Everyone seems to be doing these year-end posts, recapping how their blogs have grown over the course of the last 365 days. I’m going to do something a little different and name off a few of my favorite things from 2007.

It’s been a monumental year for my freelance writing career, for example, but I’ve still managed to find some time to go on vacation, play some video games, and yak it up with some fellow bloggers. I need not remind you that this was the year that I met guys like John Chow, Stephen Fung, and Ed Lau, not to mention folks that refer to themselves as the Daily Kimchi.

Without further ado, let’s have a look at some of my favorite things from the year gone by.

My Favorite Movies - I made a promise to review every movie I watch in 2007, and I can proudly say that I’ve managed to keep that promise. If you sift through the Arts and Entertainment section on Beyond the Rhetoric, you’ll find a fairly large collection of movie reviews. From comedies to cartoons, dramas to documentaries, I’ve seen it all this year. In no particular order, my five favorite movies of 2007 are:

• American Gangster
• Eastern Promises
• 300
• The King of Kong
• Meet the Robinsons

 

My Favorite Video Games - This was the first full year with next-generation consoles on the market. I have a Nintendo Wii at my house and a PlayStation 3 at Susanne’s house, so I’ve been exposed to a fair bit of gaming this year. This is in addition to my Nintendo DS as well. Granted, I haven’t played every game on any of these systems, but there are at least three games that stick out in my mind this year. Let’s just say they helped to keep me sane in between gaming sessions.

• Medal of Honor Heroes 2
• Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
• NHL 08
• Heavenly Sword
• Virtua Fighter 5

 

My Favorite Blogs - A big part of blogging is interacting with the online community, reading on fresh perspectives and making some friends along the way. If it wasn’t for this blog, I wouldn’t have met a lot of interesting people. I also wouldn’t have been exposed to things like AGLOCO, MyBlogLog, or TTZ Media. In no particular order, here are five blogs that managed to capture my attention this year. (Kumiko Suzuki would have made the list, but she doesn’t blog anymore.)

• Dad Balance (Derek Semmler)
• Chrisblogging (Chris Bibey)
• Four (or Five) Reasons Why (Mr. List)
• John Cow (Bob Jones)
• Ms. Danielle (Danielle Nagami)

 
Here’s a hearty goodbye to 2007 and a boisterous welcome to 2008. Party hard and keep safe tonight!

I’ve been meaning to get a professional business card done for some time now, but I’ve been putting it off because the majority of my communication is done online rather than in person. As a result, I’m more likely to exchange emails and direct potential clients to my freelance writing website for samples, testimonials, and the like.

That said, to be respected as a legitimate business, there are certain things that you should probably have in place. Among these is a website of some kind (which I have), an email address at your own domain (which I also have, but I redirect messages to my Gmail), and a set of business cards that you can exchange at networking events and other occasions where you make face-to-face contact with a potential business partner or client. I know that I should get business cards, so I finally took the plunge.

They say that you should focus on what you do well and hire people to do the things that aren’t your area of expertise. Not to toot my own horn, but seeing how I have freelance writing as a career, I have a fairly strong command of the written word. I’ve been called an expert reviewer and a pro blogger. That said, I’m not nearly as well versed in the visual arts, so I decided to hire a professional designer to handle the creation of my business card.

Several months ago, I asked the Internet community to recommend me a business card designer. Well, Stephen Fung said that I should contact Judy Yeung and so I did. A few emails were exchanged, a few drafts edited, and now I am quite pleased with the final result. What you see above is a “teaser” extracted from the high-resolution PDF file.

As you can see, it is a two-sided card with full color and I think Judy did a great job of capturing the look and feel of both MichaelKwan.com and Beyond the Rhetoric. The two sides are quite similar, but they are different enough that people will take a second glance. I’m particularly pleased with the prominence of the Rodin Thinker statue, because that has become the emblem for this blog.

This is going to be a bit of a rush, but it would be great if I have these cards ready for CES in about a week. Anyone know of a quality printing company in the Vancouver area that’ll be willing to do the rush job for a good price?

There is a misconception of freedom when it comes to freelance writing. People from outside of the business typically think that people inside the business can work whenever they want to. This is true to a certain extent, because I probably have a fair bit more in terms of flexibility compared to folks with conventional 9-to-5 kind of jobs. There are daily duties that have to be done, like my blog posts at BlueFur, but other projects aren’t quite as time-sensitive.

What this means is that it is perfectly possible to have a very strange working schedule. I’m not much of a morning person myself, so my working day doesn’t typically start until later in the morning, usually around 10 or 11 (if not later). This sounds like a luxury to people who have to endure the morning gridiron, people who have to participate in a daily commute to the office.

At the same time, if you have a 9-to-5 job, you’re off-duty at 5pm and you can go home and relax for the rest of the day. When you work from home, it’s harder to find a healthy life-work balance, because you’re never really away from the office. As a result, a sizable portion of my work is done after dinner and it’s not uncommon for me to work on projects past midnight. I hear that Nate Whitehill does some of his best work in the wee hours of the pre-morning.

In order to stay alert, many of us rely on caffeine of some sort and many of us consume several cups of coffee (or Coke) over the course of the day. As I said, I’m not a morning person, so a jolt of caffeine almost becomes necessary to jump-start the writing engine. Early in the morning (or late at night), it can be challenging to focus on a single task for extended periods of time. When you’re staring at the same monitor and typing on the same keyboard for hours on end, you start yearning for a well-deserved break, rather than focusing your energies on the task at hand. Caffeine sounds like a viable solution, but let me tell you, relying on caffeine is probably one of the worst things you can do.

And I speak from personal experience.

Drinking coffee or pop seems completely counter-intuitive and self-destructive to me, yet I continue to do it for no particularly good reason. There are many factors that come into play, but three of the most influential factors that I’ve experienced are:

1. Lack of Stability - Caffeine is meant to give you a jolt of energy and you’ll find that when you ingest too much, your hands will become unstable and you’ll feel “jittery” overall. This is completely counter-productive. While it’s not good to be totally lethargic, you need to focus on mental energies for freelance writing rather than physical energies. Shaky hands and an unnerving urge to twitch can’t possibly be good. Just look at Tweek Tweak.
2. Loss of Focus - You may find yourself on the cusp of falling asleep in the middle of the day, just out of pure exhaustion. I’ve been there. Drinking a cup of coffee sounds like it’ll help you become more alert and more productive, but that is not what I inevitably experience. The elevated awareness translates into getting distracted easily and having a hard time keeping my mind on track. A loss of focus is, naturally, counter-productive.
3. Reduced Recall Ability - This is related to the second point, but I also find that when I’m hopped up on caffeine, it seems more challenging to recall even the simplest of things. Memory plays a big role in freelance writing, because there is usually a key word or key phrase that I want to use in a given piece of text. Not being able to remember a word or piece of information can heavily delay the completion of a writing project.

The long and the short of it? Don’t even think about finding clarity with caffeine, because you just won’t find it. All you’ll find is a complete lack of focus, a nervous twitch, and a difficult time falling asleep at the end of the day. I’ve been told that drinking lots of water is better, so I’ll try to give that a whirl in 2008.

This is probably going to be the last set of movie reviews I do in 2007 and it’s interesting that they all straddle slightly different genres.

I’ve watched quite a few films this year, ranging from dramas describing the Russian Mafia to documentaries on the health-care industry. Today, I’m going to provide a look into a grown-up version of a fairy tale, a mockumentary on parking meters, and a romantic comedy featuring a great father-son duo.

Here are my brief takes on Stardust, the Delicate Art of Parking, and the Heartbreak Kid.

Stardust is a movie that I’m not really sure how to approach. On the one hand, it definitely has fantasy elements because Claire Danes plays a fallen star. On the other hand, it’s not exactly a film catering to children, because the drama and acting is a little more complex than your typical children’s film. Even when Claire Danes went on the talk show circuit to promote the movie, she wasn’t sure how to describe it, because it’s supposed to be part fantasy, part comedy, part drama.
 

I thought that the fairy tale progressed reasonably well, but the action was a little too slow to maintain my interest. In the end, Stardust is a difficult film for me to recommend. It doesn’t achieve the same level of cross-marketing as something like The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter.

2.5 Stars Out of 5

The Delicate Art of Parking is perhaps one of the better mockumentaries that I have ever seen, because the subject matter is almost so mundane, so ludicrous that you wouldn’t think they could make a movie about it. After all, the premise is that we follow around the meter maids as they write tickets and tow our cars in Vancouver. Where this film really shines is with a couple of actors you may recognize from Corner Gas.

Fred Ewanuick (Hank from Corner Gas) plays an “enforcer” who goes around writing tickets and it’s hilarious how serious he takes his job. Nancy Robertson (Wanda from Corner Gas) is another “enforcer” and she really steals the limelight every time she appears on screen. Whether it be yelling back at an angry driver or drunkingly flirting with Lonny Goosen (the fake documentary maker), Nancy is gut-wretchingly funny. The Delicate Art of Parking, despite its strange premise, is one of the best films I’ve seen this year. Kudos.

4 Stars Out of 5

The Heartbreak Kid is pretty much your typical romantic comedy and its only saving grace is that we can’t help but laugh at everything that Ben Stiller does. When you throw in his father Jerry Stiller, you’ve got a serious one-two punch that could have you in stitches. Unfortunately, The Heartbreak Kid is just one big cliche and it offers nothing original or particularly witty. This is a shame, considering that it was created by the Farrelly brothers of Something About Mary fame. At least Malin Akerman (Lila) is nice to look at… before she gets sunburned.

3 Stars Out of 5

While talking about Boxing Day yesterday, it totally slipped my mind that it was also a Wednesday. How forgetful of me. I’ve only done this once before, so I guess my track record is still pretty good. In any case, you would think that with the holidays this week, very few bloggers would be updating their sites as often as they normally would. This doesn’t mean that we were left with a complete lack of content though!

In the spirit of giving, here are five great bloggers with five great posts. Maybe you’ll feel a little festive after reading these.

Super Affiliate Zac Johnson already has more money than he knows what to do with — he apparently throws away all of his clothes while on vacation — but it could be because he’s always on the hunt for new ways to rake in the dough. While the rest of us try to figure out Adsense and TTZ Media, Zac has figured out how to make money selling concert tickets. He recently sold a couple of Hannah Montana tickets through StubHub.com, a ticket-flipping site with an affiliate program.

Chris Bibey has probably been in the freelance writing game a little longer than I have, but it’s great that we have mutual respect for one another and what we do. One of the questions that many people ask before taking the plunge into self-employment is, “What is a full-time freelance writing income?” In the end, Chris concludes that “you are the only one who knows how much money you need to make.” The beauty of freelancing is that you can (almost) make as much as you want; the catch is you have to work for it.

PureBlogging describes how men and women blog differently. It’s pretty easy to push stereotypes here, but you have to admit that stereotypes have to have started somewhere. Do you find that reading blogs written by men and women are different? Us masculine types are from Mars, after all.

Bob Buskirk will be going to Las Vegas next month and he couldn’t be more excited about meeting the Michael Kwan. It’s going to be the highlight of his trip, surely, but I’m sure Bob will still find time to attend a few CES press events. From Digital Experience to ShowStoppers, CES attendees can’t afford to miss these events (or the free swag that accompanies them).

Ending on a festive note, be sure to check out the blog of Ms. Danielle because she has listed her top 5 favorite Christmas animations. I may be in the mid-20s, but I’m still known to get a little nostalgic with cartoons now and then. I’m a little surprised that Mr. Hankey from South Park fame didn’t make Danielle’s list. Maybe she’s not one for toilet humor. Hiiiiiiidey ho!

It’s an annual tradition in Canada for people to brave the cold and wait for hours on the day after Christmas. That’s because December 26th is Boxing Day, a day when all the retailers in land put their leftover products on sale. Everyone from Best Buy to Walmart, Chapters to Athlete’s World has a Boxing Day (or even Boxing Week) sale, clearing out as much of their inventory as possible so that they can make way for the new stock coming in the new year. As a result, consumers gravitate to the malls in droves, trampling over little old women so that they can score 10% off on a pack of socks. As if they didn’t already get enough socks for Christmas from similar little old women (you might know her as grandma).

I’ll admit that I’ve partaken in this tradition on more than one occasion. After circling for hours looking for a parking spot, standing in line to get into any store, rummaging through the pile of stuff to find anything worth buying, waiting at the cash register queue, and finally emerging out the other end with a shopping bag and added debt, the net result is typically a fairly minor deal. It feels good to save twenty bucks on a pair of jeans, but you’ve got to wonder if it’s all worth it, especially in this age of online shopping.

So, why am I not Boxing Day shopping this year. It comes down to five critical factors that separates Boxing Day this year compared to years gone by.

1. Nothing to Buy: During my high school (and even university) days, Boxing Day represented the best day to find some new clothes, whether it be a pair of sweatpants or yet another t-shirt. I could typically find jeans for half price and there would be enough stock that the shopping was worthwhile. Now that I work from home, I’m not in need of new clothes nearly as often; after all, no one really sees me at my home office, so there’s no need to maintain appearances. Sure, there are items on my wish list, but there’s nothing that I feel I need this year. No need to brave the crowds.
    
2. Already Got It: I guess it’s not completely true that there’s nothing for me to buy this year. There is, but I already got the stuff that I really wanted anyways. John Chow told me about the Dell deal on a Garmin nuvi 250 portable GPS navigation device, so I grabbed that online (with free shipping) a couple days ago. I also bought the Wii Zapper and Guitar Hero III already, so need to buy those either.
    
3. Save More At Home: If I had a conventional 9-to-5 kind of job, there’s a good chance that I would have today as a day off and so I wouldn’t really have anything to do nor would I have a legitimate opportunity to make some money. As a freelance writer, however, I can work today if I choose to, earning a few extra bucks instead of lining up to save the same few bucks. I don’t know about you, but I prefer sitting in front of my keyboard than standing in line, fighting off the hordes of value-conscious shoppers.
    
4. No Major Deals: With the beauty of the Internet, we all have the opportunity to peek at the Boxing Day flyers several days in advance. Browsing through these the past couple of days, there weren’t any deals that jumped out at me, telling me that I absolutely had to take advantage. For example, I saw a two-pack of 2GB SD cards for about $30. That’s a decent deal, but not one worth lining up for. I also saw a few Wii games on sale, but again, it was only like $10 or $20 off. This goes back to reason #1 and #2, because there’s nothing that I absolutely must have.
    
5. Sleeping In: I work hard enough, just let me sleep in. Sleep is good.

I could try to save a few bucks on Boxing Day, but I’d rather save myself for CES in Las Vegas when I might score the best deal of all: free food, free booze, and free swag.