What's New
- Friday, June 25, 2004. On this day: BBC, Wikipedia, HowTo
- Laos bound
Well the big news lately has definitely been that I got offered a co-operant position with CUSO to go to Laos for 6 months. I'm still waiting for the final approval overseas but it's pretty much a go. Definitely shaking things up in my life now.
Things have gone from not doing much at all to suddenly being very busy. Switching to printing on fibre paper for black and white means that my time in the darkroom doesn't go as far (although the results are worth it). I'm also trying to work on my final project for Photoshop class but am feeling a little bit blocked at the moment. And, now I'm trying to make plans for going to Laos in a few months. Still don't have the final date but it's probably going to be in September and I'll have a pre-departure orientation in Ottawa some time in August.
Hopefully, once my classes finish up things will be a bit calmer. Or at least, they'll be more focused to-wards the things I need to get done before I leave. There's a lot of different things I still need to do. I'm trying to figure out photo equipment with regards to what i want to take. I also have a lot of issues around film (how much to take, can I get it overseas, should I process it overseas) that still need to be worked out. On top of that, I'm trying to find a new camera bag and possibly a point and shoot camera that I can carry along with me at all times. Then there's also the matter of getting some repair work done on some gear. I have 1 camera that's not operating (and may be dead), another that really should be checked out and have a battery conversion done before I leave (although it works great), and another camera that needs to be checked out.
Then there's the other things I should be doing too. I really should get the computer room and basement sorted out before I leave because I'm not sure how much travelling I'll do after my placement so I really don't know when I'll be back. I also want to complete the update and re-design work on the site so that can go "live" at tildefrugal.net and be moved off of my development platform.
And there's probably 50 other little things I haven't even thought about yet.
# Posted 2:32 PM (0) comments
- Friday, June 11, 2004. On this day: BBC, Wikipedia, HowTo
- Copyright and fair use
Had a bit of a strange experience with copyright recently (no, I am not being sued by the RIAA or MPAA or any similar organization). I started working on my final project for my Photoshop class (still 6 weeks left so I'm really early on this) and I was looking online for some images to use in the project. In particular, I was looking for pictures of gears to incorporate into the image. I found a few basic graphics but a lot of the other stuff I found was more artistic. For some reason I was really bothered by the idea of ripping off another artist's work for my own image. What's particularly odd about this is that the week before I had no problem with ripping off 50+ images from the net to use in another project for the class. In that case though, I was looking for journalistic pictures. I briefly thought about the copyright issues involved in using other people's photos for that project but dismissed my concerns because I knew what I was doing would be considered "fair use". The same would be true for the pictures of gears I was looking for but it felt wrong to use them. I think the primary issue was that the pictures of gears seemed much more artistic or creative than the news photos I used for the other project. It felt wrong to be using someone else's creative efforts in my own project. However, that's not to say that there isn't creativity involved in getting good news photos. It's interesting because I obviously have some type of division between artistic photos and news photos in my mind but I was never really made aware of it before. I'm still not exactly sure where I draw the line.
I suppose I could go even further with this and look at my beliefs with regards to other copyrighted media and what my beliefs around piracy are. I'm not entirely sure why I should feel that using someone else's work in a fair use situation should be morally objectionable while I feel no moral objections to-wards some forms of copyright violation. I think I'll save that discussion for another day though.
# Posted 11:46 AM (0) comments
- Thursday, June 03, 2004. On this day: BBC, Wikipedia, HowTo
- Long delay in updates
Wow, not working has seriously put a cramp on my updating schedule. It's not that I don't have the time to update it, it's just that I find myself doing other things. I think the big reason is that I used to update frequently while I was at work. Slow times at work were kind of odd, you didn't really have anything to do that was work related but it also wasn't exactly free time. You had to pick things that you could do that you could also drop pretty quickly if a call came in. So working on my blog was great, I could start a post and if a call came in, then I'd just leave that window open and handle the call. If I had the chance, I might still update while I was on the phone, or I'd just pick it up later.
I can't believe how much of a difference leaving Eastlink has made though. Even just the next day my mother was commenting about how much more positive I seemed. It's like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm still looking for work but I'm also focusing pretty heavily on the 2 courses I'm taking right now (Advanced Photo and Advanced Photoshop). I'm really enjoying both classes. I haven't really gotten too deep into any photoshop work lately but I've been spending a lot of time in the darkroom printing photos. I think my printing has really improved although it still needs some work. Hopefully next week I'll learn how to print on fibre paper and I'll be able to give that a try.
Other than that, I haven't been up to much of anything. I haven't had much of a social life lately as it is and Landon's still away so I haven't been up to much at all. I have been downloading a ton of anime lately. Mostly I'm downloading fansubbbed material that isn't available in English with a commercial release. I can't believe the quality of the work that's been done and this is all from fans! It really puts some commercial releases to shame. My only concern though is how much of an impact it would have on commercial anime releases coming to North America. It would suck if companies stopped releasing stuff because it had already been released as a fansub.
# Posted 12:54 PM (0) comments
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