Paul Lumsdaine

Stopped by CVM to pick up business cards and talk about future plans of an art show. Zach and Leo are straight hustlin. These guys get things done.

A few weeks back I stayed at the Pirates Cove with Jeff Decker, Chandler and JJ. Needless to say it was a swashbuckling good time. Although the second night we slept on floor mats and inside closets (somehow J slept both nights inside of a closet). It was an epic place to visit, even if the near freezing temperatures at night kept me out of the always heated pools.

It’s astonishing that someone went through the trouble of constructing and maintaining a 22 room complex dedicated to pirate memorabilia (with the exterior decorations mostly, the interior was more Santa fe).

If you ever by chance find yourself at the pirates cove remember it was all brought to you by a sponsor: nu skin. Yes, that’s right.. The MLM giant known as nu skin is most likely what paid for most if not all of this complex.

Best news to come in a long while from the Google camp concerning their Docs app. Read the blog post below:

The Google Docs Viewer is used by millions of people every day to quickly view PDFs, Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint presentations online. Not only is viewing files in your browser far more secure than downloading and opening them locally, but it also saves time and doesn’t clutter up your hard-drive with unwanted files.

Today we’re excited to launch support for 12 new file types:

• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
• TrueType (.TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

Not only does this round out support for the major Microsoft Office file types (we now support DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS and XLSX), but it also adds quick viewing capabilities for many of the most popular and highly-requested document and image types.

In Gmail, these types of attachments will now show a “View” link, and clicking on this link will bring up the Google Docs Viewer.

View the full article: 12 New File Formats in Google Docs

I’ve just been plain ol’ busy lately. Building sites, starting the business up and keeping myself going. Pushing each and every way I can to gain the momentum every good business needs to succeed. So I was working on this site lately and thought I’d give Thematic wordpress framework a try. It is definitely robust, and perhaps more than what is necessary for most of my applications. I found creating a child theme the best way to go about setting the site up, but still have to spend a good amount of time familiarizing myself with the way Thematic works.

So now Im pretty sure Im going to be using lots of hooks in my functions.php for the code snippets that I seldom change. It just makes the whole ordeal easier. I think I can do it a lot simpler than Thematic does and maybe even explain it better than their documentation… It was a feat navigating through the extensions library at times and modifying it for my own needs.

But hats off to the developer of Thematic for making a great framework that has given me a lot of insight into the world of real theme development.

Headed to Spikes in Rosemead for the Douche Larouche MC party. Black Tibetians rocked the stage. Those Douches know how to throw a great party.

Headed down to Long Beach today to pick up the Pandaclaw cards from Color Vision Printing. Leo tol me all about this Im with Coco campaign one his friend started a la facebook. They were working hard, pushing out shirts and posters like crazy. I am a huge fan of Conan and thought it was great that there is a whole movement behind his latest late night coup.

By the way, Leo rocked the pandaclaw cards quick and they look good. Have to stock up before J and I head to Magic next week.

Headed to the GNR on Sunday to catch a glimpse of Chris Richardson’s from LA Speed Shop and to check out some amazing cars. I was chilling with photobyjj most of the time, checking put the scene. I got to meet a lot of cool people and hope to see them again. Got into a crazy love triangle with Dean and Matt from DicE mag and took a closeup of the sweet silver inlay work that James did on Chris’ chopper. Good experience overall.

The recent disaster in Haiti has prompted me to learn more about the island country. It seems overly apparent that the media is trying to bolster support for Haiti by texting campaigns (Im sure the cell providers love this) and regular donations to the salvation army. Throwing money at a problem sometimes does help bring about solutions, and in this case it might generate enough public and private funds to help the nation rebuild.

But why should Americans care about Haiti? Well, here is a nicely put sentence from Wikipedia that says it all: “It was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion”. The history and rise of this island nation from the depths of slavery make it a prime example of the triumphs achieved through democracy and a positive outcome in the fight for independence.

Because Haiti came to rise independently, it has sustained much of its cultural heritage through the years. Their culture serves as a look into the history of European exploration / exploitation, the forced migration of Africans and the strong influence of other Latin American customs that have spread throughout the world.

However, if we really want to save Haitians, we cannot simply through money at the problem, or worse yet, let the IMF come in and restructure the nation. There needs to be some serious thought put into how we help rebuild this country, and the UN needs to step up and guide this mission. The US has a lot on their plate right now, and can offer much in terms of food and finance, but cannot have all its attention diverted from other pressing issues.

How I wish we could just end those wars against terror to help battle real terror when it strikes, like a natural disaster that kills over 50,000 people and leaves hundreds of thousands stranded without shelter, food and water. America definitely needs to get its priorities straight if we want to return to being a beacon of hope to the rest of the world.