Once again, I was one of the lucky few.

I've been using Ubuntu for a really long time...

(download)

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found-in-my-room-ubuntu-5-10-IfqFFuAgrgmCtaocrtAH.zip (2.13 MB)

I just had something extremely surprising pop up on my timeline:

I am so incredibly excited to announce that Posterous has been acquired by Twitter! blog.posterous.com/big-news !!!!!!!!!!!!

— Sachin Agarwal (@agarwal) March 12, 2012

It turns out that my favorite little startup has been acquired by another one of my favorite web services. I had the pleasure of meeting many of the Posterous crew last summer during their "Hack Day." I have been sold on this service ever since I discovered it, to the point that I even use it as my main website (hello blog!). The union of Twitter and Posterous just seemed to be natural to me for the longest time and it seems that I was not the only one who felt that way!

Congrats to the Posterous crew and I hope to see more exciting news in the coming future!

I think it has been roughly 4 to 5 years since I've used IE. Looks pretty spiffy if you ask me.

Today, I am wiping my SSD and reinstalling Ubuntu; I'm going to (hopefully) ship an app. Why the sudden enthusiasm you ask? Well here you go:

Shh.... Android Devs - submit your Android app to BB AppWorld by Feb 13 and get a free Playbook --> tools here: bit.ly/w758Ci

— Alec Saunders (@asaunders) February 2, 2012

I'm sure this is indicative of how poor their sales have been, but this is the kind of thing that gets me to at least try out their development tools.

Since I know the whole internet is ablaze with SOPA and PIPA protests, I won't explain in detail what either bills are, but for those who are not so aware, I suggest you visit http://www.americancensorship.org/ and watch this video:

Also, if you are interested in more internet activism, pay the Free Software Foundation a visit sometime.

Today I took the time to sit down and fire up Fireworks CS4 to make a logo for my photography. I specifically needed a watermark that looked just a bit more professional than "adrianblog.net" splattered on the corner.

Here are the two that I came up with:

This second design is simply a modification of the first. The most prominent change between the two is the right leg of the letter "A" in the logo. It bugged me that it hung in the middle of the negative space of the "P," so I cut it out. My fear is that now the latter letter gets too much stress. Also, I have not worked out the ratio between logo:text size yet, so I will continue experimenting with that.

Update!

I've come up with the following design and here is a screen shot of the final product with some of the intermidary paths showing. The biggest issue that I tried to addres with the second logo (above) is how the "P" has this gaping whole of negative space. I found that this upstaged the "A" and that the "P" appeared to be lower-case, so I also changed the case on the former letter. What I ended up with was this symmetrical logo that had equal amounts of negative space! As an added bonus, the letters look like an overhead view of 35mm film canisters.

Two weeks ago, I decided to participate in my school's annual "Day of Service," a day dedicated to helping and cleaning up the community. A large collection of students met up on campus and was divided up and sent off on different assignements across the city. I had the pleasure of being sent to an elementary school where I aided a 4^th grade teacher.

Being on the campus was certainly something; it as been years since I had last stepped on an elementary school campus and it really takes some getting used to the fact that most of the people there are below my waist. I was asked to have the kids read their library books to me then take a comprehensive quiz on the computer. The system was really quite impressive; each book had a point value and a reading level. Likewise, each student had, assigned to him or her, a range of reading levels and some sort of quota to reach by taking quizes. 

I interacted with a number of kids, but one in particular stands out to me. On our way to the library to find him another book, I noticed that he walked with a limp. I did not intended on asking him how that happened, but he took the liberty of explaining what had happened. He explained how he was injured while playing baseball and after I ask what position he played, he proudly said that he was a pitcher. As it turns out, he was a pitcher with the Junior Giants and I can only assume he felt comfortable telling me this because I was wearing my Giants hat that day. I can say, with certainty, that talking with him made the entire experience well worth it.

Later on, we were relieved of our duties and told to go ahead and play with the kids during reccess. Some comrades who also volunteered and I decided to go ahead and play some 4-square. It had been quite a long time since we had played, in fact, the last time I had played, most, if not all, of the kids were not born yet. I suppose our rustiness was apparent as we were all beaten pretty badly. With our pride partially broken, we went on and head home.