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journal
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 journal archive
07.01.04 holy man, it's been a long time since i've written here. i started a different blog to fit in with my peer group, and i consequently stopped writing here. sorry! a lot's new--my summer has been incredibly busy and fun. i went to colorado with my dad, camped in the mountains, went to a rockies game, went to kansas city, went to a royals game, then came home. i also saw the negro baseball hall of fame and the jazz museum in kc, which were both sweet. i went to honduras a couple days after i got home from colorado for a week long missions trip. it was amazing--i'm really glad that i went, the experience was really interesting and eye opening. amid the other stuff i did on the trip, i got to visit a remote village and hand out samaritan's purse gift boxes to little children! it was really neat to watch them, it made me wish i could be there for a lot longer than a week. the day after i arrived home from honduras, i started my summer job at uw-eau claire orientation; i'm a student orientation assistant, and i basically help the incoming freshmen through their class registration, answer a lot of questions, and help them get acquainted with the school. it's really fun, i like how much interaction i have with students and my coworkers. honestly, this is the sweetest job ever--i work 9 hours a day, get about 3 hours in breaks and a free lunch. plus it's just fun work. this saturday is july 3rd and also my 19th birthday, cool. i can drink in canadia soon!
05.08.04 i'm on my front porch right now. it's dark outside, there is lightning in the distance, and my cat is acting like i am the coolest person on earth.i love my life!
04.26.04 right now i'm waiting for a slow inkjet printer to print my photos. sweet.and...finished. better let someone else use this..
04.12.04 ahh, the death of a four day weekend. i'm in the middle of some homework right now, waiting for something to print. a "voltage vs. time" graph that shows how a capacitor in a rc circuit discharges with time, in fact. exciting! thanks, physics.today i had softball practice for the church softball league i'm in. i'm playing two nights a week, it's pretty fun. i didn't really stretch everything out before practice, though, and i ended up pulling my groin a bit. i was planning on going rock climbing tomorrow, so it should be interesting to see how that goes. i think i'll still try--i use my arms more than i should anyhow, so if i can't use my leg 100% it shouldn't be much different from normal! well, my graph printed. snap! goes the self-imposed whip.
04.06.04 today it is so gorgeous outside. i can't believe i'm sitting at my computer writting this, but i just got home so that's my excuse. once i've finished writing, i'm going to make lunch and then go back outside.last night i went to the twins' season opener with the lindells. i twas great--the twins won in 11 innings, after cleveland's c.c. sabathia shut them out for 7 innings. i feel sorry for him--he pitched a great game, but he doesn't get a win because his bullpen sucks. ah well, my team won so i am happy. today i went climbing at the wall at uwec, sweetness! i haven't climbed here before so it was fun. i got to know the director of outdoor rec a bit too, so that was sweet. one of my college goals is to be working for outdoor rec by my junior year; its kind of like a dream job for me. tonight, i am playing my first intramural softball game of the semester. rock! i haven't thrown a softball since my last game in the fall, which was like 4 or 5 months ago. it should be interesting and awesome. interesting and awesome....what a great combination. to outside!
04.03.04 tomorrow is going to be 04.04.04, something that only happens once a century. amazing!today was a busy, happy ben day. i woke up about 9:45 after a kind of late night, then headed outside to work around the yard cleaning up. after i finished with that, i raked the slippery oak leaves off of a path in my woods and took my mountain bike up and down this hill until i felt like puking. puking--a strangely satisfying athletic sensation. after biking, i showered up, ate some beef stew for lunch, and headed out to go kayaking in the uw-eau claire pool with the hobnailers. the hobs are the outdoor adventure club at uwec, it's a fun group. anyhow, i learned quite a bit--there were a lot of accomplished kayakers (i am not an accomplished kayaker, fyi) there to give me tips. i learned to roll, where you are upside down under the water and you roll the boat over. i'm not good at it yet--i'm going again in a couple weeks to try to improve. for those of you who know what rolls are about, i have a problem with brining my body out of the water before the boat, especially leading with my head. i've got to work on that, it doesn't give very consistent results! so then i came home after a few hours paddling and relaxed around the house, drank some coffee, etc. tonight i'm going to do a load of physics homework, for joy! <- that's sarcasm. last night i hit a rabbit with my car and killed it. oops.
03.24.04 i'm in minneapolis right now, relaxing on my wonderful spring break. i went to the minneapolis art institute (or institute of art or some permutation of minneapolis, art, and institute) for a few hours today and took in their photography exhibit (among others). right now they have an exhibit on books, i didn't find it very inspiring. one artist did an interesting thing, though--he photographs books, page by page, using multiple exposures to create these indecipherable images of books on a single print. it was neat, but not amazing. and i look for amazing.speaking of amazing, i saw ansel adam's moonrise over [some place in new mexico] print for the first time since i've really printed much of my own stuff and it blew me away. adams is surely a printing genius--the tonal range of his prints is incredible. tomorrow i'm going to go to the omnifest and see ring of fire. i haven't been in an imax theatre since i was a little kid, so i'm pretty excited. what a great format--i love the scale of imax. annnnnd i'm going to go to midwest mountaineering (which may be my favorite store) and rei as well, so it will be a great day indeed.
03.22.04 tomorrow i'm going snowboarding for the last time this season. rock! it's going to be about 50 degrees, so it should be a fun, sloppy day.
03.21.04 the pictures of kristin turned out really well! i'll probably scan them and put them in a gallery at some point, just not now.right now i am listening to the beatles' new album, the let it be...naked one. i wish i was more into the beatles, they're so simplistic and good. and finally--i'm on spring break this week, but i'm sticking around home for the most part and printing a bunch of pictures. that's one of my primary goals--to spend a couple days in the darkroom. sweet.
03.13.04 tomorrow i am going to go take portraits of my friend kristin--i'm excited! i haven't done any studio portrait work before, and all of the other portraits i have done have been graduation or engagement pictures, not art. it should be interesting--a real learning experience for me. kudos to kristin for being willing to flaunt herself, i know it isn't easy.chuscales is amazing. i haven't listened to flamenco guitar in a while, it's so fast, precise, and amazing. can i say amazing again? amazing. i wish i could play better--ever since i started college i play guitar about once a week. when i was in high school, i played up to an hour or two a day sometimes. i don't think i have gotten much better at guitar since college started--but such is the price of knowledge, i guess.
03.10.04 hello friends, the new design is coming along nicely. i've been working on getting it to look perfect, making sure everything is in the right spot. all for you, friend.
02.14.04 a new redesign attempt, check it out. i'd like to know what you think of it, so please contact me!
the overwhelming response on the last redesign idea was "no!", so that one's been canned. :( i didn't like it as well as my current design, anyhow...so there!
02.10.04 i wanted to share a couple of interesting pictures with you; i made a pinhole camera for my photography class and i have been shooting some photos with that. i printed some positives today, check out #1 and #2. i'll probably put these in a gallery once i get a few more.
it's an interesting type of photography for me--i love the control an slr gives me; i love how i know almost exactly what image i am going to produce, and the pinhole camera just throws it all out the window. it's an interesting challenge.
02.07.04 i was just looking through my server statistics and noticeds omething really amazing/cool. my website statistics include all of the search phrases that were used by viewers to find my website, so i was going to google and plugging in these phrases to see how high i ranked for a given phrase.
imagine my surprise when i plugged in "send e-cards" and realized that my site ranks #29 out of 3.1 million websites. wow.
then, i tried "film galleries", not expecting to find my site anywhere. out of 3.7 million results, minusime.com is #2. what??!! this is crazy--what have i done to get this kind of ranking on google?
i want to hug someone at the search engine company.
02.04.04 i just read a funny caption in the newspaper. it's a list of the first grade basketball team players this year, and i was struck by how many weird names there are: dalton, hayden, clay, dillon, lane, ethin, and bronson. it's interesting--my peers are named steve, matt, josh, etc, and i'm certainly glad that i'm not named dalton. i'm sure these kids are fine people and they'll grow up to be beautiful and successful; it just struck me as funny how much names have changed in the last 8 years or so.
01.29.04 i am alive and well, sorry for no updates! i'm back home from vacation, it was great, amazing, happy, wonderful. now i'm in school, i promise that i will update very soon!
i shot three great rolls recently, i'm taking a photography class at uwec (darkroom privileges!) and life is well. have a happy day, little friend!
oh, and it is -15 degrees F outside, be happy if you live somewhere warm.
01.13.04 i like yogurt.
01.11.04 i just did a little bit of programming and made it so that the film page shows random images from the different galleries. it's the same as you see on the right side of this page, only more of them. if you'd like to see some of my stuff quickly, that's your best bet.
happy packers-losing-day
01.09.04 wow... this is a stunning picture.
i've always thought it'd be cool to work for national geographic...go on these long adventures in foreign countries and take pictures, only to come back home and get paid for it. awesome.
01.05.04 warning: baseball rant ahead!
so i was happily reading my sports news today and came across the big news that pete rose admitted to gambling on baseball while he was managing the cincinatti reds. the huge debate, of course, is whether or not he should be in the hall of fame, because he bet on the game. honestly, i can't imagine not having the guy in the hall of fame. of all the things a baseball manager can do, betting that your team will win seems pretty harmless to me. should he be in the hall of fame as a manager? nope. but should he be in the hall as a player? most definitely! the guy is a 17-time all star, a world series mvp, national league mvp, he led the leage in batting average three times, and oh--he has 4256 career hits. yup, that's more than any other player to play the game.
rose should clearly be in the hall as a player...i don't understand why his behavior as a manager should keep him out of the hall.
12.21.03 just wanted to point out an interesting photograph to everyone. it's a good use of the zoom technique, i think--i've never seen it used on a crowd like this before.
12.16.03 the weatherman just made my day. being the snow-loving snowboarder that i am, nothing beats this forecast!
12.04.03 ahh, the fresh scent of a new journal entry. not too much is going on in my life, just college wrapping up for the semester. i was excited about something to do with minusime today, so i thought i'd mention it--one of my christmas break projects is to work on overhauling this site, making it much more flexible than before. most of you probably don't care, but it should be pretty cool once i've finished.
ahh well...that was shorter than expected. anyways, WATCH OUT! BIG THINGS COMING YOUR WAY!
11.20.03 what a great idea
for all you budding photographers!
11.11.03 i was just managing my fantasy football team, looking for a new tight end. i settled on jim kleinsasser, the viking's te. the funny thing is--i saw his picture, and he looks just like jack black.
isn't that weird?
10.30.03 this week really felt like the start of winter to me--it's been wet and cold, it gets dark earlier (much earlier now with the time switch) and it just feels...well, like winter. weird.
i think i got into a photography class at uwec, we'll see. i'm excited about all the darkroom stuff; all of the photos you see on this site have been printed by someone else, meaning i haven't had any influence on a huge array of factors that make a print. it's going to be awesome to go through the entire process of making a photo, with control over every aspect.
i'm going camping this weekend on lake superior, i'm pretty excited. i haven't been able to test out my new sleeping bag in cold weather (below 35, that is), mostly because it's been summer lately. it's supposed to be 20 degrees tomorrow night, i'm psyched. i could probably go 10-15 degrees lower than that, but oh well.
rock!
10.17.03 today's hot professor quote:
"it's just one of those numbers that just zips on forever, you can never see the end of it!"
--dr alex smith, calculus
10.13.03 alright, time for a baseball rant. first off, i'm not a bud selig fan at all. second--i'm not against a few bench-clearing incidents in baseball games, i think they're healthy and certainly entertaining. now, today i read that some people were fined for their participation in the spicy game three of the alcs:Martinez was fined $50,000, Ramirez $25,000, Garcia $10,000 and Zimmer $5,000, according to a baseball executive who spoke on the condition he not be identified. "I am very disappointed in the behavior of some of the participants in last night's game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees," commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement.
now, what did zimmer do? he took a swing at martinez, before martinez tossed him to the ground. still, the old man gets only a $5,000 fine, while martinez gets $50,000?that's crazy! martinez was acting in self-defense.
once again...contract selig!!!
10.12.03 my gosh, this has got to be the coolest photo i've seen in a long time. it strikes me that this is what great photography is all about--knowing your equipment, anticipating a shot, setting up the composition, then waiting until just the right moment to press the shutter. it's interesting how easy it can seem to take a great photograph, and yet how much time it takes to learn the technique and practice the skills that allow you to effortlessly take that great photo.
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