10/31/2007

webcams


It was a beautiful fall day today and the SIU campus was just right for photos. I attended all three of my classes, but found time to find feature photos, get photos of a veteran's memorial, and get pictures of student workers at the College of Business and Administration, all of which
will be in tomorrow's paper.

After making sure my news photographer responsibilities were taken care of, I made a trip to Wal-Mart! I bought some bread, SunnyD, sliced turkey, melatonin sleep aids, and a web cam! That's right, a web cam! My friend David from TX said I should get one so we can use iChat (he just bought a Macbook Pro) and I thought hey that sounds like a good idea! So I did! It's a Logitech webcam so it's made for Windows, but after installing a few free drivers and working out kinks with the microphone, it almost performs decently! We had a video conversation or two and I wish Amber had a Macbook cuz then I could see her more often.

Dave was moving in this screenshot, so you can't see him, but it's still exciting. That's about it for today. I need to start focusing more on my classwork than I have been and not play around with webcams as much. Probably won't happen though.

TB

10/29/2007

/win

The Editor-In-Chief of the Daily Egyptian Jordan Wilson announced today at the 4 o'clock meeting that The DE's issue breaking the story on SIU President Glenn Poshard's plagiarism had won Best of Show at the ACP conference last weekend in Washington, D.C. It was judged by a group of people on a variety of criteria including reporting, layout, and photography. I think it's wonderful that those who worked through the night on that story and the rest of the issue have been acknowledged for their hard work, accuracy, and production of collegiate journalism at its best. The Daily Egyptian was followed by Duke University's The Chronicle and the entire list of winners for the category can be seen at

http://www.studentpress.org/acp/winners/f07bs.html

From the page:

"ACP Best of Show Winners
National College Media Convention
Oct. 24-28, 2007
Washington, D.C.

...

4-year daily tabloid

1. Daily Egyptian
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Ill.
Eric Fidler, adviser

2. The Chronicle
Duke University
Durham, N.C.
Jonathan Angier, adviser"

I believe this award is proof that the Daily Egyptian's reporting on the case is fair, accurate, and expertly executed. It is not, nor has it ever been, one-sided, biased, or disrespectful, as some SIU students/alumni/employees have claimed.

TB

10/28/2007

Leopard! Portal! Boston!


Look at my exciting new OSX Leopard desktop! I got back from Effingham tonight and got it all installed and set up the way I want. It's amazing! It's clean and smooth and sexy and I reorganized my dock and put all my extra tools in a little stack by my wastebasket called "Tools" It's great! And spaces are cool too because you have up to 16 desktops, a 4x4 grid. I updated my Windows Boot Camp as well with the Leopard DVD and hopefully it will run things a little smoother and not have so many things crash all the time! I love it! Had to pay my roommate $90 for him to install it on my mac.

So I went to Effingham this weekend and spent quite a bit of time with Mom and Andy and of course Amber. Mom bought me lots of clothes and stuffs at Wal-Mart and we had a big dinner today and I installed Portal on my Dell at home and showed it to Andy, he seemed amused. Portal's awesome, here's a sweet video on YouTube of the end where you kill the giant machine girl that badmouthes you a lot and she sings a funny song during the credits. It's long but you can skip through it to hear the song. It's worth listening to:



Friday I visited Amber at work at the bagel place and ate a sandwich. I don't remember what I told her before I took this picture, but it was something to make her make her sad face.

I also took a picture or two of Pete. He's my favorite boss. He ran over his dog last week with his truck and killed it and claimed that it was already dead.


I love the Canon 16-35 2.8 L. Wish I owned one. Also today, me and Amber walked down to the Halloween parade in Effingham and saw parade stuff and I ran into Eric Williams of the Effingham Daily News who I had not spoken to since before I came to college and we talked about new happenings and news photographer stuff and things. Also, the EHS band was playing by the courthouse downtown and I was in the band one year and the director's my friend's brother so I talked to him and took some pictures of the members. They sound good.


And most importantly, BOSTON RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Beat the Rockies 4-3 in the fourth game, a slam-bam sweep! I drank two beers instantly when they won to celebrate! Mike Lowell got the World Series MVP which is great because he did a lot of good shit in the postseason and his contract with Boston is up this year, so he may not play with the team ever again. I was happy. I wouldn't be into baseball at all if it weren't for the Red Sox and my childhood dream of going to school in Boston.



TB

10/26/2007

"staph"

Took this picture at the rec center today of a guy hitting a punching bag for a story about methicillin resistant staphylocccus aureus, also known as "staph" infections. I was really just supposed to go find pictures of people working out and being sweaty because MRSA is a skin bacteria that grows when people get sweaty all the time and don't always clean themselves. Turns out this guy, who's name I can't say, has had a staph infection on his leg before, and therefore he made main art on the front page tomorrow.

There was also a picture of a guy on an elliptical machine who happened to be reading today's copy of the DE while he was working out.

And this totally generic shot of the track with a guy running on it, but I didn't get his name or information so essentially the image was useless. He had an ipod on and I didn't really want to bother him.
Other than that, the only pictures I really took today were these extreme pretty macro shots of rain drops on flowers, but they're still on my card which is in my camera which is out in my car so I don't think I'm going to have them up tonight.

I'll be going home Friday evening and staying with Amber until Sunday probably, so I won't have a blog post tomorrow either, unless I can do it from her computer. I need to get more cold-weather clothes from home because I don't have a whole lot here in Carbondale and it's been like -40 degrees and raining outside and I dont even have a coat.

TB

10/25/2007

none


No blog today. Too much work to do for my paper i have to turn in and the presentation i have to do in the morning. This is a picture I took in Nebraska one time.

TB

10/23/2007

Corn

So I took this stupid photo of a corn field in Murphysboro today and somehow it ended up on the front page for tomorrow. That's how bad we need images these days. It was for a story about ethanol production causing corn prices to increase. I actually stopped to take a picture of this huge heron bird monster thing that was sitting in this little pond just off the road, but all i had with me was a 70-200 and when I got out of the car, it flew off. I cursed.

Sadly enough, that was all the pictures I took today. I did have a request from some Saudi United soccer players for pictures from their match the other day, so I uploaded a bunch to my site. It's password protected though.

I decided today that I was sick of not having an umbrella so I went to walmart to find an umbrella and the only ones they had were little girly pink and flowery ones next to all the purses. I asked the walmart lady where all the big manly umbrellas were and she said to try sporting goods and I did but all I found were ponchos and rain jackets and that kind of crap.

So I went to Dick's Sporting Goods and voila, right as I entered the store, there was a stylish display of big golf umbrellas that were black and I got one and it's big and durable and it withstands winds up to 50 mph and it's like a super high-tech batmobile umbrella and it only cost $15. There were also some Callaway Golf umbrellas, but they were $30 and i didn't feel the need for that.

So I took a picture of a corn field and bought an umbrella... Then tonight, I tried to read my 'The Crusades Through Arab Eyes' book for this paper I'm supposed to write by Thursday, and I fell asleep about 25 pages in. I can't seem to read anything without falling asleep. It's pathetic.

I also wrote up another cover letter and resume for another internship at the Northwest Herald, in Crystal Lake, IL. A little closer than Kansas, but it competes with the Chicago metro papers, so it may be a little rough. Also, it goes from January through June, so it's a month longer than the Hutchinson, Kansas one. I'll mail it tomorrow.

TB

10/22/2007

"Talking With..."


Today I slept til like noon. And it was raining. And it was cold. And I didn't want to go anywhere. But I had to go to our 4 oclock meeting, so I went to that and that was pretty entertaining for about an hour and then I had to go shoot a rehearsal for a play that's opening Thursday called "Talking With..." and tonight was their last dress rehearsal before showing I guess. It was more a series of monologues than it was a play, I dunno if a play is what you'd call it. It was pretty entertaining though, and between each of the monologues, these three women (one of whom is pictured above) came out and sang something a capella.


This character was pretty entertaining and she was obsessed with her "Oz" books and had costumes she made of all the characters, this one being Scraps, that she put on while her husband was away at work all day. She talked about how much better life in her books was than her real life and how she'd like to stay in Oz forever.

This one was probably my favorite because she kept threatening to hit her cat Tat over the head with a hammer. It was a real cat. On stage. And it walked around for a bit, cept she staked it to the floor. She was doing some kind of audition monologue. It was funny.

This was a picture I took of glass marbles on the stage. Kinda abstract and geometric. One of the actresses dumped them all over as part of her monologue about her mom dying.

Here's a picture James Durbin took of me with my A1U mounted on my 1D. Genius.


TB

10/21/2007

football, soccer, baseball

SIU vs. MSU

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This is an extremly low-quality version of the video put up on siude.com today, the one I shot with my video camera mounted on top of my 300. Myspace isn't very large-file-friendly, so I couldn't get a better looking one on there without it taking a week. But, there's one on he DE website, so check it out.

I had to go shoot a soccer tournament kind of thing today, that had lots of issues. It was an international soccer tournament with only a Latino team, a Saudi team and an African team left. The African team had lost to the "Latino Alliance" but complained that they had been playing with players not registered on their original roster, so the Alliance got disqualified, leaving just the African and Saudi teams, but then the Saudi team forfeited the final match because they wanted to play the real winners, not a team that had complained their way to the top. So, the African team received the trophy by default, as illustrated in today's main art:Then the Saudi United and Latino Alliance teams decided to have their own unofficial match to settle who the 'real' winner was. So, after I had returned from the trophy thing and I was trying to work on photos, they sent me out again to get shots of the Saudi-Latino game. The Saudis were kicking A and beat the Alliance 3-1. They didn't run a photo from the game though. Sad, too, cuz I was tellin this guy Husam that I was gonna get him a copy of the paper...

The Sports page today was all mine. It was a good day for football photos, and Sean the sports editor wants me to shoot next weekend's game the same way I shot this one, still and video. Next time, we'll get some real audio commentary next time, though.
Also had a scanner call today that a girl had been hit by a car while she was crossing 51 on her bike. Luckily, the car was only turning and wasn't driving full-speed or anything. She made it through the ordeal with only a few scrapes and was more upset to have made a scene than to have been run over. She refused to talk to our reporter and refused to go to the hospital with the ambulance, but I still took pictures. None of them ran in the paper.

I did a portrait this week of a guy named Christian Spears who works at the Compliance Office of SIU Athletics. We did a few shots like this with various signs and banners and things in the background, but this one came out the best. He's a cool guy and he introduced me to some of the SIU basketball players. I also ran into him at the football game and had a quick chat.
And, THE RED SOX ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!!! Boston destroyed the Indians 11-2 at home at Fenway, bringing the series totals of runs to 30 and 5. It's amazing Cleveland won the 3 games that they did. Everyone on the team kicked ass and the Indians had tons of errors and totally couldn't control the ball. Now, all we have to worry about is 4 games against the Colorado Rockies, and I'm hoping it won't be as bad as playing Cleveland.


TB

emotions and journalism

This is the portrait I set up of SIU Volleyball's Chandra Roberson (<) and Marina Medic (>). I brought the pocketwizards and the lights, but I was just helping out James, so he's the one who took the pictures. I would've done it a little more wide angle, and showing a little more of the salukis sign, but that's my style I guess.

It seems everyday more people have bad things to say about the Daily Egyptian, that it exists only to destroy the school's image and report the negative things on campus. It seems people take the Voices (a.k.a. Opinions) page and insult the paper and its staff based on what they read on those two pages. Yes, the Voices page has been somewhat brutal towards SIU President Glenn Poshard, but that is an opinion. It may be a college newspaper, but the Daily Egyptian is a stand-alone publication and it is >>> a newspaper. Negative events bring negative news.

I think what people who read the Voices page and complain need to realize is that opinions don't mean anything in journalism. Feelings don't mean anything in journalism. The fact that someone hasn't slept the last two nights while grieving over a lost son doesn't mean anything in journalism. Journalism is truth. Emotion is not truth, but an endlessly varied reaction. It is completely rational, when relevant, to report on an emotion, but never to report with an emotion.

You might think that is a heartless thing to say or that I am emotionless, but really I am the opposite. I'm controlled by emotion every day, just like everyone else. I don't take pictures because of it. I don't talk to people because of it. Sometimes I don't go to class because of it. I want to write letters to people because of it. I write on this blog because of it. Conflictingly, I am a better person because of it, but a less talented photojournalist because of it as well.

Does that mean I should be without emotion to be the best journalist I can be? No. It means I need control over my emotions. I need to suppress them, yet retain them. I need to overcome the feelings that stop me from being a journalist and embrace the feelings that make me feel more alive as a person. Sorrow? Regret? Anger? Anxiety? Life is too short to ruin now with then or to ruin now with what could be. Life is too short to make a problem out of an issue. Happiness, passion and love bring me to my work, my subjects and my fruits. They bring me to find new life in everyday. They are what drive me to succeed and what will carry me through the end of my days on this wonderful mess of a planet.

Also:




TB

10/20/2007

SIU 45, MSU 10






Southern Illinois destroyed the Missouri State Bears today. I had a lot of fun shooting it, because I mounted my Sony A1U video camera on top of my regular camera with a flash bracket. It was genius, I could shoot both video and stills at the same time, with the video camera pointing exactly where my big Canon 300 2.8 was pointing. I shot the whole first half and got some good shots like these, and then ditched the still and shot just video the rest of the game. We ought to have a 'Top 10 Plays' or something like that video at siude.com tomorrow. Maybe just a video recapping the game, depends on how well the video turns out.

I tried to update my Sportsshooter.com page earlier with new pictures from the game and some other things, but it locked up and all my captions disappeared, so I gave up and left it with the old pictures. Took me like a half hour to fill out. :(

James took a few shots of me with my big ultra multimedia shooting device today, so hopefully I'll be able to put a shot of it on here and maybe on Sportsshooter's Fun Pix page.

I also took pictures of Indian students playing cricket today. It's relevant that they're Indian because the DE is doing another profile thing about international students, like we did about the Colombian students, about students from India this week, and I thought I'd go to their cricket tournament to get some shots of them doing something other than sitting there and talking to the DE reporters.

Also, RED SOX BEAT THE INDIANS AGAIN!!! 12-2! Tying the series at 3-3, leaving just game 7 tomorrow at Fenway Park where Cleveland's gonna get destroyed once and for all, sending the Red Sox to the world series!! Against the Rockies! Boston's taking it all! Me and Scott were at Lone Star watching the game and I had like 6 beers and some tortilla soup and chicken fried steak and we shared a Texas rose. It was a good time, cept we each spent like $35.

That's all for today.

TB

10/18/2007

1018



So, a kid died on campus today. I didn't take this photo. Ryan Rendleman the photo editor did. I was out shooting rugby practice with my video camera when this happened. Apparently, it's unknown how he died and they won't know until they do an autopsy. His name was Alex Booth and he was a sophomore from Quincy. For some reason, one of our reporters called Booth's mother and she hadn't even heard yet. His death was confirmed at 8:30 and he had left his dorm in an ambulance at about 5:30 when they were already attempting CPR.

I went to my classes today and got a test back from my Islam class and I got a C on it! Which was good, since I thought when I took it that I was surely going to fail it. Also, the paper I wasn't sure about isn't due til next Thursday, so I have a week to work on it.

A big storm was rolling in during practice so I ended up gettin some pretty neat shots involving players being silhouetted by a big fantastic sky. I did both still and video. The shots are for a recap Monday of the game theyre going to have against UofI Saturday, their biggest game of the year, but I was hopin' I could get a feature video of them together for the web maybe before they play at UofI. Don't know if that'll happen though, since no one works on Friday nights or Saturdays and Sunday it'll be sorta outdated. Oh well.


I was looking at Sportsshooter today and realized that most of the Winter/Spring internships listed on there have application deadlines within the next 5 days, so I thought I would throw together a resume, coverletter, portfolio, and some clips to mail off to some places. I got my hopes up for an internship in Hutchinson, Kansas, but I'm not holding my breath or anything. It'd be really nice to get that one because it's not big-city news and it would be my first internship. Plus, i'd be out of school for a semester and I'd get to work 40 hours a week paid! :D

I got Wendy the writing coach at the DE to help me with what should be in my resume and stuff, so I'm hoping I've got a chance. Other than that, I didn't do a whole lot today. On my way out of the Rugby fields, I saw some deer sitting near the road so I took some pictures of them.

Also, the other day I ordered some new business cards for $7.99 and they look like this. I designed them myself with a Daily Egyptian image and a lens image and some text. Fancy.That's it for today. I'm actually tired for once, so I think I'm going to go to sleep. Probably going to Cairo tomorrow, unless I have to work. I will be mailing off a couple internship applications tomorrow as well. OH and I almost totally forgot! BOSTON beat the INDIANS 7-1 in GAME 5 of the ALCS so now its 2-3 and they're going home to FENWAY! Die, Cleveland!
GO, RED SOX!

TB

10/17/2007

"I hate... so much... about the things you choose to be."

That's one of my favorite lines from the Office, when Michael is telling Toby how worthless he is. He gives Toby so much shit all the time, and some people might think it's not fair to him, which it isn't, but it's funny as hell IMO.

Today, I helped freshman shooter James Durbin set up a simple portrait shoot of some volleyball players at Davies Gym, which actually turned out pretty cool I think. I don't have a copy of it because it doesn't look like it's gonna be in tomorrow's paper and I didn't do any shooting of my own. I showed him my pocketwizards and Vivitar 285s and we setup a shot of two featured players in front of a big SALUKI VOLLEYBALL wall thing. Maybe when it's printed, I'll throw a copy of it up on here, even if it doesn't have my name under it.

Interestingly enough, I had my own portrait shoot to do today of an assistant at the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, and it was garbage. I neglected to bring any lights and he only had a few minutes and didn't really act like he wanted his picture taken, so I took a wide angle shot of him at his desk, which was what he wanted to do. I have a history of being yelled at by Sheriff's office people, so I didn't do much to convince him of something else. Plus, I've never had a shot in the paper of someone sitting at their desk, so I figured I could have a first and last time. Just this once.

ALSO, a Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare demo came out today or yesterday or something and it took forever to download, but I played through it like 5 times and it is absolutely fantastic. The graphics are a little intense and would probably look better on a 360/PS3, but I was still able to play it pleasantly. It comes out in about 20 days and I have it reserved.

Right now, I'm half watching a silent film on Turner Class Movies which is about some kind of group of army/military guys in what I'm guessing is WWI, and it's a comedy that's mostly sepia toned and has a dialog screen every now then and I'm actually finding it entertaining. Not because it's old and cheesy like why most people of this age would find it amusing, but because it is genuinely humorous and it's actually very well put together. The cinematography is great. Period. Every scene is composed of many good shots and I'm surprised it could look that good for being as old as it is.

There's these two guys in a horse costume because hey were doing a play for the rest of their base when the base got attacked and everyone ran but a couple drunk Germans thought they were a real horse and tied them up with the other horses, but the 'horse' kept trying to escape so they were gonna shoot it but they were too drunk and they ended up pulling the 'horse's head off and they were freaking out and this dog jumped inside the hole and was sticking out the front so it looked like a horse with a dog head and they scared the hell out of all these Germans and got away.

That's really about it for today. I spent my last $50 on groceries at Wal-Mart and got all kinds of drinks and cereal and sandwich stuff and ramen noodle cups and more drinks. Drinks like gatorade and diet dr. pepper and bottled teas and milk and sunny d. Not like alcoholic drinks. They don't even sell those at Wal-Mart because theres a county-wide ordinance down here that doesn't allow alcohol to be sold anywhere that food is sold also.

I'm gonna try to go to sleep. My sleep schedule has been way off since I started watching the Office all night and now I sleep til like 10-11 everyday and dont get to bed until like 2-3am which is a problem since I have classes at 930 and 10 everyday.

Also, tomorrow is mine and Amber's one year, nine month -iversary. I love you, Amber.

TB

10/14/2007

another video!

SIRIS

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So, I did another video on Saturday, but didn't put it together until this morning. They ought to both be on the DE website (www.siude.com) tonight, to go along with the stories written by Dave Lopez and Eugene Clark, city writers. I've actually redone both of them since I uploaded them to myspace, with titles and and credits and a little siuDE.com thing in the corner, but it takes forever to upload them, so I'm going to keep the old versions on here. Future videos I'll fix completely before I upload them.

This video's not as exciting as the Town Square Market one. Probably because there wasn't any guy playing guitar. And there's no free food. Oh well, the important thing is that got multimedia experience! I still love my video camera with its sweet Schwinn bike headlight.

I work with Final Cut Express HD, which uses a separate program to add text to videos called LiveType, which I've just recently somewhat figured out how to use. It's really dumb and not user-friendly, but I've figured out I have to keep the rendered video with the text and put it back into Final cut and then export it to the size I want. Before, I was just exporting it from LiveType and it was never the right shape and didn't have sound. It's still stupid, but at least the videos kinda come out right.

Also, as long as I don't go up to Effingham or Charleston, I'm not going to see Amber for about a month, so I decided I'm going to run everyday and eat healthy stuff and drink only water so I lose lots of weight by then and I look like a totally different person next time she sees me. Probably won't happen, but I ran about 2 miles earlier! Good start.

TB

10/13/2007

Town Square Market

Town Square Market

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Did this video today of Town Square Market, an organic foods store in downtown Carbondale. They were having their one-year anniversary and had lots of free samples and stuff. Of course, it was free samples of strange organicky foods, but some of it was pretty good.

Also, I love my video camera now. I took the filter out of the front and taped it directly onto the conversion lens, so there's no more glare or blurry smudges in my video. Then I taped the hood on the outside, so it still looks cool. I got the new case and batteries I ordered for it yesterday, and theyre amazing. The case makes it so more convenient to carry the camera and tapes and batteries and stuff around. The case also came with a LCD hood, a big shade thing for the screen when it's flipped out.

AND, I was looking at on-camera lights last night and got inspired to go out to walmart and find some kinda light I could clip onto my camera that runs on batteries, mainly because I didn't want to spend $150 on semi-professional one. So I got a SCHWINN bicycle headlight and chopped up it's little clampy thing and got it to mount into the shoe on top of the XLR adapter on the camera. It's an LED light, so it's really blue, but I'm going to get a warming gel to put on the front of it. Right now, I have a bit of paper towel rubber banded to the front of it to diffuse the light, cuz it's kinda spotlighty.


I did a lot more today, but Amber and I are gonna go out for pizza I think, so . . bye.

TB

10/11/2007

Disney @ SIU


So. Once again I had this fancy video blog all recorded and I even got it into a nice quicktime movie file so I could put it on youtube, but it's been uploading for like the last 3 hours and doesn't show really any sign of finishing anytime soon, so I don't think I'm going to have a video blog tonight either. I think I'll try exporting it at the smallest size possible and the shittiest quality possible so maybe it'll be small enough to work with easiliy, and also work.

Also also, the scroll wheel on my Apple Mighty Mouse isn't working and it is completely frustrating. I think I'm going to go buy a new mouse anyway, because the mighty mice aren't very good at having two buttons. They're all one button, but claim to be usable as two, and they are, but the right button only really works if you press it really hard, and as hardcore of a computer gamer as I am, that is just not acceptable.

This picture up here is of Dan Cockerell, the General Manager of Merchandise Operations at Disney's Magic Kingdom. Yes, the amusement park. Yes, at Disney World in Florida. Why is he at SIUC? He was here today to talk to SIU College of Business and Administration students about Disney's business strategies and customer service and his experiences in his career and stuff like that. I was sent to take pictures. Unfortunately, the guest writer who was supposed to be writing an article about the man's visit quit contacting the Daily Egyptian and never showed up to his presentation, so they dropped the story. That = no pictures for Tom.

Tomorrow's a new day with new photo requests, and hopefully I'll get some things that I can really let my amazing photo skills shine with. Amazing. Also I want to get this video thing down and shoot some video that actually has meaning, not just my roommates threatening each other with knives.

kbye

TB

10/10/2007

The Office "Lazy Scranton"

I had this fancy VIDEO BLOG all recorded that I was gonna put on here today because I didn't really do anything worth writing about, so it was gonna be more exciting than usual because it was a video, but it's taking way too long to get it to the right size and form for webstreaming, so I'm gonna try again with video tomorrow and hopefully I'll save enough time to get it converted and posted. This is the orientation video Michael and Dwight made for when the people from the Stanford office moved to Scranton because their office closed. From Season 3. I love it.


TB

10/09/2007

the office

So I've been watching the Office almost nonstop for the last two days. At least, nonstop when I'm at home. I love it. I'd say out of all the garbage that's on TV these days, it's the best show out there. Of course, I've never actually watched it on TV, so I bet it's not as good with a bunch of idiotic commercials every 10 mins, but I have the dvds and they're great. and funny. I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. Steve Carrell is the manager and is pretty damn funny, but I think the funniest stuff is between Jim and Dwight. Fyi.


I also got to walk around the construction site of the library on campus today. I talked to this guy named Kevin Davie who is a GIS Specialist at the library and he took me around to all the different floors and showed me the progress here and there and explained to me what all the new rooms were going to be. I hope I fail a bunch of classes or get plenty of internships so I don't finish school for like 6 more years, because I would like to see the library when it's finished. There's going to be this crazy glass sculpture thing at the very front of the building that turns with the wind on the outside, but then has a part on the inside that turns also. I can't really explain it because I don't really understand it, but it sounds like it'll be cool. And there's all kinds of places where students will be able to relax and use computers that are going to have lots of comfortable furniture like this big rotunda kind of place that spans a few floors and has skylight windows. There's also going to be a coffee commons kinda place near the front. I had never really been in the library to begin with, so I didn't really know what was old and what was new, but the stuff he told me about that is new looks like it going to be pretty nice. I'm pretty sure this picture (<) is main art for tomorrow's Daily Egyptian.
I also ordered a carrying case for my video camera, my beloved HVR-A1U. I also ordered two new batteries for it, Sony QM91D's to be exact. In fact, it was a kit, a bag that says SONY and 2 batteries. I won't say how much it costs because I don't want to anger any certain people *cough, Amber, cough* that like to get angry at me for spending money. It wasn't really expensive, anyway. Even though I should be spending money on her, because her birthday is Monday and she's coming down this weekend and I ought to have something to give her by then. I'll find something...

Anyway I kinda ordered a case and new batteries because I'm sick of the most expensive piece of image capturing equipment I own sitting on my tripod at home 24/7 when I ought to be out shooting video or doing something else to better my multimedia experience. I even put some extra gaffer tape on the side because that makes it look cooler and more professional. Duh. I used the tape around the edge of the hood to help hold it onto the lens, because it keeps falling off when I have it on my shoulder. Course, when I have the case, it probably won't be on my shoulder as much anymore, so it falling off won't be as much of a problem.

That's really it for today, I'm too busy watching the Office to focus on a blog. Or homework. Or work. or eating and sleeping.

TB