Not this Time

Have you ever had a failure in one area that made you work harder, faster, and with more motivation in all areas? That is what I feel like right now. I was unable to procure the internship at the firm I was applying to and I completely understand all the reasons for that. Reaction? Work hard and get it next time, or the next one, whatever the case.

Alright so what is on today's agenda? First thing is, as most of you probably know already, we are launching fluffy-muffin.com on the Jan 1st. Hold your breath! Every day it is coming together more and more, When we launch it's going to be a rough polish meaning that not everything is exactly how we want it, annnd since we are not really being paid in any way it's most likely not going to get to the perfect point any time soon. BUT! Amazing none the less. So here are a couple more images that I didn't post last time of more sneak peaks at some of the functioning parts of the website. Also not to perfection YET.!

Alright! So now I'm off to work on that stuff some more, and my portfolio, and! a ASLA submission.
Until next time!

Annnd We're Back!

Hope everybody had a good Christmas,or other holiday that you celebrate, and are refreshed for the next long haul! I know my Christmas went fairly well and I am here to give you an update of what happened and what is sure to come this following quarter! First thing that happened over the break was, as I mentioned in an Earlier Post, I broke down and bought CS5.5! So far its been amazing, I have been going back and forth between the programs with such ease that its unbelievable. When I get back to Seattle later this week I am going to start the process of de-papering my apartment with the acrobat pro's pdf scan function.

So what have I been working on this break? Well I've been working alot on a project my girlfriend, check out her tumblr and blog :D, and a couple friends and I have been working on called Fluffy-Muffin.com. We've decided to launch a website about daily college life and post college life in the format of Comics and literature based musings updated several times a week. SO FAR its turning out to be a huge amount of work but very fulfilling.

We plan to pay for the hosting, and maybe an extra bit more, with ads placed within the site and a paypal donate button. Who knows, maybe we can come out even here! Anyways we are launching on the first so its been a scramble to get everything done for the big day. I'm realizing more and more though how its going to be a huge amount of ongoing work. We can do it! Check out some of the Images that I've been working on the last few weeks. All the hand drawn style elements are products of Alice Lee and the formatting is myself.

Finally, there is something I am very excited about! When I get back into school this coming weeks I am going to download and POSSIBLY purchase the student license of Keyshot Rendering. I've seen it do some incredible things and if all goes well with the trial I just might purchase. HOWEVER, I am so insanely broke right now I don't know if I can even afford the 100 bucks. SO. if you guys want to HELP ME PURCHASE :D all you have to do is take a look at my lovely advertisements :). I hate begging for money.... Until next time!

Early Christmas Present

Happy Holidays! Today I decided to get myself an early Christmas present that I can't wait to install. Its the Adobe Creative Suite CS 5.5 design premium! It comes with Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Flash Catalyst, Fireworks, Acrobat X Pro, as well as Bridge, Device Central, and Media Encoder. I've been holding off on this purchase for a long time, and I've really been wanting to do some work in Flash and Dreamweaver. I'll make the time! Anyways this was a debate between the Design Premium suite and the Web Premium suite. The reason I decided to go with the Design Premium was it has almost all of the web premium minus Flash Builder BUT the web premium lacks InDesign. I really like InDesign. Anyways this should help me on my way to amazing! Oh! and since I get mad discounts as a UW student all for 380 after tax... not too bad.
Until next time!

Working from the Sunny State

So yesterday I submitted my final model for my Rhino modeling class and here are a few pictures of it. A couple things I definitely could have done better if I summed up the motivation was variate the fern rotation and scale a bit more, definitely should have done a better job on marsh grass. Somethings I still need to figure out is how to make face-me objects, for those of you who don't know what that is, it is just an image that turns and always faces you as you are orbiting the model, I don't think it does so well with shadows though. If you didn't see the earlier version you can check out a picture here. Anyways I may continue to work on this model for a piece of portfolio as it is not quite up to standards as of yet. Take a look at some of the pictures below! AND if you would like to support me take a look (and by take a look I mean click) some of the advertisers on my page!

Other news. So I had my telephone interview with the firm I mentioned previously and it seemed to go ok. I don't know if I'll be selected but the interviewer and I seemed to hit it off well. I hope to get the position but I am ok with not getting it too. If I don't I'll find something somewhere else soon! I'll keep you guys updated. Also on another front, my partner and I have decided to submit to the ASLA awards the Orcas St. Housing Project later in the New Year. I hope to be more thoroughly involved in the submission process and I think it's going to be a good experience winning or not. Some things to be aware of if you find yourself in a similar position is the 50 dollar fee to become a student member of ASLA and the Entree Fee for the project itself! You can look at some of the PRE REVISED graphics in my earlier post here. Until next time!

Final Submission

So today me and my partner put together some pages of 11 x 17 to submit to our professor for grading. These pages will also be given to the city of Redmond to show and consider at future meetings concerning the park system. Hopefully its helpful. Comments are welcome! Until next time~

On other notes, so far California has been great. Pretty cold down here. Tomorrow I have that phone interview. I actually looked at the land8 lounge blog for some tips on what types of questions to expect and what types of questions to ask, but they all seemed geared more towards professionals seeking jobs, not a student looking for an internship. I'll let you know how it goes! Wish me luck!

The morning after

Well the quarter is over! The above picture is the aftermath of my studio desk and it was well worth it. Our presentation to the redmond arts commission was somewhat of a disappointment due to the attendence of only a single guest. Better than no guests I suppose. It was a stark difference to the review on Wednesday to professionals  professors and students. Overall I think the quarter went fairly well and I think I was taught more this quarter than the previous three combined. It's been great.

So in other news, I now have a phone interview scheduled with a firm here in Seattle who is looking for a winter quarter intern! I am pretty excited to get the opportunity to talk to them in a form other than a resume or cover letter. Wish me luck! 

Right now I am on a train on my way to California for the week where I shall finish my final rhino model and prepare for the interview!! Pictures to come as I go.

Until next time!

Tips and Tricks learned from yesterday's presentation

Relief, oh sweet relief. I feel so calm like the above picture I took in Taiwan this summer. A huge burden lifted off the shoulders. You know the feeling? So today we presented our work of the last few weeks to a panel of professors and professionals. I'd say it went fairly well but there are a couple of things learned that I definitely want to share with you. First of all, presenting digitally is a whole different ball game than presenting on plots. For most of our presentations we decided to use a site called prezi, a flash presentation site that has some cool features. Using the site you can zoom in and out of graphics, hide graphics within other graphics and reveal and a load of other things. However it can all be a bit overwhelming. There was one group that decided to go classic and plot out their boards rather than use digital and graphically I think there's was the best. I am now seeing why boards are the prefer medium for reviews like this. It is really easy to go back and look at specific graphics and remember specific talking points when all the graphics are right there in front of you at the end. In a power point or prezi format you must cycle through the images until you find the one the reviewer wants to talk about. This ended up being the dilemma for most of the presentations. However the traditional board had its imitations too. I dont think that the perspective views were as successful as they couild have been in a digital format. That being said I have come to be convinced that the best way is to have a plotted board/s up on display but simultaneously have the digital format for the main presentation. Then during reviews the reviewers can refer back to the printed boards. The other option is to set up 2 projectors each with a "plotted" board displayed on a prezi or a simple PDF and zoom in and out of those. I think for my next presentation I am going to try doing this on a prezi. Last tip, when working with prezi be very careful about the size of the images and types of images you upload. Uploading 2 flash documents has made our presentation essentially unopenable on the prezi website due to lack of memory. BEWAREEEE it could happen to you!!
Until next time!

Lets keep each other company shall we?

Would you like an update throughout the long night? I think you would :D More posts to come tonight most likely! Until next time! Update!

Arts in the Parks

An accident turned out somewhat interesting looking! Needed a break from procrastinating :D have fun in reviews! done with photoshop cs5 Until next time...
Real Estate Web Site Hosting

Under the Bridge

Here we have an in progress view of a portion of the site we are working on. We're exploring the possibility of Microsoft Hardware Kinect being implemented into public spaces (it has quite a bit already) to make parks digitally interactive with very little maintenance cost. This also will allow for changing of software from time to time to re-engage the public over and over again. Have to add textures now!~ Until next time :D

Late Nights Have Come

Late nights have come! Just want to wish everybody a good finals week. Here at the UW Landscape Architecture Department we are presenting to professionals and professors on Wednesday afternoon, then on Thursday we are presenting to the Redmond City arts department! Apparently our designs matter this quarter! After that we are installing a children's fence/ play equipment we design-built on Saturday! Pictures to come :D Until next time!

The difficulty of applying to Internships

So as you may or may not know, I recently quit my job at Radioshack to free up some time to apply to some internships.