Whitney Houston -- The Voice -- was one of my favorite singers as a child. My favorite songs by her are "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," "How Will I Know," "So Emotional," "I'm Every Woman," and "Heartbreak Hotel." Despite all of the negative press that she got in her life for the past twenty years, I didn't keep up with any of the bad things. I choose to remember her the way that she was during The Bodyguard Era. I really wish she was still alive today and had never went the route that she did; she would have been one of the best singers -- a singer who didn't have to take her clothes off and dance sexually on stage. Her voice proved that she had more talent than most of the so-called female singers out there today.
Rest in Peace, Whitney Elisebeth Houston. You will be missed.
Playing video games is one of my favorite hobbies ever since I was a young girl. The first video game I console I played was the Super Nintendo, and my favorite game at the time was Super Mario World -- which I absolutely loved! I remember Yoshi hatching from his egg, and I made my character Mario climb onto his back...then we'd go to Iggy Koopa's castle, and jump on his head! Despite the fact that the graphics were 2Dish at the time, it was a great game; I used to buy lots of video game magazines, which would give readers tips on how to play the games and win. I had the following games for the Super Nintendo:
Super Mario World
Star Fox
Paper Boy 2
Joe and Mac
The Wizard of Oz
Street Fighter II
Super Street Fighter II
Mario is Missing
Mario Paint
Spiderman and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge
F-Zero
I may have had some more, but those are the main ones that I remember; I'd go to Blockbuster and would rent games to play on the console. Then along came the PlayStation. I bought Final Fantasy VIII, Sim City, and Darkstalkers. I loved the graphics in Final Fantasy VIII where you play different characters such as Squall, Rinoa, Zell, and Selphie. The FMVs (full motion videos) were stunning; now I mostly do my gaming on the PC -- just much more convenient for me. Sometimes I play Michael Jackson: the Experience on the Wii...but that's purely for dancing and exercise (for me, that is). I've got so many games on the PC, it would be too many to name here. My favorites would be the following:
Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time
Jade Empire
Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3
Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time got me interested in three things -- East Indian entertainment (Bollywood) and culture thanks to the character Farah, Arab entertainment (I made a mistake and thought that the Persian Prince was Arab at the time), and the software program Alias Maya. SoT (Sands of Time) had lovely graphics. Check out the trailer for SoT below.
Jade Empire Trailer
Mass Effect
And my favorite: Mass Effect 3 (FemShep trailer)
At the moment, I'm playing L.A. Noire, which is a detective game set in 1940's Los Angeles. It puts you in the shoes of Cole Phelps, a rising private eye, who has to investigate grisly murders, car thefts, and drug trafficking cases. I love this game; the only thing that I don't like is having to choose whether a suspect/witness is lying or telling the truth during investigations. From what I've been told (and from what I've read on sites like IGN.com), you have to look at a person's face to be able to tell which choice to choose: truth, doubt, or lie. Also, I love the face motion that was put into this game. The characters' faces move so realistically. It's like watching a movie.
I started back playing Mass Effect 2 just to see how things would be different now that I have some of the DLCs (Kasumi Goto and Zaeed Massani). I lost some crew members -- Gabriella Daniels and Kelly Chambers to be exact. They died in ME2, so they aren't present in ME3. I'm considering replaying the last two games just to keep those two alive. I'm not really sure if I'm going to do all of this, however. I don't care much for Mass Effect 2 like I do for Mass Effect 3; it may be because most of the original crew members from the first game aren't present in the second game.
Whenever I go somewhere(e.g. work, night-out, special event, etc.), I usually like to look my best by dressing up. I mostly like to wear pantsuits, especially when I go to work. In recent years, I've taken an interest in designers such as Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and Christian Dior. I've bought a lot of perfume and some watches by them, and I've also subscribed to their mailing lists in order to check out the latest fashion tips.
Sometimes, I watch videos about fashion on YouTube just to see what others have bought while out shopping. Here's a video from the LuxeBabe, who is one of my favorite fashionistas.
By the way, remember how I said in my last post that I was watching "Marie Antoinette?" This movie shows loads of beautiful gowns worn by French women in the 1700s.
I'm currently watching Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" movie. I'm enjoying the costumes and palace settings for this movie; I'm really watching it because I'm getting ideas for more graphic designs. It's getting to the point where I'm finding it easier to learn Italian more than French with the Rosetta Stone.
Vocabulary:
French: boy - le garcon
French: girl - la fille
French: to drink - boit, plural - boivent
French: to eat - mange, plural - mangent
Italian: boy - un bambino
Italian: girl - una bambina
Italian: to drink - beve, plural - bevono
Italian: to eat - mangia, plural - mangiano
English: The little girl is eating.
French: La fille mange.
Italian: La bambina mangia.
The sentences above are basic vocabulary words. I hope I can find some really good photoshop brushes for Italy to use in my next designs; I've already got a ton of French brushes.
"Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love." -- Khalil Gibran
The above is a quote that I ran across while browsing YouTube videos for the video game "Deus Ex." I'm planning on doing some blog posts on video games and multiculturalism soon. It will explain my love for video games and studying different cultures; then I'm going to pick out three of my current best entries that mean the most to me and display them in my work portfolio.
I'm currently out of ideas as to what else I can add to my work portfolio at the moment besides more artwork. I'll think of something soon, however. I gotta start working on my future blog posts. Ciao.
Josephine Baker was known by many names such as "The Bronze Venus," "Black Pearl," the "Creole Goddess". She is someone who I strongly admire. She was an African-American who moved to France and became a world-renown entertainer. She started out as a dancer at Harlem's "The Cotton Club," but because of her skin color (she was brown-skin but darker than the lighter-skinned chorus girls) she was given comical roles where audiences would laugh at her goofy antics; she ended up leaving the United States and headed to France with Caroline Dudley Reagan's team of singers and dancers to star in "Shuffle Along." Josephine loved France so much because she did not have to face racial discrimination there, and she broke contract with Reagan and stayed in France.
She learned to speak French fluently and starred in the movies "Princess Tam Tam," "Zou Zou," and "Sirene of the Tropics." Her outfits were designed by Christian Dior, and many artists such as Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway admired her. Baker went on to show the world that racism is something that is learned and taught to children as they grow up; she took a stand against racism by adopting twelve children from around the world as a way to show that people of different races can live together in peace. She called the children her "Rainbow Tribe." Josephine even spoke out against racism during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s with Martin Luther King, Jr. She even went on to spy for the French against the Nazis during World War II earning her the Croix de Guerre. When she died, she received a full military burial complete with a 21-gun salute.
I admire her because she reminds me of the quote by Rabinadrath Tagore: "I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door -- or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present." She made her own door when there was none; instead of letting racism or discrimination stop her, she sought another alternative. In order to make it in life, sometimes you have to leave where you are and go where you will be accepted for who you are. I've bought at least four books on Ms. Baker, and they are the following:
Josephine: the Hungry Heart
Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time
Josephine Baker in Art and Life: the Icon and the Image
Josephine
I've also ordered some of her albums such as "Vive la Paris," "En La Habana," and a few others. I've got her movie collection and "The Josephine Baker Story" starring Lynn Whitfield as well. Unfortunately, all good stories of struggle and success can end with a downfall. Josephine eventually ended up with hardly any money to keep her home -- Chateau de Milandes -- and her adopted children. Social services came and took her children away, and she was evicted from her home; her friend, Princess Grace of Monaco -- whom she had met during a fallout with Walter Winchell and the restaurant staff (who refused to serve her because she was Black) -- loaned her money for a villa to stay in. Josephine eventually made her comeback in the 1970s when she returned to the United States; the times had changed, and she received a standing ovation and glowing reviews of her performances. Baker would then die of a heart attack. She was found lying peacefully in her bed surrounded by newspaper articles giving positive reviews of her performances; she was buried in Monaco where the streets were flooded with her fans who turned up for the services.
Josephine Baker - "C'est Lui," from the movie "Zou Zou"
"Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood." -- Josephine Baker
I finally got a search engine up and running on my website. Rather than try to hand-code the site myself, I found a nifty little software package by Keyoti called Search Pro for ASP.NET that would allow me to integrate SEO into the site. I tested the software on my localhost, and it worked like a charm. The problem is that it wouldn't work when I uploaded the files (e.g. dlls and so forth) on to my web server. I think the reason for that is because I was using a trial version of the software; instead of paying $500 for the Search Pro version, I decided to go with Google's SEO customization instead since it's free, and I am dealing with a rather medium-sized website. The Lite version was around $300-310 (I believe); that's a bit too costly for me at the moment, especially since my site (www.anaarora.com) is not a large corporation-owned site.
Anyways, for anyone who wants to try out the Search for ASP.NET software by Keyoti, go to the link below:
Right now, I'm trying to come up with new ideas or new sections to add to my work portfolio website. I always like to create big sites with lots of information, yet make it where it is easy to manage. I already have sections displaying my work, information on me, a contact page, and so on; I still have to code the search engine page...but then again, I don't really need a search engine for my site since it is not that big.
I also need to get back to studying French and Italian with the Rosetta Stone. It's a hobby of mine to study different languages; I've studied Spanish, Arabic, and Japanese -- but I've never actually studied long enough to be able to speak any of the languages fluently. I chose to study French and Italian this time around because of the following reasons:
I like the French culture (e.g. Marie Antoinette, Versailles, Paris, Josephine Baker's story, Louis XIV, and so on).
I also like some French music by Vanessa Paris (e.g. "Joe Le Taxi") and the French actor Vincent Cassel.
As for Italian, I like the way the language sounds and some of the movies (e.g. "Malena," "The Godfather"). One of my favorite Italian actresses would probably be Monica Bellucci who is married to Cassel.
In the meantime, I'm going to continue updating the layout of this blog until I'm satisfied with its overall look.
It's not a secret that I'm a huge fan of 1980s music. My favorite artists from that decade would be the following: Michael Jackson, Sade, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Phil Collins, Janet Jackson, Huey Lewis and the News, Peter Gabriel, and so many more. I just saw a clip that someone uploaded to Youtube for the "Miami Vice" TV series. It was a tribute to the character Sonny Crockett, and the song playing in the clip is "It Hurts to Be in Love" by Gino Vannelli. I had never heard of this song until hearing it on the clip, but I love it; here is the video for the song below.
I made three personal business cards for my website (www.anaarora.com) today. I used the program Adobe Photoshop -- which is one of my favorite programs -- to do so. I may make some more later in the future, but I really need to get back to the development aspect of my website and focus on getting a search engine functioning; I really don't need a search engine, but it would be good if I had one.
Here are some pictures of the personal business cards below:
Also, I re-did the header image for this blog as you can see above. I simply added a section to the right of the header that says "Ana Arora" followed by the link to my work portfolio.
I'm back for another post. One of the things that anyone learns about me is that I absolutely love video/computer games. I've been playing video games ever since I was little, and the first console that I used was the Super Nintendo. I mostly play games either on the Nintendo Wii or PC (as of now). I typically like RPG/Fantasy/Sci-Fi games; the two games that I am playing at the moment are "Alan Wake" and the "Mass Effect Trilogy." I've already beaten the "Mass Effect Trilogy," but I'm replaying ME3 again on Insanity Mode (the hardest level).
Take a look at the video of "Mass Effect 3's" trailer.
I tend to spend late nights and weekends playing games as a way of relieving stress when I'm not working. Also, I'm actually very particular about video games meaning that there are only so many games that catch my attention and make me really enjoy them; for example, the "Mass Effect" games are the only games right now that really interest me. Before that, it was "Jade Empire" and "Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time."
So, yeah, I'm pretty obsessed with Mass Effect right now, and I can't wait to get my hands on the new DLC (downloadable content pack) that comes out this week. It's a multiplayer game that lets you play with other players; my new character is going to be an Asari Justicar. Anyways, I'm out for tonight.
Hello, everyone. This is my first post for this blog. The reason that I've created this blog is to talk about personal interests of mine such as music, movies, and just random thoughts. This blog is a branch off of my work portfolio site; feel free to look around as I update this blog.
Also, my original goal was to host this blog on my domain using BlogEngine.NET. Unfortunately, that plan doesn't look like it will go into effect any time soon. The reason is because I recently found out that BlogEngine.NET 2.5 (the version that I have) can't be integrated into an existing web site; the only way that I can get the site to run properly is by leaving it inside the root of the application. My only other option would be to revert to version 2.0, but that version is for ASP.NET 3.5. I'm using ASP.NET 4.0.
So until I can find a way to use BlogEngine.NET 2.5 with my existing website, I will be hosting my blog here. Also, feel free to browse my online portfolio: www.anaarora.com
