If you’ve read Fantastic Four #587, then you already know that Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, has been snuffed out. If you haven’t, sorry for the spoiler? It was an emotional end for Mr. Storm, prompting me to adapt Elton John’s Candle in the Wind for this sad turn of events. Of course, we all know he’ll back because, you know, comics. But for now, let’s just pretend that he really is dead. Let’s take a few minutes remembering the wacky life of the Fantastic Four’s resident hothead.

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I stopped reading Wizard Magazine a few years ago for two reasons: 1) the magazine started to lean more towards comics-based movies and TV shows, leaving less room for actual comics content, and 2) THE INTERNET. It just lost its appeal. I just stopped caring and sometimes, I even find myself rolling my eyes when I see an issue on magazine stands. However, now that the magazine is shutting down, I just can’t help but reminisce about the good ol’ days when I would just shut everything out, sit alone in my room and enjoy a few hours reading it. I still remember the time when I bought my very first issue.

The last time I went to the U.S. was in 1996. I was in my second year of high school. I was only a couple of years into my hobby of collecting comic books. I wasn’t fully committed yet. We were grocery shopping somewhere in San Francisco when I saw a rack of magazines. I saw this magazine called Wizard and it had Captain America and Iron Man on the cover. It looked like a bunch of people have already browsed through it, rips and folds everywhere. But it was the only copy left and I just had to have it because it was so colorful and mesmerizing. I asked my mom for a few bucks and bought it — like a boss. After reading the entire issue on the plane ride back to the Philippines, I knew I would be buying the next issues. I knew that I would be in this whole comic book reading business for the long haul, all thanks to this magazine with a lot of comics industry news and pie jokes.

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I bought a 1TB external HDD a few weeks back and I’m still in the process of backing up my files into that sweet, sweet black box. In this process, I take a look at all my files and decide which ones I should protect from being accidentally deleted by my clumsy hands or from being destroyed forever by fire caused by the inevitable alien invasion. Those files I feel should be protected are copied from my laptop, Luna, to my 1TB external HDD, Trudy. Those files that aren’t as important are deleted to make room for more garbage. Today, I explored a folder named Notes. It contains text files from 2006, the year I started blogging “seriously”.

Back in early 2006, I had several blogs. There was one that contained my reviews of movies, TV shows and books. There was one that contained the poems I wrote back in high school. And then there were the multiple iterations of my personal blog. I maintained several blogs at a time and eventually, I consolidated all of them into a single blog. And then I made more. And then I consolidated again. The cycle continued until late 2006 when I established Baddieverse, which is more or less the same blog you are reading right now. One of the text files contained a list of all my blogs that existed before Baddieverse – and there were a lot. Most of them are now gone, but some of them are still up. This “graphic” is still on one of those defunct blogs:

This is why you shouldn’t ask me for blog name suggestions.

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I stopped making New Year’s resolutions several years ago, right around the time I realized planning is not one of my strengths. This year, although it’s a bit late for this kind of thing, I’m making a list of things I’d like to resolve. I’m fully aware that I’m not capable of following through with these resolutions, but at least I can say that I made some kind of effort. Let me begin by saying that I resolve to use Photoshop regularly, even if I’ll just create dumb things like this:

This is to hopefully improve my Photoshop skills. I’m not doing this to impress the ladies — and we all know the ladies find Photoshop skills sexy — but to help myself reach my goal for this year, which is to have a web design portfolio that people would actually take seriously.

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Hey. Guess what. I finished my Project 365! I didn’t miss a day! For someone who rarely finishes anything, especially when there’s no tangible benefit at stake, this is HUGE. I was pretty convinced that I would only make it to February 2010, but as you can see in my last few photos, I made it all the way to December. Hence the Christmas tree pictures and the sad self-portraits.

Click here for the Flickr set page.

I said last year when I started this project that I was doing it for documentation, hoping to learn a few things on the side. I successfully documented my entire 2010 and yes, I did learn a few things from taking one photo per day for an entire year. I learned a few things about photography, photo editing and myself.

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