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June 30th, 2010 → Another Toy
As many of you have probably guessed, I have gone ahead and picked up the iPhone 4. For all the hubbub and negative press surrounding this phone, it is an absolutely outstanding gadget — great phone included. I think there are just naysayers out there who want to bring down Apple or something, or are jealous that Apple is becoming a legitimate contender in many consumer electronics. I'm not really sure what it is, but to each his own I suppose.
The phone is such a huge upgrade over my 3G version; I just can't say enough positive about it.
June 11th, 2010 → Single-A Athletics
We have now officially reached the end of the season for little league. I had a ton of fun with this year's team, and it'll be a little sad to say goodbye for the year. Every kid improved so much over the course of the season. I'm so proud of all of them. I was also very fortunate to have a really solid cast of supporters in the kids' parents. Many of them helped out in a number of ways all season long. There's no way that one person can manage an entire team on his own, so my thanks to all the parents couldn't be expressed enough.
June 9th, 2010 → A New Camera — FINALLY!
Missing from my toy arsenal for many, many years has been a legitimate camera. That period is over now. We now have ourselves a pretty serious camera, and it's about friggin' time. I had the issue last year with trying to repair an older Sony camera, but that really never came to fruition the way I'd hoped...so earlier this weeek I said "enough is enough" and I went and did some shopping. We ended up with a Panasonic 14.1 mega pixel point-and-shoot, and it really takes phenomenal photos for its class of camera. We only spent $170 or so on it, and that was after buying a 4GB SDHC card. The camera also shoots "HD" video, although it's debatable how HD it truly is; they claim is 720p, so that's supposed to be true HD. Regardless, I won't knock the phone for that, because it takes great video for a phone, and I just need to keep that in mind. The photos this thing takes are ridiculously clear and have great scalability, and that's what I wanted in the camera anyway; the HD video is just a bonus. One thing that's great about the camera, too, is that it takes a picture very quickly after you press the shutter button. That was a huge thing for me going into the purchase, and this camera definitely meets that requirement.
May 5th, 2010 → The New Toy
With all my recent web design and other work I've been doing, I've been able to afford myself a new computer. As such, I have chosen to pick up what's basically the top of the line computer out there: the MacBook Pro. I went with the highest-end version they offer: 17", 500GB 7200 RPM hard drive, 4GB RAM. The RAM is actually what it ships with by default and is expandable up to 8GB. I plan to upgrade to this in time.
I have already purchased Parallels for this new machine so I can run Windows simultaneously with the Mac OS. It work pretty much flawlessly, and I'm really glad I picked this up (both the Parallels software and the computer!). The wife loves the Windows OS, so this is nice for her; further, it allows me to test my web design updates on a number of different browswers.
May 4th, 2010 → BoxedFarm.com = DONE!
My latest web design client's site is officially completed now. Check out boxedfarm.com to see how it came out. I'm sure there will be design and functionality changes in the future, but this should be the main look for a while.
April 3rd, 2010 → New Web Design Client
I have landed another website design gig. This one really figures to be hugely beneficial for me and the fam, as it's a pretty big gig that will involve not only a lot of initial setup time, but a ton of ongoing support. It's a site that is going to be used in an e-commerce format, as the client intends to be making tons of sales directly from the site. It's a produce delivery service, called The Boxed Farm Company. The site is, quite simply, boxedfarm.com. I envision the site being basically completed within a couple weeks, and then of course tweaks and updates to follow for an extended period as well.
March 23rd, 2010 → Living Room - Are We Done Yet?
Thanks to Uncle Sam (read: "thanks to ourselves for letting Uncle Sam borrow our money for a year"), we have some new furniture and a pseudo-remodel of our living room. The wife and I worked on this together, so I can't take all the credit for it.
Click on the thumbnails to open larger versions in a new window:
The complete image gallery can be seen at my home theater gallery on the Blu-ray.com forum. Unfortunately our camera sucks, so the color in these images is less than stellar and barely even true — to say nothing of how it is nowhere near indicative of how it looks in real life.
March 20th, 2010 → Little League Update.
Well, the little league season is well underway. Boy, this season has been a ton of fun so far. We're already a couple games into the season, and already we've seen a great deal of progress from every kid on the team. I've had a lot of help with the team from parents who've stepped up into coaching roles. I couldn't do this without them...so if any of you coaches ever make it here to this page: THANK YOU!!!!
I've made a nice little website dedicated to the team, which can be seen here: athletics.brettroby.com. I really like the way it came out, and may be some of my best design work yet. Check it out.
February 5th, 2010 → Stop. Server Time.
What a journey this has become. After tons of problems with trying to upgrade my server, I have kind just pulled out the white flag and given up. Fortunately for me, I found a guy through the Blu-ray.com forum who offered to help me get it back up and running for free; all I had to do was pay for shipping to and fro. He also overclocked the cpu for me, which was a nice little bonus. Now the server is back home, fully up and running, and the new network overhaul project can continue. I should have pics at my home theater gallery soon.
January 15th, 2010 → Little League Time!
It looks like it's that time of year again: little league time! I'll be managing my son's team again, and as such have created a website dedicated to the team. Check it out here: CSLL Single-A Athletics Website. I'm pretty happy with the design I've got so far, but of course there will be tweaks to the artwork and functionality as needed.
December 30th, 2009 → Best Craigslist Transaction EVER
I posted the RockBand set for my Wii on Craigslist, and got tons of hits on it right away. I sensed a legitimate interest in one of the shoppers, and ended up setting up to meet with them to sell it. We agreed to meet in a central spot to both of us. They were on time, didn't haggle on the price, paid in cash, said thanks, and that was that. I took the money from that sale and drove straight to Best Buy, where I picked up the set for the XBOX. Easy enough. Very happy.
December 26th, 2009 → Christmas Haul
Another Christmas has come and gone! I love Christmas, but for some reason this year I was a bit bah-humbuggish about the whole thing. Probably too much stress. I think I've got too many projects going on. Anyway, I got a couple really cool things. The gift from Max Muscle ended up being a digital photo frame, which I absolutely love. I have one at work and I really enjoy that, so it's nice to have one at home as well. The one I have at work is several years old at this point, and the one I got this year has a ton more features and is way better. Cool deal. Mom got me a pair of tickets to the Globetrotters at the HP Pavilion, so that should be a nice time out for me and my son. I'm really looking forward to that.
I pretty much only got one gift that counts as a "toy," and that is an XBOX 360! The main reason I wanted and got this is because I've taken a particular liking to the game RockBand. After playing this game for a few months on the Wii, I have started to get really good. I played it a couple times on my father in-law's XBOX 360 at his place, and after seeing the advantages to the game being played on that platform when compared to the Wii, I had to have one. So now I have to get rid of the RockBand set for my Wii, and go get a new set for my new XBOX. Craigslist, here we come.
December 22nd, 2009 → Gift from MMSC
My main web design client, Max Muscle Santa Cruz, has given me a nice little gift for Christmas as a token of their appreciation for what I've done with them over the year+ that I've been working for them. I can't wait to see what it is!
December 12th, 2009 → Goddesswear
The Goddesswear site I've set up for my favorite clients, Max Muscle Santa Cruz, has really taken off since we inititated it a few months ago. They're really stoked on the income it's brought them, and I'm really happy that it's working so well for them. Check it out for yourself here. It's a pretty legit site! There's a lot of cool stuff on there, too, from a nerdy web designer standpoint.
November 30th, 2009 → Notebook Theme Website (cool)
It's been a while since I've posted. Crazy holidays. I've been fleshing out my notebook-themed website design periodically over the past couple weeks. So far this is what I've got: Notebook theme, by Brett Roby.
November 14th-15th, 2009 → Roby Landscaping
The wife recently had the itch to redo the front yard. Part of this project meant removing a tree from the planter box, which I did a couple weeks ago. She the purchase a couple nice potted mini trees, cleaned up the dirt, and laid down some black bark. It looks great. This weekend I finished up the job, installing a perimeter border made of redwood. It sort of made a little planter box. Check it out here. For a picture from farther away, click here.
I was also asked to build one for the condo next to ours, which of course I gladly did. (note: I have nothing to do with the landscaping for that unit!)
October 24th, 2009 → ...we are but men. ROCK!
Tenacious D's Tribute downloaded tonight! Man, what a blast it is to have this song availble for play on this game! There is only one other D song available for download right now, so I'll probably start DL-ing some tracks from my favorite guitar virtuosos the likes of Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen. There's a ton of Iron Maiden, too, which I'll probably get as well. I wish there was more Metallica, and I wish there was at least some Zeppelin. Oh well.
October 16th, 2009 → RB2 Downloads!
I decided to check out the available songs for download for this game, and boy was I surprised by the sheer volume. There are over 700 songs available for download. I went ahead and downloaded a few of them this evening: Pat Benatar's Hit Me with Your Best Shot and Heartbreaker; No Doubt's Sunday Morning; Spongebob Squarepants' I Can't Keep My Eyes Off of You, The Best Day Ever, and Where's Gary? The Benatar and No Doubt are for the wife; Spongebob for the kids. I went ahead and treated myself to Rush's Working Man (Vault Edition); I have no idea why it is a "valut edition" but I do know this: it is hard to play! All of these songs are surprisingly fun to play, by the way...even the No Doubt and Spongebob!
September 25th, 2009 → Joining the crowd
Well, I've finally caught up with the Joneses and got myself involved in a music video game — Rock Band 2. After years of fighting it because I thought I was "too cool" to play these game due to the fact that "I play a real instrument," I finally caved in (if you want to call it that) and started my life as an e-rocker. The straw that finally broke my back was seeing how much fun my wife was having singing while we were all at her parents' house for a BBQ. Actually, everyone was having fun, but seeing her on the mic kind of made me think "oh, we could play this together" which would be pretty cool.
August 29th, 2009 → Slick Custom Shelving
Thanks, Ikea. I swear, our house is something straight out of an Ikea showroom. My latest project involved some custom Ikea shelving in the living room — a design of which I'm quite proud.
It started out as a two-shelf arrangement; something I put together earlier this year to welcome my growing collection of Blu-ray discs. The wife and I decided to expand on that, and eventually get rid of our DVD shelf, seen here in one of the before pics. I then went on to install a third shelf, raising the height of the original two and lessening the gap between them. Here's a picture of that → {pic here}.
Considering the aforementioned growing collection Blu-ray (and Wii) titles, we decided that this was cool, but not quite enough...and we were tired of the look of the DVD shelf. We ended up removing the DVD shelf, and then going with a staggered pattern of long and short shelves that now basically fill up the wall.
Example #1 shows how it looked just after I installed all the shelves. In example #2 you can see how it looks when it's all filled up. Don't worry — the location of the phone and oscillating fan are (were) only temporary; those cords will not fly in my theater.
...but if you know me, you know that wouldn't be enough. We (I) decided to add a power outlet so that we could charge our HTPC keyboard and Wii remotes. Hence, we have a modification to the modification project.
Here you can see me clearing out the shelf to prepare for my big task; this image is a close-up of the shelf/area where I'd be installing the new outlet; yonder you see the new outlet installed; and finally here you can see what it looks like "completed" (I say "completed" like that because it's never truly done). I also added some framed Led Zeppelin LPs, as you can see Houses of the Holy to the right of the new shelving unit if you look closely enough in that last picture. That was a temporary location for those frames. I've since installed those permanently, a little bit farther over to the right. Pics of that to come later.
August 2nd, 2009 → Sweet Webbies in Action
I just finished up a nice chunk of work for Max Muscle Santa Cruz, one of the sites I'm webmastering. They've decided to go online with their sales for Goddesswear, which is activewear for women, and I am sensing that this is going to be huge for their business. My contribution? Well, I have created a special section on the site devoted to Goddesswear. If you have a look, you'll see some decent layout design, but what's really cool is all of the different popups and such that I implemented. One of my favorite things I've done is the pop-up image on mouse hover to another pop-up gallery window technique, as seen on each of the product pages, such as this one. There's a lot of clever CSS, HTML, and javascript code working here. There are also text pop-ups on every images. Good times!
July 21st, 2009 → Quick Update
I've been super-busy over the past couple months with a number of things. I've been really rocking the home theater upgrade scene at home with a couple sweet new additions (living room speaker upgrade to the max; master bedroom television upgrade), and I've been getting a ton of interest in my side businesses/ventures. I've got a great little thing going at Max Muscle Santa Cruz right now where they're having me set up an online store for their Goddesswear line of clothing that they're starting to sell over the internet. There are PayPal links, shopping carts, and all kinds of cool stuff. It's pro looking, and I'm pretty proud of it. The owners are happy with it so far, too. We've already sold a bunch of stuff and it's only been up a few weeks. I've also picked up a couple new customers for web design, so stay tuned for that.
That's all for now.
June 11th, 2009 → Season's Greetings
The end of my first season as "official" team manager for my son's little league team has come to an end today. I had a ton of fun managing the team and coaching the kids, and I hope to do it for many years to come. We had our year-end pizza party last night at Round Table, and each kid was awarded a trophy. Team mom Lori took care of the party reservations and putting in the order for trophies. She was also very helpful in other aspects of team management. Her husband Steve is an awesome coach and I hope to be as good of a coach as he is someday. Their kid Keagan is eight years old and will be moving up to double-A next year, so I likely won't have the opportunity to coach with Steve for another year or two; I believe my son will be staying in single-A, as he is not yet seven. I had a great time coaching with him, though, as well as with coach Vic, who was the manager of our team last year in T-ball while I helped coach.
I was able to capture a ton of video, and I'll be posting that on the Angels team site soon. I'll probably do something along the lines of showing small flash videos, with the option for the end-user to download the original .mpg files from another hosting site. I took over 1GB worth of video yesterday, and I won't be able to host all that on my site. I got some great clips, though, so stay tuned!!!
May 15th, 2009 → New Website Coming
I've got an absolutely amazing idea for a website. I can't disclose the idea here just yet, as I don't want it to be stolen by anyone. Basically, though, it'll be the most awesome thing in the history of the internet (or close anyway; eBay is pretty good).
March 20th, 2009 → 300 is good to me
I hadn't played Wii Bowling in days, so out of the clear blue sky I decided to give it a shot again. On my first game "back," I bowled something like a 240/250 or so, which pissed me off. I couldn't live with that, so I decided to play another game. You might be able to guess what happened next:
March 13th, 2009 → Chasing the Dragon
All right, so I'm just going to give up on getting my camera fixed. I only invested about $25 in it ($18ish for the battery with charger; $5ish for the USB reader), and I did get it to "work" again; however, its imaging is very poor and it is beyond the point of putting additional money into it. I believe I'll just try to find a used — but working — camera of the same model so that I can use the new battery and USB card reader. The camera itself is a good one, it's just that once a camera goes for a swim in a pool, they're usually un-fixable. I learned that recently.
I will say that the overall experience was worth it, though, as I got to learn a lot about cameras — I knew nothing before this experience.
February 19th, 2009 → Angels Website
Well, I've been appointed as a head coach for my son's little league team. I originally signed up to be an assistant, as I feel I'm best suited for that role right now due to my patience with and understanding of youngsters, but apparently there weren't enough volunteers for head coaching jobs, so they called on me. It's not a big deal and I'm not complaining or anything; it's just that I really didn't anticipate taking on the responsibility.
Anyway, I've decided to dedicate a portion of my site for the season. It should be a lot of fun to maintain. I've already had a number of compliments on it, and I haven't even completed it yet. On the site you'll find several neat little CSS and HTML goodies, and even a PHP or Java script mixed in here and there. Check it out at angels.brettroby.com!
February 15th, 2009 → It's aliiiiive!
My camera project has finally reached its end! I just received my camera after what amounted to about two week's worth of finagling and dealing with it. I can safely say it was for the better, as I got to learn a bit about cameras — definitely a weak subject for me — as well as actually have a legit camera. We've had our FujiFilm 2.0 megapixel camera for about six or seven years, and I believe it was old when we got it back in the day. The "new" camera is about 1/4 its size, has a better zoom, and three times the resolution. Good times!
I am waiting for a little gadget I bought on eBay to arrive now. It's this little USB card reader specifically for the memory card that my camera uses. It was $5 total with shipping. I'll post some pics taken with the new camera as soon as that arrives and I'm able to upload pictures from the camera to my computer.
February 11th, 2009 → Más Camera
Sadly, the LCD backlight did not fix the problem. The camera still shows the very dim images, and the camera still takes pictures; hence, I don't think I really "fixed" anything. I talked to the seller of the backlight, and he said that the problem was one of two things: the LCD backlight or the mainboard (analogous to a motherboard of a computer) of the camera itself. In complete fairness to him, he told me that it might be the mainboard and not the LCD before I bought it, but that 90% of the time the symptoms of my camera are attributable to the LCD backlight.
So I wrote the seller telling about how the backlight wasn't the answer, and I added my sob story about how I really love the camera, and out of the kindness of his heart he offered to fix the camera for free so long as I pay for shipping of the camera to and from his store. What an amazing offer. I told him I'd take him up on that. I originally wanted to fix the camera on my own, but at this point I think it'd be best to get it into the hands of a pro.
February 5th, 2009 → Camera Repair Update
I just purchased and received a generic battery and its charger for the camera from my last post. I charged the battery and put it in, but that didn't "fix" the camera. When you look at the LCD screen, you can see that there's an image on there, but it's so dim you can hardly see anything at all. I did some research on this, and it appears as though it might be the backlight for the LCD. The camera still is capable of taking pictures, however, so I will persue this further. I just found an eBay auction for an LCD backlight, so I went ahead and picked it up for $15 shipped. As soon as it arrives, I'll put it in and see what happens. Hopefully that fixes it.
January 28th, 2009 → Free Camera
I was given a nice Sony DSC-W50 6.0 megapixel camera from my stepdad recently. Apparently, it was dropped into a swimming pool, and it no longer powers on. He told me I could go ahead and have it; if I got it working, more power to me. I couldn't pass up this opportunity!
January 10th, 2009 → Another Client!
I've gotten another client for a flash design for their website. The site is Simply Clean Care (.com). I haven't uploaded my work yet, but it should be there soon. The site's owner is also interested in having me work on not only this website so we can jazz it up a little bit, but also some of his other projects that he's working on. This should be a pretty good business relationship and I can't wait to get going on all this.
January 3rd, 2009 → More Home Theater
I just upgraded my home theater AGAIN. Surprise surprise. Check it out here.
December 29th, 2008 → Snowboarding!
First snowboarding trip of the season is under the belt. It was a pretty good day. The snow was sort of choppy and icy, as the weather kind of affected the texture of the snow, but it's hard to complain about the first run of the year when you have a new board and bindings! I cannot wait to go again.
December 1st, 2008 → Business Section Up and (semi) Running
The business section of my site, which I'll be using primarily as a portfolio for my works, is somewhat up-and-running now. It's definitely not completed, but it's a nice start. Check it out!
November 24th, 2008 → Yet Another Job!
I got hooked up with Evolution Skin & Body for another project. The owner liked what I had done for her on a previous job that I did through my day job at Nisene, so she decided to hire me to create a brochure/menu for her products. I have a lot of great ideas in mind for this project. Check my business section soon to see the finished product.
November 23rd, 2008 → Tetris Party
Well, this didn't take long.
I've already beaten the game's standard game mode (level 15). It really isn't that hard because you get to spin the blocks for a long time once they've reached the the floor or top of the existing block pile. It's kind a weird thing to get used to, having grown up on and playing NES 8-bit Tetris for the past 20 years. Also different to me is getting used to the way the blocks spin. I can't put my finger on it, but something is different. I'll be including my Tetris Party stats (that means a review, current high scores, nd pictures) in my video games section soon.
November 21st, 2008 → Move Video Games — Great.
Just when I thought I'd had enough video games in my life — I only play about five or six of them total with any regularity — Nate introduces me to Tetris Party, Virtual Console, and WiiWare. I've made my first Wii Points purchase, spending 1200 point of the 2000 on Tetris Party after seeing it in-person at Nate's place. This ought to be fun.
Now I've got a whole new world to explore in my video gaming; hopefully this won't distract me from my web design work.
November 18th, 2008 → Santa Cruz Television
I've been working on Santa Cruz Radio and Television's site for a while now, and I just implemented some new pages. The overall operation of the site is very user-friendly now, so I'm really happy with the way it's coming along. I updated the installations page, and it's looking really good.
Last week, I changed up the testimonials page using this cool new technique, and it looks awesome in Firefox. Of course, it's not fully supported in Internet Explorer for Windows, but Sarafi and Opera do support it. Basically, what it does is it allows images as the background of a block of text. Check out the screenshot here. Beautiful if you ask me. Again, not currently supported in IE (boooo!).
November 16th, 2008 → Lazy Sunday
While the wife is a away, the Brett will play! Actually, this update is more related to work than play, and I've got the battle scars from crawling under the house to prove it.
I completely eliminated my desk from the living room, effectively opening up our lving room a great deal, giving us a ton more space, and de-cluttering it in general. This was done under complete secrecy from my wife, as she is out on vacation right now with the kids in Idaho. I know, I know; you usually don't hear "vacation" and "Idaho" used together in the same sentence unless you're saying "I'm going on vacation and leaving Idaho" but hey, her older sister lives up there and they like to visit...
Anyway, this is was a pretty involved process. I didn't merely remove my desk and just throw it away; there's a lot more to it than that. In that desk was my main computer, and we keep a lot of personal stuff on there, like family pictures and videos and such. What I've done now is moved that computer into our closet, so it is now being used solely as a server. All other computers in the house can either logon to it as a user remotely, or access the separate directories therein to view photos and videos as they so choose. Of course, my network is private, so no unwanted wireless prowlers will be granted access.
I put several things up for sale on Craigslist, and I was able to sell my desk — the main piece — for $25. The wife still has no clue as of November 19th. She'll be returning this weekend, and hopefully by that point I will have gotten rid of the few other little pieces of furniture and equipment that need to go in order to complete this project. She's going to love it, I already know that much. She's been wanting to get rid of the desk (which she bought for me, mind you) for a while now.
November 15th, 2008 → Is the snow here?!
With the weather starting to look more and more like "real" winter, I am going nuts for snow a little farther up north so that I can begin the snowboarding season. I went five times last season, and I really learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence in my abilities. I'd really like to build on that this season.
I can't wait!
November 12th, 2008 → "New" Technique Discovered!
I finally got around to figuring out how to do pop-ups for internet browser images. In this particular version of the pop-up, it requires CSS and HTML to work in conjunction with each other. Other versions can be done using HTML only, but they're not as "sophisticated" in the way they work as this version. I've only scratched the surface of actually implementing this technique into my site, but if you look here and here, you can see how I've used them so far. One thing that's kind of cool is you can apply the pop-up to text only, meaning an image can pop up when you hover your mouse over text — as opposed to a thumbnail image — which is really neat if used correctly.
November 10th, 2008 → Website Upates (finally)
I finally got back to shoring up my video games section. If your internet settings allow embedded .midi files to be played, crank up those speakers and rock out to the legendary Section-Z theme song. I love that song.
I'm really pleased with the video game portion's overall look and flow at this point, although it's still fairly raw in the grand scheme of things. I've really only completed one portion of it, and that's the Mario Kart DS pages, which have been done (for the most part) for a while now, albeit in a different style. Now they match up pretty nicely with the rest of the video game pages, but I'll probably go back over them again.
If you have a look at my Empipe section, this one is going to be a lot of fun. My coworker and buddy, Nate, is a mathematician and has good experience with javascript. The plan is to have him create an applet that allows Empipe to be played on my site without needing to actually download the game. Now, the only challenge is getting his butt in gear so he can do this for me. I trained him a bit on Adobe Illustrator, so that's the tradeoff we've arranged.
Also to be updated are my Mario Kart Wii (I rule at that game), Wii Bowling (also pretty good at that), and Tetris (I am the undisputed king at that, too!), so stay tuned — this should be a lot of fun!
October 25th, 2008 → Word of Mouth = Good.
So I started talking it up with a patron of Max Muscle Santa Cruz while I was in there getting an energy drink, and as it turned out, he wants to jazz up his website. His name is Shannon, owner of Williams Gate Works. I told him I could do any number of things to accomplish his request for jazzing up his site, but for starters he mentioned wanted some animated graphics for his home page that cycled through his products. No problem, I told him. Here's what I came up with: check it out. This is just a few simple flash .swf files that I created, but it was a fun project and really livens up his site. Keep in mind that the design of the site is not my own; only the animated images are what I've done.
He has mentioned that he may want me to do some more work on his site, like actually change the design and such, but that might be a while — the holidays are coming and many people are holding onto their money for that (as am I). Apparently he has a friend who's in the market for a website, so stay tuned for that.
This network thing is all right!.
October 6th, 2008 → Kart. Surprised?
This just in: I play Mario Kart Wii a little bit here and there.
So since my last post up in here, I pretty much concluded that I wasn't satisfied enough with beating Mirror Mode with "only" a one-star ranking. I decided that I would focus on beating Mirror Mode (and further, the entire game) entirely with two-star ranking (or better). Well, I've done that. I did that a while ago, but then I had to go back into standard racing mode and go through all the cups again that didn't already have two-star ranking. Fortunately, all of my 50cc cups were already there; and only a couple of my 100cc cups didn't have two-star ranking. I busted those up with the quickness, then it was on to 150cc. I'd already attained a two- or three-star ranking in 150cc on a couple of the cups since I first completed my one-star romp, but about five or six cups were only one-star ranking. This included the top four hard ones. I finally completed that tonight after a lengthy battle with the Leaf Cup. I swear, I hate that cup.
When you use the wheel 100% of the time and have at least a two-star ranking, it looks a little something like this!
September 19th, 2008 → Kart
I'm way into Mario Kart Wii.
I just beat the game completely with one-star ranking or better, including Mirror Mode. I have never raced using anything but the Wii wheel, which in the inner Mario Kari Wii circles is true OG status. Additionally, Mirror Mode is not easy to beat with one-star ranking, especially when you've already OCD'ed on standard mode for the past couple weeks and are really locked in to the regular tracks. With the one-star or better ranking in Mirror Mode, the character Rosalina becomes unlocked. Getting the one-star ranking in Mirror Mode is the most "natural" — and definitely the most difficult — way to unlock her, but you can also do it by using your Super Mario Galaxy savefile and racing 50 times. I was having none of that and wanted it the real way, so I got her. I even snapped a picture of this accomplishment, which is here. Nate thinks she is the hottest of the Mario babes. I can't say I disagree.
Have a look at this picture, then look at this one. Those are just two of the new welcome screens you get to see once you beat the game completely with one-star ranking. I already had a one-star ranking for standard mode for quite some time.
September 13th, 2008 → Changes Coming
Since my last update, Nick has begun his work with KSBW and has had quite a successful early career there. I have decided that I'll be posting his newscasts on a special page devoted just to this. They'll all be in flash video (think YouTube), so they'll be very internet-friendly. I'll have all videos available in a high-definition format on request. Stay tuned for the completion of this page within the next day or two (hey, these things take time). I'll probably keep Nick's final Daily Sports Report with The Hippo up at the top of this page for a little while longer before pulling it down.
Additionally, I am going to redo the music by ognihs link so that it's simply music; ognihs' music will stil be available for listeing through my site, however — it just won't have its own page any longer. I think I'm going to also start adding the works of legendary hip-hop artist Sankofa. For now, though, click here to check out his site. He's got a great rap about Sarah Palin right now; it's pretty big on jackasslist, too. By the way, be sure to bookmark jackasslist and check them out daily. There's a clickable button to the right.
This new capability to host video and audio was made possible through my webhoster, digital.forest. I have a link to them to the right. Great customer service, great response time, great technical support. They're about as good as it gets. They come highly recommended by yours truly.
I would like to start adding some depth to my video games page, but I just can't seem to make the time. I've been getting ridiculously good at Mario Kart Wii, and as such that deserves a little bragging. Keep an eye out for the updating of that page.
I am also working on two websites concurrently right now: Max Muscle Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Television. MMSC was my first web design client, and I'm helping them right now to implement a few new tricky cool things to their site and e-business approach. The Santa Cruz Television site is my cousin's (Greg) site, and I'm expanding the home page that he's had for a while now into a full-fledged site. For years, he's had simply a landing page, but nothing else. Now, you can visit the site and actually explore it a little bit. I haven't been able to work on it quite as frequently as I'd like, what with all website work I've been doing and all the softball I've been playing, but in the coming weeks the site is going to explode (I mean that in a good way, of course). In the meantime, click here or on the button to the right to check out their site. They'll help you out with all your HDTV, DirecTV, Dish Network, and all related high-fidelity home theater applications you can think of. They really hooked me up.
August 29th, 2008 → Thank You, and Good Luck!
The end of an era starts today. But that's OK, because it's the beginning of a new one for my boy, Nick Winkler. Nick has worked his last day as the morning guy for The Hippo as he prepares for his upcoming career as a TV personality — starting very soon with KSBW (our local NBC affiliate). Unfortunately for me, this means that the daily sports reports will no longer be featured on brettroby.com. We had a lot of fun with that, though, and I was fortunate and stoked to have his reports on a daily basis; they will be missed for sure.
At any rate, it's for the better anyway, and I wish my boy all the best of luck. Be sure to tune in to KSBW on Saturday nights and catch Nick as the sports anchor!
July 12th, 2008 → Perfection (again)
I haven't played Wii bowling since I last scored perfectly, but my son wanted to play this evening so I decided to see if I've still got it. Apparently I do: 300 on your face.
I'm not sure what counts as "good" in Wii bowling, but I'm assuming 1875 ain't bad...
July 5th, 2008 → Ladies and Gentlemen, we have PERFECTION!!!
So I've been playing a fair amount of this Wii bowling game since I started a couple weeks ago, and I've made some great strides over the past seven or eight days; ever since I "figured it out" as far as how I like to throw my ball. This pic and this pic show what I'm talking about.
Well, today it happened. It's a little thing I like to call "the perfect game." What's funny is I wasn't having a particularly sharp session when it happened. It was one of those "oh what the heck, one more game" rounds. Turns out that "one more game" hit the spot.
You know the drill: here's the proof.
June 24th, 2008 → Big Things!
I just heard from my boy, Nick, that he's landed a job as the weekend sports anchor job for the NBC affiliate for most of central California! Maybe you've heard of a little station called "KSBW"... Anyway, they're friggin' huge around here, and I'm so proud of and happy for Nick. He'll be interning with Dennis Lehnen until they've determined that he's ready, but the plan is for him to take over that weekend sports spot in August. You'd better believe I'll be watching that broadcast! Heck, I might even make an "event" out of it, just to embarrass Nick a little bit.
He's following his dream, and now he is just one step closer to realizing that dream.
Go, Nick, GO!!!
June 21st, 2008 → "Pro" Ball Status (booyah)
So after playing a good amount of the bowling game on the Wii Sports game that came with my system, I have gotten fairly good at it; I'm scoring over 200 points pretty regularly. I have not bowled the perfect game yet, but perhaps that will come soon. I did, however, reach "pro" status, and as such, I have a nice new marbly/sparkly ball that I get to use whilst bowling. As of right now, I'm teetering at the 1000 points threshold, which is where you need to be for pro status. I've dipped below it a few times but then climbed back up to get back to pro status. I had a pretty bad night last night, which kind of tanked my ranking. You better believe I'll be back at it tonight.
I still haven't quite figured out how Wii goes about calculating the rankings, but Nate and I have come to the conclusion that there are number of factors involved; most notably some sort of "handicap" scoring like you see in golf in conjunction with a system of recording your consistency.
The game is very fun and I'm about 1mm from being hooked on it.
June 15th, 2008 → Father's Day Kart
The wife and kids got me Mario Kart for the Wii as a Father's Day gift. We hooked it up and I played it with my son for a good two or three hours. The game is pretty fun. I'm not sure I'm 100% sold on the idea of using the wheel exclusively, but that's probably my OG kartness shining through. That wheel is definitely a challenge when you're used to mastering the older versions of Kart with the hopping and turbo sliding. I'll tell you what, though; the game is fun!
If you thought I'd let you sneak away without a photo first, you need to familiarize yourself with brettroby.com a little better!
June 14th, 2008 → Yep...I'm OLD!
You know you're old when:
- Your cousin, whose actual birth day you remember, has graduated high school
- The word "coach" precedes your name on your trophies! (an aside: I still love trophies no matter how they're earned!)
- You play softball to feed your competitive hunger
- You can legitimately use the term "when I was your age"
- You're 30 years old
June 9th, 2008 → Wii!
Oh yeah — WE GOT A Wii!!! I didn't get a chance to hook it up yet due to some stuff going on at home, but I felt that I should probably just buy one anyway since they're sold out everywhere. Here's what I bought: Wii console; extra nunchuk; Wii Play (multi-game that comes with remote); and kit that contains two rechargeable batteries with docking station, component cable, and wireless sensor bar. I wanted to buy Mario Kart, but they were out.
...and of course we have the obligatory photo.
June 4th, 2008 → DirecTV Installed!
DirecTV officially installed at the Roby household! I have only just begun playing with the settings and programming, but I'm pretty stoked on the new setup. All of the standard definition channels — about 200 of them — are digital and are nice and clear, and we currently have 35ish HD channels, with a quota or allowance of up to 95 if they add them to the plan we purchased during the time of our contract. For the same price, our cable provider gave us about 75 standard definition channels in analog, which looked like crap on the new TV, and about nine or 10 HD channels.
When you do, be sure to go to Santa Cruz Television for complete sales and installation support.
June 3rd, 2008 → Web-design Career
I have officially begun my career as a web designer! My first client is Max Muscle Santa Cruz. The domain name was purchased last night by the store's owner, and I just got the nameservers changed this morning. There should be something here very soon, so stay tuned. I have a test page set up right now where I'm trying out different things before setting it as the index/homepage. I plan to get this site really rockin'; what you see on my site here will pale in comparison if all goes according to plan. I've got some great ideas brewing, and I can't wait to implement them on my first site!
May 30th, 2008 → Special Site for Mom
My mom is putting together her 30-year reunion. I have decided to help out with the hosting and stuff. Check out the special section of brettroby.com dedicated to the Harbor High School class of 1978! Lots of cool things here, programming-wise, that I haven't done before. So far it's turned out really well.
May 24th, 2008 → HDTV! YAY!!!!
The Robys have entered the HDTV world! You may not care, but dang, I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Check out a couple pics here and here. We went with the Samsung PN50A550 — 50" 1080p plasma. It's got a host of features that I absolutely love in a TV, and I've only just begun to see what this set can do. In that second picture, you can see the split-screen in action. Each of those screen sizes measure about 26" — or about the same size as the TV we have in our bedroom!
Needless to say, a nice video game console purchase will be following this purchase very soon.
Many thanks to Santa Cruz Television for hooking me up with some great pricing and professional installation. It's always nice to know family in the business. Check them out for great pricing on equipment and installation.
May 5th, 2008 → Site Redesign
Hello,
I have just redesigned my website. I created all the CSS from scratch myself. Don't worry about all the purple; it's kind of like the new black.
This site is best viewed in Firefox and Safari web browsers, for whatever reason. It does not seem to display well — or at least the way I'd prefer it to display — in Internet Explorer for now. I'm working on it, though.
I will soon have a little more information for the site to make it a tad more interesting than it is right now, but you can still mess around on here for a few minutes before getting bored. Check out the history of the Rock Wad and feel free to submit your own; or just skip all that at go to the list of Rock Wads.
I've just added an "about me" page. Go ahead and check that out. It's incomplete at the moment, but it'll take you so long to read you'll probably get tired of it before you're done with what I have written and you'd probably want to come back to it later anyway! «-- Click on that "About Me" button to read (a little bit) about me. I'm pretty fascinating! (OK, I'm at least interesting; you've got to give me that)
Cheers,
Brett Roby
Creative Design Manager and CEO
Brett Roby Creative
Offering Web Design, Sales, Marketing, and Growth Solutions for Your Business
brettroby.com
RIP, Mr. Evel Knievel
October 17, 1938 - November 30, 2007
The original daredevil
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