New Location!

I moved my blog today over to a wordpress site!

http://zacharyhorst.wordpress.com

Go check it out!

Also, you probably will want to subscribe to it :D

ISO

Okay, so here's what I learned about the ISO setting on a camera.

First of all, the ability to change the ISO on a digital camera is pretty much fake. I mean, digital cameras emulate the ISO of film cameras. ISO is basically film speed, and usually is 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, or 3200. A lower number means smoother pictures with less light let in, a higher number means pictures with more grain with more light let in.

Film is light sensitive on one side because of chemicals and microscopic silver particles. The ISO is the size of the silver particles. I thought that was really cool when my profesor told my class that. The lower number the ISO, the smaller the particles of silver, the smoother the picture, the less light the film takes in. The higher the number the ISO, the larger the particles of silver, the more grain the picture has, the more light the film takes in.

Interesting, isn't it?

My Week

College has started! Here's a bit of how my week has gone.

Monday Night: (But I switched it to Monday morning because the night class had about a thousand people in it and the morning only had 8 people) Typography Traditional. Seems like it could be an interesting class. All about type and we are apparently going to eventually make out own fonts?

Tuesday Afternoon: Illustrator I. This class should be great. I will be learning the ins and outs of Adobe Illustrator, a program I have not yet had any teaching in and don't know much about.

Wednesday morning I had work from 5 to 9, then met Taylor Wilbur Concialdi at Chic-fil-a because I had barely seen her all break! We talked for a very long time about our lives and things to catch each other up and it was great. Thanks for the awesome conversation! I miss you Taylor!

Wednesday at 1 I had Design Fundamentals II, which will probably be interesting.

Wednesday night I went to JH ABS and I must say, I was impressed. Usually they are alll overrr the placeee, but they were actually really talkative (in a good way) and we had a great discussion about the Church. It was exciting, because they don't usually have as good of a discussion as they did Wednesday.

Today (Thursday) I had Digital Photography for Designers from 8 am to noon, and I'm really excited about it. The instructor is awesome and seemed ridiculously knowledgeable about photography. She explained what the ISO means (as in, what the number actually means instead of just what it does in a camera. It was extremely interesting. I may post a blog about it later just because it was very interesting. But yeah, very excited about having a photo class.

Thursday night from 6 to 10 pm I have Photoshop II (aka Digital Imaging II) which I am excited about because I just found out that I have the professor from the Thursday morning class for this one too! Very exciting because they professor for Digital Imaging I was not very organized, and this professor seems to be. Also, she has an MFA in Photography. FTW!

Later!

Mere Reflections

Just in case you don't read Riley and Trey's blogs (since they already said this), we started a joint blog, and it's kind of come to life in the past week. Go check it out!

New Year

If you don't care about my reading list (which I don't blame you for) just skip the first two paragraphs and begin at the third.

As part of my New Year's resolutions, I have decided to reread some of my favorite books that I haven't had the pleasure of reading for a while. I started two days ago, deciding to read The Chronicles of Narnia, which are perhaps my most favorite books. As evidence, I'm already part way through the second one (I'm reading them Narnia-history-chronologically, so that's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), and I am quickly rediscovering why I enjoy them so much. Every time I read them, I find more connections to Lewis' other books and more allusions to the Bible. And indeed, the end of each one of them is so beautiful. I won't discuss them now, because you may not have finished any or all of them (if so, put them at the top of your reading list!) and I don't want to ruin them, but they almost all end beautifully. Other's on my 'to reread' list are the Hobbit and LOTR, and possibly The Space Trilogy, maybe the Circle trilogy by Ted Dekker, and I'll probably end up reading The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters, too.

I also plan on reading for the first time The Cost of Discipleship (which I recently received for Christmas from AJ), and the prequel/sequel to the Circle Trilogy (weird I know), Green. I hope to read the books from Lewis' "signature" classics that I haven't already; Mere Christianity (how can I not have read that one, I know), Miracles (which I started once but had a hard time wading through, there's so much thought in each paragraph!), and The Problem of Pain. I also need to finish the GMac anthology that Trey lent to me, along with like a thousand other books that I've started and never finished.

In other news, I've all but decided to leave the Art Institute of Houston - North. I think most of you who read this have heard in some way or another, but I wanted to let you know what I'm thinking. First of all, I don't see me going to a college that isn't an Art Institute. Honestly, I've been far too spoiled by the lack of Gen. Ed. classes to switch back to taking math and english (which I pretty much have gotten all done with AP classes in high school to the ). I'll have to take a few history courses eventually, other than art history even, but I'm okay with that. I had originally considered checking out the art program at UT (which, if you know me, is hugely out of character, haha.) But in it you have to take something like 33 hours of Gen. Ed. classes and they don't really even have a specific Graphic Design program from what I can tell.

So, I will be staying with the Art Institutes. What's wrong with the one I'm at?

If you have asked me how I am liking school in the last few weeks, I have most likely told you that I am enjoying it a lot, which is true, but what I probably haven' told you is that I am not satisfied with the school I'm at. I love the subjects we're learning about (the adobe programs, color and design theory, drawing, etc.), but I don't think that I like the fact that my class is the pioneer class, as in, we are the first to take any of the classes, so we're the guinea pigs, we get all the failed methods. I'd prefer to be way down the line where we are the beneficiaries of the already refined teaching methods, if that makes sense.

So, this Art Institute leaves something to be desired, where will I transfer to?

There are two Art Institutes in my sights: The one downtown here, and the one in Austin. Basically, since the option recently came into sights to possibly find a place to live with Riley and JM (who are going to UT) in Austin, I'm majorly leaning towards that one, and if it works out, I will definitely go with that one. So the only way I would go with the one downtown is if it was for the quarter between this one and the one that starts in the summer. Otherwise, I will probably take the quarter after this one off and start at the Austin Art Institute in July.

The End.

What do you think?

Year In Review: Places

Places I've Traveled to (in order chronologically, I think):

Martin Dies Jr. State Park. Barcelona, Spain. Paris, France. Disneyworld. Escape (Camp Tejas). Camp Buckner (Burnet, TX). Port Aransas. Austin. Belton. Dallas. Norman, OK. Shawnee, OK. Austin. San Antonio. Galveston.

Technojoy

Okay, so let me just take a paragraph or three (or five) to talk about the fantastically thrilling state of technology. WARNING: This post contains geek levels previously unknown to this blog. Please enjoy. (and a note to Molly: I WILL be talking about cinematography. :)

Too often I forget how amazing all the technology we have is, and how recent it is, since it is fed to us over the course of time. But every once in too great a while I sit back and try to appreciate it all from the perspective of my junior-high-age self. What would myself eight years ago have said if I showed me an a touch screen phone? The state of 3D movies? The BBC's HD Planet Earth series? The size of my TV? The vast and virtually limitless amount of information I have in my pocket or within arm's length at literally any and every hour of every day?

I would be dumbfounded. Flabbergasted. My jaw would hit the floor.

I just got out of the 10:30 showing of Avatar IMAX 3D. Based on the quality of the CGI and the realism of the 3D by way of double-frame-rate digital film projection and non-red-and-blue polarized glasses, my brain could probably pass a lie detector test stating that I had, in fact, just spent 2.6 captivating hours on a planet called Pandora inhabited by 10 foot tall creatures called Na'vi, fighting for their lives and flying giant lizard bat things around floating mountains.

I didn't have a phone until eighth grade, when I was only allowed it for emergency use. I had a clamshell phone without internet or unlimited texting, without one touchscreen (let alone two), and without a QWERTY keyboard. Now I have a phone that can do basically anything I can fathom, and that's without jailbreaking it. No one even used cell phones until I was in junior high. Now with mine I can see any place on the planet, along with many not on this planet, I can download and play hundreds of thousands of games, many for free. I can order movie tickets, check and mess with my bank account, email, facebook, twitter, music, and TV shows.

My first game system was a nintendo NES, which played only in two dimensions and, less than one-hundred different colors. Now I can control three dimensional characters in millions of colors with a pointer at the end of my controller which isn't even connected to the console! (physically, anyway).

So yes, I am a geek. I love technology and it brings me joy to see isn't advancement and to contemplate what it will be in the future. I'm just trying not to forget to appreciate how ridiculously far we've already come! Isn't it mind-bending?!

Expect a future post on what I think about the future of 3D movies etc.!

That is all. :D