It's been a few years since I've seriously made a New Year's Resolution. This time around (especially with tomorrow being the start of a new decade), I decided that I should make a few. The following is not listed in any particular order:

Curb the laziness.
There is so much more I could've done this year if I didn't procrastinate so much. My excuse to put something off was always because I was too busy. Busy doing what? It's the end of the year, and I don't know if I ever finished doing whatever the hell it was I was busy with. Pulp flyers? I obviously can't use that excuse anymore. No more excuses! If I have something to do, I need to DO IT! I'm sure that the following resolutions will then fall into place naturally.

Reduce the clutter.
Clutter in my bedroom. Clutter in my mind. Clutter in my email inboxes. Clutter on my social network profiles. Clutter in my hard drive. Clutter in my iPod. Clutter everywhere! If you were to browse my flickr photos, you'll be hard pressed to find a recent photo taken of my bedroom. Why? The place is an embarassing mess! People get really surprised to hear how disorganized I am at home considering how I carry myself in public, but there's a reason that even some of my best friends have never seen what my room looks like. Just now, I bent down to pick up a receipt from the Ecko Unltd shop for a track jacket I bought in July. Yep. No idea why it was never thrown away. Twenty-Ten will be the year that I make my room, life, and mind resemble a Swiss graphic designer's dream come true.

Invest in a scanner/printer.
It's been something I've needed for ages, and I think that I'll finally be getting one. I've seen a few that have the option to print directly onto CDRs, and that's definitely something I need when it comes to making demo mix CDs to hand out to folks. I'll also be able to get rid of a bunch of the clutter in my room once I get around to scanning it all (interesting magazine articles, club/rave flyers, CD liner notes, etc).

Improve my Japanese.
I spent a year (and thousands of dollars) abroad to improve my Japanese, and where'd it all go? My Japanese (both speaking and reading/writing) has gotten so bad these past couple years, and I really need to get it back up to the level it was when I was living there and communicating daily. This will be the year to do it, whether it means dusting off all my old text books, blogging in Japanese again, investing in Rosetta Stone, or just trying harder to make Japanese friends either locally or online who wouldn't mind being language/conversation buddies.

Create a track.
2007 was the year that I finally started DJing after years of saying I would. 2010 will be the year that I finally produce a track. Whether the end result is a crazy, ravey banger or horrid excuse of a song, it will be nothing if I never start. I have the means of doing it, so it's time to get to it!

Continue school.
2007 was also the year I stopped going to school. I had my reasons, but the reasons are now completely irrelevant. My current plans are to start again in the fall of this year. I need to learn more about design!

Work out regularly.
I started using One Hundred Push Ups fairly regularly in September and October, but just kinda stopped in November. January 1, 2010 will be the day that the working out continues! I'm 31 now. I can't just sit around and expect to stay in decent shape without trying!

Manage money/finances better.
Does that really need an explanation?

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I would normally say that *I wonder whether* I can accomplish all of my resolutions this year, but screw that. I WILL accomplish them all! Happy New Year, everyone! What resolutions do you guys have???

A friend of mine on Facebook shared this video... I love it!

Goddamn Electric Bill - Ten Thousand Years from Goddamn Electric Bill on Vimeo.

I then showed my buddy Emily, and she told me how it reminded her of the short film, Signs.




This totally had me smiling ear-to-ear by the end of it! It's pretty amazing how something as short as 12 minutes can get the viewer so involved!

Warning: This post is LOOOOONNNNG!

I kept meaning to write individual posts on the various things I did last month, but I was either too busy working, sleeping, or doing said things that I never had a chance to really sit down and write/post pics about any of it. I decided to just lump them all into one post (which actually took me about a week to write)... Here goes!

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10/3 - San Francisco LovEvolution



So October started off with a bang... It was SF Love time again. The event known as the "San Francisco LoveFest" and "Love Parade San Francisco" changed its name to San Francisco LovEvolution this year, as the folks at Go Ventures apparently had the rights to the name "Love Festival" and were going to take legal action with the SF Love organizers if they continued to use the name "LoveFest."

But yeah, this year the event was the biggest it's ever been; not particularly with the DJ lineup (which I don't believe was as large as it's been in previous years), but the amount of people who showed up! I got there fairly early, but it was PACKED! Seriously... It was the most crowded SF Love event I'd ever been to, and it started actually making the event a little less fun. My guess is that this was really the first year that it's happened while word-of-mouth social networking (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Xanga, etc) was as at its biggest. I wonder if the promoters are going to use the same location next year, because this year turned out to be a bit much...





































After the parade itself, I went to Opel's afterparty ("Infuse: Love Evolves") over at Kelly's Mission Rock to watch Will Bailey, Zodiac Cartel (a.k.a. Elite Force), and Lee Coombs, among many others. I wanted to go to the Skills Official Afterparty, but I just wasn't ready to part with over 80 dollars just to rock out for a few hours...

















In hindsight, I kinda wish I did go to the Skills Official Afterparty. At Infuse, I was so exhausted from running around all day that all I wanted to do was sit down, listen to the music, and stare at lasers (yes, I was sober), but there was hardly any decor at the venue, and there definitely wasn't anywhere clean to sit down and relax. The Skills Afterparty was at the Bill Graham Civic Center, which is filled with bleachers. I remember chilling up in the bleachers for quite some time last year... So yeah, after the event was over, I met up with Kimathi and his friends (who split off to go to the Skills party) and we all grabbed a bite to eat at IHOP then crashed at the Travelodge next door.





View the rest of the photos here!

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10/08 - I bought the Palm Prē!

Back in September, I finally came to the conclusion that I would be getting an iPhone... That was, until Sprint suddenly announced the Any Mobile, Anytime plan, which has unlimited data, messaging, GPS navigation, and mobile-to-mobile (with any carrier) for $70 a month. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't find a plan cheaper than that on any other carrier without having to sacrifice one feature or another. It didn't help any that I finally got to play with a Palm Prē for a minute when I hung out with my buddy Megu and her friend Christine (who had a Prē). So yeah... I finally broke down and bought one on the 8th.



I didn't want to buy it from a Sprint store, as I would've had to pay $200 and wait for a $50 mail-in rebate... I decided to go to Radio Shack The Shack and buy it there (where the price was $150 out the door). Unfortunately, buying it at a retailer that doesn't have its own dedicated cell phone staff means that they might not know how to properly activate a phone. After standing around for about an hour or so, I had to take the phone home and activate it myself. It sucked, but the in-home process wasn't so bad.




Ooh, pretty!




It came with this nifty little felt pocket! I never really use it, though...




There it is next to my old Helio Ocean! I kinda feel that the Pre is the spiritual successor to the Ocean, what with Matias Duarte being the design chief at Helio (r.i.p.) and now the (inhales) Vice President of Human Interface and User Experience (exhales) at Palm.




That was a cool little easter egg in the product packaging!

Overall, I'm satisfied with the device. It was able to sync my Facebook contacts, Gmail address book, and AIM buddy list without a problem (though I did have to sit there and manually merge all of my duplicated contacts, though that was to be expected). I like the way the phone combines AIM conversations with the SMS text messaging threads, and the email client was SUPER easy to set up. Tweed, the more popular Twitter client on the phone, and the phone's Pandora app kick ass as well.

Like any phone, it's not perfect, though... The camera is fixed focus, so I can't take any macro shots like I could with my Nokia N82 (I <3 me some macro shots, haha).

The Google Maps app on webOS (the Pre's operating system) isn't as deep as it is on most other phone, either. On the Ocean and the N82, I would be able to save favorite locations, and even plot directions from one favorite saved location to another. I haven't figured out a way to save any locations in the webOS version of Gmaps... The closest I could do to that is to save an address in a friend's contact info. When you click on someone's address in their contact list entry, Google maps automatically opens and shows you the location. That feature is pretty nifty, but in future versions of the app, I hope that the developers let users save locations, if not in the app itself, at least back into the phone's contact list. Either that, or I hope that Google goes all out and releases the turn-by-turn Google Maps Navigation app for webOS.

I also kinda miss having a directional pad or joystick on the phone. It doesn't sound like it would be necessary on a touchscreen phone, but it really comes in handy when moving the cursor around when typing, especially if you don't want to accidentally hit the "send message" icon before you finish a text or IM.

Wow, I didn't realize that I was going to nerd out this much over my phone!

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10/11 - San Juan Bautista Photowalk

This was the second Monterey photowalk I've gone on (the first was in downtown Monterey back in August), but this was the third one that was officially organized by my friend, Joe Doudna. Most of the photos I've been taking these days have been more just to archive my life, so it's nice going on these photowalks; I haven't really been taking photos for art's sake much lately, so these have definitely been giving me the opportunity to put a little more thought into my shots.

This was the first time I'd ever been to San Juan Bautista. It felt like someone had plucked a city from an entirely different period of time and plopped it down into central California!

























View the rest of the photos here!

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10/23 - Got the Sennheiser PX 100-IIs!



I think I'll write up a separate blog post about this...

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10/29 - Lisa's bday @ Cibo & checking out Scandals Halloween Bash @ Doc's in downtown Monterey

I was invited to a friend-of-a-friend's birthday dinner at a restaurant in downtown Monterey called Cibo. I've worked across the street from the place for years, but this was my first time eating there! It wasn't bad!












We then went over to Doc's, where the Scandals folks were throwing their Halloween bash. There were local bands (Mapless, Candy Flip, and one more that I didn't get to catch) and a few electro DJs playing all night...

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10/30 - Twisted Land of Oz



My buddy Trevor (who DJs as Omega) invited me and a few other local electronic DJs to spin at this Wizard of Oz/Halloween themed house party/rave on the 30th.




Can you tell who I was for Halloween (again, lol)?
Half the people there were giving me hi-fives, while the other half jokingly yelled at me because of their healthcare concerns. Haha.
























The party was shut down due to noise complaints about 30 minutes into my set, but I had a lot of fun spinning (though admittedly I did completely trainwreck when I tried to mix my intro track into the end of Durty's last track! Whoops)! Poor Joe didn't get to spin, though...

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Phew! Wow, you actually made it this far down? Good job!