Posts tagged with "projects"

First Photo Contest Win

Thumbnail: In A Flash Contest Results

Not the grand prize, but I won the por­trait cat­e­go­ry for my pic­tures of Chaos from Canada Day ’06, and Gerry from my Gerry Project.

Our judges had their hands full. With close to 100 entries, and pho­tos of every­thing from pen­guins to croc­o­diles to war vet­er­ans and oth­er UCC lumi­nar­ies, it was­n’t an easy deci­sion to com­pare these apples and oranges. Ultimately, the judges decid­ed that tech­nique and con­tent count­ed in equal mea­sure.

To cre­ate as fair a judg­ing process as pos­si­ble, names, grade, and grad­u­a­tion years were left off the pho­tos, and replaced by a num­ber. That way, cur­rent stu­dents and Old Boys all had an equal shot. (To ensure no judge was swayed by the opin­ion of anoth­er, each wrote down his or her favourite num­ber, with no pri­or dis­cus­sion.)

It was a blind judg­ing, and as a result, my two pho­tos tied with each oth­er for first place with­out the judges know­ing that they were both from one per­son. Not bad for the first pho­tog­ra­phy con­test I entered.

Seeing my pic­tures in print is great, but win­ning isn’t the impor­tant part.

The most sat­is­fac­tion comes from know­ing that I could step out of my com­fort zone to call a stranger and take pic­tures of him, which was the main goal of the Gerry Project.

Being rec­og­nized for the pic­tures was a nice lit­tle bonus.

The Nihilistic Adventures of BB

I final­ly got my sto­ry fin­ished and post­ed on BitterBuffalo.com. It’s a fic­tion­al­ized account of how Mikhail Lermontov may have died, a buf­fa­lo his only intel­lec­tu­al friend. I actu­al­ly tried three times; the first two attempts were just a tad too seri­ous, so I threw them out. I tried to get all the themes of Russian roman­tic lit­er­a­ture in there, such as nihilism, fatal­ism, and rev­o­lu­tion, but did­n’t write too much for fear of bor­ing the read­er.

Disappointing Weather, Weekend Plans, Etc.

It’s always dis­ap­point­ing to first learn that weath­er will be nice and cool in three days, and then find out that the ini­tial pre­dic­tion was wrong the day before. It was sup­posed to be in the low 20’s tomor­row, but now it’s slat­ed to be in the high 20’s. Aaron has a tee-off time set up for us tomor­row, but unless we can find a third par­ty with a car, I won’t be able to go. Aaron stops work­ing at the course in a week, so this will most like­ly be the last chance of the sea­son to get out on the course, which is a pity since I got my clubs resized last year.

Trolley is com­ing down this week­end, as he has three days off from his job at the LCBO. I’ll be look­ing for­ward to drink­ing, watch­ing some Mr. Show, and gen­er­al­ly just hang­ing out.

Tom is plan­ning a camp­ing trip some­time in September, and unless I lose a limb, I’m going to go. Actually, the loss of a limb may be com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant. I love camp­ing but I hate the sum­mer, so any oppor­tu­ni­ty to be out­doors when the weath­er is cool is prime.

Christine has a writ­ing project up, which I’ll glad­ly be par­tak­ing in soon. I always enjoy the chance to write cre­ative­ly in a non-com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment. What, exact­ly, has made the buf­fa­lo so bit­ter is anoth­er sto­ry.

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light has­n’t com­plete­ly left the day yet. The sky wax­es grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lect­ed gloomy day.

I final­ly fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­i­er now. The one report is worth two cours­es itself. It end­ed up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­plet­ed course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decid­ed that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album late­ly, and even though I did­n’t much care for it at first, I’m com­plete­ly addict­ed now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tion­al Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-sea­son, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals includ­ed along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scu­ba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more per­son.

Artfag is cur­rent­ly a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would main­ly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­put­er prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sid­er more if I’m actu­al­ly able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.

Graphics Presentation, Powermate, Etc.

So…

I just fin­ished my graph­ics pre­sen­ta­tion. I pre­sent­ed to a group of nosy peo­ple in the class, instead of only my prof and TA’s. The peo­ple who watched were quite amazed, it seemed, at what I was able to accom­plish on my own. It made my proud that I was able to write the code from scratch in two days. I admit that I had one of the more inter­est­ing ideas out of the class, being dynam­ic as well as math­e­mat­i­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing, as opposed to some of the sta­t­ic ani­ma­tions or cheap games that oth­er projects con­sist­ed of. I think I had one of the less­er ambi­tious ideas though, since mak­ing a game look nice would be much hard­er than a sim­ple sim­u­la­tion such as the game of life. The TA’s con­grat­u­lat­ed me after­wards, and the prof, who’s infa­mous for being so soft-spo­ken that peo­ple mis­take him as com­ing out of a funer­al, actu­al­ly clapped at the end. It made me fair­ly proud of my pre­sen­ta­tion, although the praise of Charity, the res­i­dent CS eye can­dy in a fac­ul­ty of the aes­thet­i­cal­ly chal­lenged, made me even more con­tent. It’s as if phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness gives some­ones opin­ion even more weight. What can I say, I’m a suck­er for a pret­ty face.

A Griffin Powermate is glow­ing seduc­tive­ly next to my key­board, a pur­chase I made over the week­end. I’m cur­rent­ly using it as a vol­ume knob, and I have yet to set it as a zoom func­tion for Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, or Ghostscript view­er. It’s so sexy that I almost put it down my pants.

After hav­ing one of the best brands of Hong Kong milk tea for a few months, I’ve switched back to the leaves pro­vid­ed to me by the med­i­cine shop in Chinatown. I can taste a very dis­tinct dif­fer­ence now; the lat­ter seems to have a more fruity, earthy taste to it, and a weak­er body.

I believe that I have a place for the next year. Nick and I went to look at the apart­ment com­plex across from mine, and we were extreme­ly impressed. It’s 200 square feet big­ger than the one I’m cur­rent­ly in, yet $50 cheap­er. I will even have my own bath­room. It lacks a bal­cony, but a bal­cony is some­thing I’m will­ing to sac­ri­fice for a larg­er liv­ing room. We have the arrange­ments made, and we will try to sign some­thing on Wednesday, to reserve an apart­ment on the pent­house for July. I’m a lit­tle wor­ried that there may be some prob­lems that only pop up after inhab­it­ing the same liv­ing space, but I’m sure that it will be noth­ing I can’t deal with. I can’t even imag­ine leav­ing this city now, because of all the great friends I have here.

I should be receiv­ing a $1500 tax return with the next two weeks. No plans have been made yet.