Whaaaat???

(Left to Right: Alex Day, Charlie McDonnell... unfortunately, I don't know who the other two are...)

I am thoroughly disappointed in Pandora. Not only does it play advertisements related to Justin Bieber on the most random of stations (I have a Dave Melillo station and he came up. Their musical styles are basically opposite), but they don't know who Alex Day or Charlie McDonnell is!

Now, I'm guessing some of you are looking at your computer screens with an odd look thinking, "Well, I don't know who they are either." Therefore, we must fix this. By clicking on their names in the paragraph above, you will be brought to their respective YouTube pages (and as always, if I put in the wrong address or it simply doesn't work, please tell me. Knock on wood, but we haven't had any problems thus far).

Charlie does these videos where his subscribers challenge him to do various tasks. One of them was painting his entire body purple (one of my personal favorites). On top of challenges, he creates music and is part of a band called Chameleon Circuit (Alex day is included in this).

Alex Day does these videos where he reads Twilight and then makes fun of it. They're really quite funny, even if you're like me and you like Twilight alright. He also has some independent music on his channel. The songs are quite good, I highly recommend that you listen to them.

Any way, I figured, hey, their music is on the internet, so Pandora is sure to have it. Not the case. I don't know if it's because the Music Genome Project has to weigh their musical style very carefully in order to categorize them and figure who some similar artists are... I know it's not because they're British, because the Beatles are in their system. Maybe it's because they're newer...?

I'll give it some time and then we'll see if this rant was necessary or not.

Of course I won't stop listening to Pandora, but I have lost a little more respect for the site.

At least one good thing has come from this: everyone who reads this will at least be aware of the existence of Charlie and Alex.

Have a great week, everyone!

Castle in the Sky

This week's obsession? (hint: look to the photo!)

You've guessed it! TREE HOUSES.

So I was wandering through Barnes and Noble one day with a friend. He was in science related books and I was strolling through art, when I happened upon this enormous and super-cooling looking book of tree house designs! Needless to say, I picked it up and flipped through it. I was like a little kid in a candy store (maybe that image has changed now... maybe a little kid with a new game for their Wii or DS... I dunno...).

So now, I've been sketching out random designs and ideas for when I do build one (because I will build on sometime before I die. It's part of my bucket list now). I'd love to show you one of the designs, but unfortunately, I'm on a computer that does not hold that file. So you'll have to settle for the pictures that I find on the internet (really, they're all quite amazing. You should Google it sometime. They have some crazy cool designs out there).

To get more ideas, I researched books that had pictures of tree houses (maybe even some conceptual art for said tree houses like the one that I found in Barnes and Noble). I really can't wait to get a peek at those! (Oh boy! Oh boy!)

Food for thought, dear readers. Have a great week!

NaNoWriMo!

Hello Everyone!

Have you ever wanted to sit down and just write a novel but you can't find the time or motivation to do it? Perhaps you could give NaNoWriMo a try!

November is a long way off, so there's plenty of time to make up your mind. "NaNoWriMo" is an acronym that stands for "National Novel Writing Month." Clever, yes? To officially sign up, you have to create an account (it's completely free). Once you're signed up, at the end of October, you'll be able to set your word count goal (the typical novel is 50,000 words, but I'm pretty sure you can set it lower if you so desire). After that, you write like crazy! The whole point of this is to meet your word count goal. If you meet your goal, you win!

I highly recommend at least looking at the website. Maybe that will be your deciding factor. But any way, if you do decide to join in the madness, make sure you look for me: Jude_Rosenberg55 and then we could be writing buddies throughout the month of November. I just ask that you send me a note so I know who you are. Especially if you have some obscure username that doesn't hint at who you really are.

Oh yeah! If you click on the title, it doubles as a link, and that will take you to the website where you can scout things out to your heart's desire. And if that doesn't work for some reason, here's the website: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

Also, if you could tell me that it doesn't work, I'll try my best to fix it for the future. I hope to see you there!

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

--Jude Rosenberg

California or Bust! (More Hopeful Planning)

Hello Everyone,

Things just seems to be running against me. I received news from the fiction contest I entered and nothing happened for me. That's all right, there are other contests. I found two or three more and I'm currently working on poetry for those (I'm not going to post them here, because they need to be previously unpublished, and I believe Blogger is considered self-publishing. So if you want to read them, I would be happy to send some to you via snail-mail or email). Plus, that contest was international. There was a very small chance I was going to get picked any way. And here's the other thing: I was hoping to work as a camp counselor at a Girl Scout camp next summer, but you need to be eighteen years old to be a camp counselor. Thank you Girl Scouts of America... It does make sense though; I'm sure parents wouldn't want a minor looking after their minor children. So that will probably be something I do during college over summer periods. Which means, I'm stuck at home, yet again. I just want to get out and do something good and wholesome during the summer. Urg...

I have other hopes and dreams for a summer too. I want to go to California. More specifically, I want to take a train to California. I have never ridden on a train other than the Light Rail or one in Chicago. I want to go to California (like, next summer, maybe?) and then do some college visits (because I did find an art school in California that I'm seriously considering) and then, since I've never been to the state before, do sight-seeing like my parents did when they were there. I could look into some hostels and everything! I could learn how to read a map beforehand and then save up for airfare and stuff over this summer and the school year (if the places I applied to work with me and give me a job. I've done my part already... stupid economy...).

I have decided that my Australia trip will be postponed, yet again. It'll give me more time to save, plus I can look for a friend that's just as interested in going to Australia as I am. It would probably be more fun any way. We can split the rent of some place and stay for a month. Who knows, maybe it'll be my college roommate (yeah, I'm crossing my fingers).

Hooo.... have a good week, everyone :)

Sincerely,

Jude