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Stuff to type about

So I killed my iPod. 100% completely dead. The cable I was using in my car fell apart, and I think some wires got crossed and now my iPod doesn't work. Which makes me =(

I think I'm getting a new camera for Christmas, and with that I want to start a new project. It's called Project365, and I read about it over on Lifehacker.com. Basically it's to improve at photography by taking a picture every single day. And not the same thing every day, like those time lapse videos that are so popular, but something unique every day. I'll be using this space in conjuction with my Flickr account to keep myself on track. So starting January 1st, if I don't post a new picture every day, yell at me!

Other stuff has happened, but I really don't want to talk about it on here. It's pretty sad. But other than that I have nothing to talk about I suppose. Just help keep me on track for my new year project.

Forgot

Last night I thought about all this stuff I was going to write about today... but I forgot all most of it. Blarg. I'll try to make stuff up off the top of my head then.

I got a new photography book last night, since well, that's what I've been obsessing over lately. A couple of people recommended it to me, it's called Understanding Exposure and then it has a colon and more words. The guy explains things, and then shows you in pictures what he means, which is pretty cool. Like he'll say "this picture was taken with this and this, and this picture in the same spot was taken with this this and this and this is why this looks better than that." Except with less run on sentences normally. I'm enjoying it, and learning a ton, even if I don't (hopefully yet) have a fancy camera. I was reading it at lunch today, and it inspired me to bust out the camera and take a bunch of macro shots, which I'll post to the ol' Flickr account later.

I'm buying a new laptop bag later today so that I can bring my laptop with me to home and not worry about me dropping my bag and destroying it. I checked out two highly recommended bag companies, and liked one way more than the other. There was Crumpler and Timbuk2, and I thought the crumpler bag blew the timbuk2 bag out of the water on most fronts. Except for the laptop holding space. In the timbuk2 bag it's lined with cordoroy, and in the crumpler I think it's just padded. Also swaying me towards the crumpler is that it's on clearance at the place I went. I just really don't like the color, but the color I do like doesn't seem to be for sale on the usa website.

Anyway I've got nothing left to write about I suppose.

It's been a few weeks

The last time I published was on November 27. Man that was a while ago. Sorry about that.

I'm learning to absolutely hate Mondays. Mainly because the weekends screw with my sleep schedule so much. So both last week and this week, I got around 2 hours of sleep before work. Insomnia is always fun. Instead of sleeping I decided to try and fix my computer which was acting up, and watch the majority of Silence of the Lambs. What a good movie.

Speaking of movies, I saw Juno this weekend too, which was fantastic. It's only playing on 7 screens, but did really really well. Apparently it's in the top 7 films for gross as compared to screen number. Lots of 7's there.

My picture taking has slown down a bit, as I've run out of stuff at work to actually take pictures of. It's just too dark in here. I can't pump up the ISO because I get way too much noise, and I hate taking pictures with the flash on. It makes pictures look like crap in dark areas, and bugs my coworkers.

I go home in a few weeks for a few days, and I'm looking forward to it. I won't be there so long as to start hating Midland, but I think long enough to see everyone I want to see, and do everything I could possibly want to do. Which boils down to eating Rosa's, Chick-fil-a, Sonic, and Taco Villa.

Work was incredibly stressful last week, but I won't go into it right now. It's blown past already so it's not that big of a deal. They have told me they're probably going to move me to junior compositing tasks soon, which I'm very excited for.

And that's a lot to read so I'm done typing.

I think I get it

I started the Flickr account, just because I really didn't understand some of the concepts of Web 2.0. I just really didn't understand why I should care or why anyone else should care. But now I think I kind of understand it.

I check my flickr account every day now, hoping I get more views on my pics. And then getting excited about what's getting views. It makes no sense. I have no idea who's looking at these pictures, or why, but I am giddy that someone is. Hell, two of my pictures are having a race as to who has the most views. It's almost like a competition in which no one else is playing (right now, since I'm not currently following anyone else.)

So I guess that's how I "get it."

My desk at work

My desk
Originally uploaded by PowerLlama

This is where I work every day. I made a little panoramic version.

fun with a camera.

Sometimes it's hard to see.
Originally uploaded by PowerLlama

I like this picture.

New camera!

IMG_0016.JPG
Originally uploaded by PowerLlama

So I got my new camera tonight, and I've played with it for the past few hours.

The thing is fucking TEENY. All the reviews said it was small, but jesus, this is smaller than I expected. It's like smaller than a deck of cards.

So far, it seems to take some pretty nice photos. I'll have to take more in the sunlight, because the lighting in here is crap though.

Initial verdict is: I like!

Pictures

Geotagging is one of the coolest and creepiest features to come out of the digital age in regards to photography. You put in the data where it was you took the picture (latitude and longitude) and when you upload it to a site like Flickr, you can see it on a map. Which is really cool when you want to see pictures of home and you just zoom into Midland on the map and see some great photos. But it's really creepy when you see some kid's birthday. You can restrict who sees that information for a reason you know.

I just bought a new camera, and I think I'm going to start taking more pictures, and trying to just get more into photography in general. It's something I've always liked, but never really got that into. But my new camera is pretty small, and fits into my pocket so I should be able to take it anywhere and just snap pictures when I feel the need.

I put a thing to my flickr pool over on the right there, but all it has so far are pictures from bars taken by my crappy camera phone. It almost makes me miss my old phone. My K790a took absolutely great pictures and had a flash. Take that iPhone. Oh well.

So yeah. Hopefully expect more photo stuff from me.

I think I'm balding

Someone please tell me I'm wrong.

My desk!

This is what's on my desk right now. Man I'm bored, waiting on stuff.

New job!

Well as many of you know, I just started working at Digital Domain.

It's only my second day though, and I haven't done much. In fact I'm updating while at work waiting for my first meeting.

Alright gonna go. Bye.

Brutal Halloween!

Just got done dressing up for halloween. Here's how it went down:

Before:


With a 'stache, I look JUST like my dad:


Completely clean shaven:


Straightened hair = NATHAN EXPLOSION


I pulled my pants up to old man height after the picture, and it looks better.

I am a retard

I just learned the lesson of why you should always proofread everything. Apparently for the past few weeks, I've been sending out a resume with false information on it. And wondering why I wasn't getting any callbacks.

It says I worked at Zoic from March until April 2007. Wow a whole month's worth of experience.

I'm a genius sometimes.

Bored

Just bored on the plane.

It's raining!

It never rains here! And it's raining so hard our porch is flooding!

Correction.

Dear readers,

I am very sorry to inform you that I, Austin Brown, had made a mistake in the previous post. I rescind the statement that Shawn ate 3 wings. He actually ate 5.1 wings, with the .1 being a bite of a 6th.

Please accept this humble bloggers apology.

Thank you,

Austin Brown

So fucking hot.

Oh. My. fucking. GOD.

Went to go eat wings today right. Not that big of a deal, I've been there a ton, the wings are fucking delicious. Well Shawn loves hot shit. He decides he wants to try Suicide flavor. Well the guy behind the counter dips a toothpick into it and gives it to another of my friends, Ryan, who then proceeds to down like 3 glasses of water and a few packets of sugar. He says "It's like someone sprayed mace into my mouth."

So Shawn gets the tray of 12 and starts chomping on the first one. I have never ever heard him utter the words he said after putting that first one in his mouth. "Holy fucking shit, this is hot."

He manages to down 3 of them in the span of like 30 minutes. And then he tells me he'll give me 50 bucks to eat just one. Knowing what it did to the both of them, I said fuck that. A little while later he says 20 for a good sized bite. Well I could use 20 bucks, so I did it. About 5 seconds later I decide "The heat hasn't kicked in yet, I'll finish it and get the 50." So I did.

Holy mother of fucking god. I have never had anything so hot in my mouth ever. I actually stuck my tongue into the ranch. Nothing helped except for putting ice directly on the heated parts.


And now I just got out of the bathroom. My stomach is killing me and now my asshole burns. I almost feel like it wasn't worth it, but 50 bucks can go a long long way.

I'm hungry

And I'm watching Hogan Knows Best. It's my guilty pleasure shh.

Ok that's all I got.

Holy shit, earthquake

So we just had a pretty big tremor. Scared the absolute living shit out of both Callie and I. It started off small and I thought Callie was jumping around in the living room but then it got pretty big.

What an incredibly shitty and awesome feeling. You feel so helpless as the entire earth literally shakes everything around you.

Apparently it was a 4.8 on the scale. Jesus christ that was fucking scary.


Brandon was a bit closer and had all of his toys topple off of his shelf and land on him at his desk. He went outside and his car alarm was going off. Jesus fucking christ.

4th of July

Our 1st hot dogs on the grill!

I've come to a realization

Over the past few days, I've come to a realization. I am the youngest person at Zoic. It's kind of strange. I'm not sure why, but it just seems weird to me. It's not like I haven't been the youngest person at a company before (hello Su Casa), but to be one in such a large place that's all about technology is strange.

A little link

For your reading pleasure. I don't really want to turn this thing into a link depository, but I felt this was good enough to share.

An open letter to parents who bring their children to horror movies.

Update?!

I'm avoiding working... so I thought I'd give a little update.

I'm working on an ASPCA commercial that was giving me hell. It isn't anymore. Cause I'm the man like that.

Today was supposed to be my last day. Our deadline got pushed back by 2 weeks, so I'm here until the 29th.

Umm. My cube-mate is very funny. He runs a website. www.fatguysonly.com It's very sparse right now, but it'll get there.

And that's about all I've got for now.

Man

This thing has gone unused lately. I need to fix that.

Work!

I totally said I was going to post a picture of my desk like 2 weeks ago. Well here it is. It's super grainy because there's no light in here right now except for the monitors.

I was working on a show called Drive for Fox which comes out here pretty soon, but they moved me off of that and at this moment I'm not doing anything. I worked on a pilot for two days (they called me in on Sunday to work) and then most of last night and all of today will be training hours. Which is why you don't see Linux on those monitors. Or Shake. I'm trying to learn a program called Combustion.

Actually I wanted to learn After Effects, but I don't want to go and buy a book for it. And they don't have any here. The only book they have is a Combustion book. Oh well. Combustion is rad so I'm happy to learn something new.

It's going to be a long and sloooowwww night.

Oscar party!

So I get to go to an Oscar party with my roommate. And to do this I had to buy some clothes to go in. I am a sexy beast.

Incredibly good mood

So today started off really shitty. Forgot to park in the right spot last night and woke up to a $50 street cleaning ticket.

Then after getting to work, I got sent on the worst run ever. I was gone for 2 1/2 hours.

But all is well in the universe now. I get back to work and was told to get on a computer ASAP and start working on my shots. My producer tells me "Now you're on the alias, so just e-mail that whenever you're done." I have no idea what she means. After I finish my shot, I e-mail her and tell her it's done, and that I'd e-mail the alias if I knew what that meant.

Turns out what it meant was "you do have an email address. It's xxxx@zoicstudios.com".

:D :D :D :D :D

I'm the first intern with an e-mail address out of my group. I've also worked on multiple shots. So I happen to think I might be a bit close to getting a job.

I'm so EXCITED


Oh, and then later on someone asked me if I wanted a cappuccino and for some reason my mind did not register what that word meant. At all. I actually thought they had made the damn word up and gave them an incredibly weird look.

Thetons!

Come get a free stress test to check your theton level! Damn you L. Ron Hubbard!


Because no one seems to know, this is how it works. You hold those little metal cylinders and they measure your "stress level." This in turns tells them how many thetons you have in your body. These people are in fact, Scientologists.

A lot to read about not a lot of stuff

Last Thursday I was assigned my first real project. I had done a couple of really simple things before it, like getting some high-res skyscraper photos, but nothing that really used any sort of artistic talent or anything. But my first real project was some pretty simple rotoscoping stuff.

Or so I thought. I went in about noon on Friday, thinking I could bust it out in a few hours. Little did I know that I had to knock off about 16 layers of rust that had built up over the past 6 months in the oilfield. Friday was spent with my head banging against the wall, and getting almost nowhere. I was really tired and in a pretty bad mood, but I was supposed to go to a concert later. I was not about to go back to Sherman Oaks, then drive all the way back to Hollywood so I just kept working until about 7. More on the concert later.

I come in today, after completely worrying about getting this shot done all fucking weekend. I even came in early. Within like 20 minutes, I retrack the shot, and everything comes out near perfectly. I clean it up, and I'm already done with half of it. The half I spent all day Friday on. All day Friday. I felt so freaking dumb. It was a productive day though.

Friday I went with some coworkers to go see a bunch of bands I hadn't ever heard of. The one I was there to "see" was Natives of the New Dawn. The lineup was Slinky, Natives of the New Dawn, Ghost, and Swampa Z. Z. I can't even explain how Natives or Swampa sounded. They were just so different that if I explain how they sounded you would tell me that it doesn't exist. Hell, Tommy told me I was lying to him.

Natives was like this weird combination of funk, hip hop, jazz, and a whole lot of rock. They were a bunch of white guys. Their keyboardist was like this real chubby guy with a beard and shaggy curly hair. And you would never expect the sounds that come out of his mouth. This dude could fucking sing. Their lead guy was a redheaded dude with a beard, gauged ears, and glasses. But the dude could flow.

And Swampa Z. Z. was crazy too! They're from Hawaii and were like hip hop and rock and ska and tons of stuff, but with this definite Hawaiian vibe to them. They did this really long 80's medley of just a ton of songs, but they all had their weird hip-hop hawaiian feel to them. They were really really fucking good.

Slinky was like this basic ska band, but they were all really talented. And only 15. They made me sad that I own a guitar. Their singer looked like my little brother.

Ghost sucked. Really generic white rapper.

And that's all I got for now. That's a lot to read.

Callie is weird

Apparently, she thinks I'm gross for using my laptop and pooping at the same time. It's the epitome of productivity, and she thinks I'm gross?!

I'm pretty sure it's why laptops were actually invented. Since the dawn of time, man's progress been slowed by his bowel movements. Now that we have finally overcome such a barrier, we should be allowed to do so! Free from prejudice!

Now I'm going to get off of my soapbox.

My internship

Well, a couple of people have asked how I like the internship, and I've finally decided to sit down and post about it. I've been there for a week now, and worked 3 days.

My intern orientation was last Wednesday, where I got to meet all the other interns, and one of the owners of the company, and a couple of other people. There were 6 of us, and I think over half of them were going back to school after the internship. This is awesome, because that raises my chances of getting hired. We got a little tour, signed some paperwork (woohoo NDA!), and then I was done for the day. We only work two days a week, and Wednesday is not my day.

They also told us that we'd be doing nothing but answering phones our first two days on the job. Well, that just didn't happen. I also got a gigantic scare that morning.

The night before, Callie tells me I should probably leave around 8:30, if I want to get there before 10. So I set my alarms for 8, and head to bed. I wake up at 6. Sit there for a bit, and look at my clock. "Oh yes, it's only 6, more sleep for me," I think to myself. I go back to sleep, and wake up again. Look at the clock. Look at it again. It's 8:57. Holy. Shit. I freak out, jump out of bed, run brush my teeth, throw some clothes on, and head out the door. Traffic is of course terrible, and on the way there, my gas light turns on. I eventually do make it there around 9:35.

I go in, and instead of sitting on my ass and answering phones all day, I'm told to grab some coffee and a bagel, and grab my keys because I'm going on a run. I didn't have to go too far, but I didn't answer the phones in the slightest bit all day. I painted sticks and ping pong balls with another guy from Texas named Shawn, and made a new friend. Ate lunch a little while later, and then printed stuff out.

The day went by really fast and I met a metric fuckton of people. Just introduced myself to everyone I could.

It's generally a pretty laid back atmosphere. And there's a kitchen. It is the strangest feeling having a kitchen at a workplace where my parents don't own it. Because we had a kitchen at Su Casa, but I was working for my parents, so I didn't feel awkward eating out of it. But now that it's someone else's kitchen, it feels really weird. It took me pretty much all 3 days to be able to eat anything out of there. Like the first day when I was told to grab a bagel, I just grabbed some coffee. Even though there were bagels already out, ready for my consumption.

I'll try and post more as time goes on, but I can't really promise anything. I will promise a picture of the place soon though. I'll take one with my phone.

Hopefully I'll kick a lot of ass and get a job quicker than anticipated. That'd be awesome.

In case you were wondering

This is what my room looks like right now. I really need to unpack.

I love the mountains.

It's hard to see here, but the mountains are gorgeous.

Oh yeah, and as a side effect of me moving my stuff back to blogger, it seems my pictures resize correctly now. Guess I'll start taking pictures again.

Well that was easy

I e-mailed Dreamhost about the problem, and they had it fixed within a few hours. That made me very happy. The two times I've needed support from them, they have been very fast about it.

I'll make a bigger post later about me being in California and all that stuff.

Alright this is lame

I haven't posted on here in a while. And now that I came back to post I find out about all these awesome new features that Blogger is offering. I look them over, and a bunch actually look useful and cool.

But guess what? I can't use a bunch of them because I host the blog on my own webspace. And now they have another cool new feature where you can use your domain name, but it's hosted on Blogger. It's supposed to be the best of both worlds. Well I can't fucking do that either because of Dreamhost.

What a pain in my ass. Maybe they fixed the image upload thing now.