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Photoshopped by me.
Photographed by my wife.

365 Day Project

So, I've been wanting to get into photography, but haven't been sure how.

However, I was struck today: I should do a 365 Day Project! As I'm sure many of you inferred from the name, a 365 Day Project is when you do something every day for a year.

So what should my photography project be?

My immediate thought was that I should take a photo of something within a block of my home. This would include inside my apartment, around the park, and anything else I can find within a block of my apartment, and then I could blog about it once a week. What do you think? Can anyone think of any other really fun 365 Day Projects? Has anyone ever done any 365 Day Projects? Read more about 'em here.

PS- Totally haven't even started on my poem.

Elfed

Linds was mad that I made her into a zombie, so she made me make her into an elf.

That's all.

What I'm doing instead of homework

So it's finals week and I've been playing with photoshop instead of doing homework. These are some pictures that I've made all retro-y and look like they were taken with super old vintage-y cameras. Here's hoping I make it through the week...

More Boredom

So, here is some more pictures from Europe. And let me warn you: I got two positive comments from my last series of pictures. So this time, I'm stretching. Don't worry, you don't have to feel obligated to laugh when you see them. As I said: I was just bored. 

 This is me being an airplane. In light of the recent death of Leslie Nielson, I'll say it's a tribute to Airplane! even though it's really a tribute to the Sound of Music.

 This is a happy butterfly. I see it and think of the Silence of the Lambs.

 By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!

 This is one of the hundreds of extreme close-up shots taken by my lovely wife.

 This is me, trying on a brand new pair of clown shoes in Sienna, Italy.

 We didn't actually notice the creepy guy in the background of this picture until much later.

 I only recently noticed that my head is located right where that guy's genitals should be. Awkward.

 This is me, looking intellectual in front of a famous cafe for intellectuals in Vienna.

 This is us in front of a big O.

 Killer Octopus.

Word to the wise: don't ever shoplift in a foreign country. Another word? Oubliette.

 Motion sick?

 Salzburg sandstorms come out of NOWHERE!

 For whatever reason, I kept running into ravenous mythological sealife.

 Dog-Sherlock Holmes.

 Linds looked like a witch in this picture, so I just completed the effect.

Yeah buddy, I got muscles. And this picture was in no way enhanced by photoshop.

The One Where Jeffrey Doesn't Actually Talk about Europe... OR How He Never Actually Wrote His Novel...

So, last year, Lindsay and I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tour Europe with the Humanities department. (You can read all about it here.) Oh, wait, I never actually blogged about it. And I'm not really going to now, but I recently acquired a Wacom Bamboo tablet, and I was really bored, so here's the fruits of boredom and not a lot of drawing talent.

Here's some of Lindsay celebrating Marie Antoinette's B-day.

And if you're wondering where on earth Lindsay acquired a pointy-party hat, they have convenient vending machines right in the subway!

 This cat gets has Napoleon riding his back, because he's the lord of the Bastille. (That's a thing, right?)

Ok, people. Who does baby Jesus look like?

Afro-Tom Hanks-baby Jesus anyone?

Oh, and here's one of Zombies. If you don't know why, you haven't been reading very carefully...

All Hallow's Eve Part Deux

So it should be fairly obvious that I like Halloween and Zombies. I honestly don't blog all that often, but a fair number of past posts have been related to this holiday, and I'm planning on posting more throughout this month of October. I guess it all depends on how lazy I get. For sure, I'm going to have to do a post about my new Zombie Barbie dolls, but that's for another day. Today, I'm going to post a zombified picture of myself. I'm sure you can probably see it if you're reading this, but I'll give a warning anyway. It's a bit... graphic. Not too bad, but my wife certainly didn't enjoy looking at it. Last year for Halloween, I posted a zombified version of this same picture, but by all accounts, it was a lot more tame. I look like someone that's been dead for maybe a day or so in last year's. For this year, I would think maybe four-days-in-a-hot-room kind of corpse, though I didn't want to bother with bloating. Also, I enjoyed this project a lot, so I'll probably work on it some more, or maybe try my hand at another picture. I'd love to do something with some advanced decay, maybe muscles and bones sticking out... I guess we'll see... Oh, you might have to click on the picture so you can see more detail.

Key Lime Truffle

My wonderful wife brought this home to me today.
That is all.

All Hallows Eve

So, for whatever reason, this year, I've decided that I'm hugely into Halloween.
For the past month, I've been raving about Halloween and Halloween-related-generally-scary-stuff! (Just ask Lindsay how much she's heard about Zombies in the past month...)
I've been especially interested in Zombies (hence my Gimp'd photo) and have been engaged in several Zombie related activities, such as baking zombie shaped, green-frostinged, sugar cookies (see how they like us eating them for a change!) I read (ok, audio-booked) a book called World War Z, which takes place in a post-zombie-apocalyptic world and is basically a series of accounts of survivors. It was rr'l rr'l good. Hmmmm, what else? Oh, I'm addicted to cinemassacre.com's Monster Madness Movie Review. *Note* The previous link is NOT for the faint of heart, nor for the easily offended... You have been warned. Anyways, James Rolfe (aka'd as the Angry Video Game Nerd) Reviews an old horror movie for every day of October, starting at the beginning of movies in general and working his way through the decades. LOVE IT! He's done it since 2007 and has reviewed something like 46 Horror Movies and 30 Godzilla movies in the course of the last three years. It's my new favorite thing. Of course, I can't really watch any of these scary movies given that I truly enjoy being able to sleep at night and don't want to do anything to jeopardize that (that is until I have my beautiful wife to protect me in bed! Less than 40 days! CRAZY!!!)
But yeah. Halloween is great. Oh, a bit a trivia, we've all heard the "All Hallows Eve" bit and how that's where Halloween is derived from, but where did the holiday come from? Well November 1 is All Hallows Day or All Saints Day, a day to celebrate all Saints, known and unknown. So the night before was All Hallows Eve... and that somehow got translated into the creepy non-Saint related Holiday of today. Crazy.

Anyways, I'm lovin' Halloween!

Engaged

After 7 years of best-friendship, Linds and I are now engaged and eagerly awaiting our wedding, which will take place on November 21, 2009 at the Jordan River Temple in Utah.

The Blue Bomber

So it's finals week. Sigh. Anyways, as I was feverishly doing homework and studying, I was struck by a sudden desire to blog (and as anyone who has been following this blog knows, I'm not struck by that feeling all that often) so I pondered what it was I wanted to blog about.

And I came up with Megaman. I don't know why. So here we go.

Megaman is a video game series heralding back to the 8 bit era featuring a cyborg-ish protagonist named Megaman who had been created by Dr. Light to fend of the scores of evil robot masters created by the evil Dr. Wily. Each level begins with Megaman warping in, defeating hordes of lesser robots and ends with a showdown between Megaman and the Wily TM Robot Master. Each Robot Master had some kind of theme like "Fireman" or "Woodman" or "Airman" and had attacks somehow related to their theme. Upon their defeat, Megaman would absorb whatever power they had and could use it against other robot masters, exploiting each one's weaknesses according to whatever weapons he has been able to obtain. Each special weapon has an energy bar that is quickly depleted and whenever Megaman adopts a new weapon, his classic blue coloring changes to whatever matches the weapon (i.e. he turns red and yellow when equipping Fireman's weapon. And that is the awesomeness, that is Megaman. (In Japan, he is known as Rockman, just in case you were wondering.)


Megaman vs Blobman


This was created by me on my mission when my companion was sick and in bed. I purchased a Megaman Action figure from a dollar store and had him stop motion battle a big blob of silly putty. Awesomeness.




This is a video that sums up the 8 bit video game experience. Music. Frustration. Awesomeness.
By way of explanation, the singer is getting frustrated because he keeps playing the Airman level and can't beat it. He's just venting his frustration at not being able to defeat Airman, who just won't die.



And for those of you that don't speak Japanese and don't like the subtitles... (Though the singing isn't nearly as enjoyable.)


And as an added bonus, here's a stopmotion video I made of Protoman (a contemporary of Megaman) taking his turn fighting the Shapeshifting Blobman!

Jeff Strife?... Cloud Farnworth... ?

All right, so a while ago I found out about a free image editing program called GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program (think of it as a free version of Photoshop, though it's a bit different) and I've just finally decided to buckle down and learn about it. So with the help of my Darling Lindsay and my darling YouTube, I have been experimenting with image manipulation. This is pretty much my first project. Pretty sweet, I know. :)
So yeah, I guess we'll see if I can figure out how to do even cooler stuff (but let's be honest, what on earth could be cooler than my head on Cloud's body!?)

"All right everyone, let's mosey!"