The Beginning of the End

The first week of my last year is done. I can already tell I am really going to enjoy this year. My classes are arranged so that my day just seems to fly by. I also don’t have any long trip to classes at all. I do have to change floors every period, but that’s pretty much all I have to do. My back is definitely a fan of this year too. There are no textbooks that I have to carry. My backpack finally weighs practically nothing. Of course, getting out an hour earlier is a nice touch as well.

Math this year is really different. It finally fits my mindset of “just get the answer.” Ms. Muck trusts us that if we get the concept, we get it. She doesn’t give us loads of homework, just enough to make sure we get a little practice. We can also use TI-89s now. They are pretty amazing. They will factor polynomials, expand them, solve equations, and most importantly, they give answers in textbook answers. Exact answers. For example, putting in the square root of 8 gives me 2 square roots of 2 instead of some decimal that doesn’t help me at all.

My homework load so far this year doesn’t really seem lighter… but it seems more useful. I actually kind of want to do it. I’m still kind of in an overlap from summer work anyway, so I’m sure it will lighten up before long too.

Not sure what else to say at this point, but yeah, this year is going to be awesome!

And Thus It Starts Again

And so it is time for school to start up again, and for my life to fall back into a regular rhythm instead of the “fly by the seat of my pants” mode that is summer. It has it’s ups and downs of course. I think this has been one of the most dynamic and life-changing summers I’ve had. I feel like my life is much more directed now. I have a better sense of what’s important in life. Everything just seems so much more meaningful. I’m sure all of it is thanks to how much my walk with God has grown. It makes all the difference.

I know I have been putting a lot of thought into college and where my life will go after high school. It used to feel like a hopeless debate, but now I feel like I’m actually almost there. As some of you know I’ve been interning with the film team at 12Stone, and I am really enjoying that. I’ve always considered film a possibility, but I am discovering that I really enjoy it. It’s one of those things that just doesn’t feel like work to me, and that’s just a great thing. Obviously I will still be putting a lot of thought into the whole thing, but I am feeling much more confident about it.

Time has fallen short on me and I must prepare for school, but I will follow up with another post hopefully in the next few days outlining my hopes for the blog this year. Good luck to everyone heading back to the classroom!

RAW vs. JPG

While I was shooting my uncle’s wedding last week, I decided to foray into using RAW little bit. I never could get into it before. I would play with it, but I just couldn’t see the difference. I guess these were just the right conditions for it, or I just did something different or something, but WOW! I’ll just post three pictures and let them speak for themselves. The first will be what the RAW looks like totally uncompressed. The second is the jpg put out by my camera. The third will be edited RAW image. The jpg still doesn’t look bad, but you can tell it made it a little more red than what I was kind of wanting. Enjoy! 

iPhone 3G S First Impressions

Yes, like what seems to be the rest of the world, I picked up my iPhone 3G S. I previously had the first gen iPhone, so I’m not totally new to the iPhone world, but it’s a significant step up nonetheless. The first thing I noticed was that the little S, standing for speed, is not just a little badge Apple decided to put on the box. It really is very noticeably faster, and I’m not just talking about the internet. That, of course, is ridiculously faster, but everything is snappier, from app opening to the switch from portrait to landscape and back.

One of my main worries was that the plastic back would feel kind of cheap after having the aluminum back of the 2G, but it doesn’t at all really. In fact, it’s much more comfortable to hold in certain positions, particularly watching videos in landscape view. The oleophobic screen actually has a slightly different feel to it. It’s a little smoother, and it definitely does what it promises: keeps fingerprints and other gunk off of the screen.

Location services are, for obvious reasons, a much better experience than on the 2G. The camera is another area of big improvement. The autofocus actually works quite well, and the camera quality is very noticeably better. And of course there is the video camera. The quality on it is actually very good, considering what it’s coming from. No, it’s not HD or anything, but it’s still a great camera to have in your pocket all the time. Unfortunately I don’t have any good test shots and WordPress is being weird and not even letting me put in the image I do have so I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.

Bottom line: the iPhone 3G S is quite an amazing device. I definitely agree with the fact that it is more evolutionary than revolutionary, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome!

Destin Thus Far

Just thought I’d put out an update on our Destin trip. For those who don’t know, my uncle is getting married here in just a few hours, and I’m the photographer. It’ll be my first wedding shoot so I’m pretty excited.

We left out about 6am yesterday morning, somehow managing to miss the bulk of rush hour. It was, of course, a long trip but we made it. We stopped for lunch in Dothan and made it to Destin around 1. We just rested and settled in until dinner at the Back Porch. Wow, that’s an amazing restaurant. It’s right on the beach, so I got to eat my fried shrimp feeling the amazing sea breeze while watching the waves and beachgoers.

After dinner we headed down to where the wedding will be to check it out and do some pictures (mainly so I could figure out what kind of exposures I’ll need for the wedding). As it turned out, everybody decided to come down there and check it out haha. The setting could not be better. It’s a beautiful beach. Being at sunset only makes it better. I know it will be an amazing wedding.

This morning, my dad, my uncle, and I went back down there to check on a few other things and ride a few non-existent waves. We grabbed lunch and Chick-fil-A (again, but hey, I’m not complaining), then headed back to the hotel. My dad and I went to the go-kart track for a while, and now we’re all just kind of cleaning up and I’m making my final photo preparations. I know it’ll be a great night.

Apple Announcements Galore

So WWDC was Monday. Yes I know I’m way behind on this but I might as well throw my thoughts out there. First off they had some stuff about Snow Leopard. I’ll admit, I’m pretty excited about it. It looks like they’ve got some really impressive back-end stuff built into it. I think the most amazing thing, though, is that it will only be $29 for current Leopard users. It’s also pretty crazy that it cuts the OS footprint in half (6GB gone!), all while making big improvements.

Perhaps the bigger news, though, is all about the iPhone. They talked more about the new 3.0 software and such, mainly telling us stuff we already knew. They did announce the release date though, June 17th (next Wednesday). That’s much earlier than I think anybody was expecting. More shockingly, they announced the new hardware version, the iPhone 3GS, will be coming out two days later. I am happy to report that I already have mine reserved at the Apple store at the Mall of Georgia. I’ll admit a large part of the reason I’m upgrading is just because my 1st gen iPhone is slap full and I can just tell it’s getting old. The new features are great though. A much faster processor, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA support, video, voice commands; it’s all great stuff. Admittedly a lot of is stuff that should have been there in the first place, but oh well. Apple has still had one of the best smartphones on the market, and now it’s even better. You can bet I’ll have a review of it shortly after I get it (and you can also bet I’ll be there early to get it haha).

harman/kardon Soundsticks II

Yay! I’m finally following through on one of my “promised” reviews haha. I’ve had the speakers a couple of weeks now, so I’ve had time to get a good feel for them.

I’ll just start by saying these speakers are absolutely incredible. I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever. They are gorgeous, for one thing. I know they were designed to fit in with older Macs (the G4s, I think?), but they still look great. But at the end of the day, they are speakers, meant for audible rather than visual pleasure. And in that respect, they more than deliver. I’m listening to Celtic Woman on them as I’m typing this, and the voices are amazingly clear, while the drums and bass notes and pure and booming. I won’t claim to be an audiophile (more of a  wannabe audiophile haha) or to know the intricacies of good speakers, but I do know of all of the different speakers I’ve ever heard, these sound the best. Heck, on that note, I haven’t even really played with the EQ at all, and they still sound amazing. They may not be at their best, and they’re still the best I’ve heard. In fact, I know they aren’t, because 90% of my listening on them has been MP3s, and the only super-high quality sample I’ve been able to get my hands on is the free nine inch nails album they release, which, frankly, sounds terrible (sorry to any NIN fans out there). Overall, I could not be more pleased and I would not hesitate to recommend these to anyone willing to pay a little for their speakers.

I Can See Clearly Now….

Sorry, just had to use that title haha. I did indeed get my contacts Wednesday, and I am loving them so far. I decided to get them for many reasons, really. I got glasses at first because I didn’t think I would wear them all the time, just when I was taking notes or something like that, but I did end up wearing them pretty much all the time. That wasn’t my main reason, however. I just got tired of them being in the way all the time, having a frame in my vision (and no peripheral vision), and having to constantly clean them. None of these problems exist with contacts. My entire range of vision is focused, and they are constantly cleaned by my eyes. I guess it’s a little extra trouble in the morning and evening, but it’s well worth it, and I’m learning how to put them in very quickly.

I’ll admit though, I was stupid and wore them way too long yesterday, being a new wearer, and now I’m paying for it a little bit. They don’t hurt bad but I can tell they are a little irritated. I still haven’t put them in today; I’ll probably wait till about 4 or 5, just to be on the safe side. When they are in though, I can’t tell at all, except I can see. I really cannot feel them one bit. If anything, I think my eyes feel a little better than when they aren’t in, for some strange reason.

I just remembered another of my reasons for switching over. Photography. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to try to use a camera with glasses on your face. It is so much nicer to be able to use it like normal again.

An Ode to Lazy Days

I won’t deny it. I’m really enjoying just not doing much of anything for these first few days of summer. This past school year was killer. I know I’m usually somewhat of a workaholic and I’m always trying to accomplish something, anything, but I’ve just been chillin’.

Friday I did go get Crisis Core finally. It’s an amazing game, to be short. It would be a good game on a home system, but it’s a portable game. Easily the best game I’ve ever played on my PSP. The only thing better than Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy that I can take with me anywhere. Hopefully I’ll get a full review up before too long (and yes, I know I say that about everything).

Otherwise, I’m looking forward to getting contacts tomorrow. I’ll blog about that after I actually get them.

Hmm… I thought I had more to blog about but I guess that theme of laziness is applying to my creativity too… Oh well. Maybe I’ll actually have something to say tomorrow.

Unchained!

So, we had the big Unchained Vision event at the Gwinnett Braves stadium this morning. It was amazing! It was so awesome to see that many people, many of them close friends, in one place to worship God and commence a new movement to bring His word to more people than ever before. The venue couldn’t have been better, the music was amazing (including the fun little songs before the service), and I think we pulled off the best wave I’ve ever seen haha. God really is moving in amazing ways right now, and I don’t think He has any plans to stop any time soon, and I’m so glad I get to be a part of it. I wish I had some pictures from the event but I didn’t take my camera. Oh well… maybe next time. Oh! I also got on the vid screen haha. They decided to do it like a regular game and put some people up there during the pre-service songs, and I was one of the lucky few.

Now I’m back to be stuck in a boring Sunday afternoon… I got the Windows 7 RC installed on the ol’ dinosaur, along with a few other little projects, but there are still a good five hours left in the day… I guess I might go play FF VII or something. I’m trying to finish it fairly soon so I can get Crisis Core to have to play on my various summer trips. I don’t want to get it until I’ve finished out VII though. Yeah, I think I’ll go do that.