Attempting to post some pics

Christmas lights are great for taking photos in high ISO with a really high shutter speed. Then i wiggled the camera around alot to spread about the light. :D pretty




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On break, but not really.

It's Christmas break once again and I'm taking the opportunity to post. So far I've probably done some slacking. Played alot of video games and the like but now in a mode of buckling down and diving into the tedious task of perfecting my portfolio for the mid February application deadline for the Landscape Architecture Program here at UW. Fun stuff.

Frankly its not that bad. Just would rather be doing other stuff. Like nothing. It seems harder out of the studio environment, but just need to keep reminding myself how badly I really want to be in this program, and its not going to happen unless I but a sufficient amount of effort into it.

Final Project for fall quarter went great. Presented in front of some pros and got some great feedback. The boards turned out pretty well I think. Google is being wierd and not letting me upload images at the moment but will post again soon with the layout. Until next time! MERRY CHRISTMAS!




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Many pictures to come?

Bought a DSLR on black friday. A Nikon D3000 to be more specific. I've been wanting this and deliberating about it for some time now. I can definitely say that I am satisfied with my purchase. Admittedly I am still a noob at legitimate photography but I think that this is the first step in a good direction. Heres a couple that I took this morning that I think turned out alrgiht. Until next time!










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Its thanksgiving! and working.

Not totally unenjoyable
going to attach a few screen shots this time of the current work.
Tonight! We will embark on an adventure to the deep unknown of Oregon. Plans to purchase? Yes. Yes indeed. Hoping to pick a DSLR among some other things. Haven't totally decided on the Canon Rebel Xsi or the Nikon D3000. A dilemma indeed.

We're redesigning portions of campus. Particualry three points that serve as linkage points for the University and part of the surrounding area commonly known as the "AVE". I've taken the concept of "Ave Culture" and encorporated parts of that concept with the university design paradigm of axial pathways and monumentality.



This is the main approach. Campus is located on a hill that forces visitors to climb a 28 foot rise. Something to work with. The main set of stairs serves as the "fast route" in which the majority of people will travel through to get to their destination either to campus or to the ave.



Zig Zagging across the main axis are smaller paths that serve as the "slow routes". This is the "hodge podge" concept that there is no direction, simply wandering. Along the smaller paths are openings that allow for gallery sculpture pieces to be displayed from the museum that sits adjacent to the site.



ok! now time for turkey!
Until next time~
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!






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Busy

More posts shall come soon! I know i've neglected this for a while but when i have time i have much goodies. Thanksgiving break possibly? :D
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And It Begins

Yesterday was the first day of my Junior year here at the university of washington. It was pretty ok. The Landscape architecture studio is something extremely different from the architecture studios that I took last year. The environment is one of non competitiveness. I'm not quite sure if this is entirely accurate though. I think that the program is fairly competitive, its just that there aren't as many people. I think this has led to a bit less need to assert oneself as the "top dog" to one's peers. Regardless, I feel that its a false sense of security so going to treat it as I would if it were another architecture studio. Our first assignment is to create an 8.5x 11
postcard of our "favorite place in the world". It took me longer to decide the place than it I think than it will take to create the card. Eventually just asked myself, if I had no responsibilities in the near future, where do I want to be? What do I want it to be like? I want to be walking. I want it to be cool, breezy, fresh. There should be animals and oddly, there should be traces of humans of the past. Ruins? Sounds weird. Regardless. Fort Bragg in California is at the moment, my favorite place in the world. Image courtesy of GabaGaba.

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Stepping Back, Over Passionate

Is too much too much? Lately I've been thinking that perhaps that I'm really too set on some things. Is architecture really for me? Am I really put too much emphasis on this to the point that I've messed things up? Perhaps if I had been more flexible with what I wanted to end up doing with my life then I wouldn't be under the extreme pressure that I am now. I have an extreme desire to eventually end up in the "design" field, leaning more towards the aesthetics but in a technical manner. Though this whole thing is making me think that I'm too "passionate" ? Perhaps if I step back a bit then the things will work out more. But the problem is that I know what I want. I feel like that by stepping back, by giving up the design path then I'm going to end up at some dead end place where I'll regret my life. Not really a place wanting to be. Where I want to be issss _____ what. What what what. Not really a SPECIFIC answer to that question. But I definitely have a gist. Perhaps I need to focus more. I'm thinking to much.

Anyways. Third roommate returned from home today.



We're set for the quarter. Desks set. Dishes done...er not. 360 plugged in. We're ready to go. Been wondering if its going to be hard to focus this quarter. I'm hoping not. Think I can handle it. Just got to work out the whole motivation thing and get out of this rut of thinking its all too big. I know everybody is facing these same kind of thoughts as well. Thats why I don't know why I feel soooooo sad? Helpless? More ...inadequate. Guh complaining and feeling dissappointed in myself. This blog as become a cry fest. RUUUUNNNNaaaawaYYYYyyyy.

Until Next Time~



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Not doing enough.

Its been a few days since my last posting. Somewhat of a reflection of what I feel like overall. Pretty much lazy. Just feel like that I'm not doing enough to prepare for a quarter that I know is going to be ridiculously busy and difficult to cope with. Either way I should probably pick up my act. :/


Other than that things have been going ok I think. My girlfriend came back from her hometown a few days ago. That made me really happy :). Probably over-happy since shes been gone for about a month. dododo. But when she came back she gave into my begging and let me see my birthday present early :D It was a Nintendo DSi. Its pretty awesome. It can browse the internet and take photos and play alot of games. I like it alot :D.






Well, until next time~.


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Finally getting better.

Well today is the first day that I've finally felt up to par after getting sick. It seemed to take forever to get better but finally I am. While I was sick basically decided to put anything constructive on hold and sit around the apartment and relax. The dishes have slowly piled up as well as the list of things to do in my mind. I think today is the day for renewed goals. Going to clean up the apartment and get some stuff organized.

Been thinking alot about classes for fall quarter starting up soon. I feel anxious to start but at the same time I am not looking forward to the insane amount of busy work that will soon be upon me. I'm also fearful that I wont make it into this landscape architecture program. If I dont it seems I have no other choice but to accept my fate as an art history major. Going to make it my goal to get a 3.5 in the pre req classes and work on the portfolio at least a little bit every single day.

I think that if I meet these two goals then I have a definite chance.

Atop all the muck I also have work this quarter. As in working again at a convenience store/cafe. I would like to drop this extra time spender completely honestly but the fact of the matter is is that I cannot go without the steady income to meet my rent/bill needs. nothing could really make up for it.

Anyways, just my thoughts.

Until next time.



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Sick Relaxation?

Well today I essentially sat around and wallowed in my cold. Watched a couple movies. Made a trek up to safeway in order to get some orange juice to combat the sickness.Really should have biked there as the walk back was horrible Buying a gallon of orange juice, half gallon of milk, and 10 lbs of rice was most likely a mistake.



Other than that have been browsing around on archinect alot as well as a little bit of Design Community forums. Tomorrow comes too quick. Until next time.



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Onset of Swine Flu?

Started off with just a soar throat but now seems to be getting worse. I'm going to say that this prevented me from posting? Perhaps not. Will try to post tomorrow. As far as the architecture of the day goes, going to link to daily dose. I found it quite enjoyable.


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Early Morning, Late Night

So today has been a bit of a long day. Woke up early this morning in order to go renew my food handler's permit that allows me to be a barista here in the lovely city of seattle. It was an insanely easy test, the only hard part was staying awake during the 30 minute video. All in a days work.
After that went to pick up my mail from my nearby grandparents house only to find out that the rebate I was expecting from Apple has yet to arrive. Somewhat of a surprise seeing that its been a good 15 days since I bought the laptop. Thinking on it now though, its fine, 15 days isn't that long.

Other than that spent the day loping around the apartment trying to work up motivation to do something constructive with my life. Set on the task of working on redoing the font on the zion project. Yes, the "zion project" is in lower case letters now. This is my attitude on putting any real work effort into it. I've turned into a useless blob. Anyways. The Font was originally some generic default font in Illustrator called Perpetua. It served the purpose of the original design themes of straight verticals and straight horizontals. Upon talking with some of the admins of the Zion Group the font was somewhat not "colorful" enough. I looked on their website and it seemed that they were leaning towards more of the "cursive z" as a first letter. Decided to take it into the whole word. At that point i realized that the initial design simply could not work with the re conceived text element. Thus. This previous draft:
The only thing different about this draft and the one that was previously posted is the faded lines leading to the ZION text. I feel like this really helps this particular design. The re conceptualized version is very different. At this point I really don't care for it much but I think it can turn into something different but good.

Again, this is very very rough and essentially took me ten minutes of moving some vectors around. I think it was important to actually get something "on paper" so to speak in order to move the process along.

So tomorrow going to work on that more, with all luck after I return from the gym. The luck part being I actually go to the gym tomorrow. Other things happening today is that I've turned into a regular Betty Crocker. Made some quick and easy "cakies" tonight using a box of cake mix, couple of eggs, and 1/3 cup of vegetable oil. And here are the amazing results. Hopefully they still taste good in a few hours.








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Total addiction and re-conceptualization

So today shortly after waking up I realized that I am sadly and totally addicted to coffee, or more specifically, caffeine. My head throbbed and I had cloudy thinking until well into the second cup of Foldger's Brewed. Its not good. I know i should get off but deep down I like drinking it. I know its probably not good for me, or my teeth for that matter. I don't know if its because I'm addicted that I like the taste? Or the taste has led to the addiction and the whole process reinforces itself in a never-ending cycle. Annnd for tonight Comcast is being ridiculously slow to the point where I cannot upload any photos.

Otherwise. The zion Project is in the process of being re conceptualized. Thinking about adding a Bellevue skyline in junction with the hong kong skyline. This is due to the fact that it turns out that the group is "based in Hong Kong but in fact operates out of Bellevue. At any rate I have a somewhat more final draft of the Initial HK skyline that with any luck will be posted tomorrow. Until next time, get better internet than comcast.


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The Reality of Infrastructure

At 7:30 this morning I awoke once again to the glass breaking sound of the Waste Management company performing their duties of removing the trash from the dumpsters behind my apartment complex. This has been the routine now for about a week strait. My roommate and I have come to the conclusion that there must be multiple garbage companies that each service the different beens on our building and the ones across the alley, thus creating the noise every day rather than once or twice a week.

So this morning as I lay there waiting for the truck to be done I started thinking about how infrastructure must be taken into account during the design process of any structure that is actually intended to be built. In some sense it seems almost insignificant, but in reality it is very. The garbage trucks, the telephone lines, power poles etc. If they're not taken into account then the whole theme of the structure could be tainted. As far as my building goes, it was build quite a long time ago. I wondered if the designer of my building took the garbage trucks into account when designing. He had to have known right? He or she? Probably didn't know about them coming everyday. Details make a difference. But is it really worth shaping the whole design around a waste management company's pick up schedule? Or is it best to ignore it? I don't really know. Perhaps there is a happy medium considering the fact that as time goes by, those type of infrastructure elements, especially waste management schedules, are bound to change. I suppose for now I'll try closing my window in the morning.



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The day of the sink explosion

So this morning as I was attempting to wash last nights dinner dishes and this morning's breakfast dishes my sink randomly started pouring water from below. It quickly filled about 1/5 of the kitchen with 1" deep water. I have no idea what happened but here is the aftermath.
I'm not sure if it looked like that before or not. Our kitchen is so poorly lit its hard to tell.

Other than that waking up this morning didnt work out so well. Ended up sleeping until eleven, then had enough time to do some work then head off to work. Sounds fun. Other than that though I think that there is probably only about 40 to 50 more random PDFs to sort out before my design files are essentially organized to satisfaction.

One bump is that as soon as I walked into work today my boss asked me to close, which turns my planned four hour shift into a long 9 hour one. Not so fun. No worries, its bound to keep happening. I might as well get used to it.



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Its Raining

Not much to post about today. Started to rain pretty hard last night. Let up for a bit just enough for me to make it to work. Other than that only got about 50% of those three folders sorted out. Essentially spent the whole night playing poker with my roommate and brother and a few friends and random people.

Thought I'd test out posting video on here so here it goes.


This is my roommate Francis. He hates to be on any type of image capturing device whatsoever.
The next video is of my brother who is quite the opposite.

It was interesting.
Until next time!




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Long Day

Today is set up to be a long day. Here at work until 830 tonight. I've determined that I'm going to focus on work though when I get home. Hopefully. At any rate, I did some file organization this morning. During the insane winter and spring quarters last year all of my project files turned into three big throw-all folders that have become a jumbled and totally unorganized mess. When I sat down to begin revising some of the things I saw wrong with my portfolio I realized that it was essentially impossible to find any file that I needed in order to edit the link on the larger pages. Things have been moved around so many times within the HD that its ridiculous. So, this morning I created a new folder for three main projects that I completed during spring quarter 2009 and have been going through the hundreds of PDF's, Sketch-Up models and exports, Illustrator files, and Photoshop files and placing them in their correctly organized space. I'm actually opening each file though this time and doing a thorough check. I think one of the issues I was having in the past is that the clutter was so big I felt I had to rush through by organizing just by glancing at the thumbnail or title of each file. Not going to cut it.

Other than that I was thinking about some design stuff. I'm still working on the Zion Project which is somewhat amusing. But in the end I think that it made me realize more than ever that design and thus architecture is not simply a do it done project. It requires revision after revision after revision. And then more revision. When I submitted the initial draft (knowing its not done) of the logo/business card to the Zion Group the amount of opinion and input was unimaginable. I have a plan of action though but I have a feeling that there will still be much revision and that this whole thing could lead to much more design work in the future. Hopefully.



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Long Week in the Dark

Well Haven't posted in a few days to a very real lack of internet access at my new apartment. Last few days just been slowly unpacking and getting things organized. Slowly. We are all moved in though. Here are some pics.
So our layout is Living room = our three desks. Bedroom one is our game room with futon and television, bedroom two is my roommate's and I's sleeping space. Pretty complicated I know.
Overall the whole thing is alot smaller than my previous apartment and this is true for my roommates as well. The one nice thing is the excessivly large kithen. Its about the size, if not larger than our living room. Found that pretty amusing.
Feeling somewhat at home now though. All my stuff is relatively unpacked. Still have to go pick up a few amenities such as laundry soap. Now the only thing left is to get back to work on my search for an internship. Its really tempting just to sit around all day (which is what I have essentially been doing for the last two days), but now that I'm back at work I think I'll start up on that again.
Anyways, other than that my hair is ridiculous today.






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