As a small note: I will not be giving out any backstage information on this blog.

I do not know the exact day I depart for Orlando yet but I will be capturing video, taking pictures, and possibly ustreaming on the trip down. I’ll post more on this in a week or two.

Vlogs will be starting up again. I am going to attempt to record one this Friday. I will definitely be recording one next Friday and will be ustreaming the entire thing live as I record it. More information will be posted about this in the next few days.

That’s all for now.

Anyway, final week is approaching in just a couple of weeks.  And yet there is now no excuse to stop me from blogging more often as I now have WordPress on my Droid.

Facebook

Facebook’s app is very well designed. It features built in chat, pages, and messaging. The design is very sleek and…

Wait, that’s the Facebook iPhone app.

The Android app for Facebook is poorly designed. Most tasks are handled by launching a browser and displaying the mobile (not touch nor lite) version of Facebook. Android also makes it easily possible to sync your contacts with your Facebook account. Thus Facebook Sync puts people in the awkward situation of contacting a person without having to ask for their number first. When asked where did one get their number from, there is nothing that sounds more stalkerish and creepy than “my phone got it from Facebook.”

Foursquare

As if tweeting about what you are doing wasn’t enough, now you can earn points by going to places for no reason!

I’ll admit that I am addicted to Foursquare. The premise is simple: the user visits a place and checks in. By checking in, they earn points and badges. The person with the most check-ins at a single place is crowned the mayor. All of this is posted to a website for the world to see. You can see my profile here. At the time of this post, I am proud to say that I am the mayor of Five Guys Burgers and Fries and The West Wing.

Foursquare’s Android app is really well designed. It makes use of Android’s location services and gives a reasonably accurate list of venues. I just wish that there was a way to correct locations from the app. Somebody put the Willard Building at the wrong end of Pollock Rd. and it rather irks me.

WordPress

It’s a lot like the iPhone app, and the recent redesign looks great. The design for editing content can be cleaned up some more. Plus, it really should allow for managing more posts along with category and link management. All in all, it’s a good app and it works well.

For now, I will publically refer to the song as Siderial until I get a few recordings done.  Siderial is not the name of the piece in the show.  Although, I will say that the song has to do with physics.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

It’s alright for a child to dream. It’s okay for a person of high social ranking to dream. But the others who dream will be shot down. As one thinks back to their childhood, they remember having large dreams for their futures. A lone child may dream of shooting into space in a rocket. They yearn to be able to walk hundreds of miles above the Earth, floating free of gravity. To explore the cosmos at which they look up to on a clear cold night.

As time passes, the dream falls apart. The child may learn that according to physics, there is gravity in space and that astronauts are constantly in free fall. They may learn that traveling through the cosmos is much more time consuming than they thought. And they may learn that NASA has a really low acceptance rate for their astronaut program. The dream has been ripped to shreds by reality. All that remains is a memory of a childhood spent in wonder and “worthless” dreams.

The lone musician attending college, wishing to score the next generation defining movie, is a dreamer. The courses teach the generally accepted structure, and he accepts it and uses the knowledge. Another set of courses teach melodic work, and he gladly learns it and starts writing based on this knowledge. By the end of his college career, he is writing music based on logic. He follows what was taught to him in college and has lost the pure creativity that was there before. The great composer that could have been has fallen to mediocrity. He no longer stands out and the dream has faded into nonexistance.

Randy Pausch had spoken on the idea of following your childhood dreams. And, after his passing, I raised a question to numerous people: what is your greatest dream? The answers I have been receiving from many people are roughly the same. Everybody in our society wishes to find a secure job, have a family, and retire without anything to worry about. This is not a dream, it’s a goal. Getting a job performing on Broadway is a goal. But getting a lead role on an award winning show on Broadway is a dream.

One must learn to go back to their childhood. Think back to when you dreamed your grandest dreams. Make the dream your goal in life rather than the status quo. Aim as high as you can and do everything in your power to make your dream a reality. And, when you find yourself to be truly happy, you will find yourself to be living your dream.

So, to close, I ask all of those who read my blog one simple question: What is your greatest dream?