Twitter

Anyone who is following on twitter knows I went on a very minor tweet rant the other day about Twitter and how people use it. It was all sparked by this radio personality that I follow on twitter who used to reply to tweets addressed to them (a phrase I call TweetBacking), but hasn't over the course of the last few weeks, and yet they still are promoting their Twitter feed by saying, "Follow me! Follow me on twitter." For some reason this REALLY aggravates me to no end. I love twitter. I love the fact that there is interaction among you and your "followers." That is what makes this a social medium. If you aren't going to participate in the social aspect of it, then go away. You are not nearly interesting enough for me to just follow you and have no interaction with you. Twitter was/is a way for people to get a chance to interact with people they may never otherwise would have. If you aren't social on Twitter, you are just someone using Twitter as a megaphone. Something that allows you to shout your thoughts/feelings/nonsense to the crowd, without hearing them respond. So if you are one of those Twitter users whose followers are 1,200+ and you follow less than 100 and you never tweetback, then you are an egotistical jack ass and have no idea how to use or reap the real benefits of being involved with a social media.

Weight Loss

In my attempts to get below the 180 mark, I am now publishing my weight on my twitter feed every day. I came across this article yesterday and a lot of it made sense to me. No eating late, working out, weighing myself and publishing that weight. All very good motivational tools. So hopefully I will hit that goal of 180 and maybe even go further.

Photography Obsession #2

We took a vacation in December to one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited, Turks and Caicos. It is truly an amazing place and this was our second time going there. During our visit there, I took close to 500 photos (in both RAW and jpg formats) after we got back, I edited those down to about to 225-250. Out of that group I pulled the RAW images of a select few and did some photoshop editing to them, these are what sifted out. I always say, the more shots I take, the better my chances are of coming up with a good one.


This shot (and the next 2) were all taken while we were eating lunch outside one afternoon. It was in a section of the resort called the Italian Village. This image is color adjusted and cropped more horizontal from the original.


I think sometimes when you make a color photo black and white and leave just a touch of color it can look cheesy, I have seen a lot of wedding photos done that way where the flowers are left in color (especially when the color is like peach or something) I don't think this photo is cheesy like that. I love the orange of the glasses AND that they draw you into them to look for details in the photo you might not see otherwise.


This is the 3rd shot taken at the same lunch (how lucky is that, I am glad it took forever for us to get our order). I looked straight up behind me and this is what I saw, the sun back lighting this tower, the top part of the picture is the umbrella we were sitting under waiting for our food. I did very little to this one in photoshop, it is very much like the original. I love all of the lines and angles in this photo and it is AMAZING that the sky has the ability to be so blue.


This one I call "dream life." Sitting on a beach, beer in my hand and not a worry in the world. I photoshopped the "clutter" out of the photo, the buoys, the people, the boats, and just left it with me, the water, the sun and a beer.


Kite flying is hard. This is a shot of Owen doing something we all have done . . . try to get a kite in the air. I think it is such a good shot, cause of the lighting, and motion, you can tell he is trying so hard to get it going.


Conch Shells . . . this guy had "caught" (if that really is the right term) these conch, cleaned them out on his boat, and then set them on shore to sell. I actually took this picture standing in the ocean and looking back onto the beach. In photoshop I enhanced the pinks and purples.


Really didn't do too much to this photo from the original, just cropped it down some. Renea and Owen were hanging out in the ocean when Owen decided to give his mother a kiss. I just think it is a sweet pic.


I have see a lot of beach pictures where the sun is never seen, and I wanted to take one that incorporated the sun as well, I think it adds that feeling of "hotness" even though it really was very pleasant the whole time we were there. The water is really that color, it is gorgeous!


Sunset. It really it is as simple as that.


One of my favorites. Just my son Owen and the water at dusk. I love the pastel -ly feeling of this picture. I did some photoshop clean-up where I took buoys out of the water, but that was about it.

Photography Obsession #1 - Rails to Trails

Ok, so I am going to kick the logo word marks project to the curb for now (it had been since May after all and there has been little clamoring to continue it, and by little I mean none) so I thought I would post some photos (of my new obsession). I got a new Nikon D90 camera back in the spring and have been having a great time playing with it. I definitely need some more time working with it and learning about it, but here are some of the results.

This was a bike trip that Owen and I took on the Rails to Trails in Parkersburg. It was a beautiful day, the weather was cooler and the trail was amazing and peaceful. There were even some remnants of the Railroad from days gone by.

Here is Owen taking a rest (which he did a lot of):





Train signal. I love the shadowing on this one and how the light hits it.


Same signal but 2 different angles:




I was so proud of myself for finding this. It was a concrete marker for the railway and was slightly askew. I don't think that the "W" means West cause we were riding East, but who knows:


I am happy with the composition of this image, I like that it is black and white, I just wish I had some more contrast, and if I had all day to wait for the lighting to be right I think there would have been . . . eventually



Cool Tree:


Ok, so there is first of a series and I will share more photos in the coming weeks, I promise!!

Creativity-Project 3

Ok, this was a tough one. Heidelberg just changed their logo and went to something new and they added a new wordmark that contains, what possibly could be, the longest mascot name ever. SO I took some liberties with this one (I can, it is MY project afterall) and just included their nickname (changed back to what they used to be called). If I had more time I would have figured out how to incorporate "Heidelberg" in the logo but that could have taken all day.

Creativity-Project 2

So here is the Capital University Crusaders. As far as I can tell, they have no "official" wordmark, believe me I did some research trying to find anything that looked like they knew what they were doing. There is some debate over what is there actual logo, either the one displayed above or a version that has the one displayed above but on a shield with swords. Anyway, I present to you the Capital Crusaders.

Creativity-Project 1

So one of my friends, Christina, decided to do a "project-a-day" to help her be more creative and I thought that was a great idea, so I decided to play off of her project a little with one of my own. What I decided to do is start with the OAC Conference and create wordmarks to go with their athletic logos. I started with Baldwin-Wallace and quickly realized that I have to put a time-limit on these or I could spend days with each one. I don't know if this will be daily, but I will work my way through the conference.

Winding Down and Up

ahhh take a deep breath and enjoy the end of the semester. Another school year gone by, another set of graduates getting ready to head out into the "real world." Things have been freaky busy these past few weeks, more freelance, finishing up my teaching for the semester, starting golf league . . . you think it would slow down, but something else pops up. For some reason I think that all of these things just 'happen' to me, but I am now starting to think that I seek out busy and must need it, otherwise what would I do?

Draft Status

Owen asked tonight if it was football season as I had ESPN on the TV and they had some of their draft coverage on. Renea told him no, but this weekend was the NFL Draft. Owen asked, "What is the draft?"

Renea wisely looked at me and said, "You want to take this one?"

So I did my best to explain to Owen that players that were in college, like Pat White, at West Virginia, could be picked by professional sports teams like the Steelers. I told him each team takes their turn in picking players from college.

Owen looked at me and said, "Daddy, you know what? The Steelers could pick you to be on their team."

I said, "Really? Why do you say that?"

"Cause Daddy, you are in college. You could get picked by the Steelers."

He might not know exactly what I do, but he does know that I work at a college.

New workout

You might have seen the infomercial, if you happen to have cable on at 7 a.m. or any station at 3 a.m., it is a program called P90X. It is supposed to be a program that you do at home, following the DVDs and working along with them. I ordered the DVDs a few weeks ago (off of ebay) and I converted them all to be played on my iPod, so now I can do the videos at the gym rather than home. I have already watched the first DVD to get a feel for what I am getting into and it looks very intense and almost a little scary. I will have to plan a little extra time in the mornings to get through the entire workout as the first one seems like it will take 1:15. I will update on the progress made and we will see how this will all shake out. I am not sure what day I am going to start. This week is busy and I would have rather started on a Monday. Part of me wantes to take a week off and come back on Monday ready to go, but another part of me wants to make sure not to let what I have worked for up to this point waste away by not working out. I imagine that by tomorrow morning I will have made a decision . . . and since my workout bag is already packed . . . that decision seems to have been made.

T-Ballin'

Owen's first t-ball game was yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Kids enjoying the game of baseball (for the first 2 of 3 innings and maybe for the last time in their lives.) No score is kept, and each time a team is at bat, all the players get to hit, also all players play the field. I coached 1st base and helped guide the kids around the bases, I also helped with the right side of the infield, guiding wayward fielders and showing them where to get the outs. Owen did well hitting. I thought this was all about hitting off a tee, but they actually throw the kids 3 pitches (from a coach) and then if he/she doesn't hit it, then they put the ball on the tee. Out of Owen's three times up he hit the ball from the pitcher (coach) twice and only on the last time did he have to hit off the tee. In the field, it was a different story. He was scared of the ball when hit in his direction, so we have to work a little on the fielding skills, and once he and another player were fighting over a grounder. I enjoyed it. It did last long for me as well as them. I had the first basemen of the opposing team ask me 8 times, in the second inning, if the game was over yet. These kids have a very short attention span and if things aren't moving, they are losing interest. No one got hurt and a good time was had by all, you can't ask for any more than that.

Perfection

I consider myself a bit of a fan of advertising and marketing. I pay attention to commercials, tag lines and logos and I am extremely interested in how companies position and market themselves. To steal a line from "PTI," how companies "protect the shield" so to speak. Meaning how they present and defend their brand.

I try to keep up-to-date on the latest in advertising and in doing so I ran across this ad. Very rarely do you find a commercial that is effective, humorous, and does a good job of branding. This one does it all.

Thank you Easter Bunny! Bock Bock

I already linked to this commercial on my twitter, but thought I would do it again here for the twitterless.

Quick story from church today. I was explaining to Owen about communion and I said, "When Pastor gives us the bread and says 'this is the body of Christ,' he is talking about Jesus." Owen said, "Cheese its?"

"No, Jesus."

"Cheese its?"

"Jesus!"

"Oh I get it now, Jesus."

I guess because of the bread he had snacking on his mind.

Bock! Bock!

Simple dinner

I have been craving something off the grill all week and while I was sitting at work today I was trying to come up with something to make and then it hit me, Shishkabobs. I went to the grocery store after work and picked up beef, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, zucchini, and redskin potatoes. All I did was put some olive oil, salt, pepper and Worcester sauce on the beef, and vegetable oil, salt and pepper on the veggies. Placed them all on the grill and cooked away. So simple. We dumped everything in a big bowl when done and then you just scooped out what you wanted. It was delicious. So simple but so, so good.

Love/Hate relationship

We have a few really big projects that we work on each year, and one of them is our alumni magazine. Full color, 34+ pages, and over 20,000 copies mailed out. When it comes down to the last couple of days it gets a little crazy and I sometimes second guess the decisions I have made as far as color choices and where things are laid out. I have come to realize that most of the time these moments of irrationality come from working on it too long. Staring at the pages for hours on end trying to come up with the right positioning. Then all that changes when I print out one of the last copies for us to review, and suddenly the changes I was fretting over don't seem so large, and I actually like what I see. I have to admit, it is a love/hate/love relationship when I hit these last few days before sending it off to the printer. There are only a few more changes (I hope) and then we can send this to bed and can move onto the next relationship, er, I mean job.

da Weather

Ok, it is April and there is snow on the ground. This is not good. Where is the spring? Where is the warm weather? I know a lot of people complain about the cold and the snow, but I HATE it, and hate is a soft word, my feelings toward snow and cold weather is 10x harsher than that. I am miserable in the winter. Miserable in the snow. I complain about it all the time and curse Mother Nature via twitter. Can we catch a break? Get a little warm weather and let it gradually get warmer as the spring progresses? I would prefer that over these "teases" we get with a day being 65-70º and then it goes down to 30º and snow flurries. I am tired of it. Please let's just move on. Obviously the cursing hasn't worked, so I am not begging and groveling. Let's get to the spring and warm weather.