The Modern Hippy Male

I’ve never been a fan of reading. I can count on one hand the number of books I’ve read in my life. Most of those fingers would be accounting for books that were required reading for a class. You see, it’s not that I don’t like books. In fact, I don’t particularly dislike reading. However, I was diagnosed with ADD at an early age. ADD, for those of you that don’t know stands for Attention Deficit Disorder. Feel free to wiki the term to gain a broader knowledge. In my experience ADD is a vicious and extremely annoying. Essentially my mind wanders, especially while reading. I can be reading a book that I have a lot of interest in, or one that I don’t particularly care for and it will happen all the same. My mind will start to think of some random event or thing and that will dominate my attention. I will continue to read, in that the words will continue to be processed by everything but my brain. It is only after this has gone on for a good paragraph, a few sentences at least that I realize what is happening and have to refocus, and start the paragraph over.

This can make it very difficult to get through a book, or even a chapter. I’m currently reading a chapter in a book for my speech class and I’m having a bear of a time. Along with the fact that I have ADD, this has caused me to avoid books in general. As I stated, having read around 5 books total in my life, I haven’t had much practice. This equates to me being a slow reader. In fact, I just took two reading tests and one told me I was reading around 154 wpm and another rated me as between 150-200 wpm. That’s only double what I can type (74 wpm typing). So, this chapter I have been reading for over 2 hours and I have 17 of the 34 pages completed.

If there is one thing I could say to parents regarding their children, encourage them to read. At this point in time, it is one of the best ways to procure knowledge. Sure people can be taught information, but this requires another individual with the knowledge, and commonly costs quite a bit of money (college courses). A truly affordable way to gain knowledge of any subject is to be able to read well. And as they say, practice makes perfect.

Good reading skills are important! There is a wealth of knowledge in books.

And now I’m off to continue my battles and finish my reading. Only 2:54 am, maybe I can finish before the sun comes up!

As the title states.

I’m currently attending college and I’m about to finish my ATA in MIT as a Web / Graphics Designer. In an attempt to earn some extra cash, I’ve decided to enter a few design contests online. If you’re not familiar with exactly what a design contest is… well, I was going to link to one of the sites that does this, but they don’t deserve the traffic, so I’ll just explain.

Ok, if you don’t know, a design contest is essentially where someone in need of a design service, as in graphics or web design, posts a brief explaining what it is he/she needs or wants. Then, stupid people, myself included, foolishly do the work on the sometimes 1 in 1000 chance that we will “win”, and earn the prize money.

This process only works to benefit the person in need of the design. For every one contest, there ends up being one happy person, and many people who wasted their time designing just so the purchaser can say… “Sorry, it’s just not my style.”

Please, heed my advice designers. While it may seem like a good idea at the time, don’t do this. It is encouraging those in need of design services to seek there results in this manner, thus further decreasing the amount of quality work that is available. And not to mention, the majority of these contest’s prizes are well under where they should be.

I have entered many over the past week, and won few. I’m done with these contests, and you should be too.
That rhymed.

For further consideration: http://www.designers-who-blog.com/index.php/archive/things-that-suck/ and http://www.creativelatitude.com/articles/article_0804_habib.html.

Edit: Thank you for the comment regarding http://www.no-spec.com/. I’d like to point out that NO!SPEC has a good way that you can represent your feeling in regard to design contests.

Supporting the cause!

http://www.no-spec.com/

I was going to go to bed after that last post. But I decided to further explore an extra tab I had open in my browser from a previous search. Somehow, and beleive me when I say that I have no idea how, I ended up at this video on youtube.com. I feel I should warn you, for several reasons:

#1: This video is of a religious nature.
#2: I’m not a religious person myself, and am not showing you this for any other reason then for the purpose of discussion.
#3: It’s perfectly fine if you are religious, I’m just not. That’s ok, right?
#4: Ok, fine. If it’s not ok, go ahead and leave my site. Try being a bit more accepting of other people’s beliefs. Don’t let the door hit ya where YOUR good lord split ya.

Ok, now that I have that out of the way. I really liked the way this video was done. Simple, perhaps a bit to bland for some, but well done. The story it discusses is interesting and thought provoking, so it achieves it’s goal. However, it struck a bitter cord with me when the author stated that “this isn’t inteded to be funny, it’s intended to make you think.” And then he jumped into a long string of “Isnt it funny when…” Admitidly, this is a pet peeve. But this is my site, and I’m allowed to pet my peeves. I can even stroke them if I like. (wow, way dirty)

I have an “Isn’t it funny when..” for this author. Isn’t it funny when you mention to someone that is religious that you are not, and then they A) lecture you about faith, or B) treat you as if you are inferior? Please, I respect your beliefs. In fact, I applaud anyone who is willing to go door-to-door for a cause or belief. That doesn’t sound like fun to me.

Realize that just as you have made a choice to believe in god, buda, or whomever your creator(s) may be, I, and many others, have chosen either a different belief structure, or not to believe at all. This is our choice. Respsect this, and we can all be friends and get along. Don’t push your beliefs on me, and I wont direct you to my #4.