I’ve bought more than my fair share of smelly bath soap packages just because I didn’t know what else to get.  It was exciting, but the feeling of joy was transient, conditional, and sometimes even felt a bit petty.

Fast-forward to last Thanksgiving: we decided to try something different.  No more gift drawings.  No more gifts, period.  Instead of buying each other things, each person who was at the family Thanksgiving wrote down the name of a charity that meant something special to them.  We put our names and charities in a hat, and then each person drew a charity to donate to (on the behalf of the person whose name they drew).  It’s been a while so I don’t remember all of the charities, but I do remember 826 Seattle, The Friendship House, Opportunity International, Kiva, and more. On Christmas after we gave the donations, we talked about what we had learned about the charity, and shared why they were important to us.  There was one condition for giving gifts: if you wanted to give something — if you desperately needed to give something — you could, but it had to be hand-made (by yourself).  So last year, I gave to Opportunity International and hand-roasted a half a pound of coffee for my stepsister Alison.  We asked the rest of our family to donate to charities (of their choice) rather than buying us gifts.  It was, by far, the best Christmas I can remember.

This year, my charity is The Water Project, a charity challenging me (and others) to give up all drinks besides water; for two weeks (in early January for me, I’ll announce it when I’ve started it), my stepsister Jenny and I will only be drinking water, and will donate the money we would have spent on coffee, wine, scotch, soda, whatever — to the water project to help them build wells in impoverished areas without access to clean water.  I’ll be donating to her charity, a Domestic Violence prevention center in the area where we grew up.

I can’t wait until Christmas.  This is the first Christmas tradition that I’ve really felt is “mine,” but it’s one that I’m glad to share with as many people as possible.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

As seems to be the case in the rest of the country, Seattle has been bombarded by snow.  Usually we see a couple of flakes a year, but nothing that sticks around, so the entire city has more or less ground to a halt.  Fortunately for me, I live about a ~15min walk from my office, so I’ve been just as consumed as ever by DCv2 — no rest for the weary.  Really looking forward to launching the new design just to get some feedback from everyone out there; things are definitely very, very close.

I snapped a few pics the other night after getting home at midnight from a wedding.  Since then it’s snowed another six or seven inches, but it’s supposedly going to melt off this week.  Makes me a sad panda, but I can find some sympathy for those who have to chain up their cars to head into work.  Once it melts off I’m definitely looking to take a trip up to Baker to get in some snowboarding.

Hopefully Bryan Fuller can bring back Heroes

After being disappointed episode after episode you’d think I’d learn — it’s not a good show anymore.  Meh.  At least he’s got some good thoughts about resurrecting it by getting a steady stream of interest in the characters, rather than trying to right the ship through some immediate reboot.

So it’s turning this big ship back into a character stream, and everyone on the writing staff shares that desire. We need to get back into a character place, because that’s where this story started: Very clean, superhero metaphors to everyday life. That’s the path that we’re taking. But it is a big ship so it’s going to take a little while to turn it.

Also noteworthy:

People will die.

One can only hope that it’s the chick who can freeze stuff, the speedster, and the mindreader.

As I posted over at DeucesCracked, I’ve been trying out the MindWave audio program on my iPod lately.  Basically what it is is a series of audio patterns played in stereo (you need to listen to it on stereo headphones) meant to train your brainwaves into certain patterns.  So far I’ve tried the creativity, coffee (duh), focus, and sleep inducing tracks.

Sleep induction was the first I tried — last night.  Normally I need to take melatonin or benadryl (or sometimes both) to fall asleep easily; my brain wanders late at night and I have a tough time shutting it off.  I didn’t take anything last night, but instead listened to the sleep induction track for a while.  I was pretty wired when I started listening to it and gradually fell into a deep sleep, but it took me quite a bit longer to fall asleep than I would have liked; that said, I woke up feeling great.  Will report back on again later.

Coffee was the next track, which I listened to this morning while taking the dogs out.  I’d give it a 9/10.  After listening to it I was jazzed to get going on the day before actually having my first cup of coffee (I’m actually just starting my coffee now, 2hrs later).

While walking into work I alternated between “focus” and “creativity,” settling on “creativity.”  I don’t have much to report on it right now as even if the placebo was strong with it, I really haven’t gotten started working on my day’s projects yet so I can’t say much about its effects.  I am blogging, which is reasonably rare for me, but I’m not sure that necessarily counts.

Will try to report back as I’ve tried it for longer than a day.  MindWave is available for $1.99 at the iTunes store and I’d recommend giving it a shot — it’s probably worth the price for the “coffee” track alone from my experience so far.