Walter Elly's blog and website

Aliens is one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time. I don’t know if I can have *a* favorite, but Aliens ranks up there for sure. James Cameron knows what he’s doing- and I trust him with Avatar – but that’s for another post.

I will probably be writing more about Aliens in the future – the movie gets better and better upon each viewing – but the reason I wanted to post today is because I received a link to this by email:

An honest to goodness SERIOUSLY DETAILED replica of the Pulse Rifle from Aliens. Only $899.95 or 6 easy payments of $150. Christmas present for me? eh? EH? You listening interwebs?

My dad was at the cape covering the shuttle launch today and shared some pics of the scene from the #NASATweetUp from AFTER the TweetUp that he took while he was there- he sent them to me to share with you! Enjoy!

I really can’t take too much credit for this one – Jeremy Robinson is the mastermind behind this- I just assisted with the musical score :D

So without further ado- my contribution to Star Wars Uncut – which you should seriously investigate if you haven’t heard of yet!

Star Wars Uncut – Scene 467 from Walter Elly on Vimeo.

So did you spot the easter egg in the end? There’s 22 scenes left that still need to be filled, will you do one too? Maybe I should do another…

So- one of the things that I love is Twitter. Hit me up if you’re on and we’ll chat! One of the most fascinating things about Twitter are Tweetups– parties for people who Tweet. Not kidding, it’s awesome and if you haven’t been and you ARE on Twitter then you don’t know what you’re missing! If you’re not on Twitter then holy crap, get on it before your name is taken (amongst other reasons to join :) )!

What follows is my writeup about what went on last night at the SpookUp Tweetup the latest in a series of New Hampshire Tweetups from @NHTweetup. My friend Christine Major is the driving force behind these Tweetups and I’ve had the opportunity to help in the organizing and helping to host the last few events and it’s been a blast!

So without further ado, the writeup:

I arrived early for setup at the Red Hook brewery, who graciously provided an awesome venue for the Tweetup, to find @CMajor and @schneidermike on the scene and quickly got to work decorating and putting up skeletons and Twitter graveyards (be sure to check out all the gravestones at the bottom of this post!) and signs and other Tweetup necessities and SpookUp awesomeness.

Time flew by and before I knew it I was at a nearby Wal-Mart buying lighting to ensure we could turn the room lights off for ambiance but still see the beer in front of our collective faces (pardon the phrase). When I arrived back it was getting close to showtime and things were looking AWESOME – @DeKoning had arrived and was setting up a projector to show Visible Tweets from the Tweetup Hashtag (#spookup) and TweetUp co-host @McSalina and her colleague Brian were there to get the welcome table ready for prime time. Brian helped me setup the lights and we were good to go. It was showtime!

I started off the night by joining @schneidermike as he hosted a live broadcast of his @BelchingMonkey show – and got to try some fresh, delicious Red Hook brews and discuss the finer points of hoppery and brewery-y. It was awesome and you can check out the insanity for yourself as he recorded the whole thing, including appearances by @costavidafred @girlgamy @cmajor @kelsandiego and @kellycash. Needless to say I’ve become an even bigger fan of his show!

Shortly after I went in on some yummy food thanks to @MicroArts (where I work), @Vital_Design (who rocks) and @Ballards (your party supply headquarters!). I grabbed some food and met up with @tarakaiken (dressed as the Twitter bird who I #FAIL’d and thought was the cookie monster) and Scott and Kira (dressed as a plug and socket(!)) and a few other Tweeps. Then, while the party was just getting going I promptly spilled my food all over the floor. Fortunately the tweeple were their to guide me “using the napkin would be a good choice [to clean it up]”

And, thankfully before my #foodfail became national news, it was announced that it was time for the Portsmouth Thriller Dancers to perform!

Thanks to @RichdPhoto and @portsmouthtweet for the videos!! @BelchingMonkey also broadcast the Thriller Dancers event live! They were so awesome that the crowd demanded an encore, so the thriller dancers took the stage again and invited everyone to come join them– @CMajor and I were brave enough to dance with the spooky zombies and did our best to keep up with their awesome moves- it was SUCH a great time, what a “thrill” to get to dance with the thriller dancers!

Then it was back to the tweetup and the focus quickly turned to costumes as there was a contest to win! My favorite costume was @Sarah_Wallace‘s Plinko game costume – (which I won “500″ from [how do I collect my winnings Sarah?! :)]) and we encouraged everyone to twitpic THEIR favorite costumes to help encourage the judges so I totally did so by taking a twitpic of her costume – how cool! Other costumed that rocked included the Tara’s Twitter bird, the Vital Design construction crew and @StakitaMay as Michael Jackson – but there were so many more awesome ones, the TwitPics from Twitter tell the story: Captain Jack Major and Salina Vampire, Zombies!, Duffman, and more!

So who won? A zombie did! They had AN AWESOME zombie costume and it totally deserved to win for best costume. It also happens to have been a really, really, REALLY good thing that a zombie won, because there were alot of zombies there AND IF WE DIDN’T GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANTED WE WERE ALL GOING TO DIE! …. ok just kidding, we weren’t under threat of death.. we were under threat of UNDEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In addition to best costume we also had a raffle with some AWESOME prizes thanks to sponsors @PattiFousek @PortsmouthTea @portcitycoffee @swalesphoto and @redhooknh – @CMajor has the scoop on that and more so be sure to read her writeup too!

After the awards were given out I discussed JUST how awesome the Portsmouth Thriller Dancers were with @mesimos, @SullivanBC and @portthriller mastermind @TeraByte240, checked out the SpookUp Graveyard with @DaveCriswell, @CostaVidaFred and @PortsmouthReg and had more awesome Red Hook beer and hung out with even more awesome tweeple.

Towards the end of the evening @PeterGetman from @MicroArts dropped by [after a long day/evening in Boston] and promptly bought a round of beer for everyone who wasn’t ready to call it a night yet and we rocked the SpookUp until the awesome @AmandaTelfordnNH was ready to take the keys to the @RedHookNH foyer back (and leave us to our own devices).

All in all an amazing, awesome, FANTASTIC TweetUp and one of the coolest Halloween events I’ve partaken in. I’m psyched that it was such a success and so glad everyone came out! Please share your comments, pics and vids and link me up to YOUR writeup too! Be sure to check out the spoooky SpookUp Graveyard below! See you at the next Tweetup!

I love the internet. Seriously I do. Am I supposed to capitalize I in internet? I don’t do it. I realize I really should, but I don’t. Also- this isn’t technically the first post in this blog, so I kindof just owned myself. Yeah. ANNNYWAYS, I just wanted to deliver on my last post where I said there would be the mandatory first post. Well, I realized that the first post that really counts is the about me section, which I’ve got a pretty nice start to, and will complete (and then) evolve over time. So please check that out if you want a true, formal introduction to why I’m here talking to you now and beyond that lets start with the fun times and awesome discussion about the internet, technology and how we can use it to make our lives easier and have more fun!

There will be the predictable, mandatory “first post” soon. More needs to be said beyond my mini-rant about the technology stone age blog title. But, after living with Blogger for nearly 10 years, I’ve just now finally got WordPress into a shape of my liking. Thanks especially to this guide and this blog (whatup @cherylharrison!) for inspiration. Still lots of work to do though before I start making noise about this thing.

So if you’ve already found this then awesome, please say HAI in the comments- but know that more is to come :)

This technology that we’ve got today is amazing, but it’s still not good enough. Despite that I love it, but we must remember – we are not yet at Star Trek level. These things should just WORK. We shouldn’t have to deal with crashes, or incompatibilities, or whatever. We live in the technology stone age. We’ve only just begun.