So, two things to cover here, actually three. First off my blogging patterns I'm really really going to make an effort to work on changing them. I've found thru the work of this website and also just writing papers for college that writing is something that I actually enjoy to a point. I like taking thoughts and rationalizing them into a paper form. While performance and movement and media are a more direct medium for me, writing is the most accessible.
So what does this mean? Well I'll be posting new content here on a somewhat regular basis. I'm going to set the goal at once weekly you can expect some fresh content. I initially thought to go for more than that but even I knew that's being a *bit* too ambitious. Also for those of you readers of the past it's not going to be the same old thing, of me talking about what I've been up to. Granted that now most of us have departed from college it's a bit more interesting to read something like that to keep up, but at the same token it gets old. So I'm going to treat it more like an editorial of sorts. I think about a lot of things, and I sometimes write them down. Well here's to doing more of that.

Now on to blog bits!
So the latest news about the SF bay is rather depressing. Surprisingly this hasn't been HUGE news even tho those of us who live here. So a 810 foot container ship was leaving the bay and it ran into one of the piers of the bay bridge. Well clearly we build good bridges cuz it basically took a chunk out of the ship. This resulted in 58,000 gallons of heavy duty bunker fuel oil (really crude diesel basically) being dumped into the San Francisco Bay. What this means is the entire northern end of the bay area smells like oil, all beaches are closed and many of them have contaminated sand with oil, birds are being covered with the oil which will kill them if rescue help doesn't get to them fast, among other things. Take a look on SFGate.com for the bay area news. Here's a link directly to today's article

It's really sad. As a friend of mine observed, we're all so environmental and careful around here, and then something like this happens. And it's so fucking frustrating because you're doing everything you can to protect the environment where you live and all it takes is one careless mistake and it totally fucks it up for everyone in that area. The shipping company ultimately isn't going to care more than the cost of the lost fuel and the damaged ship and ultimately the delay to the cargo. To hell with our bay. Fuck them. However we are California, hell the Bay Area, you don't fuck with us.

"We'll be doing everything to make sure that those who are responsible are held accountable and that the costs borne by this will be borne by the appropriate agency or agencies... or individuals or companies that are responsible," says San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.
It's nice to know that your government is actually sticking up for you (unlike the feds. *groan*) But even though we know that the responsible parties (I bet money on the Chinese shipping company) will be held responsible that still doesn't ever really compensate us for the damage that has been done. As I'm sure everyone feels and as Newsom has said, we are ultimately the ones who suffer from this. It will probably be at least a year, probably longer before we see this spill cleaned up.

Well HELLO everyone! It's been ages, and I've been meaning to blog as usual but as you can see from entries that hasn't happened. Latest news is that this site just underwent a big upgrade. Long story short, I was running a old version of the content system and now I'm up to THE latest version. It's verrry nice.
The other major change that you may or may not notice is the theme. I did several subtle tweaks to the way it looks to make it easier on the eyes. That had been my number one complaint about the site, that reading stuff on it for extended periods of time is hard on the eyes. I found the same to be true, so I finally did something about it. Get in touch with me and let me know what your eyes think of the rework.

Also I'm currently pruning things down, to basically the important/read stuff. You'll notice that the main links up top have been slimmed down to only the big 3 that people click on. Don't worry, none of the old content is gone I just wanted to clean things up a bit. I'm still working on how to organize it better.
Also you'll notice that there is a search box now! Heyyy cool! So now you can actually find a blog entry or a page with ease rather than clicking thru pages and pages of stuff. There's also an advanced search if you wanna get fancy.

And that is all for now. I've been working on the site for the past two days getting the kinks ironed out and also learning up on the new features. Things to look forward to for the future of this site are: reorganization of old content (the videos and pics are likely to make a comeback), tagging on blog entries, new theme (I'm thinking like this one but slicker...), a blog calendar (so you can see entries in calendar view), and a few other things. ALSO I'm going to really try to make entries on at least a weekly basis, and not just the "this is what I did this week" type of thing. Article style blogging, something like that, who knows.... shall see. Anyway, it's Friday and time to go out. Till next entry!

Hey all, so to anyone who actually is actually still checking this site, Hello! So it seems that I basically dropped of the face of the blog-o-sphere for awhile there. Now I don't have the time to make the blog entry that I was hoping for but I will give a very quick overview.
So as of my last *real* entry it was just before graduation. So I have since graduated from UC Santa Cruz. I was working again at iD Tech Camps this summer, another awesome summer. I've moved out of Santa Cruz (sadness) and I'm back at my parents place in the bay area. Currently I am totally unemployed, and I haven't even begun the job search. Why you ask, well that's because I'm going traveling- England specifically. I'm actually flying out today, leaving for the airport in about an hour and I'm going to be over there for 3 weeks. (Sept 12th to Oct 4th) I'm totally floored to be FINALLY going and it's goign to be great. I'm also really excited that I'll get to finally meet some of my friends who have just been screen names up till now. Also clubs and the music scene, really stoked about going to check that out.

Anyway, that is the quick and to the point update about what's up. Now the upside of this trip is it probably means I'll be blogging more actually. Now I'm making a switch in how I'm doing this, most trip blogs will be on my other site NeilMG.org so make note and make sure to check up often. That doesn't mean I won't be blogging here as well, just not as much. If I've got some scandalous story or whatnot that will go here, hahahaa. The rest will be on NeilMG.org. I'll hopefully be posting photos as I go as well, so it'll be well worth your while to check back frequently.

So it's been quite some time, but this is just a small update. Right now I'm at a AT&T store mulling over the options between a Treo 680 or a Blackberry 8800. currently.
There are some very convincing reasons for each. For one the Blackberry has Google maps on it, which is slick. However one of the biggest issues I have with the Blackberry is the trackball thingie. I's definately a cool development for it, but to me it's kinda clunky. Personally I have a long lineage with the Palm OS system given the Treo would make it my third palm handheld.
Anyway having typed this whole thing out on the Treo keyboard, I think I'm set on this. The Treo isn't as big as I'd expected it to be, so I think it's winning the battle here. Anyway that's all for now. I need to get going and do this. I'll FINALLY do a regular post about the summer and camp and whatnot as well as my upcoming England trip. Cheers for now.

Wow, yeah it's that freaking close, the end of 4 years of college. You really don't think it's going to come at you THAT fast, but as I said in the last entry this quarter has moved like tachyon particles. (That's faster than the speed of light, fyi.) Ok bad geek science joke, I'll stick to my theater.
Anyway so I'll spare you the ever-so-typical recap I tend to do which takes practically 4 pages to get thru it all. Briefly some things from my calendar worth talking about: Clubbing in SF was fun, was good to hang out w/ Pablo and Jaime and such. Had PLENTY of drinks. Our Fete Galante project/party was fantastic, I've got a great compiled video of it. Get in touch if you want to see it.
Other stuff that same day, two dance shows both fun and such: performed downtown as well as for the Queer Youth Leadership Awards. The awards was fun, we get there before the show of course... and I notice all these cameras. I ask what's this all about and, "Oh yeah, it's being televised." Oh joy... so it was on local access, I'd still like to get a copy of our bit.
Cabrillo College dance show, that was cool. Post party was fun as well. Following week was intense, it was crunch time for Alan's show. I spent soooooo many hours working with Watchout and programming video into the system. In the end his show really looked awesome. It was really primarily a physical theater piece which I really enjoy.

In the midst of that was the weekend of iD training, that was a BLAST. It was so awesome to see many returning friends as well as chat with lots of the new folks. Really got me in a good mindset and gave me something to look forward to at the end of this month. (Aside from sheer hectic madness.)

Alright on to now-ish. These last few weeks have really been as crazy as they have been awesome. For one, I've been doing WAY more dance than I ever have. Since last week I've basically had fairly consistent (almost daily) dance rehearsals. Last week it was often two in a night back to back. It's been awesome. Just this past saturday was the big Motion Pacific recital/dance showcase. Oooh wow long day, but fun times. Shall be working on video/photos of that.
And lastly theater arts graduation, as usual we have acting/scenes and dance and whatnot in it. So.... James wanted to do this big dance piece and he made a call for dancers, so of course I go "ooh sure!" Granted it's making my schedule more busy, it's still awesome. The piece is a "progression of dance" so-to-speak as in it "travels" thru different styles of dance from more structured to more modern/free flowing. Anyway, it's awesome and I'm getting to do a bunch of varied dance.

In the latest news, graduating. Yeah, wow it's done. Gotta worry about that job thing, working, surviving. As the group on Facebook is titled:
I Picked a Major I Like, and One Day I Will Probably Be Living In a Box. I've been told about a position at UCSC with theater arts. It's gotten rather tempting, I've got my reservations about it, but at the same token it IS a decent resume item as well as something that will help provide some solid money while I float around and gain work.
And yeah that's that, I'm tired and wanna sleep. i had some notes of "stuff to blog about" but those are an entry in themselves. Hmm, I wonder how many times I've blogged about a note to blog and then never followed up on it? Ah we shall see. Studying, rehearsing, passport, trying NOT to stress... here we go.

So... as we'd all expect I fail at blogging more often. The time, where has it all gone?! Speaking of such there is so little of it left to this year. And now it's coming to that bittersweet point of where you're done with college and onto "real" things, but at the same token you're done with college. Four weeks, that's all before it's all done. It's kinda intense when you think about it as the cumulation of everything I've done in the past 4 years comes to a close then. And frankly, it's really sad. I'm more sad about the whole thing than I am happy to be done with it. I mean sure it does get repetitive over time and there are plenty of the "enough already!" moments. Like in my last entry, Ultimate has a deal to do with it. But hey, so it goes. Move along.

Onto other news, well without going thru the usual re-hash of my past schedule. Been working on Language of Angels as their electrician. Looking to be a cool show, the lighting design is spiffy. We're using the BIG strobe lights (around 4,500 watts each, peak output in the tens of thousands of watts.) Also using our UV lights and fluorescent paint. Yeah... Also Ben's sound design is totally awesome. It's listed in the "shows" section check it, go see.
Now the other big thing is that we got a Watchout system. In a nutshell it's a really fancy video playback system. So if I wanted to have a projection which was 3 projectors wide, and a few TV's around that I'd use Watchout to split the images across all of those. Here's the product page. So Alan who's doing his MFA in the DANM department (Digital Arts and New Media) his thesis show is going to be utilizing the new Watchout system. I'm programming it. :D It's Really cool. I'll get some pics of the production room soon hopefully.
So that's show stuff.... Dance, doing lots of that lately. I'm doing stuff with Motion Pacific studios as usual. We've got a few performances coming up next weekend (saturday), one downtown. Details in due time. Also been doing the whole jazz repertory dance with Shelly. Of course I'm doing hip-hop, haha. It's looking awesome, yet we've still got sooo much stuff to do... uhhh. Show will be May 31st and June 1. Mark you calendars NOW! Ah yay dance.

So what else is new.... Oh yeah time, the "theme" of this entry. So things don't get ANY simpler once school is out. My last graduation is on the 17th, sunday. That same week on Friday, the 22nd, I'll be at camp for setup. Gowad... I get barely 4 days break. AND then after that first week, then it's all the 3rd/4th July events and shit. Oye.... it's goign to be nuts. OH! and guess what.. I get to miss pride in SF AGAIN due to camp setup. GREAT. I was SOOO FUCKING PISSED when noticed that again. So annoyed.

Whatever. It's been kinda funny how I've been writing this entry. I've been doing a section and then chatting w/ people and other stuff, and then back to the entry.
Anyway this weekend is looking to be good, FINALLY going out and clubbing in SF. It's been TOO long, like several months too long. Anyway the Castro is going to be where we're spending most of our time, and might also hit up DNA Lounge for Bootie SF. Who knows, it's going to be a blast of a night either way. I'm not driving for a change so I'm definitely having a few drinks. heheh :D Bring on the debauchery!

And yeah that's really all for now. More show stuff to come in a short while. Also cashed in on Sessions big warehouse sale. Got some nice stuff and didn't break the bank. Been trying to get myself freaking some Vans classic slip-ons. It's been a BITCH of a time, all outta stock.
OH SHIT. Big news, sadly our ultimate tournament we were going to be hosting on the 19th of this month had to be canceled due to lack of interest from other teams. Majorly bummed about that. Tho I do get to dance all day saturday instead of just the evening performances. Other news, this was just today but I got a Student Employee recognition Awards Program award. Basically it's given out to student employees who have basically really been good leaders/employees/team players etc and also maintain good academic standing. It's actually a really good thing to get, cuz percentage wise only 2% of UCSC students get one of these each year. Which is only in more relevant terms is about 9% of the student employees. Ok, I gotta tell this story, not to make this entry too long. So they're giving us the details, that ok we'll call your devision and line up here, and the come up and you'll get to shake the chancellor's hand. And a bunch of us quietly went "ooohhhhhhhh" is a somewhat sarcastic way, which it was rather loud actually. Which then got most of us laughing. and of course. "what did I say that was so funny?" HAHA, great moment.

Anyway, that's that. BAm. More stuff coming in the near future, seriously. Things will be moving fast, and I WILL be updating more now.