I’m an avid StumbleUpon fan, user, time-waster, etc. In fact I often spend hours upon hours stumbling, rating, sorting through all the wonderful things the internet has to offer. I always filter out videos and I’ve started to aquire a huge annoyance for image-only stumbles. But I digress.
Here is my short list of interesting things I’ve stumbled lately. I don’t want to hear comments like “this has been around forever”, etc; I’m making this list more for myself to keep track of things, not to turn people on to things that I’m deeming “new” to the internet, when they are most likely not.
1. Aviary - (http://a.viary.com/) Suite of web-based creative apps - and there sure are a LOT of them. I’m looking forward to testing out the BETA and *hopefully* switching over when the time is right. I’m a huge fan of online apps and have completely given up MS Office in favor of Google docs. That’s just how I roll.
I’ve been reading thru the dev blog and the tools look like they perform great. They are cleverly named - Peacock, Eagle, Phoenix, Owl, Penguin, Pigeon, etc. Someone has a thing for birds. The site is beautiful as well. I’m excited about these apps.
2. Brave New Traveler / Matador Travel, etc - This is a whole host of online travel information & goodness. They look to be all separate sites/domains/etc rolled into one big community. Navigating it is slightly confusing but they do a good job keeping identical themes, etc. My huge passion for travel & information made me sign up and I haven’t had an appropriate amount of time to search around as much as I’d like. But for now, I like it. 
WANT!!! Collection #2 rocks. Awesome stuff.
4. 11 Places you should see on an around the world trip (yes please!)
Tonight I found an incredible blog that I have to share. I think it’s something that everyone can/will enjoy. It’s called “The Big Picture” and the posts are news stories told with beautiful photography. In sort, the stories (pictures) are moving, emotional, shocking and just amazing. I immediately added the feed and will visit daily.
It’s a fairly new blog and has only been around about 6 weeks, so it’s easy to go through the whole thing and see everything up until now. Please enjoy and let me know what you think.
Here’s a taste:
So the trailer for Madagascar 2 is out and I’ve heard people already starting to bag on it - that it’s going to be cheesy, not that funny, etc. But man, to me, there isn’t much about the trailer that ISN’T funny.
I absolutely love Madagascar, it’s one of the only animated movies that I can still watch (we have a 4 year old. enough said).
As long as the penguins and King Julien are in it, I can’t see it going wrong.
You can check out the trailer here, or the official site.
Has it really been NINE (9) months since I have posted on this blog? That can’t be right. But yes, it looks to be so. Wow. For some reason it didn’t seem that long. Yes I know I’ve been neglecting it for a while, but that’s close to a full year without posting. For sure no one reads this thing now, crapola.
I really want to move my blog into my portfolio site (joyful1.com) and do an all-in-one Wordpressy goodness site. But I’m lazy and that would require my free time, which incidentally I don’t have too much of. I don’t necessarily USE my portfolio for anything - being that I have a more than full time job. One that I love and care about, but one that is also sucking the life out of me and making my head explode on a regular basis. I’m not sure that I’ve ever had a job like this before. One that I am so passionate about - great people, killer office, kick ass product that is easy to support; yet it drives me to nearly have a mental breakdown frequently - small business politics, no communication, disorganization, drama, chaos, chaos, and more chaos. NOT TO MENTION a 1.5 hr ONE WAY commute. I am insane.
That being said, I’ve been at my new place of employment for about 9-10 weeks now as Web Developer / Designer / Web Department in general and it’s pretty great.
Everything on the homefront is the same, good as always. Husband is still nerding it up, playing SKATE on PS3, obsessing over adding every Blu-Ray disc in Netflix possessions, being a Motorolan and sleeping all day. (sidenote: not a deadbeat, works at night. ha).
Tyler turned 4 on May 1. He’s cuter each day, along with more annoying each day. His need to be involved in EVERY word I speak, every conversation I have, every phone call, every step I take is really trying my patience. But it’s also a cute, clingy phase that I know I will wish for once it is gone. He’s got a new swingset, he’s totally potty trained (finally!! wtf) and plays Spongebob Squarepants on the Xbox daily. He also likes to ask everyone to repeat themselves 100x and talks a lot about his “weiner” (don’t ask).
We now have 2 dogs. 2. stupid. dogs. They suck at life. Wecko is fat and dumb. Cali is a puppy and can’t control her licker - she also barks at everything. See Flickr for pics.
So that’s the boring update. :) I will commence with my postings now.