Gee, guess I was wrong

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

Over at the FLOG! blog, Peter Bagge’s “Observations from a Reluctant Anti-Warrior” is offered as a “stupid war” free sample to promote his new anthology Everybody is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations: A Decade’s Worth of Cartoon Reporting for Reason Magazine, which just happens to now be on sale.

This excerpt from Bagge’s latest anthology pokes fun at old fogey war protestors. Did I ever tell you the time Ken Freeland’s fanny pack caused him to display his under roos to a large Austin crowd when he was preoccupied with working the bullhorn? I’ll save that story for another day, perhaps.

Meditations on Michael

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

Michael Jackson can no longer live outside of reality. Since he’s dead and stuff.

They were playing that scary Barbara Walters interview from 1997 tonight. Woah. The man did best staying quiet and secluded.

Everyone – even critics I respect – call his early work very influential and essential to every collection. I don’t own a lick of it. And that’s OK. (Yeah, it was one of those things I was not allowed to experience, considering his debut video was associated with the occult, he didn’t sing Christian music and he was, uh, different from what I was allowed to enjoy culturally, which really was nothing except for G.I. Joe and John Wayne movies. Don’t ask.)

Whatever. Here’s a bunch of links I’ve been meaning to share.

Your photos, presented in a timeline. Free to $40/month. Hmmmm.
New Wilco song “You Never Know” gets me all apathetic and such as if I needed help.
New New Yorker fiction: Should I read this? Has anybody else? Sigh. Six pages, I need some friggin’ time, people!
One out of 20 confirms I’m still not a geek. (Yes, I like IMing the loved one sitting next to me) Doh! Gotta work on that, I suppose.
Esteemed New Yorker music critic Frere Jones callsÂ Sonic Youth’sÂ Eternal her favorite in a long time.
Trent is back! Sorry, I still don’t care.
Laid-off Chicago Tribune reporter calls “bullshit”Â – and he doesn’t miss newspapers
Meanwhile, in magazines: Easy come, easy go
I never knew bacon could be so scary.
When Michael Jackson dies, the world turns to the web, and a little piece of the web dies. Meanwhile, I was driving home, thinking about rain. That never came. Sigh.

Professor joins ranks of fellows at prestigious psychological association

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

One of the best things about working for the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences is that I get to use a lot of my communication skills to fill the needs of departments.

Recently, I launched a new website for the Developmental Psychology graduate program, and one of it’s new features is a place to publish news about students and faculty.

Yesterday, I wrote a brief news article about Professor Bruno Breitmeyer.

An article I wrote about Psychology Professor Bruno Breitmeyer.

Here is an excerpt:

University of Houston Developmental Psychology Professor Bruno Breitmeyer was recently named a Fellow in the Association for Psychological Science for his “sustained and outstanding distinguished contributions” to the field.

Breitmeyer joins seven other University of Houston faculty on the esteemed fellows list at the Association for Psychological Science: Richard Evans, Donald Foss, Merrill Hiscock, Richard Kasschau, Gordon Paul, Lynn Rehm and L.A. Witt.

See the rest of the article on the Developmental Psychology website.

Get me out of this town already

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

Today is Wednesday. Two more work days until my vacation!

I’ll bide most of my time at home, doing nothing in particular but I’ll also be going to San Antonio and maybe other scenic places in the lone star state.

Leah + Josh – the newly weds – were in New Braunfels yesterday (we got out that way last year), I gave ‘em a ring to check in. She said she saw some of the photos posted here on BrandonMoeller.com, and since she didn’t say otherwise, I’m gonna have to assume she liked them.

A random photo of me drinking a Maibock in New Braunfels. Ahhh ... vacation.

Nope. Still not gonna write about the transmission fail. Not today. Not yet.

I got published yesterday. Yeah, it’s still exciting.

Maybe I’ll buy / plant some flowers on my vacation next week. The Lazy Gardener suggests these sun-resistant favorites.

LOW GROWERS: Blue daze, bulbine, Mexican zinnias (already have ‘em), purslane, scaola
MEDIUM GROWERS: ‘Martha Gonzales’ antique rose, black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckias), bush daisy (Euryops), coneflowers (also tall), Copper Canyon daisies, cosmos, cuphea, daylilies, lantana, fernleaf lavender, pavonia (rock rose), coral fountain plant, mid-size perennial salvias, pentas,
TALL GROWERS: Althaea, cestrum, duranta, hamelia (hummingbird bush), pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia), ‘Red Rocket’ russelia, tall perennial salvias, esperanza (Tecoma stans), vitex.

Guess I better do my research before heading over to Houston Garden Centers, where someone got me a gift card.

Fight trannys with beauties

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

Since I won’t (yet) be blogging about my transmission fail this morning, I’ll blog about my flowers instead.

I just uploaded a bunch of them to my web site photo gallery Plogger – see them all here.

The carefree beauty rose I bought from the last sale at the Rosery in Needville bloomed again, after I pruned the sunflower leaves that were shading it. This is the only thing that went right today.

This is the carefree beauty rose bush that bloomed today after I pruned the red sun sunflower leaves that were shading it a few days ago. This is the only thing that went right today.

The Saizan wedding

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

Leah Matthews and Josh Saizan were married this weekend at a Cut And Shoot ranch on the outskirts of nowhere.

Brandon and his (working) Cut and Shoot vacation

As her uncle, it was my duty obligation pleasure to be her official wedding photographer and in the next week I’ll be mailing her four CDs with the photos I took so that she may do what she will with them.

See the wedding photos and the rehearsal photos in my online gallery.

I suggest wedding photo albums from Walmart.com or Shutterfly.com – both stores frequently have sales around the holidays (like, Father’s Day) to watch for, and one could sign themselves up to their mailing list to know when those sales are happening. I can’t attest to the quality of WalMart’s photobooks, but I am pleased with a little glossy photobook I ordered for Kim for Christmas, to celebrate our engagement. I stuffed the book with my favorite self-portrait shots from the past two years we’ve been together. This was a great idea, because about a month later, my laptop was stolen and I lost a lot of the original photos. If I hadn’t backed up my favorites on Web sites, it would have been a total loss.

The photos can also be downloaded – as a large Windows/Mac-friendly zip file – here. Slap ‘em on a CD and take ‘em to your favorite print shop to get ‘em printed. I like WalMart – they always print my prints for my annual Christmas cards and I can upload them to the web site, get them ordered for an hour later, then mosey on up there later in the day.

Though I am not a professional photographer with professional photography equipment (hint, hint: gift ideas for Christmas/my own wedding on Jan. 9), I am pretty good at making a photo better with Photoshop. I did this for two of the photos that are currently on the homepage of BrandonMoeller.com.

Here they are again:

Original photo

Improved photo: Josh and Leah on the eve of their wedding. The happy couple makes an entrance into the reception.

Original photo

Improved photo: The happy couple makes an entrance into the reception.

If the bride and groom or family would like any additional retouching of the photos taken by me, I can offer my services for $25 an hour, a bargain rate in the biddness.

Lean and Josh: I wish the two of you the best as you begin your life together and if you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to holler.

I to dumb fer Opera UNite

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

OK. So, for the past couple of days, after seeing all the hype about Opera Unite, I’ve been trying to share photos between the two computers I use on a daily basis.

But for two days in a row, I’ve been failing, and today it looks like part of it is my fault and part of it is Opera’s fault. As of this writing, I can no longer see the homepage of my Opera Unite account at my primary daytime computer, but when I click on the “Photo Sharing” service, those photos pop up. So, I don’t know if some parts of Opera Unite is down or something – I was able to see my homepage of my Opera Unite yesterday …

Also, when I try to access the files I allowed it to share from home, those files are now unavailable because the “device (is) unavailable.” Now this one is my fault.

Lesson learned: the hosting machine must have Opera Unite up and running for the files to be shared (having the computer on and ready is not enough) and the receiving end can then insert the share link in any browser to access those files.

But that’s a problem for me. I’ve never used Opera before two days ago, when I heard about Unite, and I downloaded it on a whim.

I’ll keep trying, however, because I really like the ability to easily share content with someone by giving them a URL link. And at least the photo sharing service looks cool – so far, the media player service seems lackluster because though I can stream my home MP3 collection anywhere, I can’t shuffle it all. I can only shuffle each folder (album) at a time. Sigh. I bet that’s improved, soon, though for now – though I plan on not giving up on Opera Unite, I think I’m also going to check out DropBox (mac) and Windows Mesh thingy. I’ll fall in love with one solution, soon enough, and then, I will be one synced puppy … or something.

P.S. I’m also too stupid to know how to rename folders in Google Reader. Thankfully, Elena Santos ain’t.

MySpace: Good riddance or good luck?

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

MySpace is dying.

Which is sad, because Kim found me on MySpace but now we spend all of our time on Facebook and … well, Kim only found me on MySpace because I was smart enough to use my own name and she could have also found me through www.brandonmoeller.com but, I mean, well … man! I’m a geek.

Meanwhile, Facebook is gobbling up the audience of people who want to connect to their friends on a social network. It could easily be replaced by the next big thing that also can’t figure out how to make money, but that’s not Twitter because Twitter is useless.

Jeff, over at Broken Record, argues that MySpace should concentrate on what Facebook never figured out how to do: Music and performance art.

“I’ve thought for a while now that MySpace should consider focusing primarily on entertainment – movies, music, comedians, etc. There is a real opportunity to fill a void, particularly since they have the interface and the fan base already in place. It’s doubtful they’ll follow that advice, but a site with the size and resources of MySpace could dominate online music.”

I agree with Jeff (and I commented on his blog) … but one of the reasons I dread touching MySpace is because it allows its users to do some very uncouth (rhymes with Sonic Youth) things, like installing way too many bandwidth-clogging graphics and cringe-worthy design.

MySpace: A place for music logo.

I guess we’ll just have to see if Murdoch’s MySpace can recover from its downhill trend in a Facebook world … and what it might mean for local indie artists like Chase Hamblin, who doesn’t really have his new album online and available anywhere but MySpace and a handful of brick and mortar shops in Houston. Sigh. And it’s too bad, I’d order his new one if I could, but don’t really wanna hear it thru MySpace at this moment. And, I won’t be able to make Friday’s CD release party at the Continental Club.

An exercise in randomness

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Brandon Moeller

There’s a lot out there today, and my brain is scattered across so many different things …

Did you know that cinnamon, cayenne pepper and Diatomaceous Earth may be great solutions to an invasive sugar ant problem? That’s according to Dollar Stretcher.
The torrent Pirates strike back with a pay-to-hide-yourself scheme that promises to not deter their jail time.
The Plantwoman – a favorite blogger of mine – responds to my comment and offers a suggestion on how to install a soaker system to ease up the daily watering chore.
Maybe I’ll go swimming Friday before my indebted servitude to my cousin’s wedding rehearsal dinner. I am her official wedding photographer. My fee: She pays for my babysitting Saturday night because my five-year-old daughter can’t come to the wedding because she booked her reception in a bar that doesn’t allow kids under the age of 10. The bar is, apparently, A-OK with hosting a reception for just-married couples who are 18. What’s up wit dat?
Opera Unite is freaking awesome.Â …. I can’t wait to play with it some more, as I attempt to make my home computer more accessible – without depending on the cloud. We. Are. The. Cloud, it would seem, with Opera Unite.
As inspired by LifeHacker, I’ve created my own collection of my favorite Firefox Add-Ons … https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/brandonmoeller