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This menu literally screams fun at you! Literally!
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Dear Tumblr,
So, those of you reading my recent journal entries here on Tumblr probably think, “oh look, that pixel art guy is writing stuff now, how not exciting at all.” But the truth is much much less exciting, reader: I have been writing journal entries and posting them on the internet for the better part of my life. I actually just did the math, and it turns out that after an initial 17 years of not posting things on the internet, I have now spent… 17 years posting things!
This is a turning point of some sort, I assure you.
As you can imagine, a lot of material has piled up over the course of nearly two decades, and I occasionally like to dive back into the archives to see what life was like for me in those days. Below, I have published my journal entry from February 2, 2000, just one month after I had moved to Austin from Bethesda, Maryland to start my first company, a little browser extension called Deepleap, with my friends Bryan and Lane.
In 33 days, my first kid will be delivered. 4388 days ago, this happened:
I moved into my own place after my pile of boxes and garbage which passed as my bed became so small that I was finally unable to actually sleep. Not that I’ve been doing much of that anyways, seeing as how we had a big demonstration of our super secret thing and had to have all sorts of things whizzing and banging and flying and zimzumming around the screen so that you you you can wonder what it is that we’re doing. Man, I will never get tired of that joke.
But the meeting went well and the investors are circling like sharks, smelling money like our blood in the water and thats a bad metaphor, but you get the picture. Investors! Pah! Who would have thought that I’d care about investors. (but I’ve got to pay my rent, right?)
Austin is the land of new experiences, lemme tell ya. Here are things I’ve done in Austin that I never did before:
Firstly, I went and bought a leopard print futon for my guest room/office. I’ve always said I was going to get a futon for my guest room, but I was always too lazy and either slept with all my guests or made them sleep on the couch. The girl at the futon store was hitting on me apparently, or so says Bryan. She had terrible hair, but in a “I have terrible hair and I know it, fuck off” kinda way which is appealing. She gave me her card. I don’t know if this is standard futon selling practice or if this is some kind of secret message to me “Here’s my card, call me and I’ll have sex with you,” but I can’t get anyone to go in and buy another futon (to see, of course, if they get a card too….) so I guess I’ll never know. Unless, of course, she’s as psychotic as me and personally delivers my futon.
Secondly, I went and did my laundry at a laundromat at 12:30 at night. I’ve never ever been to a laundromat and this is why: Laundromats are scary scary horrible places where crazy people hang out. As Lane and Bryan and I washed 12 loads of laundry (serious), we witnessed a) a man wander in, crawl into a nook between dryers and fall asleep, b) a woman wander in with her dog, use the bathroom several times, roll herself a cigarette and , in the process of rolling and smoking said cigarette, feed her dog a pile of loose tobacco, and c) a taxi cab driver. None of these people did any laundry at all. Oh, except the cab driver.
Ok, I kinda petered out there around, oh, C, but it was really late by the time he rolled in due to the fact that Lane and Bryan have never heard of the “throw all your clothes into a garbage bag regardless of their dampness” technique of clothes folding, so we had to sit and watch the dryers for many more hours than I was prepared to sit and watch dryers and also I personally had to sit and watch Lane and Bryan fold old teeshirts. Lots of them. And so, point being at 3:30, a Taxi Cab driver in a laundromat seems extremly surreal and amusing.
Thirdly, I bought a magazine subscription from one of those door to door I need money for college sob story people. You know the “So if I sell 25 thousand subscriptions, the man named Big Boss won’t break my legs,” kind? I hate those people, I really do. But this morning, I was sitting in my inflatable chair and I noticed one of my neighbors walking down the street. She had several dogs with her, and I recently have a desire to own a pet dog (tho I’m not allowed to!) and so when she knocked on the door, I answered it.
Aha! First mistake.
And when I answered it, I noticed that this neighbor of mine was incredibly attractive and had pale pale blue eyes. Wowza eyes. And, as most people who have heard the sad tale of my love life can tell you, a girl with wowza eyes can pretty much do anything to me and I’ll like it. So there I am, giddy and horny, and I say “What can I do for you?”
Second mistake.
At this point she launches into her magazine sale / I really need to go to college schpeil and of course, I’m just sucked in by her eyes and her voice and the fact that there is a hot girl in my living room and I have NO furniture (!! cause the futon girl hasn’t personally delivered my leopard print futon!) except the inflatable thing, and I’m embarrassed about that the same way I’d be embarrassed if my dick was hanging out there, while I stood at the front door. So what did I do? I bought a fucking subscription to Wired which I don’t even really want. And then she wandered off with $20 of my dollars.
Here’s the real kicker: Two minutes later, she popped back into my door and asked to come back in and I had the little pitter patter in my heart, the “oh, here she is to ask me out for coffee” emotion, you know, they should really name that, but anyways, here she is at the door and I’m sitting on the inflatable chair again and I get up and trip on the rug and oh god, oh, it was just a horrible embarrassing thing.
So she comes in and we look at each other and she looks around and oh yeah, here it comes, right, and she says “I think I forgot to put the code for your magazine down on the receipt,” and I say “Oh sure, here,” and she says “Oops, never mind, its right there.”
Now I suppose that could have been her vague way of telling me to ask her out, you know like, hey, I’ve come back for a second round of flirtation, but I’ve never been very good at that, so I kinda waved and she left and walked to my neighbors front door. (I know, of course, because I then proceeded to watch her walk to several other doors before the Bill Murray Groundhog Day movie regained my attention and kept it.)
So at the end of the day, I did get screwed, but not in the good way. Once again, my goal of having sex every day has been quashed!
Basically what I’m saying here is that the only action I’m getting here in Austin is hot hot startup action, and all that does is make my fingers hurt and my eyes blurry, and most of the time, my back ache. Startup Action does not equal, in any way, shape, or form, hot hot hot benbrown humping.
…but it’s almost as fun.
And so, I have a house (big) and a company (secret) and things are just really really good. But man oh man, I don’t have time to do anything but work, especially not enough time to write big long and hilariously funny Daily Text entries. Nope, no time at all.
The End.
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Sweet! Make Pixel Art got a nice writeup in iPhone Magazine in Italy!
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[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
Here’s another video update to show you the progress I’ve made on PixelPix. A LOT of progress! As you can see, with just a few clicks you can very quickly get pretty radical results.
I created an official Twitter account for the app - follow now!
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Scarlett Johansson’s leaked nude, as seen through PixelPix’s Commodore 64 filter.
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Dear Tumblr,
We went down to Houston this weekend because Katie’s family threw us a baby shower. We were appropriately showered with gender neutral gifts like yellow puke towels, gray blankets, and a pair of the tiniest Chuck Taylor All Stars you have ever seen. I learned that while baby boys are monkeys and baby girls are princess ponies, children of yet to be determined gender are ducks! Who knew?
Of course, we all know that baby Brownce will actually be a SWAN.
I was once again reminded how completely inept I am at manipulating the physical world during an attempt to hang up new venetian blinds in our living room. Even with a power drill and the assistance of my much more adept younger brother, I managed to quickly drill 3 unusable pilot holes and strip the threads off of 2 screws before giving up and throwing a hissy fit. It went something like this:
KATIE: Let’s put up these new blinds!
BEN: Please, 8 month pregnant wife, put down the power drill and let a MAN do that for you.
KATIE: If you say so!
[BEN ATTEMPTS TO SCREW BRACKET INTO WALL, FAILING MISERABLY]
BEN: GODDAMNIT I HATE THIS!
KATIE: Why don’t you try…
BEN: NO! This will never work and we should never have tried. Let’s just throw everything away and forget that venetian blinds ever existed!
ALEX: Let me see the drill.
[SOUND OF DRILL]
ALEX: Done!
KATIE: That’s what I was going to do.
[SOUND OF BEN CRYING]
The experience made my unmanliness so drastically obvious that I decided to shave my mountain man beard off so as to not give the false impression that I have any abilities whatsoever related to mountains or being a man. I have also resolved to never attempt to use one those crazy “screws” again, no matter how much I want to affix something to the wall.
Instead, I will focus 100% of my energy where my true skills lay, making mobile phone software for a tiny subsection of internet enthusiasts who enjoy taking extremely low resolution pictures of their cat standing in front of a rainbow.
TODAY, I will:
* Submit Make Pixel Art version 1.1 to the app store after one final bug fix.
* Put some fancy animations and transitions into the sticker menu of PixelPix.
* Draw a bunch of background patterns, silly noses and extra bits and pieces to include in the sticker menu of PixelPix. And for this, I NEED YOUR HELP. My list of ideas is running short, and I need some suggestions for zany stickers to draw.
What kind of silly, weird, scary or cute accessories and costume bits would you like to have access to? We’ve already got a decent set of glasses and other eyewear. We’ve got a few monster bits like horns and fangs. But I feel like girl-related things are in short supply, as are things that are simply cute and fun without being weird.
What kind of pixel stickers do you want to use?
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I trimmed my beard, and it turned into these animated GIFs!
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Liked on Tumblr
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Here’s a few pictures from the test build for the app. Just messin around with it.
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“I am Adam. Prince of Eternia”
One frame closer…
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Heres 4 more backgrounds I made for PixelPix. I guess I’ll explain what it is since I didn’t in my last post. It’s a camera application that lets...
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The Morning GIF: Poor Will Riker, Forever Number 2. http://awe.sm/5f6Mr
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I drew a frogge
