picasa vs. flickr

I've been tinkering with Flickr lately and am convinced that an active account is necessary for any aspiring photographer. From the initial comparisons I've conducted, it appears as though some resolution is forfeited when embedding Picasa images as compared to Flickr images. Ultimately, there is utility for both, but I think I'll be posting images from Flickr going forward. Let's chalk one up for Yahoo!

Because you care.

Picasa:

Flickr:

Picasa:


Flickr:

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greensandbrowns on twitter

Exciting happenings in the GreensandBrowns universe! 

The team has set up a Twitter account, and recent updates can now be found on the left-hand navigation bar. If you have an account, let's be Twitter mates. Wouldn't you rather have a barrage of G&B updates sent directly to your cell phone rather than the manual weekly check-in to the site that you are currently conducting (and by "weekly", we both really mean "daily" or "hourly")? Let's get my following count quickly up from a "0" to "1", and then quite possibly to "2" thereafter. You follow me, I follow you. The possibilities are endless.

The G&B Twitter account will be monitored by none other than Darth Sexual. 

Here are some samples of what you might expect (in 140 characters or less):

• i brewed beer at home. it tastes like my foot. i am willing to share
• there is a man that works on the fourth floor of my building. he takes poopies on the sixth (my) floor
• can somebody pick me up?
• xmen 3 on fx. gayest movie ever? fight in sf, marginalized for genetic mutation, mega-gay Archangel, bromance - Xavier & Magneto
• Emelle's pet fish died: http://alamonica.blogspot.com/2009/05/pet-fish.html Less competition, on my way to the top!

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you have died of dysentery

Thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, you have died of dysentery.

Not only is this one of the greatest tee shirts ever made, it’s also a hallmark of some valuable lessons learned during our formative grammar school years (by ‘our’ I mean the 80s latch key generation).  I’m not convinced that kids these days receive the same quality education that we benefited from.  Among other things, we learned basic survival skills that would keep us safe...if we were to ever travel across the great northwest...against insurmountable odds…in a covered wagon…hunting two dimensional animals…in the 1800s.

Why the sudden nostalgia, you ask?

A couple of weeks ago, I spent time in Oregon for work. While on the road, I saw a road sign that leads to the Dalles. This made me very excited. I wanted to attempt to ford the river with my rental car and not wait for conditions to improve. I wanted to trade something with a stranger, maybe my GPS system for 12 bullets. I wanted to shoot an ungodly amount of buffalo even though I knew that I can only load 100 lbs. in my rental car.

Well, this inspired me to rekindle a long lost childhood love - The Oregon Trail.I hunted the game down on the internets and was immediately mesmerized by the pixelized graphics and obnoxious music. And I got to share it with C-Monster who was astonished at how terrible the game looks - the same things that I think are terrific aout it. The simplicity was too difficult for her to deal with. I love it.

You can find an Apple IIe emulator and the game here. 

You’ll need both. When you are playing the game, you’ll be asked to “flip” the disk to side 2 which you can do with the menu tool on the right-hand side of the emulator. It took me a few tries to figure this out, but you will. I promise.

In my first Oregon Trail expedition in twenty years, I made it across the Dalles with only one other survivor. At the onset of the trip, I forgot to purchase clothing for my party – which included ML, Salma Hayek, Megan Fox, and Scarlett Johansson. If you know me, I always like to role with the punches so I took this to mean that we were headed westward to establish a nudist colony somewhere in an idyllic valley along the Oregonian coast. I must regrettably report that three ladies perished during the harsh winter months (unrelated to our lack of clothing, I'm sure). I was forced to colonize the new land with Scarlett. Tisk tisk.

I was pretty displeased with my score so I played again. I am attaching my high score from my two attempts thus far. I highly encourage everyone to download the software and recapture some of that elementary school magic. Please post your score in the comments section if you somehow best my great feat. I have a feeling that I will be doing this by myself. If you have never played, what are you waiting for?!

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random in eugene

Greetings from Eugene, Oregon! (More to follow on this soon).

Until then, I am excited to debut ML's new blog, a self-proclaimed authority on the G&B experience. Who knows, maybe we can discuss the same topic in the future and compare how remarkably different our perspectives are on shared experiences. That can only lead down a path of merriment and amusement, right?

A la Monica.

On an unrelated note, I would like to apologize to the Greenies and Brownies (this is your unofficial name until you you can come up with something better) for the conspicuous lack of postings throughout February (which happens to be the greatest month of all). I will say simply that last month was extremely challenging both personally and professionally. A tranquility emerged as soon as the month closed along with some much needed clarity.

I, and hopefully you, are constantly in the process of retaining the good and discarding the bad. It's one of the true purposes of life, isn't it? All in all, I feel as though February took me a tiny step in the right direction. So...thanks for stopping by even with such minimal activity over the last couple of weeks.

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long lost penguin

Are you aware that YouTube now generates more search volume than Yahoo? 

Does this blow your mind as much as it does mine? Maybe this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Every person I know plays the game "Who can find the most interesting/comical content on YouTube" and share it before the next guy does. Thus, there must be some folks out there who are constantly searching...and searching.

At a recent retreat, Abacus Champ (formerly Linn-Duh) proudly boasted that he knew "the best kids getting hit in the face" clips. Before he had a chance to catch a whiff of his morning breath, he had his laptop open to YouTube, searching for any new clips to ensure that his claim held true for another day. 

I, on the other hand, still prefer my online entertainment in written word, but have found my own practical use for YouTube. It's the best tool available to back fill some of the fuzzier memories of content I have consumed in the past. Those blurred, amorphous images no longer lie dormant.

For example, I once saw this remarkable footage of a domesticated penguin on Animal Planet (tangent: If you ever find yourself without headphones on a flight that offers satellite programming, just flip over to Animal Planet and watch animals maul unsuspecting people. You really don't need audio to understand what's going on). I thought I would never see it again. What an interesting time we live in, one in which we are able to unlock stored memories with a few typed words.

I promise you will enjoy this, and thanks for stopping by!



Now, if only somebody can relay to me the video footage of sleeping piglets in water that aired during the same episode, I will send you a gift of equal value. Video is great, but don't let words escape you.

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"we're just dancing"

ESPN recently compiled the best of their "This is Sportscenter" television promos into an hour-long special that aired over the holidays. Fortunately, they are housing some of the very best on their website as well which can be found here. There have been some classics over the years, but I think this one has to be my all-time favorite (unfortunately, I couldn't locate a better quality version on espn.com:

Dude, I'm not sure how Karl Ravich (right) got a hold of a go-to move in the GreensandBrowns clubbing arsenal, but let's give him a pass on this one. He's just dancing.

One thing on Gheorge Muresan: At the end of his playing career, his agent urged my uncle, a doctor in the greater Washington D.C. area, to sign a release clearing Muresan to play that would have allowed for him to meet a playing cause in his contract. Muresan's knees coudln't handle all of the stress from his body, but the agent didn't care. My uncle refused. That story is as accurate as I can remember - he told me about it like five years ago. This is the same uncle that preliminarily examined Joe Theisman after Lawrence Taylor snapped his leg like a twig.

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better than this - mark titus

I have done some environmental scanning of the type of online content that you, the reader, may be viewing as an alternative to the microseconds of entertainment that I provide once or twice a week. After an initial audit, I must concede that GreensandBrowns is utterly boring and is void of any utility.

Will I cry about it? A little. Will I quit? No way, it's much too fun, and it would be disappointing to all of the reader. 

I evolve. I'll try to offer some semblance of value here by sharing humorous content that I come across. The lone criterion to appear in this section is for me to wish that I had created said content myself. (Sidebar to prove my point: John Lennon was envious of Paul McCartney's beautiful "Oh! Darling". He tried in vain to sing on the track but that arrangement, available on the 3rd Anthology album, was eventually canned, and he later claimed that he would have been better suited for the song. I love Lennon but c'mon). Thus, I'd rather not sulk about G&B's limitations.

On that note, here is my first offering: Club Trillion (for basketball lovers)

This guy is a bench warmer on Ohio State's basketball team and only recently began to pen his experiences in that role. In this short time, he has been recognized nationally, and even appeared on a Bill Simmons (I really need to stop mentioning The Sports Guy) podcast for his irreverence and talent with the written word. To be funny out loud is one thing. To master comedy through vocabulary and syntax is something entirely different and in my opinion, incredibly difficult. On top of that, this dude is like 21 or 22. I spent a solid couple of hours at work yesterday reading every single post (there aren't that many as of yet) and combating fits of laughter.

And you will chuckle too when you discover what Club Trillion is - an ingenious statistic conceived by he and his buddies. It could have only been devised by a gang of college kids with too much time on their hands. I applaud you, Mark Titus. 

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