A friend from this past summer’s Bike and Build trip Michael Carrol (who recently landed a gig with a really cool company) has showed me an awesome photographer who literally burns film.  He overexposes 35mm exposures to the point where the light source burns into the film. Here is the link and I will also post the pictures here:

Well well well.  It has been FAR too long since I last posted on here.  Since then I have made some very nice changes to my life.  First and foremost I quit smoking.  This happened 5 weeks ago.  Since then I have tried my best to adopt a healthier lifestyle.  And for the most part I have been fairly successful.  I have been waking up early during the week, only eating out on the weekends, and trying to convince myself to go running every day.  The waking up early has been fairly successful, as well as the only eating out during the weekends.  Certain things throw me off every now and again but I am doing my best to get back on the horse when I do fall off.  Now I have tried to adopt into a healthier lifestyle a few times before but somewhere down the line I slide into a path of least resistance and fall back down.  Anyhow, I don’t want to look at this in terms of finality, with it having “worked” or “clicked” but rather a growing experience.

Quitting smoking has been the greatest accomplishment.  Now, I have to say, that I have quit smoking a few times in the past for substantial periods of time, so this isn’t a huge deal, but it is still a pretty huge deal.  One of my favorite bloggers that I have been reading from time to time for a few years now is a man named Leo Babauta, and his blog is Zen Habits. He quit smoking a few years back then little by little, slowly changed his life.  He has said from time to time that you should make little changes to your life at a very slow pace, about once a month.  Now, I am the type of person that likes to do MANY things, and get completely distracted on tangents, make discoveries and do ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING EXCEPT the thing that I am supposed to be working on.  And, being in the creative field of architecture I am given PLENTY of opportunity to do this!  There seems to be distractions at every corner.  But, that is another subject in itself, back to Leo.  So, Leo says make one change a month and then build on that by making another change the following month.  And make them small changes!!  Small things that you change about yourself.  It can be anything.  But only make one change a month.

So.  Since quitting smoking I went overboard with the changes.  (Before I say anything else, I can now smell EVERYTHING!  Smells are intoxicating, and amazing!  As my friend Katie said earlier today, “welcome to life!”)  I made tons of changes that weekend!  I started running, I started waking up earlier on a regular basis, I quit eating fast food during the week, I journaled every night.  I made changes everywhere!  And this is totally against the rules!  But wait, there are rules?  No, only a suggestion, and a good one at that.  So yes I did go overboard, but looking back I think I needed to.  Smoking is very addictive, it haunts you, it drives you crazy, your body wants nicotine and your mind listens to that beckoning call by coming up with excuses and ways for you to get that nicotine.  It’s tough.  BUT I will try to maintain with what changes I have made for myself and build upon those changes instead of adding new ones.

#1Quitting Smoking #2Wake up early  #3Stop eating out during the week (I allow myself one or three big meals eating out during the weekend)  #4  Be active!  Go running preferably during the morning (endorphin highs in the morning make the rest of your day soooooooooo much better, seriously, try it!)  #5  Write in a journal every day (preferably the morning).

I know I know I know I know I know I know, that is a lot.  Especially coming from someone who definitely thought he was functioning best when it was 3AM, chain smoking, drinking tons of soda and/or coffee, and sleeping the first half of the day away.  But, the change i will make until the end of this year is that I will make no further changes or additions and stick to those 5 things as best as I can.  Now just make it through final review and I will be OK!

Today: Volunteering with Habitat for Humanity Wake County and HOPEFULLY going to see Harry Potter after that!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Yesterday was pretty crazy.  I pulled an all-nighter, the first real all-nighter of the semester.  Funny thing, turns out that we didn’t even get to review the drawings that I stayed up all night for.  Instead we went over perspective all day.  But, perspective is pretty damn cool so I was OK with that.  And, per usual after an all-nighter, I am up early the next day.  Maybe I can actually get things done on time this time around so I don’t have to deal with hallucinating during my history class.  It sure WOULD be nice to stay in this rhythm as opposed to staying up all damn night and falling behind.

I am about to ride my bike to school today, that should be fun.  I need to go to a bike shop and pick up a converter for my new pump sometime today.  Here is a really cool video that a friend of mine posted the other day:

I read a book by Bukowski the spring before I went to Berkeley for the summer.  It was given to me by my friend Daniel.  It was called Women.  It was good.  He is a very interesting guy and I think he epitomizes that man that all we all want to be sometimes.  The guy who lives alone, drinks way too much, eats unhealthy, smokes too much, watches no T.V., and writes all the time about whatever he wants.

Anywho, I recommend his writings to anyone who has a profound respect for, “His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.”

The reason for this post being that I found these top-ten quotes by Bukowski and I thought I would share it with my spammers.

Bukowski

I started this blog with the intention of it functioning as an outlet for my thoughts.  A journal on my desk wide open for everyone to read.  To serve as my soap box, my cathartic release, an area where I can just ramble.

When I was living out in California I did something that really made me feel good.  Every morning I would wake up and start writing.  I would write 3 pages a day of just writing.  It was very stream of consciousness writing.  It would take me on average around 20-30 minutes of writing.  It was very medatative.  I didn’t worry about spelling or about I didn’t care about the spelling or what it looked like.  for instance I am writing right now with the monitor down over my hands so that I cannot see what I am writing.  sure I might pick up on a spelling mistake here and theer nd go back and try to erase, but for the most part I am just trying to get things out of my head.  I think this might be an interesting practice for the next ew weeks.  I am almost halfway thew with my first semester of graduate school and I have to say I feel that I have succeeded in areas and there are definitely some areas that I could imporove on.  oOne being time management and working efficiently.  being pro-active.  wri drawing more in my sketchbook.

I think that I should either continue this practice online here or in my journals again.

I never even read those journals.  the book that I was reading at the time that got me started on the whole journal wiritng thing said not to read them because it wasn’t about what you had written.  It was just about the act of doing it.  The act of getting things out of your head, and about order.  Maintaining order in your life.  Architecture is all about order.  It is somewhat completely dependent on order.  No one builds buildings in a politically unstable place.  No one builds buildings in a poor economy, somewhere chaotic, somewhere with no rules, .  I forget who it was, but he wrote a book about architecture and anarchy.  something about killing someone?  I am not sure.  I think he is a dean at Columbia?  I want to read that book.  I need to read much more, and especially DRAW much more!  Architecture and anarchy?  I don’t remember.  That reminds me

of

when

Schaffer quoted Adolf Loos “ornamentation and Crime” in class the other day.  I love that essay.  I mean I don’t 100% agree with it but I have to say what he says totally makes sense.    I think doing this

Online would be interesting.  Have those thoughts completely open for the world to see.  rather than keep them in my journal and never to be seen again.  I don’t really care what or who reads them.  I think it would be an interesting experience.

After all.  Who reads this damn blog other than spambots?

So far I have received admission to 3 out of 4 of the schools I applied to–NC State, The Pratt Institute, and UNC Charlotte.  I was turned down last week from UC Berkeley via a web page. It was sad to be turned down by Berkeley, but at the same time I had a wonderful time there this past summer and who knows, maybe in a few years I will move out there.  It would have been nice to at least get a letter from the college of environmental design, but instead they made me log onto my application only to be forwarded to this link.  With California on the verge of bankruptcy, and the students having to dig them out, I understand if they wanted to save the cost of paper and postage.  Or, being Berkeley, wanted to be a little bit “greener” about the whole process.

After doing some research on The Pratt Institute and the total cost of tuition, I really don’t think I can swing it.  I was hoping to get some sort of scholarship or financial assistance, but no luck in that department.  I first heard about Pratt my freshman year in college from my intro to 3-d design teacher Bob Gerhart.  The first day of class he showed us countless slides of previous students work, going back I think twenty or so years.  At the time I was debating transferring into a school so I could study architecture as an undergrad, or pursuing an undergrad degree in Art and later going for my Masters in Architecture (what I did).  I was fascinated by the work that he showed us, primarily the 3-dimensional model structures that we were to construct at the end of the course.  He was a very interesting guy, who had been at UNCG a whole lot longer than anyone else.  I think he resigned during my sophomore year, but was allowed to keep a studio in the new art building for the next year or so.  I always enjoyed my conversations with him, which were always fortuitous, and ended up lasting much longer than anticipated.  He seemed genuinely interested in my pursuit of studying architecture, and always stopped me to discuss an architects work, and then proceed to tell me about some crazy story about the 60′s-70′s while he was getting his MFA from The Pratt Institute.  His stories were always interesting, mostly involving drugs, or a crazy artist using feces, or shooting themselves.  He was always very nostalgic when telling his stories, and I always enjoyed listening to them.  He kept a studio on the top floor of the new building for I think another year and then I believe he went back up north–he may have never left Greensboro, not sure.  Either way that is who first told me about The Pratt Institute, and later on I heard it’s name thrown around countless times, most recently by Pam in The Office.

The other two schools I haven’t heard back from are Clemson and Sci-Arc.  My dad received his Bachelor in architecture from Clemson and I have grown up going down to Clemson football games every fall as far back as I can remember.  When I was young it was a huge deal because we only had two tickets and my two sisters and my mom would also want to go.  The trip involved stopping at a gas station to get snacks for the road, listening to the Tiger Tale Gate show the whole way down, being one of the 80,000 screaming fans dressed in orange, Carolina Pride hot-dogs and Pepsi’s at halftime,  going down on the field after the game and standing next to the giant football players, and then best of all, begging dad to get me some sort of over-priced souvenir (football, sweatshirt, etc.).  We still have the tickets and last year I think him and I made it to three maybe four games.  Last fall he also briefly walked me through the college of architecture.

I have been talking about UNC-Charlotte since my sophomore year at Greensboro.  Back then I went and visited a friend of mines older brother, and he proceeded to show me all the goods there, the computer labs, the laser cutters, woodshop, metal shop, lighting rooms, etc.  I was completely blown away.  I was all about it.  I definitely wanted to go there.  A year or two later I went down to an architecture symposium there and stayed with a professor who I met in my first visit down there.  I was once again completely fascinated by everything there.  Their open house coincides with criticalMASS which is the symposium that I attended a few years back, and it is a great time to visit.  However, it is at the exact same time as NC State’s open house.  I might have to attend the open house at NC State and drive down the Charlotte on Saturday for criticalMASS.  In their acceptance letter they said only 16 people are admitted to the program, I am not sure how many are admitted to NC State, Pratt, or any of the other schools, but their letter made it sound pretty exclusive.

I applied to NC State for undergraduate admission and was put on a wait-list.  Since then I have had a bad taste in my mouth about the school.  Until I received notice that I was accepted to graduate school there, then I wanted to start howling (wolfpack).  Their architecture program has a great reputation and is housed in the College of Design, which is a pretty tightly knit group of creative people.  I have a cousin who lives in Raleigh and will be getting married this September.  They have a townhouse about 4 miles from the college and have a spare bedroom I can rent from them come this fall.  NC State is definitely becoming my top choice and I am almost 80% committed to going there.

I am happy I applied to all 6 of the schools because having choices feels pretty good.  Now I just need to snag some scholarships and apprenticeships!

I just found this video and have been fascinated by it for the past 2o minutes.  I would like to see the construction of one of these, especially the time frame.  I think the majority if not all of these lighthouses are off the coast of France near Brittany.  Not sure if there hasn’t been already but I think a special on Nat Geo or Discovery, covering the lighthouse during one of these violent storms would be very entertaining. I am sure it could be turned into a Global Warming scare tactic. Whoa did I just say Global Warming? I am so sorry, I completely forgot that we are now in a Global Cooling cycle…….

A few years ago I was asking someone who was getting his masters degree in architecture what I should put in my portfolio.  He replied that he has seen people bring in all sorts of things, from boat designs, to portraits to even Lego designs.  At the time I am pretty sure I laughed at him.  However, after reading this article on Lego club member Warren Elsmore, I can say that I truly see the light.  Pretty cool knowing that Tony Kettle was either inspired or aided by Lego’s for the design of the Falkirk Wheel.  I wonder if this guy was an adjunct member of Archigram in the 1960′s…

When I was organizing 30+ years of shop drawings/presentations/specs/and God knows what else at my dads office two years ago I ran across a TRS-80 floppy disk.  It was gigantic.  It reminded me of a geriatric version of an 8.5″ floppy disk, if you can imagine such an unwieldy object.  I immediately ran downstairs and asked the secretary who cracked a huge smile and started laughing when I showed it to her.  She referred to the behemoth floppy as a “trash 80″ disk, and said they were used widely in the office in the 80′s. Amazing how now I can store a few of those computers on my key-chain.

Late last year I ran across an article in Architectural Record telling about a Texas Based printing company that was sure to revolutionize the way that architects and the construction industry woo their clients.  Zebra Imaging out of Austin Texas has been working with several large architectural firms in testing out their newest idea–holographic renderings.  There is a long write-up there so I won’t reiterate anything else.

I wonder if 30-40 years from now some kid cleaning out the attic in an architecture firm will be throwing these holograms out.

Well this is the first post of my blog.  I am still working on re-theming this blog (as well as building the rest of the site) so hang with me!

-C