Computer-fried Brain

I have been staring at my computer for hours and my brain is fried. I bet a lot of people feel this way. I read somewhere that nearsightedness is up by 42% or something, and I’m sure it’s because of computers.

Twenty years ago if someone told me I’d be staring at a bright light for hours at a time, I would have thought it was some Bush Administration torture. My eyes burn and water, and the next morning everything is out of focus.

I’ve been chained to my computer creating this cartoon movie that took about 72 hours to make and is about 45 seconds long. If I can figure out how to upload it I will, but just in case I can’t, I’ll tell you the plot. BTW it was for an Adobe Flash class I’m taking.

There’s this Martian (from Mars) who lands a spaceship on Earth and starts walking. First a bumblebee stings him, then a dog bites him, then a skunk sprays him. So he turns around and walks back to his spaceship and goes back to Mars. The End.

Why did something so easy take so long? The Flash program is not really all that complicated, but you have to be precise with everything, and that was my downfall. It probably took my classmates three or four hours at the most. I had to keep looking at my notes, looking at the textbook, and still I couldn’t get it right.

Walt Disney this is not. I have a highly elevated respect for those guys now that I’ve done my own animation. Their cartoons actually move like something normal. Mine are just pictures yanking from one place to the next – a picture of a bee zigging a half inch here and zagging a half inch there. It’s actually pretty pathetic. I’m not going to upload it because I’ll be embarrassed.

So I’ll talk about the other fun things I did today besides work.

Well enough of that. I read a quote by Bob Dylan that went something like this: Money isn’t what’s important. What’s important is getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, and doing whatever you like in between. It’s a good philosophy, and one of these days, if I can figure out how to break the chains on this computer, I’m going to do what I like in between. Crazy thing is, I like working on my computer, I just don’t like looking at it, and I don’t like having a fried brain.

That is why I’m going to turn it off right now.