Yesterday was the completion of my first day of Second Year architecture. I only had one class, and that was studio for 4 hours, but it was a simple introductory class, so nothing major. Though, we did get assigned a project.

The first project of the year, which involves all years except first, is the Corbelleti Competition. The competition was started in honor of Corbelleti, a department head of Penn State from 1968-1988. He was a master draftsman and it is said he could sign his name with both hands at once meeting in the middle. The competition is all hand-drawn and has rather strict guidelines. We have to design a gallery with a cafe and the likes that has to be in the arts sub-campus of Penn State.

This is going to be quite a stressful year. I am going to have lots of work in all of my classes, which include Studio, Materials, Theory, and Architectural Engineering. On top of that, I added a class in which we will be dismantling a yurt, and recreating it. It is a Materials Reclamation class. So, needless to say, I will have my hands full. Hopefully I don’t burn out and I can find the motivation to keep going.

[GoGoAbigail]

I’ve recently found a website called the Behance Network. It is a gallery of sorts where people post their illustrations, ideas, concepts, photography, pretty much anything. It’s a great source of inspiration.

I’ll probably post a few things that I find interesting from there every once in a while, so here is the first one to kick it off. It’s a watercolor of soccer themes, something that hits close to home. Enjoy.

Football (soccer) Fan:

[Behance]

Well, today I learned that you can embed a Flickr slideshow on your blog. So, I decided to give it a try. This mainly came about because I wanted to share this neat little photo I took yesterday and manipulated today. It’s a bulldozer! As boring as that sounds, I’m really proud of how this picture came out. It was shot with my new camera, the Canon S90, and edited in photoshop. Without further ado, check out my Flickr Slideshow.

Well, I try to sing.

I wanted to test out the video capability of my camera, so I decided to record myself singing and playing the guitar. In these videos, I’m using color accent mode, which I find pretty sweet. So here they are. Make sure to watch them in 480p.

Washed by the Water by Needtobreathe:

Rio by Hey Marseilles:

So, I’ve been playing with my camera a little, and I decided to set up a Flickr account to post my pictures on. The thing is, Flickr only allows 100MB of uploading per month, and I’m already 95% full. So, I’m thinking of just uploading my images to my DeviantArt account and just having my photography and my drawings in the same place.

Nevertheless, you can still check out some of the pictures I took with my Canon S90 on my Flickr Stream. I’ll post a quick feature set and review of the S90 in a bit.

Well, today is a great day. Not because of anything I did, but because of what I ordered–a camera! I’m beyond excited to get this thing.

I got the Canon Powershot S90. Small little camera I can carry EVERYWHERE with some powerful features. I’ll probably post a quick review when it arrives with it’s full feature set and a couple of test shots. I can’t wait!

I had a really hard time deciding which camera to get. It came down to portability in the end. Being a college student, I wanted to have a camera that I could take anywhere with me whether it was to my class, to dinner, or to a soccer game. The S90 is a tiny little camera that will fit in my pocket but it has image quality that is simply amazing, can take beautiful low-light photos, and can thrust me in the right direction with the full manual controls. I can’t wait to get it!

In order to graduate high school, every senior at my school has to present a project that shows they are capable of researching, organizing, and presenting information. I chose to create a 3D animation because I’m rather interested in the topic. I documented my progress on this blog here. The project was created in Blender 3D being self-taught, so it’s not a bad product in the end, though I wish I could have spent a bit more time. Enjoy.

As a project in architecture, we were given an entrance to a building and told to describe it in drawings. One day, being bored (where did I get this free time), I decided to mess around with Blender and quickly created a 3d version of my entrance. Here it is, enjoy:

“I’d rather be optimistic and a fool, than pessimistic and right.”