Hi! Call me Jeremy. I'm a science fiction writer, web designer, and photographer living in Fort Collins, Colorado. You
can find out a lot more about me here. Have something to
say about something you've seen here? Drop me a line in the comments or
e-mail me. I love meeting new people.
The site still has a few bells and whistles I want to add, particularly in the static page areas but for now, I think I'm ready. So. Here's the new blog site:
For you Livejournal users: content will continue to syndicate over, so you don't need to change anything. You'll miss out on some cool features though, but that's cool.
The http://www.tuginternet.com/jeremy/ site will stay up and active for the mean while, providing an archive of the last five or so years of my life.
Please, head on over. Leave comments on the welcome post. Kick the tires. Notify me of any bugs, suggestions, compliments, or complaints. Thanks!
This is a very easy to follow tutorial on how to set up flash text replacement on your website, expanding your typography options when it comes to headlines.
Real world links that you "click" with your camera, causing the site to load in a browser. Kind of like a barcode, only looking more like an atari graphic.
Dooodeedoodoup: Sign you may be overworking yourself.
What is "dreaming you are working the photoshop palette all night," Alex.
The worst part is, I not only did that, I also dreamed writing this joke in my blog.
I am ridiculously over-excited about my coming new lens. I really should be focusing on packing right now, as we move in a little over a month. But, toys! I guess I will pack some this weekend.
Have you all heard of Pmog.com? It's a passively multiplayer game you play in your browser just by doing what you already do. Little messages pop up, and you get gifts, or find secret portals to other websites. Every url you visit gets you experience points. And you can make missions for people to take, which leads them along a string of websites with a theme, or whatever. I'm going to do a tour of SF short fiction websites. Doing my part to talk up the business! I think this could be really fun, and, well, possibly a tool for viral marketing, so I'm a little suspicious of that. Think of it as a weird kind of Digg with bombs.
I got into the beta yesterday, and it's not as much fun as it could because nobody I know is playing! Go check it out and sign up for the beta. Report back here if you are let in, because I need people who read the same sites as me laying mines for me and stuff. We need to create an association of genre writers! Did I mention the whole thing has a steampunk vibe to it? What are you doing here still?
This picture didn't turn out great in color, but I think I rescued it in B&W. The great news is, I've done enough freelance work this month to reward myself with a new 70-300mm lens. Should be here by Wednesday next week, so expect many more wildlife photographs coming soon.
My next purchase might have to be a portable bird blind...
I head out to the same nature area every Saturday and Sunday morning lately. Things are slowly turning green here. Tiny leaves adorn the tips of the branches of trees, and the grass is flourishing. It's been dry, but moist enough to wake the sleeping life.
The cattails sleep longer than most everything else. It occurs to me that I've never noticed the moment when cattails grow anew. Do they arrive in spring, or is it summer? How do they push up from the old growth that remains all winter, captured here? Life for a new cattail plant must be a harsh one, living so packed and close to your dead ancestors. I imagine it would be like living in the Catacombs of Paris.
I just realized that by stopping talking about things I hate, my post count on this blog has plummeted. It makes me feel kind of bad that so much of what I wrote about were the things that irritated me. It's not that there aren't good things right now. They're just not anything anyone would want to read. I think to a certain extent, I've been trying to make my mental shift from the old style of blogging to the new one that will accompany my new site. (Personal stuff will stay on LJ in Friendslocked posts).
But, I do haver one crazy idea for blog content that will make you all happy.
There is no creative rejection, work issue, or crisis of self confidence that you cannot overcome with the judicious application of headphones and incredibly loud music from your "starred" playlist (primarily consisting of the music that rocked you out during the difficult years of high school and college).
Music is the ultimate salve, self. Slap that stuff on next time you feel like crap. Bounce your knee and feel your mood improve instantly. When you rock out, you truly believe for a while that "you rock."
Two days after our boss-outside-the-office handed down the edict of "no one (but me and my close team) work from home," I finally got my VPN key that would allow me to work from home. I would cry, but instead I choose to find it funny. The universe is mocking me!
Another Wednesday, another round of 80% iStock rejection. This time, too much "filtering" and noise reduction. The last time, it was too little. I'm giving up on exclusivity. I'm going to sign up for 2-3 other sites and make iStock a secondary upload site at best. I am pretty confident that their reviewers are overzealous. There was an article I read the other day that said the reviewers had been instructed to look for a major reason to accept an image, not to reject it. Load of crap, if you ask me.
Anything I upload to them from now on is coming straight out of the camera with absolutely zero modifiers. It's like being told in the writing world, you have to submit your first drafts, and do no editing on your work. Crazy!
I had my first shoot with a model today. She's an actress and a coworker at the day job. Samantha did a fantastic job, and I got some nice stock photography from her, and took some good headshots as well. I'm finding that I actually love photographing people. You can make them do stuff!
At the end of the shoot, an older gentleman came up to us and said it was a thrill to watch us work and was very complimentary to Samantha. Then a little boy came to ask what we were doing and told us all about how he liked photography and wanted to know if I could give him some film. Shooting in public seems to attract quite a bit of attention.
Click here for the full set. Let me know which ones you like the most!
There are no open jobs in my industry in town right now. Not a single one. Craigslist, empty. Monster.com, empty. Newspaper, empty. It's eerie.
At the grocery store last week, we found prices up 30% on some items.
Today, I am reading about flour shortages around the country, resulting in an increase in bread prices.
My day job has devolved into me writing marketing copy. No design work in days. None on the horizon. I am starting to fear the big L. Starting to think we should sock away all the money we were going to use for a vacation in savings, in case that happens.
I want to be optimistic, but my financial prospects are feeling grim and my job has had every ounce of joy squeezed out of it once again. Every time I look at the website that I get to have nothing to do with, my spirits just sink. I need to get all of our debts paid off so that I can freelance full time. God damned Grinnell loans.
At least my freelance work is fulfilling, when I have the energy to tackle it. I am doing some very nice work for clients. I have to get back to work on that tonight.
Morale just hit an all-time low here in the office, as our new boss-outside-the-office has handed down an edict that no one in our department may work from home. All the other members of our greater team, including the new boss? Work from home full time. We Colorado folks were asking for 2 days out of the office a week. And we were summarily shot down, something about our "visibility" in the work place.
Seems a bit hypocritical to me, really. Is that the right word? I'm not sure what word I want, but it's not a nice one.
Anybody out there need a full time designer who can telecommute from Colorado? My cost of living is low compared to the coasts!
