Archive for October, 2009

A few months ago I was browsing through Best Buy and I came across a little black box called the Western Digital HD TV Media Player. I can truly say it has changed the way I watch television. It is the future in so many ways and no one seems to know about it. This little black machine hooks directly up to your HD TV with a HDMI cord. All you need to do is hook up a small USB device into one of two USB ports and through a cool UI Interface you can pick any files on the USB device and play them from your TV. It is Awesome!

I have been watching digital moves for a while now through my XBox 360. The XBox works perfectly for watching moves. Actually it works better than the WD HD TV Media Player, but it has one major fault. Microsoft XBox 360s overheat like crazy. Watch two moves in one day and you run the risk of permanently destroying your $300 toy. It just became not worth it to watch movies on it, so I looked elsewhere. But like I said, I just happened to find the WD HD Media Player but I’m glad I did. Priscilla and I use it everyday.

I have begun to collect 1080p movies on a little portable hard drive. They are Blu-Ray rips that have all the quality and without box, menus or price tag. Its just a file that to select and play from a menu. It’s incredibly easy. Now the way I go about getting these movies are alittle morally grey, but that doesn’t mean it’s not about to take over.

The Itunes Store has become a phenomenon unlike anything else. Soon, movies will be distributed the same way. The idea of digital movies is only being held off by the Money Makers to insure them people will have to buy the Blu-Ray version and then they will need to buy the digital version. It’s kinda a genius way to go about it, and the people will just eat it up. Like I said in an earlier post no media is the future of media. I have a feeling that the digital era will be apone us way sooner than those execs will want it to. As hard drive space becomes larger and larger in capacity and cheaper and cheaper in price and smaller and smaller in size, digital movies will only increase in popularity.

Another thing to consider, is that having no media releases the limits of capacity. Eventually, there will be a higher resolution TV. Higher than HD. Movies are filmed in over 4000 pixels across and IMAX is 10,000 across. High Definition is only 1080 across. TV’s have room to improve and they will. Soon movies will be produced in 3D. It is just the next thing to make the consumer buy. Again genius. I can’t wait to get my hands on my 3D OLED paper thin TV that is wirelessly synced to my entertainment station. The future is closer than we know. The economy is the only holding us back now.

Retouching can be considered an art. Manipulating and improving an image is one thing, but taking multiple images and putting them together to create something completely new without it actually looking like a composite is the key to this retouching project I did for Simmons Mattresses. Not only did I improve the look of the people sleeping on the bed by removing subtle imperfections, I also joined a separate image of the bed interior to give it a cutaway look.

So Priscilla and I have this house we bought.  We are on our way to being completely domesticated.  And on our journey, we decided to build a garden in our new backyard.  There is a small area between our lawn and our house located on the back wall that stretches about 20 feet across.  It gets direct sun about half the day, so we decided this was the best spot to start our little experiment.  Now, growing things is pretty foreign to Priscilla and I so we asked my parents to help out with some gardening knowledge to get us started in the right direction.  When they came to visit in May for my birthday, they were ready to get dirty.

My mom suggested that we plant the following:  2 Tomato plants, 1 yellow bell pepper plant, 1 jalapeno plant, 1 zucchini plant and 2 yellow squash plants.  It seemed like the perfect plan, so we bought our seedlings and our seeds and started digging.  The first thing we discovered was that our perfect little spot was covered with rocks and full of this red clay dirt that was incredibly hard.  So we had our hands full right off the bat.  We picked so many rocks our we were able to create a stone border around our plants.   It actually looked pretty awesome.

After the preparation was done, we dug our holes and planted our garden.  It was pretty impressive.  With no surprise it didn’t do much for the first couple of weeks.  Eventually we saw the squash and zucchini sprout out of the ground and makes it’s way upward.  The tomatoes, jalapenos, and bell peppers  were seedlings when we started so we knew they would make it without much work, but it gives you a strange kind of accomplishment when you grow things from seeds.  We watered every other day if it didn’t rain as it does so often in the Southern Summers.  We kept an eye on them until all of a sudden we had a garden.

The tomatoes shot into the air engulfing the wire cage we gave them for support.  The zucchini and squash slowly creeped into leafy bushes with bright yellow flowers.  The jalapenos and bell peppers grew to about 3 feet before they started growing small white and yellow flowers followed by small vegetables.  Yep, I said vegetables.

The tomatoes started and never stopped.  We have more now then we will ever need.  The jalapenos kept coming too.  I never have wanted more uses for jalaponeos then right now.  We put them in everything and they are hot.  Really hot.

But, the bell pepers never really did much.  We started to see flowers and then we saw a small pepper starting to grow.  That was over a month ago now.  It has materialized a little, and has recently strated to turnh yellow (they are yellow bell peppers) but not much else has happened.  A small second pepper has started to grow, but that is it.  As pathetic as the peppers have been, the Summer Squash and the Zuchini have done much worse.

LKike I said before, the plants grew.  They grew into large vines with think leaves and giant yellow flowers, but thats when it got strange.  They got a fungus called Powdery Mildew.  It created a lite white powder that covered all the leaves and eventually killed them.  At first I had no idea what it was so I just strated chopping the infected leaves away.  When I was done there wasn’t much left.  I read later in a book Priscilla gave me for our one year aniverary, that all we needed was some spray I could buy at Target.  I bought some and sprayed it on the leaves that were still standing and all of a sudden I felt like an ideot.  The plants tried to come back.  They really did.  But ever time a fruit would strat to grow, it would die.  Eventually, it was littered with white flies and roating veggies.  Last night, I cut them all down.

But at least we still have our tomatoes and our jalaopenos.  They are striving.  And our peppers are trying to produce they just aren’t doing that well at it.  Maybe a few more months.  They better hurry up though cause its only getting colder from here on out.  But so far it has all been a great learning experience.  Even with our plants still producing I am excited about next year.  I think I might try out some of the same stuff and maybe some new things too.  And next time I will take care of that Powdery Mildew before it starts.

This was a project that turned into a mess really fast. It took months to complete, but after the work was done I had learned a whole lot about html coding and different ways to build a website. The outcome was great and I am now able to modify it without a problem. I think that the design still holds up today and is still pretty impressive as far as My Space pages go.

www.myspace.com/davecaselli

I love to smoke. Well I don’t love it anymore. No I still love it. No I don’t. Maybe I do. Honestly, it has been so long now that I’m not sure I do anymore. I had my last cigarette May 24th 2009. I was really drunk and it was my one and only relapse since I have quit. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, I’m just laying out the facts. I started smoking when I was about 18 years old. So I was a smoker for about 11 years. Wow, 11 years. It’s hard to fathom that long of career of smoking. But like I said, I love to smoke.

Now I know that 4 months isn’t that long. I guess it just seems like a long time. I remember I quit once before for about 4 months before I had a relapse and started smoking Black and Milds before I went back to my favorite Marlboro Ultra Lights. For some reason that seemed like it was a lot shorter of a time to quit back then. I remember I wanted to cheat so bad. It was unbearable. But the truth was that just that I really didn’t want to quit. I think that is the biggest difference between then and now. Even after four months of wanting a cigarette and watching other people light up right in front of me, I still want to be a non-smoker. And after 4 months it still sucks balls.

I labeled this blog: “The Beginning of the End” because I know it’s not over yet. Actually I doubt it will ever be over. I will always want to cheat one way or another. I have recently smoked a few Black and Mild cigars while I was drinking and around smokers. I am in no way addicted to Black and Milds but I do have to stop smoking them. They help me keep myself occupied without actually smoking. I am making excuses now. Black and Milds have nicotine. I am addicted to nicotine thus I am addicted to Black and Milds. I know they are bad, I just find a way to convince myself they are ok. I am not going to let this detour me though. I am not going to let this bring me down. I will not quit quitting.

The next step is getting past the urge when I am drinking. I always knew it was the hardest, but I have been strong enough to not smoke a Marlboro so far so that’s a step. I quit drinking for a month to help and that kept my motivation up. I am not scared and am very confident this will be that last time I have to quit. I just have to keep on keeping on and I will.

Originally I wanted to continue my “Could I move to..” series and add one about my families Cabin in Tahoe, but I figured it was unrealistic because our cabin is unlivable in the winter. But don’t get me wrong, I would still love to live there. The Caselli Cabin lies at the base of the 39 Mile Track on Highway 50 and is seated approximately 100 feet from the Sacramento River. The 39 Mile Track is right on the edge of a small town called Strawberry and is about a 30 minute drive to Lake Tahoe. It is a magical place that is the host of so many of my best childhood memories.

Now it can’t be accessed during the winter because it snows in the winter. It snows a lot. Now one might think that it snows in a lot of places. Yeah, it does, but the 39 Mile Track is a dirt road that goes pretty much straight down a massive mountain. Snow plows wouldn’t have a chance. The cabin is plenty secluded, but there are quite a few neighbors too. The 39 mile Track itself is the home to a bunch of cabins that share the forest with the Caselli Cabin. But I do have to say that our cabin has one of the best stops on the track because it is one of the only cabins that sits right up against the river.

My Dad’s parent’s inherited our cabin from my Grandmothers Aunt. As far as I know, she was pretty wealthy. Though I have never met my great Aunt, I think I can tell a lot about her from the way the cabin is decorated. It has change significantly over the years, but there are still reminiscence of the 1940’s throughout the small house. Pillows with Norman Rockwell paintings on an old orange coach are in the living room next to two wicker chairs. There is an old Humphrey Bogart poster on the wall next to a whole bunch of photos of my grandparents when they were young. The ceiling sore up twenty five feet and are open showing the beams that hold the place together.

The outside is painted green and yellow to match the forest surroundings. The color choices are limited by the government which makes a ton of sense in my opinion cause I would hate to see a bright pink cabin next to ours. Anyway, our wooded cabin has a large tin roof and and stone fireplace surrounded by a giant deck that looks out on the river. The terrain is scattered with large boulders and huge pine trees. Squirrels and Chipmunks are seen playing everywhere and are accompanied by a ton of noisy blue jays and robins.

Like I said the river is but a few yards away from the front of the cabin. As far as rivers go, this one is quite small. About 50 feet across. When the river is high, you can’t get near it cause the water is moving too fast and when its at it’s lowest, it can easily be walked across. It is one of those mountain rivers that has house sized boulders with waterfalls around each turn. It’s filled with a ton of Rainbow Trout which I very rarely fished, but the few times I did, I had a blast. Our neighbor once pulled out a 19 inch trout with his fly rode right in front of our cabin. It was unbelievable.

Being 3000 miles from home sucks for a great number of reasons. Other than being away from my family, the cabin is right up there at the top of the list. All the times I missed being at the cabin just makes me sad. As time goes by I can only hope that I can let my future kids enjoy the cabin as I once did.