The Transition
11/25/09 10:52 CST
Happy Thanksgiving. Heads up, there's bound to be big changes all around coming in the near future. I'll have more details in the coming week or two, so stay posted. Things will be updated here soon as well.
New tasks
09/07/09 15:27 CDT
Well, it's time for a new expansion of the site. I'll be posting music stuff in a few days now that I have some content to post. The Photos section will also undergo it's initial development in conjunction with the development of my PHP/MySQL-based Content Management System (CMS). This is proving to be a monumental undertaking for myself, since I'm teaching myself PHP and MySQL, and will be creating everything from scratch. It's definitely a project that won't have a specific completion date, but rather a given set of objectives and milestones that will likely never cease to end. Or something like that (it resembles the engineer's mantra: "If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.").
In other news, I've been approached about making some stands/racks for marching bass drums that allow multiple drums to be played by one person. I'll take pics of the existing ones that we have here at Fort Hays State, and if I do end up making these new ones (as requested by Lakewood Middle School in Salina, KS), I'll document the process and place everything under my Projects section, which is yet to be started on. I also have plans to make a custom computer/office desk in the near future using cheap components and some "household domestic engineering". Hopefully that goes well.
That's all for now I guess. A relatively short post, hopefully more will be coming soon about stuff more interesting than the psycho-babble about this website. I'll keep you all posted.
-BW
My Canon 30D is my Spouse
07/31/09 23:09 CDT
Short of being really weird, I've become "one" with my Canon EOS 30D lately, having shot so much stuff with it. Between two weddings, two portrait sessions, two engagement sessions, and a few concerts, I have enough material to keep me occupied for 5 weeks straight without even leaving the house. Lucky for me that won't be the case, but I'm getting fairly intimate with Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Photo Mechanic, as well as Photomatix 3.0. I think I'm starting to wear a smooth spot out on my desk from where my arm sits for the mouse.
The Scanning and Music pages should be getting updates later this weekend or next week, as I'm finally compiling some those, as well as the web design section. I recently dug through the hard drive on my old system and found all my web design files from that, including thumbnails from a previous iteration of my site specifically setup for "portfolio" purposes. I'm hopeful I can get images of the actual layouts and designs as well.
The FHSU Drumline this year is slated to be the biggest in a decade; 15 people have been confirmed and/or enrolled in the band with intent to be on the line, and the best part--they're all drummers. I know this sounds weird, considering it is a drumline, but considering that the last 3 years straight, we've had to pull members from the rest of the band to fill the line out, it's a nice change. Plus it means we'll sound better. I'll be posting some of the arrangements for the line on here in the Music section later next week.
If you haven't noticed, I redid the layout for my Photography site, and I'm much happier with it than the old one. It has a little more depth to it. I'll be adding a ton of new photos there over the next few weeks, so keep an eye on the menu on the right side for new photo shoots.
That's all for now. I'm out.
-BW
20 Ways to Save Cash in the Bad Economy
05/08/09 14:28 CDT
Written for the first entry for The Shift Managers.
I've gotten fairly good at stretching my cash lately. Here's 20 ideas to help you do the same.
1. Quit buying bottled water. Buy a filter pitcher, and refill your plastic water bottles with filtered water from home. On average, it costs only 4¢ (FOUR CENTS) per gallon to drink filtered water from your tap; on average, it costs nearly 50¢ per gallon to buy it from the store.
2. Install flourescent energy-saving bulbs and install weather stripping on your doors & windows. During the day in summer, close the blinds or shades on the south windows of your house. It'll cut your electric bill down and save energy. It also reduces the amount of dust entering your house or apartment, which means less vacuuming and dusting (thus saving more electricity).
3. Eat out less. Groceries are expensive, yes, but they go further in the long run. $100 at the grocery store will likely feed the average American family for a week, while eating out may eat that $100 up in a few days.
4. Speaking of the grocery store, buy discount brand items. Brand loyalties are the biggest farce in American culture these days, especially in world of groceries and the food industry, and mean nothing in terms of quality or taste. My mother makes six-figures a year and still buys the value-brand peanut butter, among other things.
5. Recycle. Aluminum cans have gone up in value the last few years, and that translates into spare cash. Some cities and suburban areas even have recycling collection...
Read the rest of the full post Here.
Jubilation!
04/17/09 14:08 CDT
After almost a month without any updates, I finally got around to doing some things, and honestly, I like the new color scheme. I just didn't like what I had, it wasn't cohesive, and some parts were just too dark or too light to justify the scheme. So here's the new one. This will stick around for awhile, and I think it's easier on the eyes.
Speaking of updates, the photo section currently directs you to my photography website, but eventually I'll be building all new galleries specifically for this site that aren't geared for a whole big portfolio look, so maybe in the next few weeks you may see those pop up. Fun Stuff will be getting a large expansion once I get everything compiled. There's a whole slew of material for that, and my Web Design and Scanning sections will get a kick start this weekend as well. So keep your eyes peeled.
In other news, I recently was approached with shooting another wedding. Well, three really. And to make it even more interesting, one of those weddings is in Hawaii. Yeah, again, and it'd be next March (2010). But this time, it's better: potential for all expenses paid (save for what amounts to souvenir and party money), and the potential to stay beyond the allotted 9 days afterward. It's not for certain yet, and I may not know for at least another week or two, but the potential is at or above 90% certainty. I am stoked beyond comprehension at the thought of spending another trip there.
Lastly, my roommate was recently evicted for failure to pay the rent, which is a blow to me financially, but if I can make enough money over the next 4 months, I may just finish the lease out by myself. Photography jobs are starting to become more common, and my name is getting out there more every day. Hopefully this summer will prove to be a nice big monetary windfall.
-BW
Huh? O_o
03/23/09 13:53 CDT
Well, so much for getting stuff put up this week. My plans have altered greatly over the last 24 hours.
What was planned to be an engagement session in Kansas City on April 4th has been moved forward a week to this upcoming weekend, which, while it throws a wrench in some of my plans, it does make it possible to get home for easter (*ahem*). But we'll see.
For the record, being unemployed sucks, but it does make for time to get a lot of other things done (like change the oil in the truck, wash the truck, clean the garage, clean the kitchen, get photo work done, and even maybe eat some lunch between all that). It also makes it difficult to get things paid for. If you know what I mean.
In other news, I managed to shoot a 258 in bowling...again. It's my high score, and I've hit it like 5 times now. The scary thing about last night is I was literally two throws away from a perfect game--or two pins rather--a 10-pin in the 6th frame, and a 2-pin in the 9th frame. Everything else was a clean strike. it's ridiculous how two measily pins can cost you 42 pins in score. Bah.
I'm out for now.
-BW
Stupendiferous
03/16/2009 17:51 CDT
Content is for people who have time to look at it.
Okay, that doesn't include me, but generating this stuff is not going well, and I just have to sit down and do it. But at the same time, learning PHP isn't going nearly as fast as I'd like it. So for now, I'll stick to typing out these entires in the code-editing window of DreamWeaver.
The Bio page is relatively finished, though I think I may revamp it in the near future to include some more stimulating (read: interesting) content. And maybe more pics. But that's what the photography section is for. Well, what it will be. Fun Stuff will likely be the next to go up, since it'll mostly be links and stuff, but we'll see where that goes.
The most labor intensive section will by far be the photography section, which is why it'll be last, but the Scanning section, which will be based off of my old radio scanning data, will be closely behind that for amount of data collection and organization. RadioReference.com has become a useful tool, but I like to present my stuff because I'm cheesy like that.
The battle continues. Carry on.
-BW
Fruffy Ruffles
03/11/2009 19:41 CDT
So it begins.
What you're staring at on your screen is the product of about 3 months of laborious, intensive, scrutinizing and antagonized work that comes from the depths of my soul.
Or it's just me screwing around with Photoshop and Dreamweaver and then realizing that CSS 2.0 and XHTML are evil creations by people that have no more social skills than I have a life. I digress.
I consider this personal website to be my guinea pig, and over time, you'll see new things pop up, and eventually it'll become my haven for everything about me that isn't officially Business Related. At the moment, I've learned CSS to the point that I can throw something together that works relatively well, but I haven't mastered it yet. I don't intend to get to that point anytime soon either. My next order of business for this monstrosity, other than finishing and adding content, is to learn and implement PHP and a CMS (Content Management System) so as to facilitate things like dynamic blogs, and legitimate photo galleries that aren't entirely Flash based (much like on my Photography website).
On the right side bar, you'll notice my Twitter updates as well as my latest Deviations on DeviantArt, and those are self-updating (yay for server-side JavaScript functions!), and may yield some fairly entertaining things to look at.
For now, this is all. More to come in the future
-BW
