I've been digging back into southern rap lately and today I dug into some classic H-Town rappers and found a pretty new K-Rino album that had some good tracks on it.

Album seems alright so far but I haven't had it on full loop long enough to judge if it has legs.

Stay strong on dumping the cigs. It takes a while but eventually you'll only have to fight back a craving once every now and then. I've been clean for about 4 years now and I can tell you it'll get easier.

I post once in a blue moon. I generally don't come across anything worth reading and I really only have time for hubski as a work break distraction so most of what I do is lurk. I post the occasional comment but for the most part I don't think what I have to say is worth posting in the first place so I don't. Hell, I'm sitting here wondering if even this is worth posting so...

Well my fiance's visa application has been thrown into administrative processing just a week after she was approved. Today was her last day on her job since she was planning on flying over a week from now. Now... Who knows? It feels like the government just stole my happiness and gave me an IOU. Naturally we're out half the cost of the plane flight and it's thrown both our schedules right out the window.

The worst part about this is there's nothing I can do. Calling more than every 2-3 weeks won't help either. I'm feeling rather lost today.

I'd skip out on final cut. I haven't used it in a while but nobody I know likes X. If you want a no frills easy editor see if you can get a copy of Sony Vegas. It's really user friendly and as long as you aren't trying to do complex post work it's great.

I enjoyed the video a lot. I'd love to have a travel vlog to follow. I love to travel myself and wouldn't mind having a good place to snag ideas for trips for myself and the fiance.

As for the technical aspects I think for the most part your jump cuts were good but there were a handful of shots you lingered on a little long that I would tighten up. For example the shot of your boyfriend from 0:32 to 0:35 could be cut at 0:34 and it would transition a lot smoother. I think the sped up shot that starts around the 1:26 mark could be sped up a little bit more to match with the speed of the other sped up shots.

You got some great angles on your clips. The shots I liked the most were the the far off low to the ground shot with tons of vinyl between the camera and your boyfriend and who couldn't love that shot of pulling out that Rick Astley single.

A tip for giving your edits more impact would be to edit to the beat of the music. It doesn't have to be rhythmic jump cuts but when you do decide to cut to a new shot it's best practice to try and make that cut line up with the music. I'd also tighten up the ending by hard cutting to black on the shut of the car door along with the silence of the music and have the end just be a handful of frames of black.

Sorry about the long write-up but I went to school for this stuff and I've been having to brush the dust off my own shooting and editing skills with the job I've got now. I tend to think about the edits in every video I watch these days so hopefully I was able to give you some usable feedback.

"Get yourself a different woman."

Hah. It's pretty funny that this was some of the advice he took from Citizen Kane. I'll admit it's been a while since my film studies course in college but I don't remember that really being his major problem.

There's finally a date set for my fiance's visa interview and I couldn't be more excited. Once we know we'll be allowed to live in the same country we can actually nail down some permanent wedding plans. Life is moving forward and it's looking great. The future seems a lot brighter than it used to look.

I can't think of anything recent that blows the doors off. Most of the recent anime I've seen is good with qualifications. Most of them seem to be perverted sometimes to the extreme. None of these are suggestions if you're looking for something that is good with no qualifications.

Food Wars - Funny and mildly interesting twist on shonen but it's full of ecchi.

Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There - A fun anime centered around the idea of fantasy armys faced with modern military but it's very focused on otaku tropes and the lead is a perv.

Blood Blockade Battlefront - An interesting take on the paranormal world colliding with our own in NYC. It cribs style from Cowboy Bebop and has an interesting method of telling stories but the story telling method feels disjointed and ends up feeling lazy a lot of the time.

I have seen a couple good anime movies lately though. I'm not entirely sure if these are super fresh releases since the fiance has picked them but here they are:

Patema Inverted - It's an interesting tale of a world where scientists accidentally inverted gravity for an entire area and the people within when trying to create free energy. The story takes place a ways into the future from the event and involves a boy from the right side up world meeting a girl from the upside down area. Complications ensue. I enjoyed watching it and there wasn't any typical anime bullshit.

The Wind Rises - It's probably cheating picking a Miyazaki movie but I thought the movie was pretty great. The story centers around a man who was infatuated with aviation from a young age. It follows him through his career during the period between world war 1 and world war 2 in Japan. It avoids delving too deep into the conflict and doesn't cheer on the axis but also doesn't condemn the people involved. Well worth a watch but then again what Miyazaki film isn't worth a watch?

I wish I had some better suggestions but the above are the cream of the small crop of stuff I've seen recently which, Miyazaki film excluded, doesn't really say a whole lot but should at least give you a starting point to finding something you enjoy.

Heh, I can't stand Log Horizon either but for completely different reasons. I thought the first handful of episodes were generally alright but then the story started getting majorly masturbatory and wasn't very interesting. It culminated in an episode in season 2 which was a 20 minute long speech about how they were gamers and rah rah rah don't give up. Holy shit man. After that episode both my fiance and I were thoroughly done with Log Horizon.

The art also did take a nose dive after the first few episodes. I figured they had dialed in exactly how much viewership and revenue the show would generate and adjusted their budget accordingly.

If you're looking for a gamified anime I'd recommend Is It Wrong to Pick Up a Girl in a Dungeon. It's had a more interesting plot than Log Horizon or Sword Art Online, both of which took dips in the middle of their first seasons. My only problem with it is it can be a bit fan servicey in a boobtacular way.

Huzzah for kitchens! I don't think I could live long term in a place without one.

Never heard of it. Got a link?

I actually have a good portion of the downpayment in bonds at the moment. I'm just going to end up having to liquidate them when we go to purchase a house. Once all the expenditures are out of the way we'll probably start putting money into a Roth IRA and some diversified bonds similar to what I have now. I just doubt that the IRA and bonds will equate to enough savings for either me or my future wife to fully retire in our old age. I appreciate the suggestions though.

Heh it was a bit of music nerdiness. Buckethead really likes to play with dissonance and it's an acquired taste when it comes to listening. You'd probably appreciate some of his more melodic stuff or some of his softer stuff.

I watch anime with the fiance. She picks the majority of them but occasionally I pick one as well. I also play video games but I haven't been as into it lately. Slowly going through Elder Scrolls Online with the fiance though.

As for solitary hobbies I like to make and listen to music. I usually don't care about the genre I just care about whether it sounds good. I mostly stick to digital production when it comes to creating music. I may eventually post some on hubski whenever I feel like I have something worth sharing. I play the acoustic guitar as well but that's more like therapy for me. I like that I can sit there and play some riff I've known for a while and let my mind wander while I loop through the patterns or when I'm frustrated I can smash the sound out of it with noise and force. I find solace in music.

It seems a lot of guitarists have started four finger tapping like this. The first artist I ever saw do it was buckethead.

It blew me away then and as a casual guitarist it blows me away these days too. I know what they're doing but I don't have the dexterity to pull off dual hand 4 finger tapping.