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

Science and Baking

This is possibly the most random topic I will ever blog about, but I just wanted to point something out.

Baking is possibly the least precise practice on the planet.

I laughed at myself just rereading that sentence now, but I think about it every time I make food from a recipe. I find it hard to reconcile the baker in me with the ex-science-olympian. How can I put any trust into a measuring system that insists that every recipe on the planet uses the same intervals of flour that are so different from one cup to the next? If measurements mattered in the baking world, then you would have things like "recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups 3 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon of flour at [this amount] of density" instead of "recipe calls for 2 cups of flour."

Anyway, there you have it. Also, this is why I laugh at people who measure anything larger than a tablespoon by scraping the extra off the top.

Heaven & Scrooge

You wrote a letter and you signed your name

I read every word of it page by page

You said you be coming, coming for me soon.

Oh, my God, I'll be ready for you.

Because I want to run on greener pastures

I want to dance on higher hills.

I want to drink from sweeter water

in the misty morning chill.

And my soul is getting restless

for the place where I belong.

I can't wait to join the angels and sing my heaven song.

I hear your voice and I catch my breath,

"Well done, my child, enter in and rest."

Tears of joy roll down my cheek

It's beautiful beyond my wildest dreams

I'm walking through the bright white gates

Breathing in and out your grace

All around me melodies rise

That echo with the joy inside

So I start to sing

But I can't sing loud enough,

I can't bow low enough,

I can't lift my hands high enough,

when I'm worshiping you my God.

Also, on a non-Phil-Wickham-song related note, I saw the new 'A Christmas Carol' movie today. It was really good. I was struck by the whole theme of it this time more than I usually am when I see a version of this story. The whole part about how Scrooge asks the guy collecting money for the poor on Christmas Eve, "Are there no prisons...And the Union Workhouses?...Are they still in operation...The Treadmill and the poor Law are in full vigour, then?" In the story it's obviously satirical, but how often do we hear things like this in the news? I know I've thought along those lines at times. And the part where Scrooge sees that under the robe of The Ghost of Christmas Present are the two emaciated children called 'Ignorance' and 'Want.' The whole thing just made me consider a how careless I am. How selfish I am. How can anyone, especially Christians, be this way?

And on that note, I shall leave you with an article by my favorite musician: Compassion vs. Consumption by Jon Foreman

You Should Probably Go Read This Article Right Now:

http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/shane-claiborne-1209

It's by Shane Claiborne. Apparently Esquire Magazine asked him to write a letter to non-believers and it has some really good points.

More on Thinking Styles and Synesthesia

Bear with me! This is me working out how my brain works, ha.

Sometimes I feel the need to belt a song out as loud as I can, and if
I don't my stomach gets all into knots. I think it can be attributed
to me feeling a strong emotion about something.

Today Pastor Mark's sermon was about love. This is a subject I feel
very strongly about. I spent the entire sermon wanting to sing an old
song my mom sang when she was in the choir called 'Only Love.' (I also
really wanted to sing Your Love is Strong, Your Love is a Song, and
Love's Going To Last) But I spent the entire sermon feeling off
because of the response I was having to the subject. I wanted to be
able to express how I felt about the subject be singing any of those
songs at the top of my lungs, then I probably would have felt better.

This leads to a topic I posted about a
long time ago about thinking styles and synesthesia (which is
basically the connection of two unrelated senses in the brain, i.e.
hearing colors). I have come to the conclusion that I think very much
in sights and sounds, never in words (or should I say written words, I
hear the words I'm thinking or I literally see the text of the word in
my head, whereas my brother, AJ, thinks more in terms of information.)
I think that probably the only reason I can write poetry is because of
the rhyming aspect, because I hear the words being spoken in my head.
I've never been very good at writing an eloquent essay unless I have a
sort of writing style in my head to follow. Most of my sentence
structures I use I have stolen from sentence structures I've heard
repeted a lot around that time.

How does this description me myself differ from your thought style?
This subject intrigues me!

A Great Quote

"My friend Anna works at a soup kitchen, a cafe downtown run by Catholics. I volunteered there one day, cutting celery, and there was another woman working who had a son who was autistic. Her son sat in a booth and stared at his hands, flicking his fingers in front of his face, watching them like flames.

The boy's mother said he was autistic and sometimes spaced out, staring at his hands, but because I didn't know what autism was, really, I figured he was more or less mesmerized by his existence. I was romanticizing the situation because the kid was probably distracting himself or daydreaming or something, but I thought maybe he was like Hamlet looking at his hands, thinking sincerely about what it means to have been born.

Back when I got out of high school, I used to think about stuff like that all the time. It was a phase, I think, but I used to suddenly realize I was alive and human. It felt like I was in a movie and had two cameras for eyes, and I'd swivel my head as if I were moving my cameras atop a tripod. I even wrote a poem about it and said we were 'spirit bound by flesh, held up by bone and trapped in time.' Back then I wondered why nobody else realized what a crazy experience we were all having. Back then I'd be lying in bed or walking down a hallway at college, and the realization I was alive would startle me, as though it had come up from behind and slammed two books together. We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren't capable of remembering how we got here. When you are born, you wake slowly to everything. Your brain doesn't stop growing until you're twenty-six, so from birth to twenty-six, God is slowly turning the lights on, and you're groggy and pointing at things saying circle and blue and car and then sex and job and health care. The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe that life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given--it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

[...] When Steve, Ben, and I wrote our characters into the screenplay, I felt the way I hope God feels as he writes the world, sitting over the planets and placing tiny people in tiny wombs. If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.

I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to more and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.

But I've noticed something. I've never walked out of a meaningless movie thinking all movies are meaningless. I only thought the movie I walked out on was meaningless. I wonder, then, if when people say that life is meaningless, what they really mean is their lives are meaningless. I wonder if they've chosen to believe their whole existance is unremarkable, and are projecting their dreary life on the rest of us."

--Donald Miller from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

You really should give it a read. It's a fantastic book. Very inspiringly anecdotal. He tells stories inside the overall story that are so inspiring, it makes you want to get out and do something important.

seperation anxiety
hidden from society
feelings mean nothing
without some variety
frequent confusion
believing an illusion
time is relative
especially in seclusion
theories aside
trying to abide
this entire thought process
is just an aside...

Lately;

Oh goodness, my mind keeps telling me that it's tomorrow.

I'm so excited for this weekend! Friends I haven't seen in too long! Beautiful weather! (it's supposed to be sunny with a high of 70-75 all weekend in OK) :) Wonderful music! Oh, Jenny & Tyler.

On a non-related note, here's what I've been considering lately:

This is how I've observed life works: First, you aren't old enough to appreciate how wasteful you are, or how blessed you are. Then, at around late high school to college age, you realize that you throw away so much stuff every day, and that there are so many people who don't have on fourth of one half of on eighth of the stuff you have, so you try to fix all that. Then, you become disillusioned sometime after college. Is that how it works? That's the only way I can think of that explains why college people are so activistic, only to be content in 10 years. idk. Maybe I'm being harsh, but I hope that my desires to help others never leave.

This is kind of spawned from a debate I was having with a friend on facebook. But anyway.

Also, go listen to the new switchfoot CD! It's streaming on www.myspace.com/switchfoot. I did the 'pop out music player' thing and have been listening to it nonstop. I really love switchfoot.

Anyway, here's a morsel from the album:

"We lock our souls in cages, we hide inside our shells, it's hard to free the ones we love, when you can't forgive yourself!"

Also, you should go read Donald Miller's "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years"

That is all.

Let me tell you about something that happened to me the other day.

I had lunch with a friend, and the subject of politics came up. My friend is admittedly very, very conservative, while I am admittedly more left-leaning.

We somehow got onto the subject of abortion, and this is where things get odd: my friend told me they are pro-choice, while I am whole-heartedly against abortion.

We began to discuss why/how we had come to have our beliefs, and it was really intense. My friend told me that they are pro-choice because when my friend's mother was pregnant, there was something wrong with the baby, so she decided to get an abortion. Well, my friend was conceived in the time between when the first baby was due and the time of the abortion, therefore making it impossible for my friend to have been born if not for the abortion.

Vice versa, when my mother was pregnant with me, I told my friend, the doctor told my mother that she should probably get an abortion because I very likely would have a birth defect. Needless to say, I did not have a defect and my parents did not decide to have me aborted.

It's difficult to think about, isn't it? We didn't continue the conversation any further.

Again, I am against abortion, but it's a weird situation to think about.

This Week...

So, I've had a whole bunch of work lately! And actually, It's great. I really like working at The Container Store. The people all enjoy being there and try to have fun doing what they're doing. On Wednesday, I worked from 9 pm until Thursday at 5 am setting up the middle of the store for the Christmas thing they do called gift wrap wonderland. I must admit I enjoyed getting to see all the patterns of wrapping paper. There were a whole bunch that reminded me of 60s and 70s wallpaper, which was interesting. But I liked them. Like one looked like stylized woodgrain, and some had silhouettes of deer and trees. (Erin, you better not go into the container store anytime soon, because there are a HUGE amount of things that you would love. haha). But yeah, the graphic designer in me was saying "You should probably get all of this because you could use it! Eventually."

Anyway! Oh yes! Mrs. Sherri asked me to do the graphics for Christmas Café! I'm pretty excited. I'm working on a few designs for when I meet with her and Pastor Stu on Monday. One of them is kind of Container Store wrapping paper inspired. haha. But yeah.

The weather is amazing right now! It makes me THAT MUCH MORE excited to go visit Taylor and Marie in Oklahoma with Erin in November! gah! I'm really, really excited! :D

In other news, I'm currently debating in my mind weather or not the new Mac 'Magic Mouse' would be a good investment for me...It's SO COOL! It's like a laptop trackpad on top of a mouse body! I'm leaning towards getting it...

So yeah, there's my life lately. How are you?

This Weekend...

...was wonderful!

Saturday I went up to Belton to visit Molly! It was a lot of fun. On the way there I listened to some indie bands: Grizzly Bear, The Decemberists, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was tight. I seem to have become an indie fan...haha. I've still got a whole bunch more to listen to...

Anyway, Belton was great! I got to meet Molly's lifegroup leader and her family, they were really nice! Sarah seems awesome for Molly, they're so alike! We watched the end of the OU/UT game and then Molly gave me a tour of Belton and UMHB which was great! There was a market going on in town and we got ice cream at this random place and went to a tiny free museum. It was cute, haha. Also, we went to we this lake and Belton Dam, which was cool. Then Molly gave me a (much shorter) tour of the UMHB campus. It's really nice. The weather was awesome! It was really quiet because it's their fall break.

THEN we went to the concert! After Edmund was really weird. They told us that they were from the future...which was odd. Also, they had one guy whose entire job was to sing into this vocoder. I must admit, that was cool. Also, they came out with glowing shirts, haha.

Tedashii was next, and I must admit that I was impressed. Though Jimmy Needham wasn't as impressive I thought.

Le Crae was really great. Though I don't really care for rap, Le Crae was so into the gospel! I mean, he spent more time preaching than rapping. It was tight. Oh! And Jessie Cook was there!

Then I drove home! haha.

After church today I saw Pippin! It was really good! It was a play about a group of actors performing a play. But yeah, Cy Creek always puts on great plays.

Then I hung out with Becca, Liam, and Renee at iHop, which was great.

Great weekend!

This is random, but...

will someone please tell me if Stockholm Syndrome is good?

Another Poem.

shine like stars

in the universe...

a staggering concept! It says:

be seen despite astronomical

distances!

a maddening precept! It begs:

remain bright long after

you're gone...

tell of something almost

unfathomable

incomprehensible!

...indispensable.

what's happening lately

So, since my last post I have become 19! I've started my second quarter at AiHN, and I've had my first day where I had to go into work three days in a row.

Here's my new quarter's schedule:

Monday 8am - Noon = Perspective Drawing

6pm - 10pm = Concept Design

Tuesday 6pm - 10pm = Graphic Symbolism

Thursday 1pm - 5pm = History of Design

6pm - 10pm = Digital Imaging (which is Photoshop class)

It's going great so far. These classes are much more graphic design oriented, which is cool, because it means most of the people are graphic design majors. All the people I've met are really interesting! There are more people there who have been in other jobs or colleges before the art institute than just graduated highschoolers. Also, I was nominated Graphic Design student of the quarter! haha. It's pretty exciting.