So get this. There is this lady from Sweden that used to be an aerialist. She took this skill and turned it into a job hanging off the side of oil rigs in the North Sea. That is some hardcore stuff. Now, add to the mix that she is a uber talented Jazz-pop vocalist.

Well, you get to meet her on tomorrows RfL Indie Music Blast, episode 424.

Trust me, you will like what you hear.

Very interesting lady!

The site is http://reachingforlucidity.net if you want to listen tomorrow or subscribe.

Wow.

I did not watch the Grammy awards. I am not one for that type of show. It is cool that the Foo Fighters won a bunch. Personally I am happy for Adele, but I am sick of hearing her name.

That being said, evidently someone thought it would be a great idea to have girl beater Chris Brown perform. Someone thought enough time had passed since he brutally beat Rhianna and then showed no remorse. Well, he did have remorse for the dip in his career, not so much for the brutal beating.

I guess those that thought this was a good idea were on to something. Here is a link to 25 idiots that would just love to have some Chris Brown time, the beatings would be the cherry on top.

Really? Is this where we are today?

I am ashamed to be a human sometimes. Luckily I am part dimension hopping alien. That is the only reason I sleep well at times.

Cheers.

It amazes me that I am still seeing reports and comments about the Kindle Fire not being an iPad killer. It not being a full featured tablet capable of using for “real” work. It not being capable of what all the other tablets are capable of.

My response? Get over it.

I will say this. The Kindle Fire is not an iPad. You can’t use it in all the ways of the iPad. It is not an iPad killer.

What is it? A much cheaper tablet that is perfect for what it is. A multimedia reader and web browser, basically it is a low powered and priced entertainment unit.

As that, it excels over anything else in the price range.

Saying that the Kindle is not an iPad and thus does not need to exist or is a failure is like saying there is no need for the Toyota Corolla, or better yet Yaris, since BMW is a much better car. That is the logic of the argument.

Amazon never hid the specs or what demographic the tablet was aimed at. If you bought one expecting more, you are an ignorant fool. If you own an iPad and just hate the idea that the Fire exists, get over it.

I will be enjoying another book on mine tonight and might stop by Facebook to see videos of my god kids. I welcome the thought of having a device which is a diversion rather than adding to my already high workload.

Cheers Amazon. I love my Fire.

No link is added as anyone can type amazon dot com and since I live in NC, I can’t be an affiliate.

Check out the new Indie Music Blast ep 423 at Reaching for Lucidity. 3 great Bay Area bands in one show!

Reaching for Lucidity Behind the Scenes Episode 1

Hey all! Welcome to the first episode of Behind the Scenes, our new RfL show. Here I will talk about RfL media, web trends, some gossip, new apps and services, and more.

In this first episode of RfL Behind the Scenes we cover productivity and organization, the return of Indie Music Blast, and the Pepprmint Operating system.

I talk about a new productivity system I have created using Jerry Seinfeld’s “Train-or Chain of Productivity” as my guide. Pics from Flickr are below. I employ a series of color coded X’s and O’s to keep track of all my goals and projects. The object is to keep a train of accomlishment with as few breaks as possible. The colors are thus:

Red X = RfL work (Comic, recording, animation, blogging, etc)
Blue X = Boxing training
Black X = Followed Diet
Blue O = Reading (books, not web)
Black O = Freelance Work

I also use sticky notes to paste goals, to-do’s, and other important items on the calendar.

It is productive, YO!

I then touch a bit on Springpad in this episode. I recently switched from Evernote to Springpad and find it more useful.

On the RfL front, I talk about the newly reinvigorated Indie Music Blast and the status of the graphic novel. These are the two main RfL projects right now.

And last, but not least, I touch on the Peppermint OS. This is a lightweight, fast, and feature rich Linnux flavor which is great as a dual boot option or can be run from a usb stick or a live cd. Peppermint is now available for order on a 4 gb stick. The stick is available as bootable, live, or empty.

I love this OS. Give it a shot and you will as well. I’ll bet on that.

Screenshots : Desktop and Menu

Seesmic on Peppermint

Cheers till next time.

Things are really heating up over at Reaching for Lucidity. The new Manga style Ebooks are coming along. All titles will also be available in print. This is an exciting new direction.

One thing that is out at RfL is the Steampunk look for Eban and SJ. It has been pointed out to me that the movement has been corrupted. T-pain has stolen Abney Park frontman Captain Robert’s look. Justin Beiber has a steampunk themed video.

That of course means that the Steampunk aspect of Eban and SJ is out. That also means I have to retool things a bit.

That is all cool. It will still be epic.

Here is a test page from the book. No story here, just a formatting test.

That is where things are at RfL right now. I am excited to have RfL moving again. It has been pretty stagnant for too long.

Before I sign out, I figured I would share some cool things I found around the web. Adam Daniel Mezei has put out his list of stuff that he wants for 2012. It is a cool list. It makes me want to dig deep and come up with my own list for 2012. Keep your eyes here for that. What do you have on tap for 2012? What is your list?

Chad Howse is offering a free workout. It is his version of what he thinks Thor himself would do to keep in shape. Get the free .pdf right now.

And over at Reaching for Lucidity, I have a list of the software and cloudware I use to create my media. Check it out if you would like to see what I use.

Cheers!

And here is a possible direction I may be going. I have a few stories to tell and I don’t have enough time to animate them. Boxing training takes up a lot of time. However, I may get these stories out graphically.

Below is a bit of where the project may go. I am currently trying out two different programs and I will start production once I decide on which I like better.

As always, the writing is all done in Celtx. I can’t praise that program enough.

Cheers.

The Dungeon at RfL

I had a pretty good training session today in the Dungeon so I thought I might as well share. I worked on skills and conditioning today. One rule I always follow when focusing on skills and conditioning in the same workout is to work on skills first, then conditioning. Conditioning leads to fatigue which leads to sloppy form. By working skills after conditioning, you have a better chance of picking up bad habits from the sloppy form.

I started out the session warming up with some jump rope and jumping jacks to get the blood flowing. Then I jumped into the workout.

I set my round timer to the Masters Boxing Division round lengths of two-minute rounds with one minute rest. I set the timer for 16 rounds, and then I went at it. The key in this workout was to go all out, even in the skills portion. Here is the breakdown of the rounds.

The first 8 rounds were skills. I set a goal to work on hand speed and footwork today.

Round 1- Floor to ceiling bag (or double end bag)

Round 2- Heavy bag

Round 3- Shadowboxing with emphasis on footwork

Round 4- Floor to ceiling bag

Round 5- Heavy bag

Round 6- Shadow Boxing

Round 7- Floor to Ceiling bag

Round 8- Heavy bag

After completing these rounds I used the next 8 for conditioning. The rule for conditioning is to go for the full two minutes just as if I were in a fight. Here is the breakdown

Round 9 and 10- 30 seconds each of Burpees, plyometric push-ups (clapping push-ups), Medicine Ball Cleans with a toss, Medicine ball slams (mimicking a sledgehammer)

Round 11 and 12- Alternating leg-lifts, leg scissors, v-ups, alternating crunches (rd 11) and back extensions (rd 12)

Round 13- Plank

Round 14-16 – Quick Squats w/ medicine ball

Well, that was today’s workout. Tomorrow I will focus on skills and abs. I always work abs. Hope this gives you some ideas for your workouts, even if you don’t want to be a competitive boxer it sure does get the blood flowing.

Cheers!

Hey all,

I am catching up on things here on board the R.F. Lucidity. Seeing as I have been ill, and then had to battle hackers, things got a bit behind.

I need tunes to keep me going. I made this playlist today on spotify, my Pow-pop-glam list. This is going to help me get through the day.

I wanted to share with those of you that have Spotify accounts. Hope you enjoy!

Any playlists you would like to share? If so, leave the link in the comments.

Cheers

I read an article on improving memory earlier today. By the time I got to the end I could not remember the beginning. Feeling like this was a lost cause, I grabbed another cup of coffee and forgot what I was doing.

A Clean Non-Hacker Version Phoenix

The R.F. Lucidity has had some rough sailing lately. As you know from my earlier posts, I, Eban, the resident mondo maniac pirate, have been ill. Twice in three weeks. It has been a time of suck due to the illness. Unfortunately, an older drama of suck has been going on both here at ECdotC and at Reaching for Lucidity. We got hacked! Argh!

Over the last month and a half, at least, I have been poring over line after line of code. I have been cleaning all the barnacle riddled mess left behind by the scalawag hackers. No sooner would I have the sites working properly and all my passwords changed when the damned exploit would rise up again. It was like a phoenix. A damned, dirty, filthy, jackassed phoenix, but a phoenix none the less.

Hackers Dojo? Hackers are NINJAS! No match for a self-respecting Mondo Manic PIRATE!

Hackers are by design smarter than us other folk. Too bad they don’t use their powers for good. No worry though, they are pussies and I am the mondo maniac pirate of RfL. Smarts don’t figure in this fight!

The problem was that the hackers had left behind a backdoor which they used to continually relaunch their spooge-like goo plague on my sites, and by extension, my readers. You would never know by looking at my sites in a web browser. The damage was visible on mobile browsers. My sites were filled with pharma spam. Lot’s of it I tell you!

Worse yet, Google could see it. You can’t hide crap from those spiders they let loose on the world. Even the best pirate crew just get out-of-the-way and let those nosy beasts do their gathering for the Google.

Well, I finally tired of the whole mess. I yet again changed all my passwords. This time it was my next step that changed. I did not go through my site code and clean out the intruding mush. No. I backed up all my custom content and my config files and then I sent my sites off the end of the plank. I deleted my WordPress installs, the very keel of the R.F. Lucidity pirate operations.

I then went through the process to bring fresh, clean installs into my servers. This was odd as we pirates are not used to clean, especially us steampunk pirates that also happen to beat people up for a hobby. We usually stay at a just above healthy level of base grime. We made the exception this time and the installs went forth into the vast expanse of RfL server-land.

I then reintroduced all the custom content and crossed my fingers for Reaching for Lucidity. For an extra step, I moved this here pirate island to WordPress.com while I executed the cleanup procedures. I then got to move it back to the all new clean digs.

As a last, and yes, redundant step, I yet again changed every password I could find.

I am happy to proclaim, SUCCESS! Both RfL and ECdotC are finally fully free of nasty hacker phlegm and oddities. We have survived the attack and yet again sail in clean inter-web tube thingys.

Not to be outdone, I also am seriously deep in the process of kicking this damn second illness. This means training will be back on soon. It takes a lot of training to be a boxing, steampunk driven, mondo maniac pirate creator of the web.

But heh, someone has to do it.

Hackers, scum I tell you!

Cheers!

Hacker Dojo pic by mightyohm

Phoenix pic by Blindpuppetry

I got new symptoms this morning. In addition to my sinuses and cough, I now have a wheezing coming from my lungs and I occasionally have trouble taking a breath.

I do not want to be at work today. I feel like crap and Dayquil is doing little to make it bettter. Can’t wait until I get home and can sleep.

I have started to spray lysol on everything I touch at home. I have to keep Effie safe.

As soon as this fog clears, I can get back to training and creating.

Freakin sucks!

It is official, colds suck. At least it is not as bad as 3 weeks ago when I thought I was going down. I will get my flu shot this year. As I wrote earlier, for whatever reason it seems my immune system is under attack this season.

I hope everyone out there is feeling better than me.