Spare Time

I love awkward periods of time between classes. Now I can catch up on posting!

So my fan wore out on my desktop PC and school started, so I've taken my sweet time in repairing it. I just got it up and running so I can start editing Arizon/Vegas trip pictures soon. I've had the netbook but editing pictures on it is a joke. The editing process will probably be slow as I'm moving my workflow over to Ubuntu--having to find alternative software is a potentially frustrating but very exciting process.

The most widely accepted open source alternative to Photoshop is GIMP and it's pretty similar in layout; however, it's UI is a nightmare. I believe I've posted on this already. I've done a little research into a RAW photo processing software, but I have yet to test anything. It would be nice if Adobe would port some of its software over to Ubuntu--there's a decently large customer base who would be willing to pay and I speculate the longer they neglect this market the better the alternative open source software will become and they may even lose their monopoly. Time will tell.

Anyways, school started and I'm ending my Electrical Engineering Technology major and beginning my Computer Science major, so a lot of my hobbyist musings have been more computer-oriented than photo-oriented. However, I plan a full return to my photography hobby, particularly once I get some sort of dedicated website up and running to replace my various fragmented blogs. Consequently, I want to keep posting here even if my actual photographs are few and far between.

If you are a technophile or just want to keep up with my non-photography thoughts in the meanwhile, head over to my other blog http://codingcraig.blogspot.com and look around. That will probably be where the bulk of my postings occur. Once I set up a website of my own, I'll hopefully have everything in one place, yet separate enough to prevent subscribers of one category from having to sift through content they don't care about.

Anyways, that's all I have time for this break. Gotta head to class!

Greetings From Arizona

Hello readers, my friends Seth and Molly and I went on a trip to see Seth's family in Arizona. This afternoon we climbed a mountain. It was awesome. The scenery is beautiful here and Seth's family is great. Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Las Vegas. Pictures will be posted shortly after Christmas, hopefully.

Coding Blog

I'm guessing most people who actually bother to look at this blog don't care to hear me rant about programming, so I'm creating a separate blog to discuss my projects. But if you have nerdy interests like me, here's the URL:

http://codingcraig.blogspot.com

Camera Bag

... mine lacks a little legitimacy/function

Finals Week Update

So finals week is dumb. That goes without saying. I've spent waaaayyyy too much time studying. However, apart from that, I've been entertaining myself by writing an application which does the following:

• Scans my computer for music files and generates a list with information about track title, album, artist, and track number
• Allows me to check whether I have a physical copy of the album or not
• Allows me to check whether I want to keep or delete the song
• Calculates if it's worth it or not to buy the whole CD or just the songs I like (if I like 4 songs out of the CD, I could buy them online for $4.00 or maybe if the CD is old enough, I could get the whole CD from Amazon used for $3.50 or so)

Basically the objective is to make sure I don't have any illegally-acquired content, so I have some ground to stand on when I talk about copyright reform. Secondarily, it allows me to purge my library of all the crappy music that somehow smuggled itself onto my computer (I've never downloaded a rap song in my life, yet I somehow have dozens in my library?) Thirdly, I get to hone my Python skills on a somewhat fun, useful project.

In other news, I'm going on a roadtrip to Arizona pretty much as soon as finals are over--I'll be gone until Christmas Eve and it will be the first trip I've been on since I've had my camera. I hope to return with some decent pictures to play with. [Edit: Seth wants to play pokemon while we're driving to and from... win.] We likely won't have Internet most of the time and even if we do, I hope to be too busy to do much updating. Updates will come after I get back; however.

Good luck to everyone who still has finals!

Things I Like (what I have been working on in my absence)

• Open-source software
• Ubuntu (Operating System)
• easy to use (I'm seriously considering installing it on my parents' machines)
• secure
• hard to screw up
• Software Center -- get all of your programs for free from an "App-Store" like location, rather than hunting through the internet
• powerful
• I can do anything I would normally do on Windows or OSX on Ubuntu
• free
• better than OSX and Windows (surprisingly)
• people designing and developing software to better computing for everyone, simply because they enjoy it
• a lot of programs are superior to for-profit programs
• DIY (do it yourself) projects
• Programming
• Python (really easy, powerful programming language)
• learning to use a computer as a tool to create my own tools
• creating tools for other people to use (see open-source)
• Graphic Design
• open-source GD programs
• GIMP (Photoshop alternative)
• Inkscape (Illustrator alternative)
• web design
• fun blogs by graphic designers
• http://pishposhandsuch.blogspot.com/
• Web development
• web design
• Python for web

New Posts, Coming Soon!

Sorry to keep you in suspense... This week has been really busy since school has started and I've been working so much (I'm trying to save up for a new lens, probably a Canon L-series, probably their 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM--because I really want some wide-angle with some shallow DOF). Anyways, photography has been placed on the back burner, but I'll try and get some stuff up soon. In the meanwhile, I'm typing this at Starbucks and here are a few things on my mind:

• Starbucks remodeled. Looks great! New rectangular tables make me hate life less than their old round ones. Round tables seem to make a lot of their space unusable and they're really uncomfortable to rest my writing arm against. Anyways, I'm happy. Plus they can be pushed together to accommodate larger parties.
• This is a bit old, but Sbucks finally got free wifi as well. Before they more or less charged you $5 to use it as often as you like, but it was still a silly hassle-full system. Much better now!
• It was my birthday on Friday--I didn't tell anyone and I removed it from Facebook to see how many people would remember slash because I'm growing out of my pay-me-attention-on-my-birthday phase. This birthday was very much not a big deal in the conventional senses, but it was one of the best I've had in years (largely because of my humble attitude). I really felt honored that even a few people remembered at all. :)
• I love 3 day weekends. I'm accomplishing a good balance of homework, lounging, and socializing.
• I really want to get more time to work on my website--a portfolio/blog consolidation. Perhaps that will be a winter project. There really aren't enough hours in the day to work on it this month.
• I love my friends a lot.

Anyways, I'll try and get a good photo-filled post up in a few weeks. And I'll try and amend this post with some Starbucks pictures or something.