My Challenge: Going from blogging a couple times a week to every day.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/31/07 at 09:12:45 am

Last week I received an email newsletter from the people who hosted NaBloPoMo or National Blog Posting Month which I took part in this past November. The newsletter about the upcoming Blog365, a new challenge where you have to produce at least one entry or some form of content every day for 365 days in 2008. With NaBloPoMo, coming up with a blog entry every day in one month was rough and I ended up failing miserably. However, I did accomplish what I was set out to do and that’s blogging more often, I used NaBloPoMo as a writing exercise to motivate me and I think overall I was somewhat successful.

Now that motivation is gone I’m back to my 1 to 2 entries a week. It’s depressing because I want to blog more often, I want to be known as a “blogger” but I feel like I’m just too busy to spend time doing it. I am a very busy person but I know if I try hard enough I could come up with an entry a day, I mean, how hard can it be, right?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough, Click Here to check out my profile on Blog365.

Longest 3 days ever.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/28/07 at 09:12:57 am

So, Christmas is done, it always comes and goes so quick and it’s always depressing when it’s all over. I guess the most depressing part is the slam back into reality with having to work the day after. I kept telling myself that it’s only a 3 day week, only 3 short days and I can crawl back into my Christmas fantasy and play with all of my new toys and eat the now aging Christmas goodies and leftovers. Longest 3 days ever.

I did have a great Christmas though; it was a lot of fun to spend time with the family and even more fun to see everyone unwrap things that they really wanted, including myself. I posted a list of my haul on DIC which you can see Here. But, the big enchilada is the new camera, the Canon Powershot A650 IS. I had the camera on my wish list but I wasn’t actually expecting to get it, I planned to buy it myself after Christmas or whatever. I think I’m still stunned, it’s an amazing camera and after I’ve had some time to play with it I’d like to muster up a review.

I also received a few new computer games including The Orange Box, The Office, Call of Duty 4, and World in Conflict. The problem is that WiC and CoD4 are extremely demanding games and neither my new XPS notebook nor my desktop can run them to my standards. I ordered some more RAM off Newegg for my desktop and I’m thinking about picking up a brand new graphics card this weekend but I’m still not sure if that will be enough. I have a feeling that I’ll end up purchasing a new desktop by 2009.

Just 9 more hours and the 3 days will be over with.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/23/07 at 08:12:12 pm

I doubt I’ll be blogging before the big day, so I just wanted to wish a very Merry Christmas to all of my friends, family, readers, and people passing through my little corner of the internet. Tomorrow I’ll be heading out to spend time with my family this holiday season. I still can’t believe that in just a few hours it will already be Christmas Eve!

Anyway, I still have gifts to wrap and things to pack. Happy Holidays Everyone!

In 2007…

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/22/07 at 01:12:27 pm

It may not be New Year’s just yet, but I came across this hilarious video and I had to share it with everyone.

Don’t send a lame Holiday eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

My Mother, The Blogger.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/20/07 at 12:12:40 pm

A couple months ago I assisted my mom with starting her very own blog. I knew that she would have some clever writings to share and the idea behind what was going to be expressed, the name etc. was good so I was looking forward to her getting started.

This month she has been busy with her “12 Blogs of Christmas” which are essentially entries about important points or events in our family’s Christmas planning and celebration. We have always taken the holidays to the next level, as far back as I can remember, Christmas has always been a big deal in our family and many great traditions have been created because of it.

So without further introduction, I invite my readers and friends to check out my mother’s blog for a few holiday tips’ and a good laugh – HandMeDownLife.com

Movie Review: I Am Legend

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/18/07 at 02:12:44 pm

From the trailers and previews I had seen for ‘I Am Legend’ this movie looked just well… Legendary. I knew this was going to be a film worth seeing in the theater and I wasn’t disappointed when I did this past weekend.


Apparently I Am Legend is based off of a book by sci-fi writer Richard Matheson and is the 4th movie derived from the 1954 novel with the same title. Not having read the book myself I only had a vague idea of what this movie was going to be about.

In the movie, Will Smith plays the lead role as military virologist Dr. Robert Neville. After a rapid virus mutation that wipes out roughly 5.4 billion people and infects an additional 588 million with a rabies like illness that degenerates them into in-human animals, Neville finds himself as the last person alive in New York City, and possibly the world. Neville just so happens to be part of less than 1% of a population that is immune to the virus and throughout the movie he uses the immunity to his advantage and gives everything to find a cure that he hopes will reverse the effects on the few left infected.

The story might sound like a lot of the “zombie” movies that have come out over the last couple years, for example the ‘28 Days/Weeks Later’ series or even ‘Resident Evil’ with the whole “man made apocalypse” aspect in the plot. The main difference in I Am Legend is this story feels very real, almost disturbingly real. You can tell right away that the story isn’t supposed to be focused on the vampire like monsters that roam the night. I don’t want to give it all away, but I will say that Will Smith does a great job playing a man who essentially goes borderline insane from isolation and his fight for survival.

Will Smith really was the perfect person for the main (and one of the few) roles in this movie, you can easily find yourself feeling what he is going through as it’s expressed perfectly. He also does a good job pulling off intelligent scientist thing to where it’s believable. His various skills in survival, experimentation, and preparation were both fun and interesting to watch.

A few reviews that I have read so far said that this movie is boring and there isn’t the amount of action that is expected. I do agree that most of the action scenes are already shown off in the previews, but it’s far from boring. When you’re not sitting at the edge of your seat, you’re watching in anticipation of how the story will unfold. Also, everything was so well put together, all of the special effects were high quality but more importantly all of the little details that we’re put into the movie are to me, what really makes it stand out.

I would have liked to see more back-story to what was going on, you’ll notice that the movie sort of jumps right into the aftermath. However, Neville‘s flashbacks throughout the movie give enough information to have a grasp on why everything happened the way it did.

So, to sum this up, I Am Legend is a great film to end 2007. Personally, it was one of the better movies that I’ve seen all year. If you’re a Will Smith fan or your into the ‘apocalyptic zombies’ genre then it’s definitely worth seeing in the cinema this holiday season. If you want to wait for the DVD instead, rest assured that I Am Legend will be a solid addition to any collection.

Incident Site U.S. 447 - Cloverfield.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/16/07 at 02:12:05 pm

Tweetin’ Twitterific.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 12/15/07 at 10:12:00 pm

I got ambitious tonight and decided to start a little project I’ve been thinking about doing for a while and that’s adding Twitter to my website. I actually joined Twitter when it was launched and I didn’t find much value in the service, at first it seemed somewhat pointless and I ended up closing the account shortly after registering. Since then, Twitter has really exploded in popularity and there are more and more websites that are able to integrate with Twitter, MyBlogLog being one such website. So, tonight I decided to give it another shot.

I’ve been thinking about a way to add Twitter to the blog, where I could put the “badge” and what info I wanted it to display. I decided that the top near the navigation was a good spot for it, I’ve actually seen a couple other blogs with similar placement and I thought that it looked good up there. I still have a couple bugs to work out; I’m having some troubles making the little Twitter logo link to my Twitter page without it pulling the gray background from the previous div styling. I want to make it clear that I really hate the navigation bar on this layout, it looks decent but the way it’s coded is ridiculous. Some of you may remember that I originally wanted the navigation off to the right when this design was created, I guess I’m glad I was never able to pull it off now that I’m adding this Twitter thing.

Anyways, eventually you may be able to click the Twitter logo and you will go to my page with all of the ‘tweets’, for now you can take a look by Clicking Here.

For those interested, to pull of what I’ve done so far in terms of displaying my Twitter updates on the blog I’m using the SimpleTwitter plug-in for WordPress found Here and a little CSS magic. I think this will be fun having little blurbs and updates on the website. We’ll see how often I’ll have a chance to update it ;)

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