MikeBrum.com

Finally saw Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. I’ve heard all the reviews but honestly thought, “I can’t be that bad.”

I was wrong.

I have the Indiana Jones Raiders/Temple/Crusade Box Set, which I watch on a semi-regular basis. I will not, however, ever be adding Crystal Skull to my collection. It was simply a through-and-through disappointment.

Ah well… maybe I’ll pay more attention to reviews in the future.

I received my book yesterday afternoon from blurb.com and I wanted to take a bit to talk about it (and people wanted to hear about my impression of the service).

First, when I went to get a book printed, I first tried mypublisher.com. In my experience, the software was simply horrible. Well, maybe that’s putting it strongly, but I didn’t like it. It seemed sloppy and lazy and there’s a bunch of room for improvement. I got fed up with it after about an hour of trying to get my layout to look the way I wanted it.

I then tried to use shutterfly. Their service is slightly different, in where you upload your photos to them and then build the book online. Unfortunately, after about an hour and 4 separate attempts, I couldn’t upload my photos. A few would make it and then the transfer would hang. I’d then have to kill the page and start from scratch. Totally not worth my time trying to play around with it.

It wasn’t until my 3rd shot that I tried blurb.com. As soon as I launched the software, I knew it was exactly what I had expected from mypublisher. They have a TON of templates and options for placing your photos and text – which is exactly how it should be.

As for the product, I’m rather happy with the results. The colors are all very bright and they look pretty close to what I was expecting to see given the photos that I submitted. I’m sure my monitor isn’t calibrated 100% perfectly – though I did give it a shot with Adobe Gamma before processing the images. If anything, some of the colors might be a tad darker, but only by a small degree (assuming that the issue isn’t with my monitor).

The dust cover looks really nice and came out exactly as I wanted. I was impressed that the text that I manually positioned came out exactly in the right spot and not “just close”. This tells me that the layout software that you use renders the previews very accurately – which is very important for anyone using it in any creative way.

I submitted the order (including all of the files and layout details) around 2:00am on 5/27. With 2nd day shipping, I received the book on 6/2. Including that Tuesday, that’s a 6 business day turn-around from order to receipt of product – which is very respectable IMO.

Everyone that I’ve shown it to has been very impressed with the results – including people that saw the images before publication. I’d definitely recommend blurb.com to anyone looking to make a book for themselves.

That’s what the weather outside looks like. It’s wet, super windy and a bit chilly. Blech.

I’m working from home today. I was up until 3am working and I’m waiting for the book I made/ordered to arrive. Since tonight’s my last photo class of this course, I kinda need it, as it’s my final project. Nothing beats “down to the fucking wire”.

I’m really curious how it’s going to come out. I think there’s already some things that I would change, but I’ll make those decisions when I can sit down with it and see the results. I’ve never done a large scale printing project before, so this is a wholly new experience for me.

Work hasn’t been bad, but I’m still not 100% back on yet. I’m going to need to be soon though. I’m just going to enjoy the slow ramp back in while I can.

PS – more pics from NC when I can sit down and process them.

I’m fighting off boredom by chatting with Corinne (who I’m also help fight off boredom) and was looking through photos from today as well. There’s a few that I really like that I uploaded for her to take a look at that I figured I’d share as well.

Since I’m not near my main PC at home, these are all unprocessed. Just saving them with whatever Picasa’s default RAW->JPEG conversion is. And like all my photos, they’re all uncropped – just resized for the web. These three were taken on my Canon 30D + 70-200 f2.8 IS.

Click for larger versions.

I’m at Logan and leaving for North Carolina in a bit. I’ll be there until Monday afternoon, at which point I fly back to Boston.

I’ll have limited connectivity, but I’ll be on from time to time. If you need anything, I’ll try to get to it as best as possible.

Much like Boston public transportation, expect delays.

Had to trek down to Providence this morning for some court stuff. As far as things go, it was painless and easy. The bummer was waking up at 6am to get down there in time. The upside was being back home by 11:30. I’m just exhausted though. I’m not used to getting up early any more. Work is all about daytime (starting at noon) and nighttime work (starting at either 7pm or midnight) – nothing “early morning”.

In other news, I got some more comics today. I’ve been interested in a few of the titles coming out of Boom Studios. When I have some time here or there, it’s nice to just sit and read.

So for now, I’m going to just hang out for the next few hours and start prep work for the work I need to do around 6. I’d take a nap, but I think I’d wake up more out of it than I am now.

For my photo class, we had to basically come up with a project and “present” it in some way. It was suggested that making a book would be a pretty good option, so I took that route. It taught me a lot about color management having to do with printing, which I’d never even considered before, so it was a good experience, albeit stressful at times.

Anyhow, I decided to focus on macro and close-up flowers since it’s something I really enjoy. Below are copies of images that I used in the book, paired up how they’ll be displayed. The top image is the cover shot. I really liked it.

The cover shot

I ended up using blurb.com as a publisher. I initially tried mypublisher.com, but found their software to suck bigtime. It was simply horrible. I then tried to use shutterfly, but their Java app to upload photos froze on me about 5 times and I gave up after wasting an hour. I’ll post after I receive the book and see how it came out.

I feel relaxed… which surprises me.

I ended up spending about 4-4.5 hours in Photoshop yesterday doing everything that needed to be done for my photo project yesterday. The bulk of it was in the morning, but I also did a bunch after midnight while I was waiting for work stuff to get done. I’ll post more about the project itself in a little bit.

I also managed to go on two nice walks yesterday and met up with a coworker for ice cream. The weather was superb and it would have been a shame to have not made it outside. I took my camera out with me for the first walk, but it was so windy that I never pulled it out of my backpack.

Despite the holiday, I had to work from 7 until about 2:30. It’s not difficult work when everything goes right… but given how sensitive the environments are, it requires a lot of planning and work can only be done in certain time windows.

Got more work to do tonight starting at 7. Again, won’t be difficult, but it’ll take a while to make sure everything goes in. In the meantime, it looks like there’s some storming that’s about to happen – which should be interesting. Haven’t had a good storm here in a while.

Woo! Yeah! Holiday weekend – company holiday. Aww yeah baby!

Wait… I have to work tonight. Awww indeed. :(

At least I have today to do stuff. Probably going to go for a walk and get some ice cream. Mmmm… ice cream.

Most of the day, however, is going to be spent on my other computer in Photoshop working on my photo project. I think I finally know the whats and hows of my plan, so I can move forward with some purpose. Sure it means wasting a beautiful day inside, but that’s the kind of week this week is going to be – me doing a ton of stuff that I’d rather not be doing, while I’m unable to do the things I’d like to do.

Anyway, thems the breaks. At least there’s ice cream.

Today marks Corinne and my two year anniversary. It definitely doesn’t seem like it’s been that long – but at the same time, so much has changed – but I think all in good ways: jobs, our apartment, two remarkably dumb but incredibly cute cats, two trips to Hawaii, one to Grand Cayman and the fact that we’re fairly avid certified scuba divers.

…and that’s just the big stuff.

I never would have expected to be where I am right now two years ago – or have predicted how impossibly happy I am with pretty much everything in my life. That’s not to imply that we’re codependent – our relationship is remarkably healthy and we still have the things that we do on our own. It’s just that Corinne is at the center of all the things that I enjoy and she (with the patience of a saint) supports me in all the stupid, odd and goofy things that I do. It still baffles me – but I definitely got the better deal in this relationship!

So here’s to two great years – and hopefully many, many more.

Love you – *k*