No, I’m not going to be making it a habit to put animal names on my titles. It’s not my fault, but I apologize. Or as SOME people say… “apologise”. I honestly don’t know what the correct term is, but in the US it’s “apologize”, though both may be allowed.

Dictionary.com, people.

It says both are correct. Rationalise and Rationalize are also correct. I DO hope all you wonderful English-speaking folk will be able to look past these small cultural differences. I mean no disrespect to your language. lol.

Moving on! Yes, my colorful sneakers. I don’t know, man. They seem to steal the spotlight all the time. I thought it was really flattering when people complimented me (or gave me evil snares, and yes, I HAVE gotten evil snares), but now I’m beginning to envy them.

When I went to New York, a lot of people would talk to me because of my shoes and stuff. I found it really neat lol. I was walking down the street in wonderful NY, and I hear this woman say “Honey, look at his shoes.” Since I obviously knew she was talking about me, I turned around and alas there was this young woman and her boyfriend/husband looking at my shoes. So, she sees me and goes “I like your shoes!”

“Thanks!”

It hasn’t gotten any better. Last Sunday, one of my friends introduced me to her boyfriend. He speaks English only, and since I know English I decided to be nice and talk to him so he could feel a bit more comfortable in this Spanish-speaking island.

-”It’s nice to meet you, Sam!”

-”You too. Nice shoes! They’re like 0.0″

O.o

And that’s when I realized I was being used by my sneakers. All this time, I thought I had chosen THEM, but in reality it was my sneakers who had chosen me. They had chosen me since the beginning of time as a mere tool to take them places. They use me to meet people and to get compliments. It’s all about them. People don’t really care about what I’M like, they just like my shoes. Life is so superficial like that.

SOOO… I’ve decided to donate them to someone who doesn’t walk alot. That way those stupid evil Pumas won’t be able to go on with their master plan of conquering people’s attention. They will die old and new-looking inside someone’s closet. With a little bit of luck, I will be able to find someone who works at a farm. That way, the Pumas will have to work around animal feces all the time. They would stink. And no one would care about them. THEN, they’d be sorry about using me.

And since I feel like a mad man, talking about inanimate objects as something with a mission and a plan, I will say goodnight to everyone. Sleep deprivation can do strange things to a person. Also, it’s the fact that my brain hasn’t had rest since January. Which really sucks. So yeah, in conclusion, my shoes are not evil, they do not have a plan to conquer people, they do not use me, and I am not giving them away. They are just attention-worthy. It’s probably because very few people on this island walk around with multi-colored shoes. lol… suckers all of them. They know not what they are missing out on.

Updated 6.25.06: Here are the shoes/sneakers/trainers. Since I am from Puerto Rico and am educated under the United States’ variation of English, I will call them as I wish.

…. and this one was taken in New York, the same day the girl on the street complimented me.

According to this article in New Scientist, you’d serve the environment better by cutting back on animal foods instead of switching to a hybrid car.

Thinking of helping the planet by buying an eco-friendly car? You could do more by going vegan, say Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago.

They compared the amount of fossil fuel needed to cultivate and process various foods, including running agricultural machinery, providing food for livestock and irrigating crops. They also factored in emissions of methane and nitrous oxide produced by cows, sheep and manure treatment.

The typical US diet, about 28 per cent of which comes from animal sources, generates the equivalent of nearly 1.5 tonnes more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan diet with the same number of calories, say the researchers, who presented their results at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last week.

By comparison, the difference in annual emissions between driving a typical saloon car and a hybrid car, which runs off a rechargeable battery and gasoline, is just over 1 tonne. If you don’t want to go vegan, choosing less-processed animal products and poultry instead of red meat can help reduce the greenhouse load.

From issue 2530 of New Scientist magazine, 17 December 2005, page 19

This webpage shows you how you can make your own “Ten doller digital camera“.

For some reason my father has been incredibly generous lately. I’m a little worried to be quite honest. See, I being the wonderful driver that I am, had a car accident last week. I thought for SURE, my dad would kill me. I thought for SURE that all hopes of my England trip with oz would be cancelled.I was happy to find out that my dad DIDN’T want kill me when he found out about my accident. I was even happier to find that he is more than willing to send me to England to go meet up with oz and check out University of Manchester whenever I wanted to go! It’s amazing, honestly lol. Dad’s grand, God love that man. So yes, I cannot wait for winter, when I go see oz and get to see the United Kingdom.

This comming year should be spectacular, I do believe. Speaking of spectacular, I did this little strip of pictures with my face. They’re like… for everyone to see how different I look in pictures.

I’ve been told I look different in every picture. And you know what? Two of my family members have told me I look different every day. My GODFATHER told me “Regner, if I were to see you on the road, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you at times. So if someday you think I’m being snobby because I don’t say HI, it’s because I don’t know it’s you.”

o.o

So yeah. This is what my life is like. It’s a good thing though. I like being a chameleon.

I have never fallen for the Apple iPod. I like to be different and in any case, my iRiver H320 has held all the features 2 years ago that the latest iPod has now. But here is a fascinating look back at the day Steve Jobs launched the very first Apple iPod back in 2001. This is a 9 minute video (from YouTube) of the inspiring launch presentation.

Despite my loyalty to iRiver, this presentation is world class in persuasive marketing techniques. Back in 2001 I would be itching to get my hands on the stylish device, just as big as a pack of cards that could hold 1000 songs. If only I was sitting there in the audience, I could now be quite a rich guy. Just watch out for the next big thing’s launch presentation, whatever it may be.

As a web developer I downloaded Microsoft’s latest browser IE 7 beta 2 to see what’s happening. However, I noticed that when testing websites I could no longer open up IE 6 (still the most widely used web browser). I overlooked the testing factor of designing for a few weeks because I couldn’t figure out how to get IE 6 back - trying to install IE 6 won’t work because you have a newer version installed. So you have to remove and uninstall internet explorer 7 first, which is actually very simple but took me ages to figure out!

To remove Internet Explorer 7:

Go to Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs
Now, check the ‘Show Updates’ box
Scroll down through the Window’s updates and you’ll find IE 7 Beta Preview
Go ahead and remove the program as normal.

Genpets are living, breathing mammals. Bio-Genica is a Bioengineering company that has combined, and modified existing DNA to create the Genpets lineup. The creatures are made up of flesh and blood just like any other animal. The “pets” have been designed to be sold on retail store shelves in plastic blister-packs, not traditional pet stores. Bio-Genica insists that its creation is not a toy, they are real, living beings. They come in seven different personality types. Each personality type shows slightly different emotions. Amazingly, Genpets have vocal chords, although limited “for the convenience of parents”.

While the Genpets™ hang on retail shelves they are in a chemically induced type of hibernation controlled by a protein in the packages’ nutrient supply tubes. This was a natural trait found in many seasonal animals that would normally hibernate in colder northern climates that has been added to the Genpet line. This also ensures comfort for the Genpets™ while they are on store shelves.

Press release by Bio-genica:

TORONTO, On. (September 3, 2005)—Bio-Genica is pleased to announce an official demo launch for the Genpet™ Series 01 pet line! Iodine & Arsenic (867 Queen street West, Toronto) will be the first of what we hope to be many retail stores to carry the Genpets. The fun begins on September 11th, 2005 when Genpets goes up into Iodine’s store window facing out onto Queen street as well as in-store.The Genpets will be placed in a newly designed display unit to showcase them to the public and will be up and running in the store until October 2nd, 2005. When asked for a comment Bio-Genica CEO Adam Brandejs had this to say; “Obviously we are very pleased here at Bio-Genica. This will be a strong launch for the Genpets as they will be placed in a high traffic commercial shopping area. To place fully bioengineered animals on public display and sale in such an area is a bold move sure to turn heads. We’re very excited to broaden our market and strengthen our position as leaders in this industry”. Of course none of this would have been possible without the hard work of our executive marketing chief Crystal Pallister. When asked for comment she had this to add; “ I fully believe the people of Toronto are going to love what we at Bio-Genica have to offer. It’s been a hit with the kids, especially teens. What better way to show them how to care for life and have responsibility than to give them a pet, a friend, which bonds to them immediately and loves them unconditionally. We are pleased to be able to launch Genpets in a store such as Iodine and as the official correspondent, I am very excited to see everyone’s reactions. I hope they will love the Genpets as much as we do”.

This has to be a joke.

So, I felt like it. oziz has been getting some steady traffic to this page over the last couple of weeks so I thought I’d actually come up with a full-on myspace resource site.

I know there’s a ton of these already out there, but there’s also a whole ton of traffic coming in to these sites so I aim to capitalise on it further. I’ll be working on it over the summer to add my own original layouts and code on the site so keep up with it. For now, go ahead and use everything it’s got!

Almost half way through my final A level exams which started 9th June and finish an age after on Tuesday 27th. I’ve already been off school for well over a month - for ’study leave’. On average I’ve been clocking up around two hours of revision a day in preparation for these exams; some days none at all. I had six hours of exams last week in 24 hours; two Geography exams followed by Economics and Religious Studies modules the following morning. THAT BLEW! Geography was ok, economics was also alright but RS was a bit of a joke. Havn’t been taught amazingly for that module so I flunked it. Even though I revised what I could. It didn’t help being the last exam of that set.

Anyway, I have six more exams to take; 3 of them start of this week and 3 the week after. And even though they are so close I cannot revise. Physically cannot bring myself down to revision, especially for religious studies as I despair with those exams.

God it’s so hot.

Anyway, now I can’t revise I’ve been watching pretty much every World Cup match, that’s three a day. It’s becoming a bad habit. I just cannot wait to get exams done with. They are so tiresome. Plus I can’t wait to meet up with Jess in Spain in a month from now. I need a fucking break.