I'm Digging Aristotle

So today in Ethics, we continued to discuss Nicomachean Ethics (particularly Book 1, Chapter 7) and  I realized that my life conformed to his theories (to an extent) in my time at college.

Aristotle states that happiness is different for everyone and the path to achieving happiness is also different for each person.  To be truly happy you have to have a goal that you want to reach, an end goal.  This goal needs to be "self-sufficient" meaning that achieving this end goal will make you happy as well as sustain the needs such that the desires that one has daily are not as prevalent.

Everyone wants to be happy.  If someone asks you "why do you want to be happy?" the answer isn't "I don't want to be happy", the answer tends to be, "I just do".

Now, here's where everything starts getting  closer to my life.  Yes I am pretty happy, but there was also plenty of times that I was not happy.  My first semester freshman year, for many reasons that I don't wish to discuss in depth, I was not happy.  I was alone (relationship-wise), I was unable to help people like I normally could, and I was kind of awkward (not being terribly sociable naturally).  Over my winter break I realized that my life was not happy and that I needed to stop focusing on others and focus on myself.

At that point I set a goal to focus on myself more than before.  This was my end goal, and there have been little achievements along the way reaching towards making myself happy.  These little goals also fulfilled the other part of being happy with the social and active parts of my life.  You can be happy, but lack the socializing and active parts of you life and still have desires.  To achieve happiness, you must be a complete person in every aspect of life, what Aristotle called "Complete Life".

I started my goal of a "Complete Life" by finding my first girlfriend, who I love very much.  This gave me the support in life that I needed, a person I could grow with and live with.  I continued my goal mission by becoming involved on campus because I missed the active life on campus.  By now, most readers probably know that I helped found a fraternity on campus as well as became the treasurer of the radio station, while still running a radio show (at least last semester).

Now after discussing the Nicomachean Ethics of happiness, I really see that my life is headed towards the right direction of happiness.  Albeit that I am not the Aristotolean ideal virtuous person because my life is filled with events to overcome (the ideal virtuous person has the ability to overcome, but never has to use it... Must be nice..), but I feel that I am happy with life and have found my way to be happy from lessons from college.

It is great how a man that lived over 2300 years ago (approx 350BC) developed a solid concept that can and has held true today.

Have a great (and happy) day!

Excitement

So I am starting to get more and more excited now.  I logged in to make this post and I saw that I am very close to 10,000 views.  It is incredible how a few people reposting a link can make a difference "and for that we thank you" - Daniel Tosh

Over this weekend I was initiated as the founding father of Pi Lambda Phi at Carroll University.  I am now in the books as starting a Fraternity, but after the fun of the weekend is over I'm back to school for some hard work and recruiting.  I could put my statement of why I joined Pi Lambda Phi, or what it means to me, but today is not the time.  Today is the time to celebrate and be excited for the future.

Because I'm at work I don't have my usual supply of pictures videos and what not to make this post, however I have 3 amusing and/or educational things to post.

First is amusing to me involves math.

I have seen something like this before when my friend filled out his reciept, but instead of Pi, he put "Do Math".  Just as amusing, but not as geeky.

Next was a semi-amusing picture of a lamb.  I don't know why, but this just tickled me today.

Last, I found a picture of something I hadn't heard about since geometry, The Golden Ratio.  The Golden Ratio in a very condensed form is an irrational number like Pi, but it is seen everywhere in nature.  The most common example is with the Nautilus (fish not ship or workout equipment).

The ratio of the angles from the center of the nautilus to the 90-degree angle comes out to the number 1.61803399 (approx.) or more simply in geometry Phi.

I hope you have enjoyed this tidbit of knowledge.

Have a great day!

Friday: A Story

So I really had no idea what I was going to post today, and I still somewhat don't. I'm sitting in the coffee shop at school thinking about what I should do and then I remembered that there are iPads that you can rent. I've always wanted to try one out and so I rented one. So far it seems to work just as well as a computer, though I am having a little bit of struggle typing everything out. The keyboard on the screen is really touchy, and I am a little afraid of autocorrect problems.

Anyway, I really just wanted to see how efficiently I could make a post in a mobile location, and it seems that everything is going better than expected.

The odd thing is that instead of the usual WYSIWYG editor it is a combo of HTML code and the text you are reading now. It's not a huge problem, but it's really off of the norm. So this weekend I'll be getting initiated into my fraternity and I'm pretty excited. Once we get back I think we want to make door decorations for our Suite of all rage comics characters. I will probably plan it out over the weekend or on Monday but I definitely have an affinity towards them. They're just so versatile.

But I do say. Nevertheless, I cannot quite guarantee the quality of this post until I see it on a real computer. So really this slew of words with rather useless pictures was just an explanation of my life and saying to the world that I'm finally getting to use an iPad.

Have a great weekend!

Who Wants Apparel?

So after the resounding amount of no one responding if they would buy P(x) Randomness stuff, I decided to start looking into what people want.  I plan on at least a shot glass, a t-shirt, and a water bottle (aluminum) so far, but I am interested in what people want to see.  There are a ton of options from coasters to sweatpants to baby apparel, and much more.  If you could leave a comment after this post, on the P(x) Randomness Facebook page, or you can email me ideas of what you want to see.

I plan on adding the shop to the site after tax returns come this year, but I am starting the designs now.  If there is some color that you specifically want, let me know so I can make a design that is friendly to the color.  Nothing would be worse than black font on a forest green shirt.

As for today's post, I really don't have much time, and because of this, I will just simply post the aforementioned thoughts about the store, as well as this awesome video.  The premise is that someone made a set of videos using Microsoft paint to famous songs.  This one is the best of the 3-4 out there now, and it is the Party Rock Anthem: Literally explained.

Have a great day!

Ferris Bueller's Words Of Wisdom

The other day I was watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off when I realized that some of the things that he said are really true and should be thought about more.  Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, Ferris (played by Matthew Broderick) says this iconic line:

I was thinking about this and I feel like 21 years of my life have just flown by.  Have I really taken the time that I should to look around?  I know I have been trying to live in the moment and less in the long term, but I haven't been too terribly successful.  It seems like just yesterday I was moving into college as a freshman.  Now here I am a year and half away from the real world.

What am I going to do? I have experience working on websites, I've been good about making blog posts, and I have potential to get a real-world internship that can lead towards a full-time job.  Does this mean I will get the job, who knows?  Will I end up being a fry-cook on Venus, who knows?

The fun part about that last paragraph is that it shows how poor of a job I can do at living in the moment.  Sure looking for a job is a priority, but you cannot enjoy life if you're worried about the future.

I know this isn't usually a thing I post about, but it is the chaos that is randomness.  If you live too far in the future, you can't enjoy right now.  If you worry about what will happen in the future, you can't fully live up to your potential.

Living in the moment also means things that happened in the past happened in the past.  You can use them as lessons, but you cannot dwell on the past.  Things happen, things come and go, but living in the moment will hopefully bring the best joy from life.  You can't make your days miserable because you want better things to happen because that won't help.

Everyone has bad days, but it doesn't mean that its the end of the world.  Live in the moment, not so much into the future.

Have a great day!

Why Is That Stuck In My Head?

On the way back from my Ethics class this morning, I just singing "Endangered Love" in my head.  This song comes from the popular Christian-themed show VeggieTales.  This particular song is part of the segment called Silly Songs With Larry.  I have no idea how this song jumped into my head, but I hope you enjoy it.

If you actually watched the video you can see how I am a little confused on how that jumped into my head after an Ethics class about the tyrannical soul.  

Seeing as I already have on VeggieTales video up, why not put a couple more of my favorite songs from the show.  I had never seen this song until today, but it tickled me when I first heard it.

My favorite song from all of VeggieTales is also the first Silly Songs With Larry that I ever saw.  The odd part about it is, it wasn't actually a song with Larry, but Mr. Lundt a gourd.  Nevertheless, the song is quite a touching tribute to the cheeseburger.

Though, I am not a huge fan of the video still...

Finally, another good song from VeggieTales has to be the Dance of the Cucumber.  It is really a fun song and Larry actually is singing in Spanish.

There are tons of other songs that the VeggieTales characters sing, and I don't think there has been a song that I really dislike.  I found it awesome that on YouTube there is a VEVO group for VeggieTales songs.

"Remember God Made You Special And He Loves You Very Much!"

Have a great day! 

School is for Chimps!

I love how my schedule panned out this year where I am done with classes at 9am 2 (3 in march) days in the week.  I still have my campus job in the laundry room so I will still have something to do on at least Mondays, but my semester is surprisingly empty.

It isn't even that I'm not taking a full schedule of classes.  I still have 4 classes and 14 credits.  Normally I'd take 16, but I've taken almost all the 2 credit classes that I could, or that would fit into my schedule.  Usually to fill the void people get involved, and I think I'm pretty saturated with involvement.  I am currently the Treasurer for Carroll University's radio station WCCX and its pretty fun, despite the occasional organized chaos.

On top of that I am the Secretary for Pi Lambda Phi Fraternity at Carroll.  Initiation is this weekend so I'm excited to become a full member of the Fraternity and jump into the new semester.  I have 1.5 more years to get Pi Lam established on campus (being a founding father) in hopes that when I come back in 5-10 years that I see a thriving facet on campus.

Last, I am somewhat involved in CAB (Campus Activities Board), but I won't be as active in it as I was last semester.  I will try to still go to some of the meetings, but it may not be as high of a priority in my weekly schedule.

I have no idea how old that picture is, but apparently CAB had a website at some point that fell to the wayside.  It would be cool to see one again, but I dunno who to approach for something like that.

Regardless, the title said that school is for chimps and I have only talked about school so far. I guess I should have at least one chimp.  We're not talking about Diddy Kong, NintendoCapriSun, but rather, we're talking about a Chimpanzee Riding On A Segway!

Have A Great Day!

Graphic Design: Bottles

I know there are quite a few people that like when I post design oriented posts.  Today I found some bottles that I like the designs of.  The ironic part of all of this is I dropped a large glass bottle on my toe and maybe broke it.  It is lovely shade of blue raspberry blue, but it is getting better.

I am not afraid of bottles after my accident and as an act of good will towards bottles I figured that I would showcase them.  Sometimes I like how the bottle itself looks, and other times I like the design on it.  I'll put my reasoning for each picture after the picture.

This bottle I like not for the shape, mostly because it is plain, but becuase I like the fruit design on the neck of the bottle.  The type on the bottle is ok, with its benefit being that it doesn't detract from the rest of the bottle.

Once again, the bottle wasn't the contributor to this, though it is interesting to see hard liquor with a cork.  I really like how there are pictures of 1920s style speakeasy characters.  My mind makes me think that the liquor is proper, but I'd have to try it to find out.

This bottle has a lot of connotation with it.  The bottle itself is really cool because of the thickness of the glass around the bottle.  I also like how the design is very elegant and dependent on the liquor in the bottle.  Everything about the bottle definitely connotes sensuality.

This bottle is a simple beer bottle, but the type on the box is awesome.  I love how it is printed on the bottle and that it is all decorative and slightly chaotic typefaces.  The only concern I have is that the beverage in it is green..

I am not a fan of ales that I know of, but everything about this is absolutely fantastic.  This company was brilliant in making their beer bottle a tankard.  The top may look a little odd, but this is still really cool.

Finally is this assumed wine bottle.  I love the use of colored wax to seal the bottles.  I like the thin simple typeface and that the bottle is monochromatic (white and a single color).  The top of the bottle looks a little lopsided, but I assume that this is a concept/prototype image.

I hope that everyone has a fun and safe weekend!

School Days

I'm back at school again and it feels great.  I really do enjoy learning. Even though today is just going to be syllabus day I still am excited to get back into structured learning.  The result of this though will most likely be some relatively shorter posts so I can focus on school.

I do currently have a post, that is pretty long, ready to go for any day that I am overly busy, but we'll see how the days go.

Today I feel like posting about the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  It was and still is a pretty funny show, but the most iconic part of the show is the intro song, seen here on an iPhone. Thanks CHiKA!

I'm somewhat curious about this next picture though.  I don't know if it is photoshopped or if you actually get this when typing it into Google Maps.

Ah intro to The Fresh Prince, you are a great song and you even go well with Guile's theme.  Then again, Guile's Theme goes with everything.

Have a great day!

Sometimes I Could Live In Isolation

I don't think I'd like to be alone all the time, but sometimes being oblivious to the outside world just sounds so enticing.  No up in arms battles about why the government is broken, no arguments on why voting is or isn't important.  It would be great, but after some time I would miss being with people. You can only live so much in the internet before you need to get back to the "real world".

But that time is not now.  Rather let us live in the internet for some more time and watch the Yogscast in their Shadow of Israphel RP that has yet to be finished.

Have a Great Day!

Roller Coasters

As a kid I took part in the Read To Succeed program.  This program essentially had it so if you read 6 hours over the course of a few weeks you would get a free ticket to Six Flags.  The program was only there for K-6 but I think I read for it every year.  As a kid it sounded like a great idea, but now you think about it, it is a brilliant business move for Six Flags.

So, how is this relevant?  During one of my first visits to Six Flags Great America, I went on a ride called the Demon.  I didn't know about roller coasters and I didn't know if I liked them or no and after that ride I didn't like them.  I got off the ride with whip-lash because I didn't keep my head back.  It took me quite some time to get the courage to get on roller coasters after that.

Now I really enjoy roller coasters but I am too big to ride most of them.  It is quite sad, but I'm working on it.  So in reminiscence of roller coasters I figured I would post some videos of some homemade roller coasters.  I'm not talking about the literal homemade roller coasters, but rather the ones made on the computer in a program called No Limits.  I picked these 3 videos because my brother made all of them.

Have a great day!

Songs and Their Non-Related Pictures

That has to be one of the worst titles that I have made in a while.  Once again, I am preparing to go back to school (on Wednesday) and I am ready to go back.  It has been nice being home, but you can only do so little for so long.  During the school year I crave a break, but when I'm at home I want something to do.  Already my week at school is busying up with a meeting on Wednesday night and a meeting on Thursday afternoon.

Then again, for classes this week, I only have 3 classes to go to for 4 hours total. In fact, I'll be done with class by 9am on Friday.

I have really gotten off track from my intended theme, so I guess I'll get back to it.  Simply today, I have 2 music videos with pictures to accompany them.

Have a Great Day!

P(x) Blog Stardate -310966.20958561014

This blog has undertaken the goal to post everyday, and today I feel the need to let my inner tekkie free a little.  I have already made a Star Wars post to my knowledge and it is now time to make a Star Trek one. You may doubt my geekiness to Star Trek, but not many people chose in Debate club to have a debate over Star Wars v Star Trek in which was more impactful on society. We lost.. Stupid Star Wars books..

I am not so much into the new generations of Star Trek, I liked the old ones with Shatner, Nemoy, etc. and the new movie is pretty good too.  It is that reason that I like these cookies.

Everyone has those days where they think it would be cool to have the ability to kick someones butt with a Vulcan Nerve Pinch.  Take a moment and think of someone that annoys the hell out of you then think of how awesome it would be to K.O. them for a bit.  Nice huh..

Still don't understand, take a look at this clip from Star Trek IV: THe Voyage Home where Spock owns a punk on a bus.

If you like what you saw and you want to see more, watch the movies, they're all pretty good.  If you want some mostly unknown facts about the original series, take a look at this infographic.

Just as a reference for those unfamiliar with Star Trek, never go out on an alien planet wearing red.  Chances are you won't stand a chance and you will die.  McCoy has his hands tied up as it is, he doesn't need to deal with you dying for a poor fashion choice.

Then again, even McCoy will have to die eventually.  The sad truth of life.  I honor his character's life with this gravestone.

Live Long and Prosper

Lying, Cheating, and Stealing

I felt like this post was going to be weak until I thought of the title.  It is not terribly creative, but it does have a theme.  Instead of posting a ton about Nyan Cat now, it seems I have been posting about Skyrim a lot.  When it is the majority of things I see posted thought, it tends to get to be a good theme.

Because Skyrim is a Role Playing Game (RPG) you have a pretty good chance that you will lie to people (though not as much as in Fallout), steal from people, and Cheat someone somehow.  Of course, the cheat that I found isn't quite cheating a person, but  more finding a glitch in the system.

Lying to people shouldn't come as second nature to people, but it seems that people enjoy doing it far, far too much.  They think it is the perfect solution because they don't have to face the situation until later.  This doesn't usually have the same affect in Skyrim that it does in real life (IRL).  Just as the cheat is, this lie isn't really a lie built into the game, but rather it is a lie because you have to use Mods to make it happen.  Step into a slim jim!

Finally, we have stealing.  This happens all the time in Skyrim and this video is a pretty accurate representation of what happens, but it has an IRL spin.  Skyrim IRL 2012.

Have a great day!

What's Taters, Precious?

A week from today I will be headed back to school to start my 3rd to last semester.  With a horrible semester behind me I am ready to take some great classes that I may actually enjoy. The outlook for this year looks great.  I get to take classes that actually matter to me, I might get a real-world job, and the Hobbit (Part 1) comes to theaters.

In 6th grade, as a class we started reading The Hobbit during SSR (silent sustained reading), but too many people got confused by it so we stopped.  I have read it since then, but I need to read it again over the summer I think.  I know I need to read it now as the trailer is out and it looks pretty good.

I am not a complete nerd when it comes to Lord of the Rings, but I am pretty dorky about it.  I spent an entire night with a couple friends watching all the extended versions of LOTR.  Something like that takes quite a long time and makes stuff like this a little funnier.

Its not every day that you find Gollum pretty funny, nor is it every day that a joke of color/race can be made funnier by an elf, a human, and a wizard.

So there is a remixed song that I really enjoy and because it is one of the songs that I know plays for 10 hours on youtube, I figured I would make P(x) History and post the longest video to date on the site.  I could play the longest video on youtube on another day, but that is such a waste of time to play a 3 day video.

Have a great day!

StumbleUpon Wins Again!

So I lied yesterday in saying that this post would be up late.  I was pursuing StumbleUpon last night and I found a new YouTube channel called Feast Of Fiction where they make Mythical meals.

The first video they posted was the Mythical Meal of Sunlight Souffle from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Sounds like they could be delicious.  Let this be a lesson to Skyrim players to read every book that you pick up.  Some them are very good, such as the Lusty Argonian, the Yellow Book of Riddles, Wabbajack, etc.

The next video they made was of Butter Beer from Harry Potter.  I definitely want to try all 3 forms they talk about and perhaps even the alcoholic version.

I hope you enjoy the videos as much as I did, go on youtube and like and subscribe to them if you want to see more.

And of course.. I make this post early to automatically post so I wouldn't worry about it and what do you know they post another video..

This new last one isn't so much based off of a recipe like the last one, but it is recreating the Minecraft cake!

Have a great day!

Simpsons Did It!

Within the least couple months I have heard that this is the last season of The Simpsons.  What does this mean? Does this mean that South Park has to pick up the slack and have a Simpson's didn't do it episode? Does Family Guy take over on TV where The Simpsons were driving that series into overkill?  Then again, with local programming all I can currently watch with entertainment is Family Guy and Big Bang theory, which could also replace The Simpsons, but that would be odd.

Nope, not quite a fan of the picture, but I'd want to see what a full episode would be like.

Its not my decision of what to put there, but it is my job to post something for you to enjoy.  So without further waiting, I guess I'll address the Simpsons.

The Simpsons are a remarkable show that has predicted some incredible things and really shows the flaws with current society, or a little farther back..

Thats kinda sick that this actually happened..

So before this last video, I was considering making a line of shirts for my blog, I know it wouldn't probably sell too well, but I want some opinions on it.  I would look into using Cafe Press for the production company with a link on the site.

My goal through this is to get enough revenue that I would buy the domain and hosting for this site and make it a blog post that does not have to go through Blogger.  Another consideration would be to swap over to Wordpress as there are more customization features and you can treat it like a website a little easier.  Nothing is official yet, but I want some opinions.

So for the last video, I found someone made The Simpsons intro pretty well in Minecraft.  My main dislike about it however is that maggie is only a cube.  I dunno what they could have done better, but I wasn't quite a fan there.

I hope that everyone has a great day, tomorrow's post will probably be later in the day as I have a second interview for a summer internship.

Save The World Jimmy McMillan!

So I had no idea what to make for today, when I stumbled to Quickmeme which I like a ton as a site.    In an attempt to make the world better I thought, who could we get to fight the little problems of life? 

Who would have thought that Quickmeme would solve that problem with Jimmy McMillan.  He fought for people when "the rent was too damn high" and now its time to fight for the little people, well different little people.

What if Jimmy McMillan fought for....

Skyrim: P(x) Randomness Exclusive

The Dessert-Filled

The Classroom Curve Passers

The Minecraft Server Laggers

The People of Bikini Bottom

The 2011 Bears Fans

The Wine Drinker

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Sing-A-Long Day!

My mind is not on this post right now.  I am excited that I get to see my girlfriend tomorrow and that is interfering with the creative process of today's post, and quite possibly tomorrow's post.  So if you notice that today's post is missing something, I apologize, I always make it up eventually though.

On a side note, I am baffled at how my blog gets big swells of hits one day and very few views another day.  I mean, the Rhett and Link post a couple days ago had 30 some hits while my New Years Design post only has 4 views.

Nope, I'm not against self-promotion.

Anyway, today is all videos that you can sing along to.  The first 2 are from a website called Brawl in the Family.  They make comics based on the Super Smash Brothers franchise as well as a few created characters like Eario, the Janitor of the mushroom kingdom, and some Nintendo characters that aren't in SSBB like Waluigi.

The comics are very funny and worth looking into.  The next video is their newest song-comic and oh boy is it true.

Not all of their comics are like this, in fact only 4 or 5 of them are.  The other 2 are about King Dedede, but they aren't my favorite.  The last video is from the Yogscast.  If you haven't heard about the Yogscast, they are a British-based podcast and video game youtube group.  Most notably they play Minecraft, but they also do play other PC games.

This song was a fan-created song from a short parody that the Yogscast made of the song YMCA.  Instead of the YMCA as the theme though, they went back to the times of dairy delivery and wrote their song about a Milkman.

Please do not break your arm to make the K in the song.

Have a great day!

No New Nyans.. How Sad

I guess the Nyan Cat meme has met its end in 2011.  There hasn't been a new one made in quite some time.  I guess I just have to deal with it and make another post of more different cats.  They aren't as colorful but they are still amusing.

The first 2 cats of course have to be about poop.  What makes cats more funny than just being the way they are? Cheeseburgers, ususally.. but poop is a close second.

The next cat is an example of what pretty much everyone has had to do at some point in their lives.  Maybe not in spanish, but similar nonetheless.

So once you are done in the bathroom, you should be washing your hands.  Cats can always use a bath, but they kinda look funny when they're still wet.

I'm not a huge fan of cats.  There is just something sinister about them.  It could be their eyes, their tiny sharp claws, their slave master attitude, or maybe this picture sums it up..

Yeah.. That cat needs an exorcism.. Or less catnip..

Try to have a great day after that scaring image...

Failure

So today, I am not feeling a great blog text today, however, this doesn't mean that I cannot post some awesome videos.  A few months back in my Hipster Post, I posted a video from aYouTube group called Rhett and Link.  Recently, they have made a video series titled Caption Fail.

The premise behind the videos are best explained in the videos and all of them are pretty funny.

Ah youtube failures.  Even though you do that, it doesn't bother me, you're still too good of a site.

Have a great day!

New Years Design

I know I said that I was going to change the blog up a little bit, but I found out that I am ahead of the game in the realm of design.  In December, Pantone released the color of the year.

For those that don't know what Pantone is, they are a company that are most known for creating a system of labeling colors with numbers.  This is a very basic explanation at best, but if you want to know more you can read about them on Pantone's website.

The color for 2012 will be Tangerine Tango!

Seeing that P(x) Randomness is already pretty Orange to start, I may just tweak the Orange and have the color of the blog be Tangerine Tango if possible.  A new logo may appear soon too as well, but I do have a lot on my plate as it is right now.

For those that think that it is cool that there is a color of the year, hold on to your hat.  Pantone is not just a color system, but a way of life.  If you want something in an exact color you can find it from pantone.  Anything from bags to coffee mugs to journals (seen above).

You can even get prescription glasses in the color that you want! Pantone Eyewear

When you think that things may get a little excessive, just wait you can even get your credit card in whatever pantone color you want. (Generally only the color of the year and a few others.)

Have a great day!