Create Every Day

Assignment: Create four drawings in scratch in GIMP in one 60 minute period. Each drawing should be different in concept than the last. The focus should be on creating solid composition.

Results to come…

Dore and I hosted a Superbowl party on, well, Superbowl Sunday.  Actually, more acurately we hosted our friends Matt and Maria’s Superbowl party.  It turned out to be a really great event, and it gave Dore and I the motivation we needed to completely finish moving the junk out of our living room.

I’m not going to go into too many details because it’s late, but here’s the skinny on the party to make everyone jealous:

1. Matt, Maria, Brian, Dore and I
2. Homemade onion dip (courtesy of Alton Brown and the Food Network)
3. Mom’s own recipe guacamole
4. Veggie tray
5. Chips
6. Beer (four kinds)
7. Mixed drinks
8. Homemade slow cooker chili
9. Fresh cornbread
10. Big screen TV
11. High-def satellite and DVR
12. Commercials
13. Mochi’s touchdown dance

Oh, and some football.

All in all it was a very fun day, and everyone left stuffed and happy.  Well, as happy as you can be when your team doesn’t win.  I became a big Cardinals fan over those 4 hours, and I felt like I could almost remember some of their names.  I think there was a Larry at one point.  So yeah, it was sad to see them lose.  It may take a bit of time.  Oh look… guacamole!

On Saturday, I tackled a project I’ve been planning for a couple of weeks: building bookshelves for under the windows in our bedroom.  I wanted to do this for a couple of reasons:

1. The space under the windows is a bit odd, and I didn’t want to have to try to find shelves that would fit.
2. Even if I did find shelves that fit, they’d probably be expensive or really poor quality.  And I’d have to deal with either bringing them home from the store or having them shipped.
3. Bookshelves are probably the simplest woodworking project imaginable.
4. It’s fun to make things yourself!

I had drawn up the designs last week and figured out more or less what I needed at the hardware store, so getting the materials went quite smoothly.  Having a well thought out plan was key in not having to run back for more supplies or buying too much.  Dore and I found all of the pieces that I needed at the hardware store, as well as a couple of new tools that I didn’t have.  We had the store cut the shelving to the right lengths, which saved me a bunch of time, not to mention getting rid of the need to buy a saw that will just take up space.

So after running around the hardware store for about an hour we headed back home to get to work.  I got set up outside in my “shop” (aka the communal table outside our apartment) while Dore got ready to go to lunch with our friend Maria.

It took a while to get my bearings, but everything seemed pretty straightforward.  It’s a bookshelf, for goodness sakes; there’s really not that much to it.  I used 1×10 pine lumber for the shelves, which had the advantage of being cheap, but the down side is that you have a lot of knots and blemishes to work around.  I spent a bit of time agonizing over which piece should go where, but finally got it sorted out.

The initial build went pretty well, and I was moved along pretty nicely with the sides of the shelves.  When I got to mounting the shelves on the sides, however, I did have some trouble because I didn’t account for how I was going to nail and screw everything together.  With the shelves in place I realized that I actually needed to be careful about the order that things went together so that  I would have enough work room.  (Think of trying to drill in screws with only 8 inches of work space… yuck.)    I took a while, but I finally sorted out the exact order of operations.

Dore helped with the final steps of putting everything together, and we finished up about 5:30.  The final book shelves were not the prettiest I’ve ever seen, but they aren’t bad.  They are level and pretty square, so I’m going to call it a success, even if the shelves aren’t quite tall enough.  If I do build similar shelves again there are a couple of things I would do differently:

1. I put the top shelves on differently than the other shelves, and this led to problems.  Mainly the top board is a bit warped, and I wasn’t able to line everything up perfectly on top.
2. Make the shelves taller!  I ended up with shelves that are just slightly shorter than a standard-height hardback novel.  Bummer.

Being able to put some more of our junk away was a major benefit of this project.  We got through another three or four boxes, and now we’re almost completely done unpacking.  Hooray!  But more on that later.

Oh, by the way… the whole project ran about $90 for the wood and hardware and about $45 for the tools that I didn’t already have.  Designing took about an hour, and build time was about 5 hours.  (A lot of the build time was due to not having done this before.)  I did not stain the shelves yet; that’s a project for another weekend.

I noticed this evening that the garbage can in the bathroom was filled up in a very aesthetic manner.  (How many times do you get to say something like that?)  I grabbed the camera and tested out a new lighting technique I learned about.  The technique is to fire the flash up and behind you so that it gives the effect of a large soft-box over your shoulder.  This throws a very nice, even light over the subject, giving lovely creamy texture and very soft shadows.

So anyway, here are the pictures:

Bathroom Trash Still Life

I like the clean lines on this, the composition, and the very soft lighting. See what I mean about everything being arranged very well?  This is as I found it.

Unfortunately I feel like this composition might be just a little too static with the shadow placed where it is. I wonder if this would have been better to frame this so that the subject was on the right with the shadow butting up with the edge of the frame.  That would probably have added a bit of subconscious dynamic to the image and made it more compelling.

Napkin Iceberg at Sunset

I love how a closeup of the napkin in front totally isolates the subject without being boring.  When I look at this I imagine an iceberg floating off an icy coast with a firey sunset behind.

Toilet Paper Roll Composition

This one was cropped way in, and the crop was actually automatically suggested by Picasa.  (Which was pretty cool to see, by the way.)  The original crop was too cluttered and didn’t have a clear message. I really like how this view’s smooth lines define the space in just a few elements.

For all photos: I adjusted the white balance in raw mode before exporting.  They were a bit yellow due to ambient light and bouncing the flash off of the bathroom’s light yellow walls.

Anyway, hope you liked my bathroom.  Now it’s time to take out the trash….

Dream Catch Me by Newton Faulkner is probably the worst song that I’ve ever heard. I would link to the YouTube video, but it would only hurt you. I’ll save you that pain, Dear Readers. Suffice to say that it has no dynamic range, absolutely mechanical (read: boring!) tempo, and uninspired lyrics.

This afternoon I was watching an awesome show on the history of photography, and it inspired me to take a couple of shots myself.  Coincidentally, I noticed that the lighting in the kitchen window was really nice.  Here are the best two shots:

"Little Cuties" Oranges

I really like the simplicity of the image and the nice consistent arrangement of the fruit.  I also really love the vibrant colors.  (This was directly as shot other than the crop.)

Stained Paper Texture

This was a bit of a surprise.  I noticed a piece of paper sticking out of a cookbook on the table.  Water on the paper had made the ink bleed through in interesting patterns.  I was quite surprised how well the photo came out.  It really shows off the subtle texture of the paper.  A little bump up in saturation makes the colors of the ink pop out.  I also had to push the contrast to make the texture more evident.

Dore’s and my new apartment doesn’t have any laundry facilities.  We tried as hard as we could to avoid doing the laundry.  We re-wore clothes (well, at least I did), we took loads to Dore’s mom’s house to wash, and we dredged deep into the back of the closet for apparel that hadn’t seen the light of day in ages (well, since we moved).  But eventually we couldn’t pack the clothes down into the hampers any more and we conceded that the battle against our dirty clothes was lost.  So yesterday Dore and I went out to the laundromat to process the massive pile.

I was dreading this day.  I’ve never been to a laundromat before (not counting the ones I’ve dropped off clothes at in Europe).  I was expecting the worst: lots of people, no free machines, expensive, and exhausting.  So I did the due diligence thing and looked for the best reviews online.  Well, turns out that was a bust.  Apparently posting reviews of your laundromat is not exactly a popular activity.  Who knew?  Well, strike that idea.  We went to the closest place.

Well, short story short I was actually pleasantly surprised by what we found.  The Bubbles and Beans laundromat was only about half full.  We quickly found machines to use, split up the laundry and let it rip.  We filled up four whole washers (and probably overloaded those…).  Once everything was in and washing, we went across the street to McConnell’s Ice Cream and got a snack to cool off.  We headed back just in time to catch the end of the wash cycle.  I tossed the clothes in the huge dryers and get them started.  Dore and I sat down and did a bit of homework while we waited.

After a very brief 40 minutes the clothes were bone dry.  I couldn’t believe it.  I expected at least an hour.  I think that 30 minutes probably would have been more than enough.  We attacked the huge warm pile and in just a few minutes had everything folded up.

We loaded up the car with all of the clothes and headed to the store to pick up stuff for gumbo.  Total time: about 2 hours 15 minutes.  Total cost: $13.25.  That’s way less than I was expecting.  Hooray!  I’m not dreading the next time nearly as much.  I might even enjoy it.

Dore is studying the Rorschach inkblot test this quarter, which of course means that once again I get to be her guinea pig.  So how did I fare?  Well, lucky for me she hasn’t gotten to the scoring part of the course, so I guess I dodged the bullet. :-)  I have to say, though, that the test is interesting.  For anyone that hasn’t heard of the test, you are shown a series of ten ink blots, and you have to try to find images in each one.  Your responses are then used to determine how crazy you are.

My preconceptions going into the test were:

• Everyone sees a bunch of sexual imagery in the blots (at least that’s what pop culture would have one believe)
• The blots are all black and white
• There are a ton of pictures
• The test only shows anything of interest if you’re really messed up

So now I’m starting to take the test, and it’s actually quite interesting.  Here were my observations of the test:

• At first, I was working against my initial perceptions.  I actively avoided anything sexual in my responses.  Not because it was uncomfortable, but rather that it felt very clichéd.  I really didn’t want to give the answer that everyone else does.  Turns out that’s probably the wrong approach; odd answers means you’re crazy.
• Some of the blots were ridiculously easy to find images in.  I would immediately see a very strong image, often with a full story behind it.
• Other images were very hard to place.  They just didn’t look like anything.
• You not only have to see something in each blot, but you have to show the tester what you saw.  This proved to be way more difficult than I expected.  Just saying, “it’s two bears giving each other a high five” (an actual answer) wasn’t good enough — I had to show exactly what I was seeing.  This proved especially difficult when Dore had seen something else in the image that conflicted.  I finally saw what she was seeing, but it took me a while.  It was a lot like the vases and faces illusion.
• They’re not all black and white.  And the color adds a ton of new possibilities for seeing crazy things.
• There are a bunch of extra things that could be inferred from your answers.  Themes in answers, how they differ from the norm, and other things that you say can and will be used in interpretation.
• I think that the test is very much influenced by the perception of the tester.  I wouldn’t want to have this be my only test of sanity.
• Most of my answers tended to be whimsical and have funny stories attached to them.  At least a couple of the images I saw made me laugh out loud.
• I also used white space a lot to construct images.  I think I looked at the blots like photos, and in several cases I was looking at both the dark parts and the light parts to reconstruct a scene complete with lighting.  Now if only I could do that to envision what I’m going to do with a photograph….

Dore thought that:

• I talked too much.  She just wanted to get her homework done. 🙂

So overall it was fun, but not something I’ll be ecstatic to repeat anytime soon.

I was listening to the radio this morning in the car, and I realized: there are a ton of really catchy songs out there that are really missed the boat.  I listened to the first 30 seconds of a song that was really good.  Then the second 30 seconds repeated the first.  And the third.  And the fourth.  By the end of the song I was totally turned off.

Is it just me, or is that happening more than it used to?  Very few of the older rock songs don’t do that.  I might suspect that it’s just because I only know the good music from the previous decades, but the fact is that I can’t think of any recent songs that don’t repeat themselves.  Where is the story telling?  I miss it.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about goals.  It seems that the older I get the harder it is to set goals, even very small ones.  My friend Justin and I talked about this just the other day.  I thought he made a very good point that when we were younger we used to just pick up and do things without a second thought.  You’d come up with a goal and bam you were acting on it.

Maybe it’s part of growing up and gaining responsibility, but I think there’s something more to it than just that.  I think there’s a tendency to look at something that you want to do and think, “Yeah, I could try to do that, but I might fail, and then I’m back where I started, but with less time.”  But you’re really not.  Failure is a good thing — I’ve learned way more from failures than from any success.  Perhaps it’s tied to a sense of our own mortality.  We perceive that we have less time to waste on “failure” and that we have to get everything right the first time.  And that’s stifling.

When I was a kid failure meant nothing, because I had plenty of time to do it right.  And that was when I did a lot of really cool stuff.  I need to start living like I did when I was a kid, and not worry about the failures.  I’ll certainly learn a lot more.