the construct :: weblog

Grand Canyon
Originally uploaded by construct.

Went on a family vacation back in june to Lake Havasu. One of the side trips we made was to the Grand Canyon. It was great because all of us hadn’t been before.

This is probably my favorite shot that is closest to it’s raw form. Sure it’s a little cliche, yet pretty nonetheless.

Today many thoughts wandered my mind about what I use everyday. My job (I have many but to keep this kinda short…) is basically internet production. I don’t know if that’s a real position, but I design, manage, test, websites all day. I also realized today how much I use the internet everyday. If the internet went down, I figure I would have significantly less to do. Sure I could still work on stuff locally, yet email, blogging, photo sharing, news reading… so on and so forth would not be possible.

Then onto more thoughts, after thinking all this I hit up one of my usual reads Zach Klein, specifically todays post on video. Video on the internet wasn’t anywhere near as popular as it was sayyyy a year ago?! Sure there was video like quicktime/windows files that are damn near impossible to watch on every computer. In this day and age the smart way to go is Flash. Vimeo one of Zach’s projects uses flash since their redesign, but I remember the days of the Windows Media/Quicktime files. Then every other online video site uses flash because it works in every browser that has flash player installed.

Towards the end he mentions this:

Aside, if I were a recent college grad without a job — I would startup a venture that produces 5/15/30 second ad spots for small to medium-sized companies. If popular video-sharing sites begin including pre-roll advertising before clips, there is going to be lots of new ad inventory, and lots of new advertisers who don’t have video creatives.

That is an amazing idea that many have shared. How would you get started in that kind of thing? I feel I could start something like that, especially by the time I graduate with a degree in Computer Information Systems with a minor in Digital Media. Anybody want to do a startup?

I suppose the whole purpose of this post was my short thoughts on how internet is attached to everyday life, with a little side on video.

P.S. Most of the time I forget to mention my various projects that I work on that make this blog dormant. Check out the Film or Video categories. Then head over to my daily music blog, MUSICGLOB.COM. Sooner or later I’ll update this site to showcases a few things.

I should be in Europe right now. Traveling the country and having a good ol time with my chaps. Yet I am not, things came up and I wasn’t able to go on my 3 week trip. All well, there will be other times, this I know.

Third trip to Las Vegas in the last few months, this time for good friend Camerons 21st birthday. Here’s the day by day background.

Thursday: Woke up and went to 8am class. That was rough to begin with. Went to class, took a midterm in my next class, then went to my third class of the day. Hung around till about 7:30 and drove to San Diego. Hung around parents house for less than an hour. Zac picked me up, we went and picked Daniel up, then started driving to Vegas at 11pm. Made it to Vegas in really good time at about 3:30am. Walked around for a little bit, Daniel and I went to sleep at about 5:30 am. I guess that means I was up for 22 hours. whew.

Friday: Slept from 5:30am till about 9:30 ish when Cameron got to the hotel from his early flight. Us four plus Camerons parents eventually made it down to brunch around 11am. Ate and were merry. Wandered around, gambled a bit then up to room. Zac and I head out to the blazing hot strip to explore and Cameron and Daniel head off to the pool. We start walking around… start drinking ar about 1pm ish I would guess. Walk around the strip till I guess like 3 or 4. Head back to room, we are all there and tired at that point and sleep till about 6 when we are awaken to go have a toast for Camerons birthday up in his parents room. Go back to room, hang out for a bit, eat some.. then off into the night festivities.

Head to “Downtown” which is actually utter crap. We met up with other friends that were there and wandered around. It basically sucked except for my giant banana ice alchol thing. After a bit, Cameron, Daniel, Zac and I get a taxi back to the strip and wander on over to Margarittaville. Lots of fun there with the weak dance floor and really corney cover band. We stayed there the rest of the night, till about 2 or 3am I guess. Stumble a long walk back to the Luxor to get to sleep at about 4am or something.

Saturday: Woke up at 11? I don’t really know… tried to get something to eat but those stupid “inclinators” (the Luxor is the pryamid and don’t have normal elevators) shake and make you feel even worse that you were. Needless to say I wasn’t feeling all that great. Neither was Zac, he was in the room while Cameron, Daniel and I went for the food. We head back to room, eventually Daniel and Cameron head out to pool again, I lay down. Zac wanders off to meet other friends that got in that morning at 6am at around 1pm or something. I nap till about 5 or so and head off to get some food. Little Cesars has really good italian cheese bread. Zac was back in the room, then Daniel and Cameron made it back around 6 or so also. We all just lounge around the room till about 9:30 when we head over to t he Excalibur to meet with more people and head out to Body English at the Hard Rock.

Hopped in a limo for a 10 minute drive with about 9 people in the limo. Get to Body English, takes a couple mins for other friend Nate to get us all in free and avoid the line. It was awesome. His cousin works in the upstairs VIP where it’s $4000 for a booth. Yeah, wow. We head on up there after getting a drink and just had a good time the rest of the night. His cousin brought us shots and she was really awesome. Dance floor was okay, I’m not into too much hip hop but they played alot of other good dance tracks to make it good overall. Zac and I leave a little early at about 2ish to the hotel. Taxi drivers are such characters… haha

Sunday: All four of us eventually leave the room at about 10:30 am to head back to San Diego for Mothers Day and Daniel had to work. We actually get on the road at 11. Made it to Daniel’s house at 4:10… he had work at 4:30pm. I make it home shortly after to have Mothers Day with my mum, then drive back to LA at 10:45pm.

Quite the trip. This long, yet short post can only tell so much. Lots of goodtimes with friends.

Best of all, I’m going again this coming weekend. hahaha, round 4 here I come!

“It’ll cost nothing to dream and everything not to”

Amazing work by Rodney White. via bearskinrug

I decided that a blog such as this is so much more than just a “blog.” Some of these things are obvious, some are not. Here is my thoughts for today on what my blog is, and what I’m going to change.

1. A PERSONAL website
This is my personal blog, thus I write about things I like on any topic I pretty much choose. Basically I concentrate on a few things: college life (going out, parties, etc), technology, the internet, film, and music. (Which I do most of my music talk over at MusicGlob.com) Sometimes I talk about media design and stuff like that, but it’s not really something I have many profound things to say about… I’m still learning design, and living it.

2. Though personal still professional
This is a website I have created, I should showcase some of my talents of design and photography here. I do post up alot of photos, but for that last while I have ditched designs and not put a whole lot of effort into this blog. I’ve decided this site should show what I can do. I realized that while browsing many other blogs, I’ll keep the link around mainly if I like the design or not. Even if I don’t read the content. I figure most people like looking at something pretty, so I should probably make something pretty.

What am I going to change?
With all that said, it’s time to redesign and get back to super blogging like I usually do. I’ve set a time span to finish a new design for this blog by Friday 5/5/06. On the not so public internet side of things, I’m going to get back into taking a bunch of pictures… even crap pictures just to take them and open up my eyes to the world again. I’m also delving into actually learning PHP/MySQL and a bunch of other web technologies that I should have down by now.

In Closing
With all that said in one of the longest blog entries in awhile, it’s time for a change.

I just realized when I looked at when my first emails were sent/recieved that I have been working at my job at my school for over a year.

Tis a pretty rad job, I like it much.

late night studying random poem with spelling errors.

- no title 3/13/06 2:30 am
when you think of something
write it down
cause you never know(n)
when what you wrote down
is worth a million bucks

I’m posting this at 5:50am… finals are great.

Went to Las Vegas for the second time this month. This time for a bachelor party. Quite fun all around for a night. I was able to take a few pictures on the way to and from Las Vegas. I spent kinda alot of money again, but it was well worth it. Some highlights:

• Crazy guy in car looking at me like I did something wrong when I was turning and staying in my lane, yet he acted like I cut him off.
• loosing 4 straight hands of blackjack, $40 bucks gone in first 5 minutes of gambling. (I didn’t gamble much more the rest of the night)
• everything in between
• breakfast saturday morning at coco’s where they spelled “your” - “yur”
• leaving 2 jackets at the Monte Carlo and remebering 60 miles away, and driving back and getting them. Thus driving a total of 8 horus that day.
• Driving over 1000 miles this weekend in total

I will say that after going twice this month, Vegas is once again quite the interesting place. I get there, have a fun time, yet leave and think that I wouldn’t mind not going back. Spend too much money and it is sin city.

And now for some more photos!

Raging Bus Fire!

The Truck

Spike trees EVERYWHERE

Junkyard panorama. Made with Autostitch.

Full photoset: On Flickr

Mellowdrone - Beautiful Day

today is going to be a beautiful day uh huh
no more waiting for the usual thing uh huh
don’t dare waste your time boy
don’t dare waste your time
no more waiting for the usual thing uh huh
what can i do to make this plane go through uh huh
i’ll put your thing in a different way uh huh
someday i’ll get it right
i swear i’ll get it right
today is going to be a beautiful day uh huh

–

totally. even when it’s hazy outside and maybe going to rain.

Mellowdrone on MusicGlob