getting set to go back to the grind
August 23, 2004 by Eric Richardson
Classes start today at USC. I'm on campus to take care of a variety of little things, even though my first class isn't until 9am tomorrow. I'm actually looking forward to what I'm taking this semester, which is a good change. I've got two cinema classes, and two COMM classes, with an extra 2-unit improv theatre class thrown in for good measure.
First thing tomorrow is Censorship in Cinema, with Casper. I mentioned a few months ago that this was the class endowed by Hugh Hefner. Books for the class include Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
My second cinema class is the generically titled Film and/or Television Genres. This is a class that each year or so switches professors and genres, going from westerns to musicals to who knows what. This semester it'll be on speculative cinema, basically films that paint a picture of the future. Books include Ender's Game and The Man Who Folded Himself.
My two COMM classes are Sports, Communication, and Culture and Massive Multiplayer Online Games. Oddly enough, I'm not a gamer. I play NCAA Football on the XBox, and that's about it. Though the class sounds a little dorky, I'm interested in seeing how it addresses community building in online worlds and seeing how transferable the concepts are to other online venues. And it fit my schedule and seemed sort of easy.
So there you have my semester, minus the random improv class.
stupid kinkos
August 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson
Anyone know when Adobe released Acrobat 5? 'Cause I'm pretty sure it was a while ago, and all the Kinkos around here still have 4. Now, when you try to view a file that uses 5 features in 4 (particularly alpha in the objects) you get some nice blocky non-transparent objects that look nothing at all like what your nice design did in anything recent. I know, if I was smart I would have saved my pdfs only using 4.0 features, but who would have guessed Kinkos is at least two years behind the times. I mean, come on, Acrobat 6 is out, and has been for a while.
i'll become a graphic artist yet
August 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson
So I'm stuck on campus this evening, not wanting to make the drive home in between being here for my multiple hour stay in the financial aid line and an event I'm recruiting waterski people at tonight. I've been passing the time pretending I knew how to use Adobe Illustrator, messing around with a signup sheet and a sign for the waterski locker.
What I've come to realize is that Illustrator is really cool. I'd used Photoshop plenty, PageMaker enough, and Premiere many times, but until today I'd never fired up Illustrator. Even non-artist me (civic title notwithstanding) was able to create something that looked pretty good.
Now I'm off to Kinkos to see if I can get these printed.
going to need that padded furniture...
August 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson
How ridiculous is this? Somehow I managed to injure myself last night while sleeping. I know it happened last night because it woke me up (and really hurts this morning). But who hurts themselves enough to draw blood while sleeping?
I don't know what time it was, but I had been in bed for a while. I must have gotten too near the left side of my bed, because all of a sudden I thought I was rolling off. Instincts sent my left foot shooting down to catch me. The left foot must have been a little tired, though, because instead of finding the ground it smacked into my bed's side-board, ripping at my toenail and cutting a nice flap of skin from the front of the toe.
It hurts.
LA Blogs Friday Questions: Parts of LA
August 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson
It's part three of the weekly LA Blogs questions. This time Jonah's put together a set of questions about parts of the city.
What city or part of Los Angeles do you live in now?
Downtown, in the "Historic Core." My building on Spring St. was built by a bank in the 1930s, and then converted to apartments in the 1980s.
If you have lived somewhere else in the area, where was it?
For my first three years in LA I lived in the neighborhood right around USC. My first year I was in the dorms, and then for the next two I was in an apartment three blocks north of campus.
Besides where you live now, where else would you want to live in the area?
The beach. I had this grand scheme to live in Manhattan Beach and commute to USC from there, but then I took a job in Pasadena and that whole idea sort of went out the window.
Where would you not want to live?
Any of the non-descript areas that are in-between everything but don't have attractions of their own. I love having such interesting stuff all around me, right within walking distance.
How often do you venture out of your area?
All the time. Downtown has a lot going for it, but it doesn't yet have enough of everything to allow you to not leave. But why would you want to limit yourself like that? LA's so big, and there are so many cool places to go do things.
Where do you usually go when you get out?
When I get out? I don't know that I have a place that I "usually" go, but I try to make it down to Manhattan Beach once a week (if I'm lucky). For movies I probably most often go up to Pasadena.
How far do you work/school from where you live?
Work's something like 20 miles away from downtown. School is just maybe two and a half miles. The commute to work isn't as bad as you would think, though, since the downtown -> Pasadena drive in the morning is against the commute traffic. I wouldn't want to see how long it takes the other way.
Money is no object; Beach, the Hills, the City or Leave?
I really want to live at the beach, but I think right now I love downtown too much to say I'd leave. And if money's no object, there are some insane condos you can buy around here for a million or so.