I decided to replace both at once, and, on a professor’s recommendation, I purchased a Blue Eyeball 2.0, which is basically a microphone with a little webcam sticking out the side.  While the camera itself is tiny, it works wonderfully, and I’m quite happy with the purchase.

As Blue is primarily a microphone company, it makes sense to look at the microphone first. Sitting about a foot and a half away from the monitor, I was able to talk at a normal volume and the sound was crisp and clear. I haven’t yet tested how well it filters out background noise, but the microphone could easily be used to produce a podcast or demo music recording.

The video quality is fantastic for a webcam.  Clean colors, a robust 2 megapixels (for a webcam), and HD resolution round out a terrific product, especially for the price.

The automatic white balance and exposure are fantastic as well.  The blue florescent wash over the picture is long gone, and within a few seconds of turning out all the lights in my bedroom, I was able to see myself clearly and in full color just from the light of my monitor.  At low light levels, the picture is grainy, but this is expected.

If you’re using the Eyeball with a desktop, you may want to invest in a longer mini USB cable.  The included cable, while it fit in the portable case, did not reach from my tower to the top of of my monitor.

Ultimately, the Eyeball 2.0 is well worth the less that $60 from Amazon.  If you want a focus on audio quality and a good camera to go with it, definitely take it into consideration.

Description

Deities’ Folly is set in a world created by the Panpantheon, a council of all the polytheistic gods throughout mythology, as a result of a drunken romp during the after-party for their annual conference.

The world is a fairly typical fantasy world.  Its continents about with mages, warriors, and adventurers, monsters wander the landscape, and treasure and glory are plentiful and available to those who seek it.

That’s how it started, anyway.

For one, in their drunken state, the gods accidentally gave the inhabitants of the new world microchips, so computers and other electronics permeate life in Deities’ Folly.  One of the results was the creations of the Arcane Engineers, a group of mages that specialize in the combination of magic and technology.

Also, in the years since its creation, Cecil, the god of commerce, has taken over as the chief god of the Deities’ Folly pantheon, turning the realm into a corporate playground.  Antitrust lawsuits are difficult, if not impossible for the prosecutors to win, the gods’ temples are skyscraper office buildings, and almost everything, including jobs, is provided by CecilCorp.

?A beta release of Deities’ Folly should be available Summer 2010.

As part of an upgrade process from College Publisher 4 to College Publisher 5, I was tasked with creating a new design and layout for The UTD Mercury, a student newspaper for the University of Texas at Dallas.

After I created a mockup in Photoshop, I decided to code the CSS stylesheet myself.  I spent 4 months learning about College Publisher 5′s document structure and creating the stylesheet alongside my other duties at the paper.

There is currently an offsite WordPress blog in the works that will replace the one hosted on the College Publisher system.  It is expected to launch by the end of May.

If you think your parents or in-laws are overbearing, try having a nagging sock puppet constantly bossing you around.

At first glance, the premise of Dionosian Award-winning student and playwright Zachary Daniel Salcich’s two-act play “Tick Tock” seems ridiculous: the perpetually nervous nerd Tommy Byebye is forced to marry Ellen Fairweather, his girlfriend of one week, by her overbearing sock puppet mother.

In the meantime, Byebye has to deal with his “The Big Leibowsky”-inspired slacker roommate, eccentric twin friends, and a priest who is probably an alien.

However, Salcich’s and director Jessica Roberts’ execution astounds with its humor, depth, and relevance. The play does a remarkable job of delving deep into the idea that we shouldn’t obsess over time, creating an experience that is simultaneously thoughtful and hilarious.

Salcich’s wordplay sticks out the most in the presentation. Between clever puns, recurring themes, and entire monologues full of double meanings, the play captures the audience’s attention and refuses to let go.

Fortunately, these subtleties of the script were difficult, if not impossible, to miss. The cast’s lines were delivered almost flawlessly, adding pauses and emphasis as well as different stage placement around jokes and meaningful phrases so the audience could pick up on them.

Facial expressions and movement quirks added to the humor. Each character felt like a very real person.

The red hat-wearing sock puppet mother is even incredibly expressive. The actors took turns wearing it, allowing the mother to use their hand to talk and even jerk them around the stage wherever the mother wanted them to go. Roberts, who voiced the puppet while directing, gave it an excellent voice and almost always lined up with the movement of the puppet’s mouth.

Only David Theis, who played slacker roommate William “Moochie” Graywood, fell flat on his lines, as they felt a bit forced. His mannerisms and movement, however, more than made up for the small issue.

The character “Tick Tock,” whose name appears only in the program, delivered monologues about time and obsessive behavior before acts, moving across a round, marked timeline at the front of the stage as he did so, emphasizing the time aspect even more and giving the audience a sort of “thesis” to think about as the play began.

Each act did its job as an episode in the characters’ lives, both making a separate point about how we deal with the passage of time while still flowing to create a complete story.

The first, in which Byebye gets married to Ellen and has to deal with a “purpose” the alien priest has given him, does an excellent job discussing moving into the future while setting up the second act at the same time.

The second, which is mostly comprised of a monologue by Ellen, discusses letting go of the past while tying up the themes and questions presented in the first act.

Nothing in this second act is ever directly explained to the audience, but Salcich’s poignant meanings are still easy to pick up on.

The believable set design added a lot to the play’s relevant, sympathetic nature. The complete back wall gives a sense of completeness to the apartment, while simple additions such as family portraits, a Post-it Note covered whiteboard, and food wrappers strewn about the living room add a strong touch of realism.

Non-realistic elements, such as a wooden lamp, were used as visual jokes in the play. The lamp got knocked over twice, allowing the audience to feel at ease about the obviously fake props.

“Tick Tock” is a must-see play. Every element mixes into an experience that left me thinking about the meanings long after I left the theater.

“Tick Tock” is still playing at the Studio Theater in the Alice Hanzen Building at Schreiner University March 26 and 27 at 7:30 p.m.

Since I live in an apartment and don’t really share much food with my roommates, I’m there by myself most times, and it’s an unsettling experience.  My fellow shoppers are self-absorbed and uncaring; the only things that exist in their world are groceries, their precious time, and, in some cases, their bratty children.  The people restocking the shelves glare at me as I pass them in the aisles, thinking “it’s because of you that I have to deal with my overbearing, pushy, moronic boss.”  Even the cantaloupes seem to wail “NOOOBODY LOOVES YOUUUUU” as I pass them.

Looking for a way to stave off the soul-crushing loneliness of solo grocery shopping, I went onto Ebay and found an old Skannerz toy to keep myself entertained.  I got pretty into it, too.  Finally, I could realize my childhood dream of seeing whether Chef Boyardee or the Spaghetti-O would win in a fight without putting two cans of mediocre pasta on a table and staring at them for an hour before realizing no blows would be exchanged.  I even took my Campbell’s Tomato Soup monster to an art museum once just so he could receive a +5 Warhol bonus.

One day, I was playing the game and waiting in the checkout line when I saw a young boy with the exact same game.  I guess his mother purposefully kept him at least 10 years behind on toys; he was coddling a Tickle-Me Elmo and had a Game Boy Color in his pocket.  I approached him and asked, “Hey, want to have a battle?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna kick your butt, old man,” he replied with about all the menace a small child can muster.

I am 19 years old.  I was not going to stand for that kind of talk.  “Oh, you’re on now.”  I won the first battle decisively.

“Old person luck,” he spat.  We fought again.  I beat him even more badly this time.

“Good game!”  I offered my hand.  He stuck his tongue out at me.

Now, I realize I should have been the bigger man here.  I should have just ignored him, purchased my mangoes (which I only bought to spite the cantaloupes), and driven back to my apartment.

Instead, I said, “Maybe you’d be better if you didn’t spend so much time trying to lick people.”

The kid punched me.  Now, he couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11 years old, so it ordinarily wouldn’t have hurt that much.

Kids his age don’t ordinarily know where the solar plexus is, either.

Winded, I staggered back and fell into a large stand-up display of cans just as the manager happened to be walking past.  The display toppled and landed on the manager, knocking him cold onto the ground.  The next thing I know, the kid is crying, and I’m being hoisted into the air on the shoulders of bagboys and restockers shouting “THE TYRANT IS DEAD, GOD BLESS OUR NEW HERO!” and the assistant manager, who I recognize as the former captain of my high school rugby team, is barreling toward me and trying to shout over the cries of the newly founded Peoples’ Grocery Republic.

So that’s why I’m no longer allowed within a hundred feet of any Tom Thumb in the state of Texas.