Starving Artistry

Engaged!

// February 16th, 2012 // 4 Comments » // Other

2/12/12

So I got engaged this past weekend! It’s been months of planning, I first purchased the ring back in late October of 2011. As you can see in this video I put together, I made her a hidden object game.

So what I actually did was take the pictures. Essentially I took a picture of a clean living room, and then peppered it with various items (and dogs). I had to carefully position each item so as not to have them overlap so that the game could function correctly. I had originally planned to do the programming too, but then realized I had nowhere near enough time to teach myself a programming language, so after assembling production notes, I hired a programmer to assemble it for me.

You can play the game here: Taylor’s Big Day

So then after a month or so of going back and forth with this programmer, I then uploaded it to my site and played the waiting game. I eventually settled on using her birthday as an excuse to propose, since I figured she really wouldn’t be expecting it. I was doing my best over the past few months to throw her off the trail. I even endured a few arguments regarding the topic of weddings and engagement due to my steps to mislead her. Shooting weddings with your girlfriend is NOT a good way to have her not think about getting married.

Anyway, it hasn’t even been a week yet and we’re already in full swing planning the wedding. First step, venue & date. We’re thinking May 25th, 2013. We’ll see! Undoubtedly I’ll be setting up a website for us. I already reserved www.taylorandben.com (benandtaylor.com was taken… go figure).

We’re thinking about doing electronic RSVP’s. What’s your thought on that?

Hiatus

// July 21st, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Other

Computer died. =( Will replace the parts on saturday, so no new posts until then…

Back yo’ $*@# up!

// January 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // Other

My Hard Drives

Okay, so they may look bigger and more intimidating than they really are, but those are my hard drives. That beast on the right is my newest acquisition, a 4 bay Raid5 enclosure. Basically, I stuck four 2tb drives in there, and the computer can read them all as one giant hard drive. Even though it’s four 2tb drives, it’s only about 6tb of space, because (in laymans terms) one drive’s worth of space (2 terabytes) is reserved as a backup in case any one of them fail. So, if a year down the road one of my hard drives stops functioning, I just throw in another one and i don’t lose any data! Important since I’m amassing a huge amount of photos, video, and music projects.

So I have that guy on the right, the drive next to it is a 360gb drive which I had previously used as my video drive but filled it up in no time. I will be emptying that onto my new one. The one farthest left is another 1tb external drive, which is just about filled with randomness. Old programs and the like. My computer itself has an internal 1tb drive which I use as storage. I also have a 500 gig network storage drive and a 320 gig iomega portable drive bringing my grand total storage space to (keeping track?) just about 8.68 terabytes, or 8,680 gigabytes.

Hopefully this will hold me over for a while!

One Year

// November 29th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Other

Incidentally, it was also my one year anniversary with Tay this past weekend. We went out to dinner at the Grill at the Morrison house in Alexandria. It was pretty swanky, a door guy greeted us and everything. I immediately felt under dressed and that I was a 12 year old child.

The Entrance to the Morrison House

They seated us in the corner which was nice. It was dimly lit (bad for pictures, good for atmosphere) and they had a grand piano which I think they have played at least Fridays and Saturdays. As it was, there were only 3 parties eating.


Tay at our seat

We tried the chef’s tasting menu which was delish. We each started with an appetizer. Tay had some apple / duck confit bisque, and I had umami which was a sashimi dish in some sort of sauce. For my main dish I had lamb (of course) and Tay had her duck.


Tay’s Duck Dish

In between courses they served us pallet cleansers (I forget the fancy french word for that).


My Pallet Cleanser

Finally, for dessert we had some sort of apple cake thing which was also good! Of course, for what I paid, it better be!


Tay and the Dessert

One year has really flown by, and just like with my photo and video stuff, it simultaneously seems like it’s been much longer, and hardly any time at all. Here’s looking to the future.

I’m Yours

// December 10th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Other

Student Recordings

// August 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // Other

Well, I’m finally going through the recordings I made of my students at the beginning of the summer, and I thought I’d show off some of my students.

9 y/o -

[audio:http://powellmedialearning.com/recordings/Clara%20Fontaine/Unknown%20Album/Prelude%20in%20E%20minor.mp3]

[audio:http://powellmedialearning.com/recordings/Clara%20Fontaine/Unknown%20Album/Sarabande.mp3]

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12 y/o – [audio:http://powellmedialearning.com/recordings/Wynton%20Cobb/Unknown%20Album/Sonatina%20in%20C.mp3]

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11 y/o – [audio:http://powellmedialearning.com/recordings/Myles%20Cobb/Unknown%20Album/Forrest%20Gump.mp3]

Did the Jackson 5 Lip Sing?

// July 4th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Other

Obviously those kids could play their butts off… but in this video, they’re obviously older. I dunno if Michael woulda sung those notes at that age… maybe. But Jermaine at least would not sound like he was still 14! And he does. Also, notice how they cut the song off right before the talking part? Also, there are strings in the recording, and there are no string players in that studio. Nowadays you could attribute it to a backing track, but I have my doubts as to whether or not they did that back in the day. What do you think?

No Doubt / Paramore

// June 16th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Other

So after a long hiatus of not going to see huge concerts, I made it back to Nissan Pavillion on Sunday to see the No Doubt / Paramore concert. Traffic was atrocious both into and out of the concert. 30 minute ride turned into 1 1/2 hours making us miss the first 15 minutes of paramore’s set.

Leaving was even worse. We just sat in the parking lot for 2 freakin’ hours waiting to get out. Evan, that lucky bastard, made it out in no time at all.

The concert itself was quite excellent, I enjoyed myself thoroughly! No doubt definitely did their thing, playing I think ALL of their singles. I whipped out my iPhone for a couple well known songs. Doesn’t sound TOO horrible considering it was my iPhone in my pocket from a million miles away.
Speaking of being far away, it was really disorienting watching the drummer. Because we were seated so far away, it took a second for the sound to actually reach us. So i was watching him hit the snare and then hearing the actual hit a beat or two later. It was really really disorienting. Then the light show, which was synced up to the hits, was out of sync to us… I never thought about that happening before because I haven’t been to such a big show in such a long time (last one was Foo Fighters / Chili Peppers in 2000). And last time I was at Nissan i was definitely seated closer.
Anyway, I took a couple of bootleg recordings and here they are for your enjoyment!

Crush Crush Crush – Paramore

[audio:paramore.mp3]

Don’t Speak – No Doubt

[audio:nodoubt.mp3]

Tag Combination

// May 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Other

And so many happen to be 80′s songs…

 

Jellyfish Love

// May 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Other

 

So rare to see such amazing harmonies live on a bootleg like this.