Steven

I am going to Seattle this weekend! Woo! I get to hang out with my friend Hannah and go see a Mariners game and then I am off to the beach with friends! Man am I excited to have a break from work and get some sun in.

I recently started going to this website called Reddit, I guess it’s a better version of Digg? I dunno, it’s way cool though. It linked me to this article: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/08/hell_yeah_hubble.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss

Space is crazy man. I was thinking about it and when you look at the stars and at pictures like these, it’s like looking into the past because the light has taken so long to get to our eyes, in some cases like in the video, the light has been traveling since the universe was just 500 million years old. If you think about it, there are probably galaxies and stars and stuff that are so far away that even if we had a powerful enough telescope to see that far, we wouldn’t be able to anyway because the universe hasn’t even been around long enough for the light have enough time to reach us. That’s some crazy deep stuff. They estimate that there are 100 billion to 1 trillion galaxies, each composed of just as many stars and planets just like ours. I can’t even start to think about how big that is. There is so much out there that it would be impossible for there NOT to be alien life. If there was a program about space, I would totally take it.

I cleaned my fridge out. It was so gross I took pictures. We will see if I get in trouble for posting these on here…

>Fridge Cleaning<

This weekend I was down in Vancouver for my friends’ wedding. The night before the wedding I went and helped a couple of my friends out with making the cake. In addition to the main, big cake, they felt the need to make 2 smaller cakes in order to feed all of the people. The plan was to have a “spy cake” for the groom and another pretty dove cake for the bride. The spy cake was AMAZING! We cut into the top and made it look like an explosion, put a flipped car on top with half a bloody army man falling out of the side, scattered some army man parts, drew some fire and put it in the crater, and put an army man in the center of all of the chaos with a little heart flag that had the bride and groom’s names written on it.

I read my first “fun” books in a REALLY long time this past week. One of my roommates checked them out from the library and I started to read them and got hooked. The books were “Post Office” and “Factotum” by Charles Bukowski. They were super weird but really fun to read. That guy is crazy. I started reading “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer which is pretty good so far (I’m only a couple pages in).

All my roomies are back! Or at least will be back by tonight. It’s nice not having an empty house. I don’t think I would do very well living alone.

My friend Hannah visited from UW Mon/Tues. That was really fun, we just hung out and watched movies.

Speaking of movies, I saw Public Enemy the other day with my friends Dave and Jake. I was super excited because the previews looked so good and the cast was promising. Major disappointment. Christian Bale sucked, although I almost don’t blame him because the writing was really bad and there was no character development and nothing for him to work off of. It was shot in digital – which is cool, that’s not something that happens often – but it looked a little off, especially for a period piece. AND shaky cam is SO annoying! The one thing I did like was that all of the car chases and gun fights and stuff looked and sounded like they were using legitimate period cars and actually shooting old tommy guns and stuff. There were so many gun fights but somehow it still managed to be boring. I would not recommend seeing in theaters but it might be worth getting it from netflix, it was definitely cool to see a period piece in digital.

What a way to spend the 4^th of July then to leave the country. This weekend I spent up in Vancouver, BC with my family visiting my Grandma and doing touristy things. We spent a lot of time in Stanley Park and on the waterfront which was, of course, super amazing. I also hit up the Vancouver Art Gallery and saw the Vermeer and Rembrandt exhibit they had. SOOOO amazing. Man, some of those paintings are just breathtaking. They also had some awesome photography by Andreas Gursky (definitely google his work right now). I can’t even explain how cool they were, you have to just go and look it up. There was also this installation piece by Reece Terris called “Ought Apartment” which was a tall stack of “apartment” style rooms and every floor you went up it was the next generation. I think it starts in the 50s and gets all the way to today. Each floor was decorated and furnished and had props in it from that generation, it was really, really well done.

I am kind of sad I didn’t get to see any fireworks but it was definitely worth it. No happenings this next weekend, in terms of travelling at least. I think one of my roommates will be back late this week which will be nice. Hopefully then my house will feel less empty.

End school. Start work. I am working in the admissions office this summer, giving tours and working with Diane filling letters and other misc. office stuff. I will be outside while working most of the time which will be really nice. I also got hired to make some new recruitment videos for Evergreen so that will also be really fun.

I have found some time to have real summer fun. Last weekend I went up to Seattle for the pride parade with some friends from high school which was super fun. Not only was the parade/aftermath really awesome but it was nice to see some of my old friends who I went to school with for 7 years. This next weekend I will be spending with my family up in Vancouver, BC. It will be nice to hang out with all of them since I haven’t seen my sister in a while and she is leaving for foreign exchange to Taiwan for a whole year at the end of the summer.

How has it already been several weeks of summer already??

Anyway, to catch you all up:

Spring quarter turned out really well, I finished both my internship and my installation piece. The installation was REALLY fun and I think everyone liked it. I built a small fort and then had the television inside with my piece playing on a loop. I’ll try to upload pictures later. Here is the video:

My internship was really good too. I finished reviewing all of the footage and made a short cut of some good shots that I liked and would work well in the final piece.

Hey everyone, be sure to check out my production blog where I am writing about the progress on my Mediaworks project (there are sone AWESOME pictures!) and you can also check out my internship blog (there are less pictures but it’s still pretty interesting.)

Here is another comment from a blog reader

Please give me the 3 things you like most about Evergreen and the 3 things you dislike most about Evergreen.

-Ridhi

Hi Ridhi,

So, the graduate studies are a little bit different at Evergreen and since I am just an undergrad and have little to no interaction with the graduate studies, this will be from an undergrad perspective.

The main reason I chose to come to Evergreen was because of the way the curriculum is set up. To me, it makes no sense to take math or science or anything if you’re not constantly making connections to the real world and making what you’re learning applicable. Not only do you learn better making these connections but real life is not separated out into calculus and physics and history so why teach it that way?

I am very interested in media studies, specifically film and video, and have been since high school so this was something I was looking for when I was applying to schools. Many of the schools I was looking at that had big film programs were pretty much introductory courses for Hollywood. Evergreen, however, really focused on teaching experimental film and using the film as a medium and an art form. There are also no prerequisites in the traditional sense so I could come to Evergreen and do film and video studies right off the bat.

The availability of equipment is also super nice. I can go to media loan and check out a 16mm camera, a DV camera, lighting equipment, speakers, still cameras, mics, anything. For free. Anytime. It is the most amazing thing ever and anyone can use it.

I could go on and on about the things I love about Evergreen so if you want more, let me know.

One thing that is kind of annoying here is that you only take one program at a time (for the most part). I want to take a lot of different things because they all look really amazing but I have to choose one. This has its good sides too though. It means I don’t have any distractions and I can focus on the one program and be invested.

The weather can be a big bummer. Cloudy and gloomy weather dominates winter and so it can get a bit tough to stay motivated and upbeat when it’s nasty outside. However, all of the rain makes everything green and this time of the year is gorgeous! It’s also nice to have seasons, the bad just makes the good even better.

The third thing that I dislike about Evergreen is the upcoming budget cuts. This is a nationwide thing which is affecting pretty much every single school but it still sucks as a student trying to pay their own way thorough school. In-state, undergrad tuition is going up something like 14% for the next 2 years which REALLY sucks. They are also laying a lot of people off and a few programs are getting cut.

Hopefully this is helpful, and I apologize for the slightly delayed response.

Steven

Here is a question from Jen that I thought might be good to pass along: