For a couple of years now, I've been interested in Parkour, an athletic discipline dedicated to moving fluidly through your environment using only your body and the obstacles in front of you. Some people call it crazy, while others think it's child's play, but I look at it as both. Training yourself both physically and mentally to perform certain things takes a lot of dedication and confidence. Once one gets a hang of the basics, it's all fun times from there.

I was first introduced to Parkour a few years ago after watching some videos online. I was always into this type of activity as it always got me excited and made me want to do it myself. It wasn't until more recently times where I actually started going to the park and other open places to practice Parkour and feel the adrenaline rushing through my body. More after the jump...

I've owned quite a few mobile devices, and none have been able to do what the iPhone has done for me. The iPhone has helped me with school, work, blogging, social events, and personal development. Here's how:

With School: Last semester I took a psychology course that was partially online based. Several days throughout the week, we were required to communicate on the message boards and take exams. Having the busy schedule that I did, I wasnt always in front of a computer. I've taken exams at the gym, posted replies while driving in a car, and communicated with the professor from the movie theatre. Some things just can't be done so well on other devices.

With work: When I used to work retail, there were times where I had to swap schedules, let HR know about my delays, and receive special notes from the team members regarding updates. In terms of my design clients, I can't exactly use Photoshop on the road, but helping me stay in touch with them has been a tremendous benefit. More after the jump...

I recently read an article over at The Artistic Outlaw that reminded me what designers go through when freelancing. For those of you that are graphic designers out there, or provide some kind of a service, these 5 ways would come in pretty handy if they were actually honored by your clients. James made a valid point when he said that plenty of people write about becoming better at your job, but nobody writes about how clients can become better clients.

Wouldn't it be nice if the people that hired you actually let you do your job most of the time, and paid on time? Yes, it would.

Head on over and check out the article.

This year's Worldwide Developers Conference hits from June 9th to the 13th. In the first week of March, Apple held the "iPhone Software Roadmap" event that made a huge buzz in the tech world with their future plans. The SDK was released to developers for just under a hundred bucks, and things have been kicking along pretty well since then.

Apple demoed a few applications ranging from games to native applications, as well as some great upgrades to their own applications including exchange server support with Mail. Without getting too much into what was discussed, the idea here is that the possibilities that have been unlocked on the iPhone are phenomenal.

I put together a small list of things that I've missed on my iPhone. They're not exactly the most complicated apps out there, but most of them being the most obvious ones for general use. Check out my list after the jump...

Times is an RSS Reader application with a unique approach at how news/blog feeds are presented to you. Dustin MacDonald, known for creating the popular Wallet application is the man behind this cool application.

The first thing you will learn about Times is that it's very well thought out. The animation and transition effects throughout the application look very pleasing, and makes it a fun application to use. From the perspective of a traditional RSS Reader, your subscribed websites would generally be grouped into one section, while the article feeds would be displayed in a window right next to it. Times takes the approach that aggregates your feeds into a newspaper-like design.

You have the ability to create categories for the different types of websites you subscribe to right next to the ones that already exist. Times comes with a big list of popular websites/blogs you may want to follow, but you can definitely add new feeds and remove existing ones at your command. If you're an existing user of an RSS Reader, you can import your .opml feeds directly into Times so you don't waste time creating new feeds for everything. Continue reading after the jump...

You can probably find a million other sources that'll tell you to "own the stage" and pretend like the presentation hall is your living room. The fact is that, it's not, and never will be. Yes, my approach to good public speaking is similar to others, but I aim to cover things that they don't - the things that don't get too much attention that are just as important.

Chances are, if you're looking to become a full time public speaker, you would be taking a few courses over at the local University. For those of you that want to learn to speak publicly for self improvement and to boost confidence in your speech, these tips may be for you... Continue reading after the jump.

It's been a while since I last came across a new application that blew me away like Acrylic's Times. Created by young developer, Dustin MacDonald, this is a new and surprisingly pleasurable way of keeping up with the latest news from your favorite websites! I've been playing with the trial version for a little while now and I can only give positive remarks. The amount of detail that went into this application is very impressive. Basing its ground on Mac OS X technologies like Core Animation, navigating through the fluid interface is simple and delightful.

Get the trial & Enter to win!
You can head over to the Times homepage and get yourself a trial copy of the application. You can also win 1 of 5 copies of this program - Desktop Vibes is holding a giveaway so don't forget to enter! If you truly care about a new and efficient way of checking your RSS feeds, I think you'll find this quite handy.

The month of May has reached its point of presence on our calendars, and with it brings warm weather, summer vacation, and more. To me, May is the time of the year where things start to calm down and pick up speed all at the time same. The school semester at the University is coming to an end, and my schedule becomes free for me to do the things I have planned.

With this free time, I hope to pursue more freelance gigs and work on some of my web projects that I have planned. I will also be concentrating on my photography, along with getting into video related work a bit more - The fact that I now have Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, I can hopefully create some good material.

For the remainder of this year, I want to continue crossing things out from my New Year's Resolution list. I want to travel to at least 2 locations that I've never been to, read a couple of books, get some needed accessories for my camera, and put more effort into writing creative tutorials using Adobe software. My Reflective Metallic Text tutorial received a lot of attention all over the web, and I hope to do the same with my upcoming tutorials. I hope to not disappoint. =)

Every since the Master Collection was announced by Adobe, I told myself that I just HAD to have it, and now, I do! Every application that comes with this master suite, I will try to learn and use to their fullest extent. I've been meaning to get into video editing and production for the longest time, as I have a high end HDR camera at my disposal. I think After Effects would be pretty awesome alongside video and flash animations.

There are a lot of new features in the whole CS3 suite that have intrigued me to make the grand purchase. Just the fact alone that I can work so easily between all the applications seamlessly makes it worth it for me. On top of that, performance improvements from CS2 to CS3 running on Intel Macs is great, too!

I always hear from people that Fireworks is a good alternative to Photoshop for creating web templates and layouts, and now that it's even more powerful, I'm stoked to give it a shot! Dreamweaver's new features supporting advanced WYSIWYG, CSS, and Javascript functions look promising and I'd love to discover the all the possibilities. I have a feeling I'm going to be spending A LOT of times with my new toy this summer.

Don't you hate it when you wake up in the morning and nothing is working out for you? Things not in place, no hair jell, books to pack, lack of new cloths to wear, etc. These are the things that most people usually go through on a tough morning. Today wasn't a good day for me at all.

To start off, I didn't even sleep properly. I would sporadically wake up every hour for about 6 hours with different dreams each time. I usually remember my dreams but I was so disoriented when I woke up, nothing stuck in my head! That sucks because I like to recall my dreams throughout the day and try to figure them out and such.

This morning I had Photography class and absolutely nothing was packed and ready. I had to print out an assignment with a bunch of photos, get my class notebook ready, and prepare my camera and tripod. So yes, I went to class without my notebook. For another class of mine, I ended up not really being prepared because I was supposed to have something completed that I thought wasn't due until a later date. More after the jump...