Category: Lifestyle

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Lone wolves ride alone!

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A few months back my wife and I signed up for an introductory motorcycle class. We have been doing all of these semi-adventurous things as a way to celebrate her promotion to full Professor and her year long sabbatical. Over the past year we have gotten NRA Certified for Pistols, taken up Thai style cooking, started practicing archery. I am proud to say that she just got her motorcycle license after a 2-day intense course at the Motorcycle Safety School (MSS) at Lehman College. I wasn’t able to join her because of my work schedule, which is sad because we always have a lot of fun together doing this type stuff.  The good thing is that she is no longer opposed to me getting a bike. Plus she is now talking about wanting to travel down Route 66 on 2 wheels for our next big vacation trip. Personally I would rather ride through Europe, but we have time to figure all that out. I still have to get my license.

 

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Call me Hawkeye!

new recurve bow

When I get bored I tend to do things like spend money and build silly things. I am still not sure what to do with myself while the whole family is away at summer camp, so of course I broke down and bought a new recurve bow for my birthday. I picked up  the Martin Saber Takedown bow with a 55 lbs draw weight on Amazon for less than two bills. I have been meaning get back to the archery range ever since I took the family a few times last year. I really enjoyed the sport. Oddly enough, I found that shooting a bow was very calming in contrast to the Continue reading “Call me Hawkeye!”

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I do crazy stuff when I get bored.

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The fourth of July is kind of boring this year with the wife and kids away at summer camp. Still, I shouldn’t complain too much since I am a married man at home without the family for a couple of days. The little things like having the TV and bathroom all to myself are pure bliss. However the house is too quiet and I am trying to keep from going stir crazy.

Right now I am deciding on whether to go to the movies or wait around for my boy Adesola to come over and hang out like we used to do back in high school. Or at least I am hoping he rolls through and brings a brother something to eat. HE KNOWS I CAN’T COOK AND AIN’T GOT NO DAMN FOOD IN ‘DA HOUSE!

I spent the morning sleeping late and watching cartoons. I spent the afternoon at the dojo, sweating profusely and getting punched in the head. The early evening was spent putting together this killer Batman costume I have been making for Comic Con this year. I have some of the main pieces such as the utility belt, the gauntlets, and the boots. However I am still searching for a good cowl.

As always with making one of these suits you have to decide to either go with the old school skintight spandex or the more modern armored batsuit. Unless I am in much better shape by the time Comic Con and Halloween roll around I am leaning towards the modern look. It is more forgiving than the spandex. I don’t want to go out and get called “Fatman”.

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Straight out of a comic book!

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When I was a young child growing up in Harlem there were very few people that looked like me in the media. And when they were people that looked like me presented in the movies, or on the small screen, they were almost always portrayed as unintelligent or docile. This is the rare exceptions to these rules made a seismic impact on me and many other impressionable black children. Yesterday I saw that one of my earliest heroes as a child, James Milton Kelly, had passed away at the age of 67. He was better known to the world as Jim “The Dragon” Kelly and was one of the prominent stars of the 1970s martials arts and Blaxploitation film era.

Jim Kelly was a martial arts legend to many of the brothers that I grew up around. He inspired many of us to start training in the martial arts just as much as Bruce Lee, and maybe more in certain ways. Being a young Continue reading “Straight out of a comic book!”

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Didn’t I tell you not to scare me??

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I have been very fortunate over the years to have had my children stay relatively safe, sound, and healthy. I have tried not to be one of those helicopter parents that tries to keep their kids secluded and isolated away for anything that could possible harm them. But every now and then, kids being kids, they get hurt. My daughter took a spill on her skateboard and needed some stitches in her hand. She is alright but it freaked me out to get a call from her on way to the emergency room. From now on she and her brother are going to be wearing helmets when on those damn things. I don’t care how uncool it looks. I guess I shouldn’t feel to upset since it has been years since I had to worry about her getting injured like that.

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End of the semester… and on to new adventures!

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Today was the last day of finals. The students in my HUW 269 New Media Project lab capstone course were scheduled to turn in and present their final professional portfolios. The final presentations are always interesting because it gives the students, and me,  an opportunity to see how far they have progressed as multimedia artists since the beginning of the semester. This year was a little different. In addition to displaying visually stunning portfolios, these capstone students, many who had graduated last week,  surprised me with a end of the semester thank you party. They bought pizza, cake, and soda that we all chowed down on as we laughed and critiqued the final portfolios that were presented.

In the 12 plus years I have been teaching at LaGuardia Continue reading “End of the semester… and on to new adventures!”

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Finally, new Mac Pros

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Apple finally is going to release an update to the Mac Pro desktop, and for the first time since they started producing these top of the line towers, I am NOT planning on getting one. This is because I have migrated away from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere Pro, thus eliminating the one reason why I would need a mac this powerful. So without a specific mac application to drive a purchase of this magnitude, I cannot see dropping this much money on the new system.

All of my other software, primarily the Adobe Suite, is cross platform and can run quite well on cheaper PC based equipment. Plus Premiere Pro already integrates much better with After Effects and Photoshop than Final Cut. And according to my research I am not alone in this belief either. It seems that many professional videographers have made the switch away from Final Cut to other platforms because of the debacle that was the initial release of Final Cut X.

All of the other mac specific applications that I use now, like xCode and iBook, can be easily be handled by lower end systems like my Mac Mini and my aging mac laptops. And while I will concede that the cylindrical design of the new Mac Pro looks cool as hell, the price, good gracious, the price is going to be astronomical. As a person more than willing to spend money on cool stuff, I just don’t see a single mac application that would necessitate getting this system. However the challenge for those intrepid people that do decide to get one will be in figuring a way of keeping this monster under 6 or 7 grand if they go with an 8 or 12 core option.

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Yipit…..Yipit good!

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The “agita” that I was feeling yesterday over my preparation, or lack thereof, for my iOS programming course started to ease today.  A large part of the reason for that was that Vin Vacanti, the founder Yipit.com, spoke to our class on the topics of entrepreneurship and tech startup creation. Yipit is a daily deal aggregator that recommends personalized daily deals from websites such as Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City and dozens more.

I have listened to many speakers over the years and I would have to say that Vin was one of the best. He offered excellent insight on the mindset of the success entrepreneur. He took us through his process for starting and implementing a new business. The main take away from his speech was that while learning to code is very important, don’t be afraid to go implement manual processes, especially in the startup phase of your venture. I would highly recommend that anyone interested in starting a business to check out his blog (http://viniciusvacanti.com/).

However, I still have a ton of catch up to do on the iOS programming.

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New Media Tech: LaGuardia Graduation 2013

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To the LaGuardia New Media Technology graduates of 2013:

When you came over to me at the end of the ceremony it brought it all home as to why I do this every day. Y’all made me cry! I LOVE MY STUDENTS! My door will always be open. It has been my honor to be your professor. I am so proud of all of you! Go out into the world and become true “digital disruptors”. Educate, inspire, keeping learning, and most of all, GET PAID!!!! New Media Tech represent!! Westsiiiiiiide!

p.s., Holla at me. On the real, I know of a really good B.A. program in Communication and Media over at CUNY SPS that some of you might be interested in attending. 🙂

Photos from the Event

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