For those that are interested, here is the itinerary for my move-out
July 25th: Last effective day of work
July 26th, 27th: Visiting Beaverton
July 29th: Vehicles are pre-packed with non-valuable items
July 30th (Morning): Vehicles are packed with valuable items, leave Eugene
July 30th (Evening): Arrive in San Francisco for overnight — Details to be arranged by Kurt
July 31st (Evening): Arrive in Anaheim, CA for overnight — Details to be arranged by Taylor
August 1st (Afternoon): Arrive in Tempe, AZ at apartment. Must arrive prior to 1800.
New Address
2045 McClintock Ave
Tempe, AZ 85282
(There is an apartment number attached to the above address, not included in this post for security reasons)
On 6/24/2008 I was taken on a photowalk by some people I know at work. Location: Marcola, OR. Here are the two photos from that trip that made it into the gallery:
While I run the risk of sounding like the tabloids and paparazzi I have an announcement:
Terri Irwin — wife of the late crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin — was at our mall today. Apparently she was there with one of her children, Bindi Sue Irwin or Robert (Bob) Clarence Irwin (I have no idea which one).
Turns out that, according to Wikipedia, Terri is native to Eugene. I can only assume that she was at the Springfield Chuck E. Cheese for her and her kids’ entertainment.
I just caught this article on slashdot saying that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) — the non-profit regulatory body for things like domain names — may be opening the doors to custom top level domains (TLDs). For those that don’t know, a TLD is the .com, .net, .org, .us, .fm, .uk, etc that is taked on to the end of the domain name. Currently the three big ones are .com, .net, and .org. They’ve also added .info and a few others. In addition, each country has a TLD based on their two digit country code (e.g. .de for Germany).
The article says, though, that ICANN is relaxing the rules on how to create a new TLD. According to the ICANN press release, “any established entity from anywhere in the world” can put their application to get one.
Here’s my question to you. If you could register your own TLD (and any domains associated with it), what would you pick?
Second question. The laws of supply and demand should dictate that the sudden increase in available internet ‘real estate’ will devalue everything but the most coveted domain names. Do you think this is true or will the new TLDs have the same impact of .info (none)?
I’m really interested in your feedback. Either leave a comment at the blog, or — for those of you reading from Facebook — leave a comment on the note there. Thanks.
A while ago on this site I mentioned that the galleries were a temporary gig. I have been looking for a way to replace them for a while now and I think I’ve got the solution. Here’s the team:
- On the back-end we have the mighty NextGen gallery. It’s a plugin available for Wordpress by Alex Rabe. NextGen Gallery is a fantastic piece of work allowing such niceties as a web interface to upload an FTP file and have it automatically added to a gallery. It will allow for growth and has much more flexibility then the regular WordPress galleries.
- On the front-end we have a plugin to the NextGen gallery. I wanted a specific look and interface to interacting and viewing the photos, but I did not want to be stuck using a flash interface. What I found was JonDesign’s SmoothGallery made to work with NextGen gallery through a plugin by Bruno Guimaraes. It required some heavy modification, which was accomplished thanks to some CSS knowledge, the helpful folks at the JonDesign forums (sps196 in particular), and sheer luck.
It’s not perfect and to me it feels a tad shaky — like the whole script may just self-destruct at any moment — but it looks beautiful and does not require flash. Eventually the one gallery will expand into various sub-sections, but before I do that I want there to be purpose and reason driving the organization. For now, I think this will work. Visit the gallery.
I have come to the realization that there are two things going on with this website:
- It looks too wordpress-y. I love Wordpress, don’t get me wrong, but this site needs to be more than a blog. Which means it’s time to take the plunge into designing my own theme!
- It looks unprofessional. If it was just a blog, that would be one thing, but I’m trying to show some other stuff, which means the blog needs to hide in a sub-link.
- I enjoy blogging so far, so I definitely need to keep that aspect somewhat prominent.
So it was three items, who’s counting? What this means is that in the next few days [hopefully] I will be doing a major redesign. This may mean that certain aspects [or all] of the site will be unavailable during that time.
By the way, Thanks to everyone who has been reading over the last week or so.
If you’ve been reading the blog, you know that I’ve been rapidly putting together the stuff necessary to do an art showing: frames, prints, business cards, artist’s statements, etcetra. Today, it all came together: I put up a showing of six photographs at Caffe Gourmet.
Caffe Gourmet is a tiny, locally owned, coffee shop. They serve Allan Bros. coffee in a variety of forms, sell some pastries, fresh salads and sandwiches, and an assortment of other fare.
If you have a chance, especially if you haven’t seen my printed and framed photographs, stop by the shop, say hi to the friendly employees/owners, and have a nonfat-iced-chai-hazelnut latte for me. They have a stack of my business cards so feel free to pick one of those up as well.
It’s all here. New prints of some photos, 16×20 graphite color metal frames, and my new business cards. Here are my impressions and reviews:
Frames:
The frames I purchased are excellent. In particular, I think the graphite color is much less obtrusive then the pure shiny black color that I had purchased for all my preceeding frames. It makes me really like the white mats that were purchased. In addition I really like the slightly oversize mat (4-5 inches on the bottom, ~3 top and sides). I felt that the 2″ mats that I had been doing were a touch on the small side. Frames were from Americanframe.com.
Prints
The prints I received were of average quality. Of the entire process, I really dislike having little control over the printing. Some photography pundits may view that statement as a reason for moving back to film. I view it as a reason to purchase a $1000 inkjet printer and move my printing “in house.” I feel that some of the black and white Yosemite photos could have used a little extra contrast for some added punch, but overall they were able to reproduce most of the tonality, so I have to appreciate that. For people who follow, I’ve been ordering my prints from AdoramaPix.com. On the plus side with Adorama is that shipping is cheap and they pack the prints really, really well.
Business Cards
I’m very happy with the business cards that I had printed from psprint.com. I was nervous about them because of the lack of hands-on control. I was slightly relieved when their website was so helpful and easy to use. I’m very much relieved now that the cards are in my hand. The matte paper that I selected doesn’t feel cheap or thin, the colors stand out, and the resolution is spot-on. It doesn’t feel cheap at all. In fact, I’ve already been receiving complements on how nice of a card it is. I posted the electronic file on an earlier post, but you can see a picture of the finished product here.
Attached is a semi-final draft of my print resume. I’ve sent it out to a few people for some edits, but I’ll open up the comments to suggestions as well. Hit the link for a PDF download.
Draft Resume
For those that are interested, the resume was created using Adobe InDesign. The Sans-serif font is Bitstream Vera Sans, the serifed font is Adobe Caslon Pro.
Quick post:
I’m updating my resume and have managed to pump out three good line items so far (I’m working for more). Keep in mind the exact wording may change, this is only a draft.
- Employee turnover was reduced 82% (42% to 7%) as Assistant Director without wage or benefit increases
- Implemented an industry leading training program; expanded local program approximately 62%
- Envisioned a new council level high adventure summer camp and recruited a project manager to see the task to completion (Adventure Trek).
