Throwback Post: Let the floods come...

A few months ago, I heard the sound of running water during my prep period. Since I was alone in the room, I had to walk around to see if I was crazy.

This is what I found after I opened my cabinets.

Do you see the pipe coming out of the wall? With NO cap?!

My room is the low point of the school. When our science filter backs up, it backs up into my room. A month ago, it happened again except came up through the drains in my sinks. Yeah for them caping the pipe. Ugh for a smelly and non-usable room for the days it took them to clean it up.

I am pretty sure I will be remembered as the teacher will the smelly room.

Otis

He was my favorite part of the BYU Bean Museum program I brought in for my students. He is about 50 lbs and huge. We became..um...okay he ignored me, but I loved him.

1st Day of School

DIPLOMA-D!

Graduation

So this happened last night:

That's from my point of view amongst my fellow graduates.

I took this one later:

That's me, after the Commencement, with my tassle on the left, which I guess means I have now "left" college. For all the pomp and circumstance around graduation, no one seems to want to take a moment to explain all the vestments.  It's all kinda shady if you ask me.  Somebody asked if the Green shawl meant honors. Nope, that means UVU.

The Green shawl is standard for UVU Dress, the Orange Tassle means I am Graduating from the Colledge of Technology and Computing. That Silver Medallion means Honors though. Check out the back of that little guy:

Magna Cum Laude, folks! That means i had at least an 3.80 GPA. (But not a 3.90. Curse you math 1050 and Biology classes!!!) [Note from Paige: Even with a Biology tutor in the house...all b/c of missing a deadline on having a paper reviewed from the writing center by 1 day...yep...still mad at us for not paying closer attention.]

It's a big weekend for our family. Today I Do my actual diploma walk for the individual college convocation. I think my walk should look like this:

Meanwhile, in about 55 minutes, My younger brother walks for his Masters at BYU, a smaller university across the valley from UVU you may have heard of pefore. (Note, UVU has the smallest campus square footage per student in the state, but at over 33,000 students, it has the largest student body. That's only a few hundred more students than the University of Utah, but almost double BYU.)

Here we are in my living room Celebrating the Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence of our graduation. (I don't get my official Diploma for 2 weeks, I don't know about Caleb.)

My robes are more wrinkly than my brothers, but that is because mine are made from 100% recycled Soda bottles and will MELT IF IRONED. Since UVU does not rent graduation gowns, this makes it cheaper for the students.  My Brothers robes are just wrinkly.

Feeling Fine.

I have a week and a half until everything is due for my final project. I have a plan, with each piece in place. I should be done early.

So why Am I stressing?

Because I had a plan in November, too. A very detailed plan with generous time allotments.

But I have team mates who don't know what a schedule is. Team mates who do not understand the concepts of deadlines and personal responsibility.

Oh, we will finish. We will graduate, most of us anyway. I have a couple of key people I can count on, and we have been working long hours for 3 weeks to fix what others broke.

But that does not mean my sanity will survive intact.

12 12 12

Yesterday, at 12:12 on 12/12/12 (that's YMD European date standard, as opposed to 12/12/12, DMY American date standard.) I was studying for a Final. In fact it was the final Final of  what would ultimately be my penultimate semester. That would make it my final Final of my second to final semester and over all, MY FINAL. FINAL. EVER. Because next semester there will be no tests. Just Projects.

I had to celebrate, of course. I submitted my proposal to Paige, who did not feel like driving around at all but said I could go.

So I did.

In Homage to those crazy single days when my buddy Nathan and I would just up and go somewhere for the evening because we could, I did a mini temple trip.

Payson, Coming along nicely

Provo City Center, with the structural support all gone.

Provo, where these adventures always started. We lived less than a mile from here.

Mount Timpanogos. This is at 5:00PM

Draper

Jordan River

Oquirrh Mountain

Bountiful

Salt Lake. They turn the Christmas lights off at 11. or maybe 10. Either way...

Still Busy

 

I thought I would share with you one of the school assignments that has kept me so busy this month.

2012 Temple Info Graphic

There are 2 versions of the graphic. One with notes from me on it, and one without. Find them now at http://3dtemples.photogent.com/infographic

Also, since this is for my web traffic class, once you are over there, share it on facebook, or pintrest or twitter or whatever.

An Open Invite

My invitation for you to our show.

My Digital Photography Class is doing a fine art show. Typically this would be  a 3 month thing, but the place the class did it last semester worked out so well that the art department swooped in and reserved it for the next 6 months. So instead we are showing one night only at the Repartee Gallery at University Mall. I have 7 images in the show, but some of the other folks in the class are extremely talented. If you are available the evening of December 12 you ought to come check it out.

Delving to Deeply into Photoshop

In my Photography and Compsiting 2 class we have been playing with advanced HDR and Panorama Options. We have been ranging from the photorealistic all the way down into the surrealistic. Check out some samples.

Alpine Loop1

Alpine Loop2

Alpine Loop3 - This one was interesting. We set up the tripod and marked its location with rocks. I took the Panorama, then I came back that night and took the panorama again to get the stars. Lesson Learned from this: Never play Jazz in the Canyon at night. You will attrack Elk. I left before it actually reached me, because Amorous or Angry, I did not want to find out.

Alpine Loop3 - Detail

Mount Timp1

Mount Timp 1 - Detail

Mount Timp2

Adventures in InDesign

I am taking a personal finance class this semester. One of our assignments is to create a financial roadmap and make it look good. As I am also learning publishing software, I decided to do the whole thing in InDesign. Here I present to you the section pages I have completed so far. As the page layouts usually have sensitive information, I will not be showing many if any of those.

The Roadmap portion of the title made me think route 66, and it all kind of snowballed into a 57 chevy theme from there. Most of the center images are not mine, as I did not have the time to actually sit down and make some.

Semester Final

Grades were posted.  Thanks to my abysmal math class grade I got a 3.4 something or other.  This brought my total GPA down to a 3.8 even.  Thankfully I had a bunch of other classes that kept my GPA afloat.  Classes that, no offense to those who love math, I will actually use in my career.  (Nathan says higher math exists to give jobs to mathematicians.)

So I came here today to post my Photoshop final.  I had to do something outside my normal realm of skill, so here we go.  I went online and found a random photo of the British natural history museum, and following the theme of my last big Photoshop class project I proceeded to play around with it.

Here is the original:

Note:  I cannot find the source for the original.  If by some odd chance you who took this picture are actually reading this, no malice is intended in the use of your image, and as a student I do have a legal right to use images for projects that are not for profit.

First thing to do was to remove everyone from the building, fix some of the digital image artifacts, and play with the color.  If you look, you will notice that almost every part of the building that  is obscured by someone is visible somewhere else.  So it was just a matter of cutting and pasting the pertinent parts, the distorting till they line up with the underlying area.Some areas i knew would not be visible in the final image, so I did not bother fixing those spots.

The end result is right here:

Keeping with this semesters uncharacteristic post apocalyptic theme, I vented some of anger towards math onto the canvas using some alternate sources like the ones shown below:

 I also found that sometimes you just have to paint in features.  So I grabbed the Photoshop brush manipulation dialog and Got all Bob Ross on it. I first added some dirt, and then I painted a  Happy Little Waterfall.

Then I added some happy Little Ivy and some Happy Little Plants.

Some final color manipulation, and voila:

One post apocalyptic Scene suitable for framing.

Homework

Until today, I have done nothing exciting enough to show off this semester. Most of my classes have been fairly easy (College Algebra the noted exception.). Take the required Photoshop course I am taking right now. Please.

One of this weeks assignments was to create an advertisement for "the local hiking club you belong to" that encourages people to throw away trash (PREACHY!) Because all my assignments this semester have back story. Seriously. Photoshop, Excel, Access, Word... They all start with a paragraph that begins with some variation of "You work for a company...". Apparently we are only capable of learning applied principles. Something that STILL does not apply to math classes.

I digress. This assignment had to feature "a landscape, a sign, one large inanimate object (To be partially buried) and two or more smaller objects. Plus text that advertises the above mentioned club. Well if you are like me, burying a large inanimate object leads to only one conclusion.

Here is (are) my landscape source(s):

Source

Source

Here is my "sign":

Source

My two "smaller" objects:

Source

Source

And Finally, my "Large inanimate object":

Source

**Disclaimer: I would like to note, that as a digital media student, I have a legal right to use any source for any assignment, as long as the assignment is not for profit**

Here is the final result: (Click for Larger)

Here it is without the extra gunk:

In Loving Memory of Charlton Heston, who said I could have his guns now that he has passed on.

(come on people, If I have to explain these jokes they stop being funny.)