Well, with my new job I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Thankfully it came sooner so I could get in and get some good experience working with broadcast elements.

As many of you know my full-time job is at Kingdom Connection for Jentezen Franklin. We produce a TV show every week that is broadcast to millions of people! Anyways, on the episode that aired on 8/15/10 “The Doorkeeper” I did a lot of work on the 3D intro. I am very proud of my first significant work and hope to continue to improve and make a nice intro/teaser/opening for the show every couple of weeks. Hope you like it!

Click on the link: doorkeeper_teaser

Screenflick

Part of my job is to get short videos together for the broadcast or the services or whatever else needs to be done in the studio. These videos always need to be in the highest quality possible too. So where might I get videos? This is the hard part: DVDs, YouTube, Vimeo, iChat or Skype, the list goes on forever! How do I keep all these videos in near-original quality? Screenflick.

Now, if I asked 20 people how they would get the videos off of the places I mentioned earlier, I would get 40 different answers! But which one of their answers would have been the same program for everything? Well, that’s why I was lucky a few years ago to find Screenflick! Screenflick is a good program that captures your screen. Sure, there are a dozen other screen capturing utilities out there also. But why did I go with Screenflick? That was a hard decision!

Features:

• Up to 60fps recording
• Records System Audio and Mic-in
• Record multiple screens
• Record only portions of the screen
• Records in the “Animation” codec, which is amazing!
• Exports your video to any codec from within the application!

I only listed a few of the features I love in the application. There are tons more to make Screenflick worth the price!

I picked this up on the internet. It was free but the site was in German. So I reckoned the english speaking people would like this iPhone 4 model too!

It’s in C4D, OBJ and MTL format.

Enjoy!

iPhone_4.zip

Well, I received an email earlier today from a guy in the UK that couldn’t buy my book in iTunes from the UK store. My publisher for some reason won’t let books go out of the US. So I decided to give the UK guy a break and let him have a $5 coupon for anything in the BlogRyan.net store.

After I issued the coupon I figured I should just open the offer up to anyone. So I am.

Just use the coupon code “morris” at checkout and get $5 off anything in the store. This deal expires August 31st so hurry and get your downloadable free stuff!

Just thank Mr. Morris for the inspiration in the comments of this post if you have the heart.

I’m not much of a photographer. And I will rarely take pictures much less also then post them somewhere. So naturally I will not be the guy with any kind of picture editing application on my iPhone.

However, (and that is a BIG “however”) I am one of those people who likes almost everything Nick Campbell, aka “Gorilla” does. Also I was needing something to play with on my new iPhone 4 to see how good the pictures really are. Therefore I remembered seeing the CrossProcess App.

App: “CrossProcess”

Website: http://www.crossprocessapp.com/

Price: $0.99

For the price this app is one of those good deals. It could easily be selling for $1.99 or $1.99! But it is simple and easy to use. I can’t explain what it does better than just showing you some of the test pictures I have taken.

Loading Screen

Options Page

Office Supplies

Summer behind a fan

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Finally free wifi at Starbucks!
I know it started over a month ago, but I am just now publishing this article because at first I couldn’t believe what they were finally it giving away. But going to Starbucks is now much more enjoyable. It may have taken McDonald’s getting free Internet first, along with their cheaper coffee, but wifi should be free. Especially if the coffee costs $5!

I just noticed today that the “Google Checkout” option on the cart wasn’t sending me the orders to approve. But it is fixed now, so if you have made a purchase and weren’t able to complete the transaction, you can now! So purchase away! (I need the money!)

Advanced 3D Cube Transition
$5.00Price:
More Details

Business Web Templates Pack 1
$0.00Price:
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Countdown Template AE Project
$1.00Price:
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FREE Color Correction Manual
$0.00Price:
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Greeble Scene
$0.00Price:
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Handwriting - Dakota Countdown
$1.00Price:
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HD Video Loops Bundle 1
$5.00Price:
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Huge Heart Scene #C4D
$2.00Price:
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iTip iOS Application Source Code
$25.00Price:
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Quick Reference: Graphics for Final Cut Pro
$0.99Price:
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Updating...

Andy Rooney said on ’60 Minutes’ a few weeks back:

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‘I don’t think being a minority  makes you a victim of anything except numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America.. Try to have things like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television, or Miss White America ; and see what happens…Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door.

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Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.

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I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, which is why there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts! ARE YOU LISTENING MARTHA BURKE ?

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I  think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia, it is an opinion.

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I have the right ‘NOT’ to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird, or tick me off.

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When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70% of the population is black, that is not racial profiling; it is the Law of Probability.

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I believe that if you are selling me a milkshake, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you must do it in English!  As a matter of fact, if you want to

be an American citizen, you should have to speak English!

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My father and grandfather didn’t die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours..

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I think the police should have every right to shoot you if you threaten them after they tell you to stop. If you can’t understand the word ‘freeze’ or ‘stop’ in English, see the above lines..

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I  don’t think just because you were not born in this country, you are qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop, trinket store, or any other business.

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We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries and risk our lives in wars to defend their freedoms, so that decades later they

could come over here and tell us our constitution is a living document and open to their interpretations.

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I don’t hate the rich; I don’t pity the poor.

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I know pro wrestling is fake, but so are movies and television. That doesn’t stop you from watching them.

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I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more.  If it ticks you off, go and invent the next operating system that’s better, and put your name on the building.

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It doesn’t take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does take a parent to stand up to the kid and say ‘NO!’ when necessary.

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I  think tattoos and piercings are fine if you want them, but please don’t pretend they are a political statement. And, please, stay home until that new lip ring heals. I don’t want to look at your ugly infected mouth as you serve me French fries!

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I am sick of ‘Political Correctness.’ I know a lot of black people, and not a single one of them was born in Africa,  so how can they be ‘African-Americans’? Besides, Africa is a continent. I don’t go around saying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was from Europe . I am proud to be from America and nowhere else.

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And if you don’t like my point of view, tough…

2000 iMac
Operating System – Mac OS 9.0.4
Processor – 500 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU, 128MB Memory
Graphics – ATI Rage 128 Pro, 8MB of memory (8 million triangles)
Screen – 786K pixels
Data Transfer Speeds – 1.3-12.5 MB/s (DVD-ROM-1/100 Ethernet)
Storage – 30GB Hard Drive
Dimensions – 15.0 x 15.0 x 17.1 inches
Weight – 34.7 pounds

2010 iPhone 4
Operating System – iOS 4.0
Processor – 1 Ghz ARM A4 CPU, 512MB Memory
Graphics – PowerVR SGX 535, uses system memory (28 million triangles)
Screen – 614K pixels
Data Transfer Speeds – .04-20MB/s (3G-WiFi)
Storage – 32GB Flash Drive
Dimensions – 4.5 x 2.31 x .31 inches
Weight – 4.8 ounces

What will the device be like in 2020?

Today I am launching something huge!

I’m giving you a free website. I’m giving you a free blog. I’m giving you a ton of things!

It’s more powerful than you think. And I have never seen anyone else give away so much.

So if you are wanting to just explore, or if you are wanting to get a website started for real, just give it a try!

YOURNAME.blogryan.net

That’s basically it. Anything you want. Any content you want. All hosted here on BlogRyan.net

You like my cart system? You can have it.

You like my Subscribe system? You can have it.

You like the design of my site or my other sites? You can have it.

Need anything else (that works on WordPress)? YOU CAN HAVE IT!

Just check out the test site and play with it! http://test.blogryan.net

Want to see the administration behind my blog? http://test.blogryan.net/wp-admin/

Just use Username: “test” and Password: “testing”

Let me know what you think. And sign up for your own uncontrolled site:

http://blogryan.net/wp-signup.php

I hope you like the header for July/August!

I’m just going to list some info on where it came from.

It may look a little familiar to some people. It was inspired by the Discovery Channel’s re-brand they did a few months ago. Then Nick Campbell over at greyscalegorilla.com picked it up and tried to replicate it the re-brand. So I went off of that and made a cool header graphic.

Also, the words in the header and the glass composite was also based on things from greyscalegorilla.com

Hope you enjoyed it and I might make all the files available soon for download to accompany the tutorials they were based on!

July/August 2010 Header

The wedding will be on January 1, 2011

The wedding is going to be located at North Mt. Zion Church of God in Hiawassee, GA

It will start at 1pm

We are trying to keep the costs down so we are only inviting close family.
For those who cannot come to the actual wedding, I will have a live video stream here on BlogRyan.net of the service. The page will go live on that day from 12pm till 2pm specifically for the wedding, but not any earlier.

We will be holding a separate reception for the family and friends that couldn’t make it to GA the following Saturday after the honeymoon.

Also here is a link to the story of the engagement: http://blogryan.net/?p=1676

Thanks for your support!

Ryan & Summer

Well, I am going to be trying out a program I got a long time ago with the Macheist bundle. It is called MacJournal. So, I’ll be testing out the embedding especially but also the syncing of my database. Hope this works out! I’ll let ya know!

Well, it has been a month. I’ve had some good time away from the blog. I have been able to put together and schedule some good content for everyone’s pleasure (I hope).

This post is a weird one, it published on a Sunday! But I had to do that to keep the time off exactly at a month, and I didn’t want to post on the same day as “Humor Monday.”

So, since I have had a month to work on my book and schedule posts on the blog for a few months out, I am going to show a sneak peak at one of my favorite utility application and a sneak peak at the resources I will be including in my firs book: “Small Production Budget”

Also, here are a few updates to the site! I have added a cart and shopping system with huge capabilities! I plan on selling tons of my stuff on here for cheap or free. And everything is going to be easy and downloadable!

GO GET SOMETHING ON THE STORE HERE

My first thing I want to show you is a free application for Mac. It is the best font manager I have ever found for it. It is called “Linotype FontExplorer X.” I have noticed recently (as I had to reinstall all my stuff on my computer) this utility is kinda hard to find on the internet! The company that makes it has a “pro” version for sale, but I never have an excuse to need it and the free one is perfect for me! So, I have hosted the download on my server so it is easy to find for anyone who would like to try it out.

I am not sure if there is a Windows version of the program. I would look for it, but I don’t cause I don’t use a Windows machine for design/video work.

The resources preview I am showing is a background that can be used for anything you would like! For example, announcements backgrounds, lyrics background, DVD menu background, and whatever else you can think of! This is the full background in HD with the H.264 codec.

Enjoy!

Resources Preview

Link to “zip” file for background: cm10

Link to font Utility: FontExplorerX123.dmg

Well, I have had the new job at Free Chapel for a while now. I still work at the Holiday Inn in Hiawassee. I try to keep a few freelance stock files going on some royalty sites. And I have to actually talk to people after work other than my fiance. So, now that I am trying to adjust to all these new work hours I usually had for sleep and blogging and playing video games has somehow disappeared!

So, I will just say this. Everyone has to learn how to juggle their time while in school. Then we all have to learn it all over again when we get a job and other responsibilities. I wish I could keep this blog full with fresh articles right now. I wish I could post something four or five times a week! But while I am trying to learn how to juggle what little time I do have off from all these other things, I am putting a hold on BlogRyan.net, and will resume the endeavor on July 18th.

I promise I will come back in a few weeks with some new and inspiring ideas for tech, design, personal and humorous thoughts. I am going to schedule as many posts in advance and stay on top of weekly content. I will give you updates and excerpts to all my books I am working on and definitely the first opportunity to buy the materials at a special BlogRyan subscriber price!

Thanks for staying loyal! And I’ll see ya next month!

Ryan Farmer

60+ hours/week trying to survive

I feel this happens more than it should…. in all aspects of all design!

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

Well, as most of the people that know me personally, you are probably gasping at the thought of me writing and publishing a book. To tell you the truth I am surprised too! I have never liked to write or read. But this is something that I think I will enjoy in my free time and hopefully plenty of other people will like to see my work.

So one section in the short book I am writing is called:

“Pioneering Media at NMZ”

The book is geared for an audience of other small churches who are struggling to start their own media or need some kind of direction for their media department.

Coming from a small church without a media budget but still accomplishing a lot with a little with my six years of working to build the media at North Mt. Zion, I have developed a heart to help small ministries make a big impact through media. This book will share the short history of how the church slowly developed a successful media ministry with only a handful of volunteers and will help encourage and drive other churches to follow in it’s footsteps and do the same.

Hopefully I will have this book completed and available for digital sale for all eBook readers including: Nook, Kindle, iPad, PDF and an online version. Also only for special orders I will try to have a physical printed copy of the book according to the printing costs. I will hope to publish the book around the end of June 2010 at a small price of only $10.

I will have more details on how to get the book in digital or print form closer to the publish date.

So here is a short excerpt from the book for your reading pleasure:

“Back in the day, I actually had nothing to do with the video recording. I only put the scripture on the screen with SongShow Plus and a windows 98 machine. We had just gotten a camera donated and for the longest time it was MiniDV tapes with boxes to hold them. If anyone wanted a copy of the service we transferred the un-edited ugliness straight to a VHS tape.”

Further editing may change any quoted text.

Thanks and make sure to let anyone you know about this upcoming short read! Also, the goals and objectives of the book are changing continually. The hardest part is trying to write to a small niche audience while still trying to appeal to as many people as possible. This is a hard balance. But, I’ll keep ya updated and more excerpts when I get closer to publishing the book!

The Ring and Box

On the Finger

Ryan and I’s engagement was everything I could ever ask for!  Ladies and Gentlemen, you would be so proud of him!

When Ryan and I started talking about marriage, I told him that he would have to come up with the perfect way to propose because I am very good with figuring out surprises!  Without mentioning this to him, I’ve always wanted my engagement proposal to be “filmed” in some way with video or pictures (for memories).

So before I get started about the proposal, I wanted to give you a little background and a few more details.  Ryan recently graduated from college and got hired with Jentezen Franklin’s ministry at Kingdom Connection (Free Chapel).  So before he started his new job, he wanted to come see me!

Saturday, May 29th, Ryan and his Aunt Patti came to visit me.  They get to my parent’s house and I was show his aunt my house.  During the time that aunt Patti and I were in the back of the house, clever Ryan was in the kitchen getting permission from my dad to ask for my hand in marriage, and of course my daddy said YES!  Well my mom decided to go in the kitchen to see what they were talking about.  So dad told Ryan not to say anything to her because she may slip up and say something.  Well she kept asking so Ryan told her and she started to cry, tears of joy.

In the meantime, Patti and I are still in the back of the house talking.  Ryan then come to the back of the house to stall us while mama composed herself!  So Patti, Ryan and I ending up leaving sometime after that.  Then the three of us headed down to the beach. Ryan took us on a dolphin watch boat ride!  On the way, Patti was so kind to take pictures for us and everything!  During the boat ride, Ryan had asked “Why were your parents acting so weird?”  Little did I know what he was talking about so I just told him I didn’t notice anything.  So once I said that, he knew I had no clue about what happened at the house.

Well back to the boat ride, once we finished viewing the dauphins, it was time to head back to shore.  The sun was setting at this point and the boat was traveling back somewhat faster then it was when we were heading out to sea, so it kinda made it hard to stand.  Ryan and I finally sat down and he says this, “You know I made your mama cry today.”  Summer – “You did??? When? Why?”

I was confused as all get out, he pulls out a cute purple heart box.  The box was the perfect size for a pair of ear rings in which that’s what I immediately thought.  As I’m opening up the box, Ryan asks “WILL YOU MARRY ME??”  Shocked by what I see as he is asking me, the following words came out of my mouth, “No way.”

BUT listen… that “no way” was a “no way I can’t believe what I’m seeing” (expecting earrings).  After realizing he just asked me to marry him, I turned to him and said “YES.”  At that very moment, I instantly became the happiest girl in the world!

As I said in the beginning, everything was PERFECT!  I even got my picture of our engagement!

And yes, the most asked question, “Did you cry?” …I did tear up when he was telling me everything he loved about me and why he wanted me to be his beautiful bride! 
MY LOVE FOR YOU GROWS MORE AND MORE EVERYDAY!  THANK YOU FOR LOVING AND EXCEPTING ME FOR ME!  I CAN’T WAIT TO ASY “I DO!”

Actual Picture of the Boat Ride!

This is just the perfect description of all consumer printers.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

I discovered just last night that my server had gone down for more than a whole day!
This was something on my provider’s side and not mine.
What had happened was, even though I paid my bill for my sever on time, they had already queued my account for deactivation and somehow it didn’t get pulled from that queue until I had to actually call support and complain.
So, my statistics have dropped to almost nothing for the past three days and I don’t like that!
Something I found also was that not all the Weekly Digest emails went out on schedule as a side-effect to all the down time, as well as my back-ups and everything else that has a scheduled cron job!
So, here is a nice brand new post going to everyone that we are back up and running! So come read the content and glance at the advertisers!
And, just for a quick heads up. With my new job and actually working 40+ hours a week now, I will try my best to keep the content rolling in. And my book scheduled completed dates are also having to be pushed back.
So thanks for the support and I hope to see ya soon!

While I was coming up with ideas on how to animate the MOTION logo, here is the other idea I pursued. The feel I was going for was something like a sports team running through the paper at the beginning of the game. It is a good idea…. but the glass animation idea was a better one for this project.

Hope you still like this idea! Let me know if you want to have your logo with something similar to this!

Let me know if you liked it!

Where Beginning Start...

“Hum, he’s cute, I don’t mind holding his hand” were my first thoughts about Ryan Farmer.

Picture this with me.  It was July 31, 2009 and the place was the Mustard Seed Orphanage in Jamaica. It was blazing hot as Amanda Coursey and I were traveling to the orphanage to meet up with our pastor, Frank Allen, for a media promotion. While we were heading to the orphanage we were so excited because we knew that we would be meeting up with Phillip Medlin (the funniest person we knew) and the teenager he was bringing to help carry all the video equipment. Instead of a teen, he brought Ryan Farmer!

When introduced to Ryan, it was fast and a little forgettable, not because of Ryan, but due to the fact that I was getting fussed out by Pastor for my dress was showing “too much” of my shoulders. Towards the end of the media promo, we formed a circle and held hands to pray. To my left was Pastor, to my right was Amanda, and to her right was Ryan. Understand this, Amanda is very funny on who hands she holds with, so she pulled me to the right side of her and now I was standing next to Ryan. I looked at him and thought, “Hum, he’s cute, I don’t mind holding his hand.” This was were it all began.

After getting to know Ryan over the next month, I found that he was an amazing young man and we decided to start a relationship. All I can say is God works in the best of ways and I am truly thankful for Ryan! I wasn’t looking for anyone at the time and prayed and ask God to send the right one my way. During the same time, Ryan was praying the exact same prayer.

We didn’t go to Jamaica looking for love, but to complete the work of the Lord and in the mean time, He blessed us with each other!

I’m looking forward to what God has in store for Ryan and I. Until then, I will enjoy every minute I spend with him!

I am proud to say that I am a VERY honored and blessed to be Ryan’s girlfriend! Actually, as of May 29th, I can now say that I am very blessed to be Ryan’s FIANCÉ!

Summer Harris

I love you, Alan Ryan Farmer with all my heart! You and I, you and I ALWAYS!

This is in honor of my aunt. Who thought her wireless mouse was broken….

But then I put new batteries in it.

…. I hope she knows what to do when her wireless keyboard is “broken.”

Enjoy!

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/computers

This piece of work is one of my favorites. For one thing, I love doing media for Youth Camp…. especially for my very own youth camp in North Georgia. I was very (surprised) honored when my friend Phillip Medlin down in Atlanta called me that night and asked if I could do some animating on a logo the state office had gotten designed. So here is that back story. Hope everyone in GA enjoys. I’ll try to keep it not-so-much technical and more realistic…. I mean short.

So here is the original design I was sent….

Original Motion Camp Logo

I had to keep the original design as much as I can. So that is no problem. I actually do like the swirl in the back.

So the first thing I had to do is to separate the swirl from the rest of the picture. Easy enough since both sides are identical and one side doesn’t have anything meshing with it. Then I just had to guess the font. Being on a mac this was kinda hard to do. However, I thought to myself, “This was probably done on a windows.” So, my first guess was the default font for Windows XP…. Arial!

My next step was to trace the paths of the swirl and export it to Illustrator. From there I finally was able to get into my program of choice, Cinema4D.

After editing the spline points, extruding and adding text (also extruding) and a few other polishing tasks I had a wire-frame draft of the 3D version of the logo.

Basic Wire-frame

You would think the hard part was done, but this hour of work was only the beginning! What did I have left to do? Well, since this wasn’t just a still logo reconditioning, I had some animating to do. You would think that a 5-10 second animation wouldn’t be that much work for just a few objects. But believe me, I only got the basic animation how it was going to be after about 4 days of work.

So, after a few more days of getting the materials (colors) on everything and adding a little glass here is the final product and a few of the stills we used for print and other places.

Hope you enjoyed this first look into my workflow. And if you have a flat logo you would like me to work on, I am still young and cheap. Let me know if you have anything you want turned into a good graphic or animation!

draft_0_0002

Frame_0094- Yes, it is actual glass

Next Week, I will unveil the concepts the client didn’t like. But the draft renders might inspire mine or your next project!

HINT: Cloth

Welcome to the end of the first year of BlogRyan.net!

(And my first Professional Job Announcement)

Wow. All I can say is WOW! I never imagined everything that has happened in the past year. I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t think I could even remember everything that has happened to me between my first post and now. I’m gonna try to keep this anniversary post short. But I’ll just tell you, this is one of the hardest posts I have tried to form. It has taken me almost all of May 2010 to throw together this just one post. I mean, it’s almost impossible to mesh a whole year into one article. I’m going to only hit the high points, and work from exactly one year ago to now.

So why did Ryan Farmer start a blog? Well, I really don’t know myself. But one week while just beginning summer school at Lee University, I was starting to get bored. I also had almost no person to talk to besides my mom, Kim Farmer, and I needed someplace less confining than FaceBook to tell everyone about myself- especially the tech side. I needed a place to showcase my video projects and iPhone/Mac related conquests. So, therefore on the 26th day of May 2009 a small WordPress blog was born! Oh, and I will mention EVERYTHING was accomplished the first two months through iPhone OS 3 beta and the developer only tethering. This was quite a test of patience for me.

After a few weeks, my summer got busy and for a while I didn’t even get five posts published in a whole month! If you want an example of an undedicated and slow blogger, then this was the place not to keep up with. But I am going to set the record straight and give a sample of what I can remember of my busy life back then: North GA Youth Camp media, Jamaica Mission Trip where I met my beautiful and perfect girlfriend, a reasonably busy semester of college at Lee University, and a cross cultural/Christmas trip to VA.

So, beginning this past January, I have set up everything here on a schedule and tried to stay at least 10 articles ahead. You have seen “Humor Monday” take it’s place as the most traffic each week. Recently I have published on Tuesdays other authors called “Guest Articles.” This has helped the user base grow from twenty-something to over 300 subscribers! I’ll post an occasional deep personal thought on Wednesdays, and finally a Tech related article on Fridays right before the “Weekly Digest” is sent to all the new customers… I mean subscribers… Oh, and I have had a few great advertisers on the site to help with the professionalism of the blog to stay at hopefully high standards.

In March 2010 with the help of my then room mate Chris Jackson, BlogRyan.net received some major design upgrades with the famous Thesis WordPress theme. After that, everything has been smooth and fast. The past three months has seen the biggest growth in traffic of the whole year. Just a side note for potential advertisers, BlogRyan.net had over 10,000 United States visitors alone in the first year! I would say for a brand new site that is an achievement!

So, to sum it up: I graduated from Lee University with a BA in Telecom, had more visitors than I could have dreamed of, met the girl of my life, and am now looking to start my career. Oh, and I guess I will officially announce it now. This week I was hired at Free Chapel Church in Gainesville, GA as a media guy. For those that know it better by it’s pastor, Jentezen Franklin, you may start to see some of my work on TV soon if you watch the show!

But what about the title of this post? Well, I guess I’ll see ya in six months for part 4!

So, this is in fact the biggest news ever posted on BlogRyan.net.  I am about to reveal to you the greatest secret you’ve probably ever been told (most certainly the greatest about Ryan Farmer).

Myth #5: Ryan Farmer is an Actual Person

If you said, “I knew it,” well, you’re exactly the kind of sci-fi geek that would read this kind of blog.  Since we’re getting close to a year I figured it was time to reveal the truth.  Ryan Farmer is in fact my blabbering, messy, unkind, and irrational alternate personality.  Since I live my life as Chris Jackson the other part of my brain had to have a creative outlet and so I started this blog.  It gives my crazy side a place to play.  So there it is.  The truth about Ryan Farmer, from the one who knows him best.

Ok, so this is where the non-sci-fi geeks say, “I knew it,” and its your turn to be right.  I’m just kidding.  That was all a joke (or so you think, I’m really not sure any more).

This post does have a purpose though.  It’s been about two weeks since graduation.  Ryan has gone back home and so have I.  So now life with Ryan has turned into life without Ryan, and I have some reflections on that as well.

First of all, let me say that I think he misses me (at least a little).  I’m pretty sure we talked on the phone for at least an hour the other day.  It’s kind of strange to not feel so needed either.  I mean no one else in my life needs a translator, maid, chef, filter, arranger, re-arranger…  Wow, no wonder he misses me.  The only one around for that these days is his mom, and she’s probably not as nice as I am about it (no offense Kim Farmer).  Even without the thought of Ryan not being around, going back home is always strange.  And this year even stranger as I am doing an internship in preparation for my Senior year at Lee.  Not so sure I’m ready for the real world.  As Nationwide says “Life Come at You Fast.”  IT seems to be going faster every day, and growing away from a friend I’ve had for the last two years is just one more reminder of that.  I guess we all have these moments in life, when you look around and realize that time is moving past you, and sometimes seems to be going faster than you are ready for.  But hey, “Ready or not, here it comes.”

Chris Jackson

Really Just a Big Sap (At least I can get rid of this Maid Outfit…)

Since I have an interview tomorrow, I decided to post this comic strip of what not to be and do at an interview:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/interviewees

A while back when I was just starting to get into the 3D scene, and trying to get good looking renders from my application, I had a hard time getting started. I had no idea what I was doing, and rendering was no exception. My preferred application (right now) is Cinema 4D R11.5 from Maxon. Getting images and sequences out of that program was totally a different monster than Compressor or After Effects.

But this isn’t an article on rendering. It is about Global Illumination or for short “GI.” I posted a few weeks ago an article on some good GI presets, but I didn’t go into what GI was or how it is successfully used. Well, this is everything I should have already posted weeks ago.

I can’t even begin to explain what GI is without showing exactly what it does and looks like. To the people close to me, you know how big something is when I call it my “easy button.” and this sure is one of them!

With GI

Just notice how much better the picture with GI looks than the one without.

No GI

I call GI my easy button because it basically lights my scenes for me! Now that doesn’t exactly reflect what the feature actually does, but it sure does seem that way most of the time. Lights still have to be placed in the near-right places; the GI just adds the realistic shadows, reflections and the light depth.

Hopefully later I will be able to go deeper into explaining GI. But for now, I’ll just leave this intro article at my simple illustration!

Save 10% on cmiVFX.com from BlogRyan.net

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I would just say that after just the few videos I have watched on the site, my next projects are going to bring in more pay than I could have ever considered!

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cmiVFX training will take your skill set to the next level, increasing your ability to expose yourself to different avenues of learning and give you an edge over the competition. They identify problems in everyday workflow and present you solutions that are efficient and easy to learn. Their training is direct and not full of fluff, so as not to waste your time, this way you have limited down time and maximum production time which is always the priority.

One of my friends sent me this in an email a few weeks ago. And also I haven’t had a very personal blog about religion in a while. So, here is what I think is a very accurate, and should be published somewhere, article. I will remind you that these are not my words, but I totally agree with the content.

The Muslim Belief

This is a true story and the author, Rick Mathes, is a well-known leader in prison ministry. The man who walks with God always gets to his destination. If you have a pulse you have a purpose.

The Muslim religion is the fastest growing religion per capita in the United States , especially in the minority races!!!

Last month I attended my annual training session that’s required for maintaining my state prison security clearance. During the training session there was a presentation by three speakers representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths, who explained each of their beliefs.

I was particularly interested in what the Islamic Imam had to say. The Imam gave a great presentation of the basics of Islam, complete with a video.

After the presentations, time was provided for questions and answers.

When it was my turn, I directed my question to the Imam and asked: ‘Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand that most Imams and clerics of Islam have declared a holy jihad [Holy war] against the infidels of the world and, that by killing an infidel, (which is a command to all Muslims) they are assured of a place in heaven. If that’s the case, can you give me the definition of an infidel?’

There was no disagreement with my statements and, without hesitation, he replied, ‘Non-believers!’

I responded, ‘So, let me make sure I have this straight. All followers of Allah have been commanded to kill everyone who is not of your faith so they can have a place in heaven. Is that correct?’

The expression on his face changed from one of authority and command to that of a little boy who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.’

He sheepishly replied, ‘Yes.’

I then stated, ‘Well, sir, I have a real problem trying to imagine Pope John Paul commanding all Catholics to kill those of your faith or Dr. Stanley ordering all Protestants to do the same in order to guarantee them a place in heaven!’

The Imam was speechless!

I continued, ‘I also have a problem with being your friend when you and your brother clerics are telling your followers to kill me!

Let me ask you a question: Would you rather have your Allah, who tells you to kill me in order for you to go to heaven, or my Jesus who tells me to love you because I am going to heaven and He wants you to be there with me?’

You could have heard a pin drop as the Imam hung his head in shame. Needless to say, the organizers and/or promoters of the Diversification training seminar were not happy with my way of dealing with the Islamic Imam, and exposing the truth about the Muslims’ beliefs.

In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President!

Myth #4: Ryan Farmer is Logical

Yes, speaking without ever using sentences, listing completely unrelated facts and leaping to unreasonable conclusions, and arriving at solutions by disagreeing with everyone around you until they make a decision for you is 100% logical.

There’s a pizza joint in Cleveland called Lupi’s.  We were driving by one day and it inspired possibly the most “logical” conversation Ryan and I have ever had.  He says he would never name a restaurant any thing that started with the letter “L.”  Not being smart enough to really understand Ryan, I ask him why.  And he says “Name me a good restaurant that starts with an L.”  Well, there you have it folks.  If you ever start up a restaurant, the name shouldn’t start with an L.  It can’t possibly be any good if it does.  I have to say I was quite impressed with this piece of logic.  I mean who else would have pieced together the fact that restaurants that start with L aren’t any good.  I sure wouldn’t.

The fact that we later named off a several very good restaurants beginning with “L,” Longhorn being one of Ryan’s favorites, does not discount this work of deduction in the slightest.

Chris Jackson

Always a Step Behind

A blonde calls her boyfriend and says, “Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle and I can’t figure out how to get started.”

Her boyfriend asks, “What is it supposed to be when it’s finished?”

The blonde says, “According to the picture on the box, it’s a rooster.”

Her boyfriend decides to go over and help with the puzzle.

She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table.

He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, “First of all, no matter what we do, we’re not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a rooster.”

He takes her hand and says, “Second, I want you to relax. Let’s have a nice cup of tea, and then…”

He said with a deep sigh… ”Let’s put all the Corn Flakes back in the box.”

I know it has been a whole week and I haven’t posted anything.

But here are my excuses:
Ran out of time for scheduling the humor Monday post
Chris hasn’t finished the second to last “Ryan” post
I graduated last weekend
My beautiful girlfriend from VA has been here for almost a week, and I try not to even touch a computer when she is in town
I am trying to clean/move/organize all my stuff from college back home and then hopefully get a job and move to another city again
Oh, I am waiting on a second interview to be scheduled, the lady was sick and had to postpone he meeting
I’m getting ready for the interview
Running up some major bandwidth on Lynda.com (getting ready for a new job hopefully)
Did i mention I graduated From Lee? Yeah
Last week (when I usually write for the next week) all i did was finals, clean the apartment and graduation practice
And about five million other things in the past week and half.

So next week I will have everything back in order and will have you at least three posts to enjoy!

Still pulling my hair out,
Ryan Farmer

Myth #3: Ryan Farmer is a Nice Person

Synonyms for Nice: Kind, Friendly, Welcoming, Concerned for Others, Benevolent

Antonyms for Nice: Unpleasant, Biting, Unkind, Ryan Farmer

Ryan, Summer and I are standing on the tennis courts when a young woman on the tennis team opens the gate and informs us that she has the court has been reserved for a lesson in about ten minutes.  We carry on playing until the two young boys she will be teaching arrive.  We are disappointed that we only got to play for about 15 minutes, but understand the situation…or so I think.  On the way out the gate (about 2 feet from the boys’ mother) Ryan mumbles “It’s cool, we only pay thousands a year to attend Lee.”  I’m stunned.  Summer goes “Ryan, that’s not nice” in a sweet I love you sort of way.  I’m still stunned.

You may think the surprising part of this story is Ryan’s comment.  I mean, he seems pretty friendly most of the time.  The truth is that the surprising part of this story is that I was in the least bit shocked by his comment.  After two years spent with him I should be used to these things.  I mean first of all, he really can’t stand kids.  And he certainly doesn’t think some other also paying student should get to kick him out of anywhere.

So I realize this one incident is not definitive proof of Ryan’s character, but take it from a guy who knows.  He might not tell you what he thinks, but he’s definitely thinking it.  If he’s looking at you he’s probably judging you, but that’s OK.  As he says “I might be mean, but I’m accurate.”

…

Chris Jackson

Filter

First, we state that women require time and money:

Women = time * money

…and as we all know, “time is money”:

Time = Money

…and therefore:

Women = Money * Money = (Money)^2

…and because “Money is the root of all evil”:

Money = sqrt(evil)

…therefore:

Women = (sqrt[evil])^2

…and we are forced to conclude that:

Women = Evil

Myth #2 Ryan Farmer is an Organized Person

So Ryan really seems to have his stuff together right?  I mean, he has a blog, he makes cool videos, he seems to know about finances and the ultimate proof is that he is about to graduate.  Sounds pretty organized, right?

Well, you’re right, Ryan has a very organized system which he uses to sort everything. If it is paper, it either lays on the kitchen table, the coffee table, the dresser, or the living room floor. If it is a box, it finds a spot against a wall. If it has an Apple logo on it (trash or not), he keeps it. (This usually means laying it on top of the papers) If it is a cable, wire, cord, etc. it belongs anywhere and everywhere.

The most important part of his plan to de-clutter the apartment is this last point; If he will need it tomorrow, the next day or within the week (2 or 3 sometimes), it should remain in a convenient place (the coffee table, or in the case of clothing, every seat in the house) until the time comes that he needs to use it, after which it will probably be returned there for future use. As I said, Ryan maintains a very organized system which allows him to function in a space free of distraction (or a place for anyone else to sit).

This level of organization is what enables him to spend time efficiently so that he has time for other pursuits, such as writing this blog. Now just don’t ask me to explain the thought process which gives him the ability to structure his life so well. His thoughts are so far beyond mine I just know I’d be lost trying to unravel those mysteries.

Myth #2—Busted or Not?  I’ll let you decide

Chris Jackson

Full-Time Maid

Just click on the picture to see the article better!

Humor Monday

Myth #1 Ryan Farmer is a Great Communicator

Okay, so maybe you would just say a good communicator, I mean just look at all the things he’s told you about:  Fashion, Technology, Girlfriends, Finances, etc.  Well, you’d be wrong.  In fact, most of the time Ryan doesn’t even use English he just mumbles and makes random noises. (bau is not only a word but sometimes a phrase or even a sentence) The scary thing is that after 2 years I’ve actually learned to understand him.  At moments I’ve even begun to respond in like manner before I even realize its happening…crazy.  Sometimes I have to translate as he attempts speaking to others in this strange, not quite language.  Let me just say, for most people, random bau’s and pew’s do not a conversation make.  Though sometimes I wonder if he’s not a “great communicator” just experimenting on whether or not he can teach a non-existent language by immersion.  Then after (what he considers) a tough day he goes and says something like “I’m suck today” and I remember he’s just weird ol’ Ryan who sometimes forgets how to talk.

I’d say Myth #1—Busted!

Chris Jackson

Roommate to the (in)famous Ryan Farmer

Hello World (or the small portion of it that reads this blog),

I’d like to introduce myself. I am Chris, the one you hear spoken of so often here on BlogRyan.net and the roommate of the famous Ryan Farmer. (Wait, did I just say Ryan was famous? That can’t be right….) I help moderate comments and Guest Posts here at BlogRyan as well as help Ryan on a lot of his web/design/video work.

Over the next few weeks I will be exposing Ryan for who he really is by busting 5 Myths about this young man whose blog you so loyally devote your time to. Come back every week starting this Tuesday to to find out what living with Ryan for two years will teach you. Learn the truth about Ryan Farmer from the person who knows him best (Other than his mom, girlfriend, sister, Phillip…)

Chris Jackson

PS, I do realize there has to be more than one Ryan Farmer in the world, and I promise to try using less hyperbole in the future, but I make no promises.

Excerpt from USA TODAY

The Library of Congress put it simply today in its own tweet, “Library acquires ENTIRE Twitter archive. ALL tweets.”

Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, which means billions of tweets are being archived. Personal, direct messages on Twitter will not be archived.

The library insists it will emphasize tweets with “scholarly and research implications.” Among those highlighted by the Library:

•The first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

•President Obama’s tweet about winning the 2008 election.

The Library has gathered content from the web since it began harvesting congressional and presidential campaign websites in 2000. It stores more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs, websites of candidates for national office, and websites of Members of Congress. It also operates the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, which is collecting, preserving and making available significant digital content.The news came a day after Twitter said it would run ads in search results, breaking a long aversion to advertising.

To read the rest of the article, go to USA TODAY.

iMac Mini

Hopefully the search engines will pick the title up very nicely.
I don’t really have an Apple product called “iMac Mini” even if that is a nice name.
What I actually have is an iPad with dock and wireless bluetooth keyboard!

This seriously feels like an iMac, but smaller. I constantly reach for the mouse or trackpad that doesn’t exist!

So I guess I will throw in my few comments with the pile of other iPad comments. First of all, I literally just got my iPad and the accessories I am using. So I will probably give my opinions a few months down the road on what I think after using the device for a while.
And here are my first thoughts:

Wordpress

It is literally too easy to use! I mean, I have used the iPhone OS for almost three years this June, and the iPad really is just a BIG and faster iPod Touch (and way way faster iPhone!). But, that shouldn’t make you not want it any less. In fact, I am beginning to think just the opposite! With this device, I don’t need an iPod Touch or iPhone. I would probably now be just fine with a regular cheap phone. However, I am very use to having a constant internet connection, so things like instant email or browsing the web or whatever else I am use top doing on the iPhone would have to stop or be replaced somehow. Yes, right now I only have the WiFi iPad and not the 3G version. I have two reasons for that: to avoid the temptation of activating the $30/month cellular fee and the other….. a slightly geekier one…. to have the iPad a few weeks sooner. But, also I didn’t have to spend the extra $129 for the extra connectivity. My next thing I would replace since I have iPad, is my laptop. I currently own the 2.8 Ghz Unibody MacBook Pro. Now why do I need a laptop when I have the iPad? My roommate, Chris, and I were talking about this the other day, but if you have an iPad that can do all your mobile browsing and typing and everything on the go, why even have a laptop? So I am considering selling my brand new laptop, and getting a cheaper and just as powerful small iMac desktop! Now, I don’t know about you, but the sound of $1200 difference in the price and money in the bank instead sounds pretty good to me! So please, leave your comments and let me know what you think about that one!

So I will leave this as a short post. But I will put stuff about the iPad and how I use it in posts often in the coming weeks!

By the way, this whole post was written directly on the iPad in the WordPress app. So those of you who think it is hard to type on the iPad, you should actually try it yourself.

As I write this post (still trying to limit myself to the new iPad) I see that BlogRyan is nearing about 300 email subscribers! While this is a good achievement, my revenues for the advertisements from the sidebar is not more than a few cents a day, on a good day!
So, I am needing some ideas on getting a small revenue stream on the site. I am planning on giving away a nice iPod later when I reach 1k subscribers, but i still need the funds to be able to keep up the giveaways!
So c’mon everyone! Help a guy out and visit my sponsors! And with a few thousand visitors on the site now each month constantly, you might want to try out my premium ads spots. They aren’t pay per click advertising and don’t change during the month. So they get about 500 hits/month!
Thanks everyone and let me know in the comments if you know of any good monetization tools for a small blog!

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep.

Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”

“I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes” replies Watson.

“And what do you deduce from that?”

Watson ponders for a minute. “Well,

Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.
Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.
Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.
Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.
Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe.
But what does it tell you, Holmes?”

Holmes is silent for a moment.

“Watson, you idiot!” he says. “Someone has stolen our tent!”

Dropbox: Beyond the basics

Posted using ShareThis

You get home from the computer store, hastily open the box and plastic and endless twistie-ties, and turn on your new computer! Now what?

Well, for me this is a BIG process. I have the Adobe Suite to install, Final Cut Studio, Cinema 4D, and countless other small applications to set up along with updates galore for all! But I get all this done in around 3 hours or less. How do I do it?

The answer is kinda simple and right to the point: an external hard drive.

You may be thinking now about Time Machine or Carbon Copy or some other backup system, but I’m not talking about this at all. Ok, maybe for my user folders and iTunes library and preferences (what DropBox and MobileMe don’t sync) I use Time Machine, but I’m talking about something even bigger! I’m talking about all my applications!

I keep a 500GB hard drive with all my CDs and DVDs as digital images. These are a combination of DMGs, .toast images and .iso images. So the logic behind this crazy theory is just this: I hate optical drives cause they are slow and the media is prone to scratches. So let’s convert them all to images and store them on an external HD.

As a result, the difference in install time from a FireWire 800 connection compared to a CD/DVD drive connection is SEVERAL hours, if not days, when the transfer load is about 200GB.

Details:

• Made DVD/CD images with Roxio Toast
• They mount with Disk Image Mounter if Toast isn’t installed
• I also install Windows 7 on another partition and use the same process to install everything
• On another note, I also partition part of my HD right off with a backup of the operating install disk.

Photography has been possessed by a new sensation in the past couple of years known as HDR. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. You’ll be wondering what this is and why photographers, both professionals and amateurs are so crazed by it. I’ll try explaining it as briefly as I can.

Photography in the past twenty or so years has progressed at an extraordinary pace with technological advancements being made so ever frequently. Lenses have come leaps and bounds so have the sensors and both these things along with the new age of processors have made photography uncomplicated. They provide the photographer with great control over what he does and wants, and his difficulties are eased with the cleverness and assistance of the inbuilt processors. But despite these great advancements modern day cameras, even the high end professional ones cannot always capture the true reality that our eyes can see. This is because the sensor in the camera acts like our eyes, but with limitations, it cannot capture all the lights and darks of an image, if you focus on a dark space then all of the scene will be captured with the darkness in mind and the picture will be underexposed (too dark) resulting in the brighter parts of the image lacking detail. Similarly Images can be overexposed when the picture has a very bright area as compared to the rest of the scene, this results in a loss of detail in the dark areas.

These two pictures can give you a general idea of the issues of underexposed and overexposed photos. The detail in the cabin is lost because the image was metered with the backdrop in mind. While in the second photo, the turtle was metered this resulted in the ground loosing detail

Now the question arises, what does HDR do? Well the DR in HDR means dynamic range; range is a term that refers to the amount of colors in an image, from the lightest (white) to the darkest (black). So to sum up, an average photograph has a limited dynamic range therefore it cannot capture all the detail in an image, what HDR does is that it enables us to capture photographs with a much wider dynamic range, giving the photograph much more depth and emotion.

This photograph does a great job of illustrating the power of HDR, despite being a bright day the sky hasn’t been able to underexpose the image, in fact HDR has given great depth to the sky which has really stood out. Then the ship has been captured in great detail, Overall this is a very balanced photograph with a wide dynamic range and attractive contrast.

Now another important question arises, where should a person use HDR instead of normal methods and what should the scene contain? Well the main prerequisite for shooting in HDR is that the scene should be a high contrast one with great variation in light to dark tones, this is because the power of HDR is to reveal as many colors as it can, so naturally the more colors you give it the better the outcome will be. Always try to present a story in the photograph, there must a theme and a emotion in the image that the viewer can refer to. HDR on a whole can be used in a variety of scenarios; I’ll show you some examples.

HDR in Landscapes

Landscape photography is one of the most commonly perused branches of photography and is very popular among amateurs. Landscapes usually provide the highest contrast ratio making them for the use of HDR .

The first picture of a landscape on the left is very dull and doesn’t seem very attractive, the photo was underexposed because the sky was bright with allot of clouds. The second shows the transformation that HDR generates. The photo has much more detail to it with dramatic clouds, shadows and sharpness which presents a sense of scale and beauty to the scenery.

HDR in Cityscapes

The following are photographs of two famous landmarks in Liverpool, England, the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Canning Dock. Both have been taken in HDR and they have the potential to make any person an avid fan of HDR, they are both very inspiring examples to learn from. Cityscapes provide you with allot of subjects and you can narrate many stories.

HDR in Black and White

Black and White photography can be considered to be one the most powerful forms of art, it is ideal for expressing passion and details are heavily exposed. Black and white photography is normally used when colors aren’t expressing themselves correctly/meaningfully. These are two examples.

Hope you’ve got a sufficient overview, in part 2 I’ll be showing what you’ll need in order to capture HDR images and the techniques required. Thanks and Bye!

Q. What’s the Cuban National Anthem?

A. Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

—

Q. Where does an Irish family go on vacation?

A. A different bar.

—

Q. What did the Chinese couple name their tan, curly-haired baby?

A. Sum Ting Wong.

—

Q. What do you call it when an Italian has one arm shorter than the other?

A. A speech impediment.

—

Q. Why aren’t there any Puerto Ricans on Star Trek ?

A. Because they’re not going to work in the future either.

—

Q. Why do Driver Ed classes in redneck schools use the car only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?

A. Because on Tuesday and Thursday, the Sex Ed class uses it.

—

Q. What’s the difference between a southern zoo and a northern zoo?

A. The southern zoo has a description of the animal along with a recipe.

—

Q. Why doesn’t Mexico have an Olympic team?

A. Because all the Mexicans who can run, jump or swim are already in the United States

Well, I would fix the car so I could get to work… but I don’t have the money and I am living week-to-week, just getting by. I hope this doesn’t sound familiar, but I hear it all the time from different people around me.

So, how do you fix this? Well, first of all, it is another of those things that is hard to get started. But this is something EVERYONE needs to start regardless of what your income is. I know I haven’t covered anything about living within your means or anything, but basically this all ties into each other, the Financially sound decisions and stuff.

So we’re on the third paragraph and some of you may still be like, “What is he even talking about now?” I am talking about a glorified saving account, or to be more accurate, a money market account.

This account is something you should never touch except in…. when? ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY!

This isn’t a go buy a car, house, dog, shopping spree, christmas, pay off the credit card, ANYTHING fund. It is something like, well my car needs a new (something big) or my kid had (insert accident) and I need to cover medical bills. Then there is the big one called UN-employment!

So how much should be in an emergency fund? Some people would say six months of expenses, but I would rather be conservative and go up to eight months! Feel free to put more in a money market account but it might be better put in a retirement account or paying off that debt or put in a short-term savings goal. Notice I didn’t say something equal to months of income, but “expenses.”

Now how do you get an emergency fund? You don’t have to do this overnight. This could take years to build up, but is necessary and worth it. It all depends on your income/expenses. Try to find something to take off your expenditure list and put toward your EF. Or while you are doing your budget, put something like 5% of your take-home pay towards this as a “Personal Tax” or something. And then also put whatever is left after you have gone through the month from your budget towards the EF. There is no such thing as extra money.

Now, if an unexpected, substantial expense comes up, and we all know that will happen sooner than later most of the time, you will not have to worry about where the money will come from. You have a secret stash of $$!

And yet, another step closer to financial security!

We hash out a new header graphic for the site every few months. So, here is the most current one in full res:

Full Image (Click to see full render)

So, how did we make this graphic? It’s actually pretty easy!

The scene is a greeble type, and we made it with inspiration from a tutorial HERE.

Our C4D File Download

And also here is an even bigger render (it’s my desktop background) and without the words:

Even BIGGER Render

Thanks and be sure to reTweet and share this with your C4D friends!

A police officer pulls over a speeding car. The officer says, ‘ I clocked you at 80 miles per hour, sir.’

The driver says, ‘Gee, officer I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar gun needs calibrating.’

Not looking up from her knitting the wife says: ‘Now don’t be silly dear, you know that this car doesn’t have cruise control.’

As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, ‘Can’t you please keep your mouth shut for once?’

The wife smiles demurely and says, ‘You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did.’

As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, ‘Dang’it, woman, can’t you keep your mouth shut?’

The officer frowns and says, ‘And I notice that you’re not wearing your seat belt, sir. That’s an automatic $75 fine.’

The driver says, ‘Yeah, well, you see officer, I had it on, but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my license out of my back pocket.’

The wife says, ‘Now, dear, you know very well that you didn’t have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you’re driving.’

And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, ‘WHY DON’T YOU PLEASE SHUT UP??’

The officer looks over at the woman and asks, ‘Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma’am?’

I love this part………..

‘Only when he’s been drinking..’

(I had to reSchedule the “How we made the Header Graphic” post till next week. Not done with the video tutorial)

The term high definition today refers to formats that have more resolution than standard definition (SD) video. In this context, when we discuss resolution its meant to describe how many scan lines (horizontal rows of picture information) make up the video image. As we looked at in an earlier section, the two main SD variations, NTSC and PAL, use 480 lines and 576 lines (respectively).

HD video today:

• There are two resolutions: 1080 or 720 scan lines.
• All HD video is widescreen using an aspect ratio of 16×9, also expressed as 1.78:1.
• Video is scanned either progressively or interlaced.
• There are multiple possible frame rates: 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 59.94 and 60.

Just some personal input…

NEVER buy interlaced. If you buy 720i, then it is the same as buying SD in progressive scan. Same thing as you scale up, just never buy interlaced. It would be better to just buy the next setting down in progressive scan. However, this is my opinion based on using TVs and screens with a computer input, or for playing Blue Ray discs. However, there is a very noticeable difference in progressive and interlaced when it comes to an image that is moving horizontally. It will look jagged where progressive will look smooth. So, for a better overall quality of the picture, always go with progressive.

This is my first major modeling and texturing project in Cinema 4D. You might have seen some small renders on FaceBook or other places, but here is the first completed high quality renders for you!

I am giving 10 of the 901 frames of this animation away in print quality for free.

These would be good to use progressively in a sermon, or for announcements or for bulletins on Easter Sunday.

And just drop me a quick comment in the comments section if you have a minute if you plan to use this!

If you would like the whole 0:30 video, you can buy it on SermonSpice.com for just $5! You can find that here

Remember to right click and “Save As”

Source file (if you would like to render out something yourself): On the Third Day.c4d

Zip File of the HQ Frames for Print: OTTD_HQ_PRINTs.zip

Well as this is a basic tutorial of the topic let’s start by answering some general questions.

Qs: What is a RAW image?

Ans: When using a Professional Camera such as any in the Nikon D range, Sony Alpha range or Cannon EOS range (Cannon has many other professional ranges) the camera has a special format to capture pictures in, called the RAW format. The RAW format is a unique format that has a very high bit rate, this means that the camera lens along with the aid of its processor manages to capture allot of detail in its image, details that your average pc monitor or LCD screen cannot show.

Qs: What’s the benefit of using the RAW format?

Ans: The immense details help in the editing process, e.g. while editing the exposure of the image you are increasing or decreasing the amount of light in the image, when the exposure of the RAW image is increased the light is already present in the image (the software just enables you to see more light in the image). This way the image is as clear and original as if you had taken the picture originally with a higher EV (exposure value) number. The main purpose of using a RAW image is to keep the quality and depth of the image at its maximum so as to achieve the optimum end result.

Qs: What is Adobe Camera RAW?

Ans: Adobe camera RAW is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to directly edit RAW images without having to change the format of the image before editing (Photoshop versions before CS2 couldn’t process RAW images directly). Besides Adobe camera RAW there is also a new program called Adobe Light Room which allows you to edit RAW files directly.

The picture on the right shows you the basic layout of the RAW editor in Light Room. The exact options can only be found in the Camera Raw Photoshop plug-in for its CS4 version.

Qs: What do the different settings and options do?

Ans: Well here’s a basic overview of the software.

Crop Tool: Allows you to crop a section of the image and also allows you to align the image to your taste.

Spot Removal Tool: Lets you correct small imperfections in the image e.g. you sometimes have a lone bird in the sky that doesn’t go well with the composition of the image, this tools allows you to remove that speck in the sky (the bird) by cropping and pasting another bit of sky that is clear.

Red Eye Correction Tool: Basically removes any red eye spots in the eyes of the subjects.

Adjustment Brush: Lets you edit a specific area of the image.

White Balance Tool: One of the best tools around for correcting the white balance of your image (images sometimes have a yellow or blue tone to them). Select the part of the image that you think is white and the software adjusts the rest of the image accordingly.

Temp: The first of the slider adjustments, this allows you to correct the white balance manually, the bar moves from blue from the left towards yellow on the right.

Tint: Another white balance adjustment tool, but this time the colors in focus are green on the left to magenta on the right.

Exposure: As mentioned before exposure controls the amount of light and dark in the image. This setting controls the preference of the user; you can increase or decrease the amount of light in the image.

Recover: Helps to fill light in the dark parts of the image and brings depth into the brighter parts. Works as a correction tool to the Exposure Tool.

Fill light and Blacks: These two allow you to manually increase the amounts of lights and darks in the image. A higher dark tone gives depth to an image.

Brightness: This allows you to adjust the overall brightness of the image, this function only adjusts the midtones of the image i.e. the middle part of the histogram (I need a whole tutorial to explain the histogram), is short this function doesn’t’ affect the brightest of darkest areas of the image.

Contrast: This sets the intensity of color in the picture, this too only affects midtones.

Clarity: This is a great tool; it helps to bring out details in landscapes and buildings, and smoothes out the skin in portrait pictures.

Vibrance: Brings out the colors of the image without affecting its saturation.

Saturation: This adjusts the amount of colors in the image; the slider goes from no color (black and white) to intense overdose of color.

I hope you liked this brief intro into RAW editing.

Please do comment so that I’m encouraged to right more. Thanks!

—————————————————————————————————-

Daniel Aswell

A few words from the Author:

Well, I’m currently waiting for June to arrive. I’m all free these days because I’ll be going to Newcastle (England) to study Interior Architecture. I’m basically a fine arts student who’s got a professional photographer for an uncle.

The purpose of my writing these posts is to 1) Share some of my knowledge and 2) To make some quick bucks so that I can get my mother a really awesome parting gift.

Oh, and my name is Danyal (It’s spelled daniel as well).

A blonde made several attempts to sell her old car. She was having a lot of problems finding a buyer because the car had 340,000 miles on it. She discussed her problem with a brunette that she worked with at a bar. The brunette suggested, “There may be a chance to sell that car easier, but it’s not going to be legal.” “That doesn’t matter at all,” replied the blonde. “All that matters is that I am able to sell this car.” “Alright,” replied the brunette. In a quiet voice, she told the blonde: “Here is the address of a friend of mine. He owns a car repair shop around here. Tell him I sent you, and he will turn the counter back on your car to 40,000 miles. Then it shouldn’t be a problem to sell your car.” The following weekend, the blonde took a trip to the mechanic on the brunette’s advice.

About one month after that, the brunette saw the blonde and asked, “Did you sell your car?” “No!” replied the blonde. “Why should I? It only has 40,000 miles on it.”

Update: By the way, the posts here are a month or so planned and written in advance. So, just to let you know, since the posting of this I have been in MoGraph A LOT! So, just to spark your interest, the head banner and footer of this site as of right now were done in MoGraph (and 5 hours of rendering) and I am recording the tutorial on how to reproduce the same thing right now! The post will be up this Friday! So be sure to reTweet this and come back Friday, and Subscribe!

Well, I will still say that I am VERY new to Cinema 4D. I am constantly amazed at it’s power and features every day!

So this week I was looking at what else C4D can do, and I found the module called MoGraph. This is the system that adds real-ish physics and density. Like I said, I am still new at this whole application, so I know there are TONS of other things MoGraph can do, but this is just showing my initial projects I played around with.

This is just a short video with me playing around in MoGraph. No frills, but a nice ending to make it not so boring.

Anyways, for you who like this, or want to see how it works, or just want this as  a starting point for your own dominoes video, here are the source files, and the non-YouTube video file for you to enjoy!

Remember to right click and “Save As”

Cinema 4D Source File

Dominoes_1.mov

And if you have any input, comments, or suggestions, let me know in the comments!

And feel free to share this with anyone!

We have been putting it off for a while now, but now that we are experiencing a huge growth (600% in February), we are totally changing the site design. We are already missing the old look of the site, but we know the new design will be much better!

So, until the new site is fully completed, please don’t make bad faces at the ugly-ness of the work in progress.

Ok, you can, cause that is what we are doing!

There are several aspects to high definition video (HD). There are multiple possible frame rates, frame sizes, in both interlace and progressive formats. In addition, its become industry “practice” to use general terminology that’s less than precise. This and the next couple articles are devoted to demystifying basic aspects of HD including:

• The basic standards and variations.
• What frame rates we should shoot for various applications.
• How terminology is misused and what people “really” mean.

With the user base growing, I have decided that it will take more than one writer on BlogRyan.net to help the site to grow. So, I am opening up the floor to anyone who would like to write for BlogRyan.

What’s the incentive?

Well, if just getting your thoughts, tutorials, website links published on a stable and continually growing web site isn’t enough, then we do have some other motivation.

If your article is picked and scheduled to post in BlogRyan, we can actually pay through PayPal. How much? Well, I’m giving it a few weeks and opening up a new poll where you the audience can easily and anonymously vote on how much an article (200-800 words) is worth.

[poll id="3"]

So, what kind of content would appear on BlogRyan.net?

• Tech related articles: Video, Audio, Photoshop, tutorials, Games, anything electronic. This doesn’t necessarily have to be at the professional level, this could be a starting place for your own stuff
• Financial Articles: Geared for “Financially Sound Decisions” posting.
• Funny Jokes: something that would show up in “Humor Monday”
• And after all this, I am looking for almost anything interesting and well written

We will not allow any content that is:

• Negative towards anyone, (except for a tech war)
• Nudity
• Cursing
• Spam (of course)

We will accept articles reposted from other web sites. However, we will only use them if we have permission to repost them with a link and trackback to their article. We also will not likely publish the article unless we are short on other’s original content. And we will NOT pay for a rehash of another article. However, if you are the original author of the article in the first place, then feel free to disregard this whole paragraph and post away!

When will we start accepting content? RIGHT AWAY!

If you would like to start writing submissions, you just have to register as an official User on BlogRyan.net here: http://blogryan.net/wp-login.php?action=register

Need something to write about? We are working on a page with a list of things we want to have articles of and that will 99% of the time be selected for publishing! So don’t worry that you won’t have anything to write about!

So, we hope that many of you will take advantage of this opportunity to get published and even make a little money on the side!

[contact-form]

So, February is finally over along with the $10 gift card giveaway.

That means there is another giveaway now for March! The payout is bigger of course, and the march towards 1,000 subscribers continues!

So, I have had a month to think about the giveaways and here is what I have come up with.

My goal is 1,000 subscribers.

$50 Giveaway in March (the giveaway is different each month). This is if I reach 500 subscribers! If I don’t, the contest will roll over to April.

Current and past subscribers are entered into the drawing each month.

The month after I reach 1,000 subscribers there will be an iPod Nano (8GB or the current equivalent to $149) giveaway to a random subscriber on the subscriber list.

So, follow me @rrfarmer

and

and tell your friends, re-tweet the contest, post this on FaceBook, befriend me on FaceBook and whatever else you can do to spread the word!

Well, I usually schedule all my entries  a week to a month in advance. But this one really deserves attention the day it happens.

This morning (Feb. 26th 2010) This blog hit a major milestone….

We hit the 1,000 unique hits in just under a month!

Major Milestone | BlogRyan.net Hits 1,000 Unique Views!

Now, this is probably because of the ongoing BlogRyan promotions and more posts than usual in a month. So hopefully the number of hits won’t decrease in the coming months, but continue on the curve that has seemed almost exponential in the past three months.

So I guess I will hint at what I am cooking up for March. As most have probably figured out, my goal is to have 1K subscribers as soon as possible. What kind of prize would you want in March? I’m thinking it may be something around $50 in prizes. In February, my subscribers went from four to 36 in three weeks! That is still not very many in the big picture, but looking at the stats in a more positive way, that would be about a 900% increase!

So, thanks for everyone’s support! And remember to let your friends know of what is going on @BlogRyan.net! I am cooking up some good content for the next few months for the techies, and the normal people alike! Right now, being diversified is quite difficult. But I think my structure and schedule will work good for the audience!

My Schedule: (Still in draft form, but here is some insight at what BlogRyan will look like)

Sunday: It’s a day of rest, gosh. Everyone Knows that!

Monday: Humor Monday

Tuesday: Guest Content (I’m about to start accepting guest authors, btw.)

Wednesday: Some Personal (thought provoking) post from the mind of Ryan Farmer.

Thursday: Nothing planned for today, just the Weekly Digest eMails going out around 1pm EST

Friday: Tech Related Posts. (C4D, After Effects, FCP, Photoshop, Web Design, SermonSpice)

Saturday: This is a brainstorm and catch up day for me. I work on projects and stuff. Probably the busiest day of the week for me. I usually take this day to design and polish web sites and videos.

In my so far… short… experience with Cinema 4D, I have found that one of the hardest things to do for a scene is to light it properly. So I discovered the Advanced render module and Global Illumination. This made lighting more realistic, and easier. But, it adds sometimes HOURS to the render time. But it is usually worth it.

But, there are always people out there who will make things easier for you…. (Please don’t take this in all ways)

For example, the guy over at Hello Luxx has provided everyone with some amazing GI presets!

So, I have copied the download here. And below are some screenshots of a basic cube with cut outs using the presets… Amazing!

GI Presets Screenshots

Well, after a few more days of working, we have a few more things finished, and being worked on. We now have more options and un-decided design questions than we had before.

Foyer? Yes. Balcony? Yes. Chairs or Pews? Chairs.

How to get to the balcony? What shape is the foyer? Backstage? Sound booth placement? Type of ceiling? Light placement? What is the stage layout? Projectors? What goes on the walls? How high should the walls be? Even have an outside? Parking lot and lights?

Yeah, I stopped there. I’m keeping these updates/previews short. So, on to the current screenshots.

Basic Finished Sanctuary

Another of Chris' Light Structures, with actual lenses in the cans.

I can’t stop watching this. AMAZING dialogue and effects!

First of all, I would like to ask you: How would you finance a car?

I could bet that most people would say to have a good credit score and try to finance it in a car loan, wrap it up in a mortgage, or get a line of credit through something. Then have a $200-$600/month car payment. And, after five years finally have it payed off.

As I am still young, and have never had to finance a car. So, all this is just inspired from Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman and many other financially-minded people I follow. If you have anything to add, just leave me a comment! I’m open for discussion and correction.

So, back to the car thing.

When you are first buying a car, get something small and cheap. I’m thinking around $5k and under. Don’t have to get a loan. Buy this car used, and with cash outright. AND, at the same time, start putting the equivalent of a car payment inside a savings/money market account.

Let’s say you did this for two years @ $300/month + 1% interest = About $7,300

So, if you could get $2700 out of that $5k car + what you saved = $10k

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that a $10 used car could buy a pretty decent vehicle.

Just to get to the end, I’m going to do this for about six years. Staying with the decent $10k used car, and saving $300/month + 1% interest = About $22k in the bank!

Let’s compare that to a five year car loan on a car loan for $22k:

$300/month payment @ 6% = About $26k total cost of car

And I wouldn’t stop there, I would do this until I could get the car of my dreams!

So, I have never bought a car or gotten a loan for anything. I also would think that a car payment/month would be more than $300/month. Actually, I hope my math is correct, but financing the car would cost about $125/month more than paying for it through savings. $125/month is a huge chunk of change for me especially! That is my food budget for a month! So in colclusion, the ending to this advice is this: Do what your grandparents told you to do and save your money instead of getting it now and paying dearly for it later!

Now, for those of you that I just saved hundreds a month on a car payment, how ’bout you share some of that cash with me? (Click on an advertisement or advertise for yourself!)

So, for the record, this is the ninth month of my blogging here. And as usual, here are my latest stats for the past 3 months, which are very satisfying for me! These stats have doubled in the past two months! I thought January was a big month, but February looks like it is going to beat it!

Well, I guess this is the intro to my newest project. My room mate Chris and I were at cheap tacos night and talking about what we have always wanted to do- design a church! We were talking about how we would deck it out with the coolest, modern style everything, and it hit us…. We should get some good experience in Cinema 4D with modeling structures, and also do something we have always wanted to do! So, this week we have made a good start on this MASSIVE project: Modeling a semi-realistic 3D Church!

So… I have decided to keep my readers informed on our progress. I’ll be posting a small article every so often on our progress and some screenshots. Also, we would like ideas on what else we should put in our church model. I might be able to include some polls to get some accurate results for decisions. So please leave feedback on what you like and what you don’t!

We also intend to have this project on SermonSpice.com for sale with some good things in it! Maybe a “Welcome to Church” countdown, or a looping background? We are still brainstorming how we could actually use this for the actual ministry. If you have any ideas, let us know! If we use your idea, there will probably be some $$ coming your way!

So anyways, after a whole day of work, We got a few things finished/almost-finished:

Stage and Stairs

Glass Door into Sanctuary

Light Bar- and Chris' unique attention to detail

Heart Video

I have posted this as an animation loop and the source files on the Subscriber’s site.

It includes this nice graphic, I can send it to you at any resolution that you would like, the full loop video, and the C4D source project file. Oh yeah, and the illustrator file to make the heart!

I decided to quickly come up with a nice Valentines day animation that to sell on SermonSpice.com (only $5). Chris helped me greatly, and this still took about 4 days to make. And now I give it to BlogRyan.net readers. Hope you enjoy this!

I’ll also have a tutorial on how I made this soon, I am still trying to piece together how I am going to do the tutorials in the future. I have to get all my branding materials together before I can start the whole recording/edit/distribute process.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Yep, I am really trying to promote subscription to my blog hard this month.

The title of this post basically tells everything….

I am giving away $10 this month to a random subscriber of my blog. Just subscribe to my blog before Feb 28th and you are good to go!

I will send you via email delivery, a $10 gift card to iTunes, Amazon, PayPal, whatever you would like just as long as it can be sent through email.

And follow me on Twitter @rrfarmer, I will be tweeting this almost daily, so be sure to follow and then re-Tweet. Tweeting is not required. However it would be really appreciated if you followed me (rrfarmer) and retweeted the contest.

Any questions? Just send me a quick message on the contact page or comment here!

Oh, and stay here, cause future planned giveaways include a $50 gift certificate when subscribers reach 10k, and an iPod Touch around 50k subscribers.

And hey, you want all this potential traffic seeing your blog/site? Advertising on my site is only $5/month! You can’t beat that!

Thanks!

I decided to post a story that was very good for Valentines week. So I remembered this story my room mate Chris Jackson had told me he did a few years ago when he moved away from home to go off to college and start the long distance part of his relationship with his girlfriend, Jennifer. I was very amazed. So without further explanation,

“I hadn’t seen Jennifer for almost two months. I wanted to do something special for her, so I decided that on my way out of town I was going to pick up a dozen roses. This just didn’t seem quite special enough though, so I decided to get creative. I went to the craft store and bought a nice silk rose, that looked almost real. When I picked up the flowers from the florist, I opened the box and put the fake rose in, and a note that said, “I’ll love you till the last one dies.” 7 hours later I arrived at her house, a little worried the roses had wilted. I went inside and gave her the flowers. Of course she read the note, and was pretty confused at first, but I told her to count the roses. There were thirteen, and the last one she saw was the silk rose. She started crying and then laughing, because she was so surprised by my wittiness. She still keeps the rose on her dresser, by our picture 2 years later.” -Chris Jackson

Wow! He is good!

I have made a 3D Glass Cross in Cinema 4D. I have the blue one for sale on Sermonspice.com (Link)

I have a poll at the bottom of this post. I want you to vote on which color you like the best!

I also have published this for BlogRyan.net readers to download for free at the Subscriber’s page.

The winner will be the next animation I’ll submit to Sermonspice.com for sale.
Why not do them all at once? Well, let me have your computer for 23 hours to render the animation, and I can still only get one done a day, I mean, I want to do other things on my computer too besides watching it render. For those of you that don’t know what rendering is, see this.

Blue

Green

Orange

Red

Yellow

White

Also, please comment on the animation and stuff if you think something needs to be changed or added etc. Feedback is the only way I will know that I’m heading in the wrong or right direction.

Actually, anyone that has real constructive comment will receive the animation for free to use however you like (the one in blue). I might even give it to you if you just say you like it… or hate it. Either way. I’m just trying to get people to comment and get evolved here. Thanks!

Oh yeah, and all my old and new subscribers will get it too. So…. Subscribe!

[poll id="2"]

I try to come up with as much original content as I can. But I found something this morning that I really like…. So here it is: The Economy is so Bad

• I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
• I ordered a burger at McDonald’s and the kid behind the counter asked,”Can you afford fries with that?”
• CEOs are now playing miniature golf.
• If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and ask if they meant you or them.
• Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.
• McDonald’s is selling the 1/4 ouncer.
• Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names.
• Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.
• Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore.
• The Mafia is laying off judges.
• Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.
• Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. Oh Great!! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!
• And, finally…I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck!

CTV Whiteout Graphic

That’s right! The CTV crew is back to work, storyboarding and coming up with wholesome entertainment for all the children of North GA!

Got any ideas?

Send us a message or just comment here!

Don’t know how to explain a few of these without offending anybody… Most of them do correlate to churches I have seen or heard about.
So I won’t and will just let your imagination run wild on these!

Church of the Living Dead
Church of the First Stones (perfect people only)
Church of the Painful Truth
Church of the Dead Weights
Church of the Open Minded
Church of the People Pleasers
Church of the Sugar Water

What Will Jesus Do (for me) Church
Me Church (stole this one from a video)

I would love to hear some more in the comments section! (or actually get any kind of comment at all)

Ok, ok. I know everyone has had to of done this sometime if they are ever bored and they have internet access (most people with electricity I hope by 2010?) But I Googled my own name, “Ryan Farmer” and didn’t find the actual Ryan Farmer of Hiawassee Georgia until…. well, I gave up after page 20. But I did find out that I am one in about a thousand other “Ryan Farmers” out there. But I mean, come on, it is 20X as Dr. P would say, and someone on the Internet as much as me can’t even be found?!?

But this makes me wonder, what if a potential employer wants to find stuff about me before hiring me? I don’t have a MySpace page, my twitter is just a reflection of my blog, and so is my FaceBook page. I have designed around 20 web sites that are out there on the internet, but they are tied to my company name, MacroWebHost.

So what do I do? There are hidden words at the end of this post…

I am guessing at all this, and I hope it all works so that I am at least on the first search page of Google. But I will start embedding my name in the footer (bottom) of all my web sites I design, and not just my company name, and will actually use my name on MacroWebHost.com as the owner or something.

Do this will be one of my New Year Resolutions, to get my real name up in web presence, and get found somehow. I mean, I’m just trying to be original at least in a resolution. What is your resolution? ….lose weight or get out of debt…. That should be something you do all the time and not just the special occasions.

So, this line is for Google to find me here, where I am nice and comfortable:Hello, my name is Ryan Farmer and I live in Hiawassee Ga. If you can read these lines and Ryan Farmer didn’t tell you that they were there, you have too much time on your computer and you should go outside and take a picture of nature or get a dog or something. Thanks!

So, as a last statement, I really went back and forth on this post. Should it be my last one of 2009? Or my first in 2010? So, I decided to be done with last year and make this post one of the first things that happens in 2010! I’m looking forward to what happens in this new decade!

App Screen Shot

Well, this Christmas break I have decided to start something I have been putting off for a while now. And that is to finally learn how to program applications. More specifically how to write iPhone applications, but first I have to get a feel for normal programming for Mac OS X.
So, I have watched Lynda.com videos for a while, read a few chapters in a programming Objective-C, and followed a few tutorials on developing iPhone apps, and I have finally after only 3 days, beat down a simple tip calculator.

That’s right. I just replaced the name “Christ” with the letter X. Am I anit-Jesus? Am I going against tradition? Am I supporting corporate denial of religion and becoming neutral to gods and trying to please everyone? No.

During my time at the great Lee University, I might have learned a few things. As most people who are aquainted with LeeU know, everyone has to get a minor in Worship-ology. Through traditional and painful chapel, Lee students are immersed in tradition and doctrine. Not to mention the countless hours of study in New/Old Testament, Ethics, Theology, Paul Connology and Benevolence. However, I narrowly escaped having to endure months of this through grace, called Summer Sessions. I met professor M. Fuller every day for a month solid. And his lecture was very easy going and had multiple out of test points that were most of the time exponentially more interesting than the actual lecture. These “commercials” kept us few in the class from drifting away in the 2 and 1/2 hours a day of class time.

So, back to Christ’s name being replaced? Well it turns out that this is more biblical than actually writing out His name! Back in the first few centuries of biblical canon writing, Jesus Christ as a name was considered holy; to the extent that they didn’t write out His name completely! The original documents of the New Testament was written in Greek. Christ’s name started with the Greek letter “X.” So, in reverance to the Son of God, abreviating Christ with an “X” was considered proper.

So, now when you see the phrase “Merry X-mas,” just feel a special reverance for God’s name. Make sure to tell your Pastors and your church leaders the good news!

This is a project for my senior year at Lee. The goal was to make a 30 second commercial about anything. So I decided to “sell” my guitar. The taping and editing and graphics and audio was all done within 2 days of the project being due. So, everything didn’t turn out quite like I had planned it. The project was on lighting and sound anyways, but I am always stressing over all the other little things. This YouTube encode isn’t as good as I had wanted it. But I covered that in another post anyways. And yes, this project isn’t the best, it was completed in only a few hours the night before it was due!

At this point, today is six months since my first post. A lot has happened in my life in this short time period. I made it through summer school, youth camp, Jamaica and am two weeks away from being halfway through my senior year at Lee University.

Here are some statistics about the popularity of BlogRyan.net:

Traffic from May to October

Mmmmmmmm….. Ricky, oh Ricky….. Have you accepted Jingus into your life yet?
And yes, Phillip fell off the golf cart, but he hit the “stop recording” button too soon as he fell for us to get the full effect. And no, none of this was staged, just part of how good Skaryoakie turned out this year!

This was a funny look at the Transformers coming to camp. “Guy” and Terren spent all day making the costumes and trying to put together a funny video. I had absolutely no faith in it…. But it turned out to be one of our best videos of the week! This is just a few seconds from the end of the video. (also the funniest part)

So, the time comes when eventually you reach senior status in school. Yes, the feeling of superiority and a since of pride for the educational institution. All the teachers know you by first and last name, you are finally able to relax in the classroom setting, and for about nine months you are happy and peaceful while everything is going smoothly in the right direction…. Then graduation comes.

Me relaxing

What now? Do I go to college for another four whole years or a University for a higher degree? Do I try to find a job in the work force? Where am I going to live: big city or small town? How am I going to find that special person I (hopefully) will spend the rest of my life with?

Post keyword: Hopefully...

And the world comes crashing down. All of a sudden life isn’t as easy. Decisions have to be made and in many cases time isn’t an abundant resource. Money becomes an even bigger issue as students leave home or move out from under Residential Life care. In spite of all the preparation their whole life, students are most likely not ready to adapt to the business ecosystem. The norms of student life fade away as (again, hopefully) financial and personal adult maturity and responsibility set in.

Paul Conn Student Union

These are just my own thoughts and concerns as I progress through my last year at Lee University. I know the answers will come at the right time as He always provides for me. I have a great family and friends that have and (still, hopefully)  always will help me when I get into trouble, as I would do the same for them. Also, my southern Christian up-bringing tells me to always rely on God and He shall direct your path.

Yep… Just what the title says. I will be doing this every so often that I accumulate some good design work. Hope you enjoy or even get some good ideas yourself! Please feel free to critique in the comments!

I like it cause the words blend different form the inside out.

Yes, I Ryan Farmer, do take your hand in marriage…. After Effects.

If you have ever worked in After Effects, you will totally agree with that statement above! But here the past few months me and after effects, well me… I’m just getting to know more about it!. I invested in a few nice presets, plug-ins and random stuff.

Ohhhh... Neon

And this is just my first post of a little something I have been working on. I will probably do this more as I already have a library of cool new things. And have already made a little side money doing some animations for a few churches and friends. So, here is just a little preview of some of my future comps. If you only see a black box, click on it twice for it to play again. (On mac it automatically will loop but on PC is stops for some reason)

Pronoun: That Guy:
A miserable person who sucks all joy and happiness out of life, and makes life a little less worth living by their consistently lame attitude. When not complaining, their drama and gossip will fill the void. He or she refuses to do something with a group, and will for-go hanging out with said group unless they’re doing something they want to do. They will put their interest ahead of others every single time, just for the sake of being “that” guy.

• The person everyone loves to hate and never wants to become.
• You’re driving and get stuck in the middle of the intersection just as the light turns red. Now, because of you no one can get by. You have now become “That Guy”
• What you become when you fail at pool, bowling, Quake, english, math, Wii tennis, etc.
• Having a thankless job where you work lots of overtime without pay while your boss is on vacation.
• Having to sit in the middle seat between two people in a car or plane.
• Being last in line to get cake or ice cream at a party.
• Crying and throwing a tantrum about something nobody cares about, including you.
• “I’m not going to give you $6 for my share of an $11 pizza when all I owe you is $5.50. I shouldn’t have to pay extra, waaaaaah!”
• Having a high opinion of your looks and a sense of entitlement when people compliment you. Your ego is usually punctuated with a “hottie” shirt, which makes you slightly less tolerable to be around than children, and slightly more tolerable to be behind than a group of tourists driving on the mountain.

Don’t be “that” guy.

Every mac person immediately knows I am referring to a shortcut on my dock to an application somewhere on my computer. I just read the title and imagine everybody else wondering how I am on a dock? What is Multiwinia? And what is it doing on a dock? If you are not a gamer, or not interested in the subject at all. Don’t read this post. You will probably be bored out of your mind and then not want ot come back and read any of my more meaningful posts in the future. Thanks!

Well, this is (currently) my favorite indie game. It is for Mac and PC so I can potentially run it on whichever partition I currently feel serves my interests better. An awesome hit since day 1, the small UK company, Introversion, produced this game in late 2008. I got this game as a “freebie” in the latest MacHeist bundle this past spring while my entertainment habits were changing rapidly. I guess this is part of my actual confession to an addiction; that there has always been an eagerness to curb my appetite for something new in this field. However, I would want to include here the natural humans’ desire in every emotion to never be satisfied of cravings. (Am I trying to justify myself?) But anyways, here goes my first attempt to post on a video game.

Pew, Pew

Formations

Line of Formations

Attacking Formation

Formations are an easy way to keep your ‘winians in order and not just to wander off and get into trouble! They slow down the overall speed of movement over the landscape, but they have greater distance and accuracy and firepower. I have found that these formations work better as a defence instead of an offence. This is suprising since the game itself introduces them to you as an offensive power in the tutorials.

I don’t want this post to be any longer. I will probably make another part to it soon. So, I will leave you with a screenshot of a failed attempt of an invasion of an island.

Fail!

I would have to say that I do play these waste of time, could be doing something better with my life, video games. I am usually ashamed of this. So, if you asked me what I did this past week, it would typically not include any phrase pertaining to any artificially rendered storyline or graphics of that nature. But I can make a descent argument that is almost logical for and against electronic based reality.

Anything can turn into an addiction. It may be a part of our culture, but that doesn’t mean it can’t become an addiction. I believe almost anything (with the exception of unusually obscene or illegal material) can be good in MODERATION. Salt is good on most things, but too much will give you a sore throat. Eating may or may not keep you alive, but gluttony can lead to some problems. This goes with most everything, including entertainment. You may sit down in the evening after work and watch the evening news or your favorite TV show. I actually don’t have TV (outside of Hulu, but that requires very fast internet) so in my evenings (after homework and web design work or whatever else I should get done today), I would play some genre video game. I have to catch myself, as we all should, where if anything keeps us from normal responsibilities (or sleep) to step back and take a breath to assess the situation as to what we really should be doing. Not everything leads down the road of self-destruction; learn to distinguish between addictions and normalcy. Of course, I could go into what and who defines normal, so I could replace in this instance with “average.”

I will ask you to asses something you do every day, maybe out of habit or out of what is normal to you, to see how you would measure up to self-criticism. I am young, and learning who I am more and more every day. But youth is no excuse for that. Sometimes innovation of yourself is the starting point for true contentment and happiness.

Easy Interface

Ok. I have dreamed of the day when I could watch TV on my computer for free. This seems too good to be true! Free TV from major networks and the convenience of watching whole shows whenever I would like? Hulu has the potential to totally change the industry and how we think of entertainment at home. I am especially in awe of their new flash application for both Mac and PC called Hulu Desktop. I don’t have to worry about my browser wigging out on me while I watch my TV shows. So far, it just works. I am usually afraid to run “browser applications” like that. There havebeen too many times my browser has suddenly quit because the server side application it is trying to run comes across a bug. And did I mention that it works with remotes?

HD TV on your PC

There is a ton more about this Hulu thing. I oculd go on how this is going to be industry changing, you should go ahead and quit your cable/satellite company, hooking this up to a TV set + speakers is very easy, investing in something like this would be a good idea… on and on I could go. But I would rather go to bed right now…. GO TO BED!

I am not 100% against YouTube. But I am 100% against anybody wanting me to put anything there. Sure, it is a fast and easy, convenient way to put a less quality video on the web for whoever to see. This is fine too…. for those of you who don’t have the equipment to host your own video someplace with some dignity (quality in other terms). I would describe myself as a quality freak sometimes. The people working with me this summer on video projects are probably going to hate me after the first day. I would rather produce 14 seconds of quality, than throw out something that is a full minute. The little things between the frames get on my nerves. And if you can’t fix it? I wil throw it out. One example, the new CTV logo (which hopefully none of you have seen as of this writing) took about 6 hours to complete. The final rendering time (well, pre-rendering but lets not get technical) took about 45 minutes! Wow! And guess how long the video is? …..about 8 seconds (246 frames in 1080p to be exact). Anyways, sorry for the side thought, back to YouTube.

Lets try a google search. “How to {fill in the blank}” and what do you get? YouTube videos! Yay. If I wanted videos from YouTube, I would have gone there. Once again I find annoying information filling up my computer screen. Ouch. Maybe I am too harsh, I think about it too much, my internal geek is showing. But really?

So, YouTube is a success anyways. I am just sorry that it got eaten by the bigger company Google. I may go ahead and change my search bar to the new Wolfram Computational Engine. Seriously? this thing can do almost anything!

For the rest of the YouTube argument? You would have to be a telecom major to understand, or work a lot with Flash vs. Quicktime…. (Guess which one I prefer?)

Look at any major analyst firm report since the Apple iPhone was released, and you’ll see the earnest intoning to stick with the buttoned-down and pinstriped BlackBerry—widely admired in executive corridors for its safety and security—and beware that odd, colorful, possibly dangerous Apple device that consumers may love but professionals should avoid. If the iPhone were meant for work, it wouldn’t be so much fun to use, would it?

Yes, it was Mac versus PC all over again: The iPhone was quickly pigeonholed as a fun, polished device for the cool kids to play with versus the RIM BlackBerry’s rep as a corporate standard designed to get work done. As with the Mac-versus-PC dichotomy, Apple’s focus on visual interface, exotic technologies like touch, and fun stuff (music, video, and games), coupled with its lack of “serious” capabilities such as encryption, let that perception take root as the conventional wisdom.

I was able to play with a few BlackBerry phones for a few hours and, I was shocked to discover how bad an e-mail client the BlackBerry is compared to the iPhone. And the BlackBerry is terrible at the rest of what the iPhone excels at: being a phone, a Web browser, an applications platform, and a media presenter. With its Windows 3-like UI, tiny screen, patched-together information structure, and two-handed operation, the BlackBerry is a Pinto in an era of Priuses.

So, taking all opposition to the iPhone out of play as inferior, old technology. I will go on with my lifesty-leize of iPhone.

texting

I never texted before I got my iPhone almost a year ago. Texting is such a slow, almost primitive way of communication. Even if you use the T9 input, it is still relatively slow. Typing on a full (even though small) keyboard is so much faster. I constantly get messages form my friends that they can’t respond to texts fast enough. However I argue my pooint, for me it is much easier to text on an iPhone rather than a cramped flip phone. This is probably why I would rather text you a whole converstion than call you. No offense, but this is a generation thing right?

I will probably get more aggreement with the music/video side of the fence. Even Windows people will use

Rythms Yo

iTunes over other music clients. Almost everybody’s MP3 player is an iPod of some sort. Well, imagine your music world working with everything else you are doing (in tech world that is). I’m sitting here listning to some Lecrae on my Bose dock when I get a call from a friend. What happens? Turn the music down or off, get out your phone (if you actually hear it ring over your music) and finally answer your call. Wow, that might have just only taken about five seconds, but it could be stressful. Right? Lets try iPhone now. When that call comes in, your music fades out, the call fades in and you can answer (or ignore) the call. Cool. But, after the phone call what happens? Well the music just fades right back in of course! I usually can’t sit/stand/ride for any long amount of time without some music or other noise. So this ease of use comes in handy all the time. I commute over an hour every weekend between my home and school. This definately has an effect on my life.

Mobile Safari

Ok, so what about the web? To do something on the internet you get a laptop, go to the library, even get a desktop or Netbook (please, please, please don’t get a netbook!) Ok, so we have a computer…. check…. Now we need the internet. Get DSL, Cable, Wireless, fill in your favorite flavor here. Ok that even could be limiting and costly. I already explained partly the internet on the iPhone and even tethering in Part 1 of my post; so I won’t repeat myself on that. I haven’t found any website that the iPhone doesn’t pull up exactly right! Some places it is even better to look at it on the iPhone! Given the drawbacks on the speed and reliability of the AT&T network, the pages come up fairly quickly. I am very happy to be able to look anything up right on the spot with my iPhone. The applications on the iPhone make use of the internet very wisely also; but with the 35,000+ apps available for the iPhone, I can’t exactly go into everything about that subject easily. There is one drawback to the internet on the iPhone, but it is something that currently no mobile device anywhere can overcome: Flash. This is something I can live without. However, YouTube and a few other flash based video streaming sites do work in the iPhone. I don’t use YouTube ever, so this isn’t really something for me. I will address my anti-YouTube-ness probably in a future post. But seriously? For now, no comment.

I didn’t plan on writing past a Part 2 of iPhone. But I still have plenty to cover on this topic. So, Part 3…. here I come!

So, I hope you are coming to the legacy retreat center for at least a week this summer! You might be like me, or you might be laughing at me; but this is probably going to be the highlight of MY summer.

I can already tell you that we at CTV have been hard at work cooking up some sweet new logos, intros, outros, lower thirds, games… you name it, we have had a few hot wings and ideas for each. As of this posting, we are still two weeks away from high school camp. So it is still too early to show any of our progress on the video. Not that you would care, but if I were looking forward to camp, something to get me pumped even more would just make my day! So, I will post a few screen shots of what is in store for this summer.

Wow! Sparkle, sparkle!

What is this? Another swirling vortex of color?

CTV News Live, please don't stare...

We will have more exclusive clips from Camp TV as camp nears even more!

Wow. I look at the title of this post and realize that I really must be a nerd/geek. However much that may be a good or more so a bad thing, it is true; iPhone is one of those life changing things. Kinda like a microwave. It makes almost every aspect of tech life faster and easier.

Needs better service

First of all, I will write a disclaimer. AT&T’s service is slow, spotty and depressing. I wish Verizon carried the iPhone. I am sure the dropped calls that I never experience or the locking/freezing up that I always haven’t gotten would be cleared up. Did I mention how most problems with your cell phone come from the software makers anyways?

Ok. At first sight, the iPhone is traditionally Apple. Glossy, shiny, smooth, glassy, sleek and the usual fetish of hardly any buttons. It is thin and you just have to wonder, ” how do they have a cell phone, flash drive and a battery in there?” But hey, these are the same guys that also make a pretty slim laptop also. If it wasn’t for the case on my iPhone it would probably drop it every time I picked it up after eating something greasy. Hmmm… I guess I’ll just have to live with it.

I may also mention that I am writing this form the perspective of iPhone Software 3.0 beta. Why do I mention this? Tethering.

Tethering you say? Only on a Mac.

Which brings me to the first point of how the iPhone is fiscally better than any other phone. Sure, cry… the data plan is $30 extra. But right now I am sitting in my apartment listening to my iPhone in the Bose dock rocking out to some Dave Matthews band mix and writing an article on the internet. Confused? Well, I don’t have internet at my apartment. One word: Tethering. Yep. So, how much does it cost to normally cost to have internet? I checked with the local monopoly service provider and ding, ding, ding…. $40! Oh wait, who else does tethering also? Crackberry you say? Ok, just add $15-$30 more dollars on top of their already $30 data plan a month plus it is only compatable with Microsoft operating systems. I think we have a winner. Which one gives me at least $10 extra a month for Moe’s?

Google Earth Anyone?

Up next, where am I? No really… where am I? Well, lets go get a map. No, lets go buy a GPS so I will know how to get someplace. Cost? A cheap decent one would be around $120! I seriously can’t even begin to list how many advantages an iPhone has over ANY other GPS system in the world. Ok, maybe the Army has something better, but I want them to be able to track everything too.

The next thing on my list is MobileMe Sync. Non-mac people especially are saying, “What are you talking about?” Well, imagine a world where your contacts list was always up to date, your calendar was accurate and your email was a reliable way of communication? Well, you may think your Gmail or Yahoo (God forbid you still use Hotmail) can even do this, but the truth is… it can’t. Well, maybe it can, but not on it’s own. Your Outlook client or even Mail can’t tell their cloud if you read your email or not.

Cloud

You would usually ahve to apply a blanket statement to either send from server and delete, or have to check your email in multiple locations. I thought we were going for efficiency? Well, anyways. Long story short… MobileMe does all this and more. It even works on a Windows! OMG the world is coming to an end!

I can’t even begin to explain how the iPhone is not just a Phone/GPS/Calandar/Music/Video/Internet/Game Console/Camera/Radio/Social party device, it’s a lifestyle.

Did I mention that it can make phone calls too? Wow.

I was looking forward to the Star Trek movie. I really, really did. But I ended up being the living embodiment of that awesome Onion sketch about nerds hating Star Trek. It just seemed like a mediocre action movie with the names of some characters from a TV show I like spackled on top.

So, as much as I fought it, I’ve ended up being That Guy. Oh, lord. Please don’t let me watch Up. Please, please, please.

Just a funny video I found while going through last year’s stuff to get ready for this year… Don’t tell Greg!

Why I blog? That is a question that I am asking myself with every key I type. I can just hear my mom, and a few other family members now, “why waste your time” or “blah, blah, blah.” Some other reason, that is probably going to be perfectly logical and good reason for me to just stay with my current non-blogging life. But this is something that I have always wanted to do. I just haven’t had the time (I have but just been lazy about it) to get this thing started. Also, thanks for the inspiration to start a blog from a friend, Brandon Chatfield. Check his out here.
The hardest part of anything is just getting started.
Getting started is one of the hardest parts of writing. It’s something I struggle with a bit myself. It’s easy to become paralyzed by trying to think of how to phrase things, and how to organize your thoughts. Sometimes, you just have to sit down and bang out some text, even if it sucks, because that gives you a starting point for revisions.
But this can be applied to almost everything. Getting up in the morning, going to bed at night. I don’t want to go into much detail or that would probably scare even me of how lazy I can be sometimes.

Maybe I am writing a blog site cause I think I have something to say to everyone?
Most of what I say, most of what I do, who cares? That is the view (and generally my attitude) that most people my age have towards everything not close to them. I look at my Facebook home page with all the quizzes and status updates and new pictures and whatever else and just say to myself, “Why am I doing this?” If you are about to go to bed… just go to bed! I don’t need to know what time you go to bed at night, just go to bed! However, I am not insensitive to something like, “Someone’s dog just got run over” or “I just got saved.” Some things do matter. But 99% of these updates or profiles, facebook, myface, bookface etc. WHO CARES? Please, stop cluttering my screen with worthless information. Thanks!

Most of what I say here will probably not be about what I am doing. But maybe something insightful to what everyone does in general. Or maybe some cool new (new to me at least) way to Photoshop or video something. I tend to get excited (yes I am nerdish) about this kind of thing. But this is what I do, and hopefully one day get real, physical, colorful, powerful money. Yes… Being able to provide for a family one day AND doing something I have always liked to do. Wow! Right now while still in college (one year left) and looking at the current state of the economy, it can be depressing for those who are about to try the real world outside of campus. In what I do, for years the thing to do has been freelance work or going into news. Well, with everything coorporate condensing and the local, and even state based news services (newspapers, radio, and now TV) going down the tubes, what are we prospecticves in this business going to do? Hopefully we will land sone job somewhere doing something related to our degrees. My plans for my life and God’s plans for my life are probably very different right now. From a Christian perspective, I would have to reference the verse where God even provides for the birds, so why wouldn’t he moreover provide for the ones He died for?

Finally, if you have read this far, I thank you, and my self-esteem thanks you. So I will leave this post at that.