Revamps

I was home all day today and while it felt like I was unproductive it was just because of how laborious it is to change up a website. I updated my personal website today, replaced the portfolio on it with one hosted by deviantART, and applied for several artistic job listings with them!

Wanna see?
Website: Alex-K-Art.com
General Portfolio: Alex-K-Art.cleanfolio.com
Photo Portfolio: Alex-K-Photos.cleanfolio.com

Also, I updated my resume again! XD

.

Shrek!

WOW! We got free tickets today last-minute for FREE to go see the new Shrek stage production! It was a musical and almost all of the music was new for the play. The part that really surprised us was how great it was! Seriously it was as good as or better than any Disney musical I've ever seen. I was really floored!

It was produced really well, had a ton of sets, poked fun at Disney, had bits catered to the kids to keep them interested, and was actually pretty funny. I couldn't take photos of the production, but I did get a picture of our vantage point before it started.

We got there pretty early so we also had a chance to hang around the State Fair for a while. :)

New Puppy!

Out of the blue today we got a new dog! She's a one-year-old dachshund named Ginger and she came to us in lieu of going to the pound. She's very precocious and hysterical to play with! I couldn't concentrate during 3D modeling because I wanted to get home to meet her!

Camera Sold!

Well, I didn't do much today, but I did sell that super-awesome double-HD (2k) camera today! It's worth several thousand, but I let it go for $800. It was a great deal for the buyer but also a great deal for me (Ken and  I are splitting the money 50/50 and the camera was free for us!)

On my way to ship the camera to the buyer in Brooklyn, I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a copy of the new "Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue" movie for Caroline's birthday now that I can afford it (the DVD - not even Blu-Ray - was $20) and MAN did I feel super burly manly walking into Wal-Mart with my gay rights purse and immediately picking up a copy of the Tinker Bell movie off the front stand! XD

The movie turned out to be really cute! I think I'm going to add Disney's smaller 3D studios for direct-to-DVD movies to my list of future employers...the movie looked really fantastic.

Rocks!

Today I woke up and took a shower and was immediately asked if I wanted to go with my family to a rock exhibit in Dallas. I of course said yes, and it turned out that we were going to something of a mini-expo on rocks a a Dallas community college. It was pretty cute! I got to talk with some professor-types to get all of my pressing rock questions answered, I was invited to be a volunteer digger at a nearby dinosaur excavation site, and the kids got a lot of cool free rocks plus some fossil/mineral kits! (Some of the free rocks were for scouts in-uniform, hence their outfits! XD)

One of Joseph's rocks in a super-close-up view on the screen. :-)

BEER!

I can't get the beer song out of my head! McKinnery Oktoberfest was great. We danced, served food, and all that jazz. Here's some photos.

Tapping the Keg

Random candid photo taken by a McKinney official photographer

Huzzah! Pictures of me on my blog! How unusual! The McKinney Oktoberfest started today! I marched in the parade (after waiting in line for an HOUR holding this house on a stick) and got a free beer stein (beer included) at the ceremonial keg-tapping that kicked off the fest. All of the performers got free stuff, but I gave my beer to Ken...I had no need to drink cat urine. :-P

Oh and that parade was just reps from three dance groups, the mayor, the small colorguard, and some of the sponsors for the fest.

Like my house-on-stick?

Harvest Moon

Last night I stayed up late working on that GI Joe model, then stayed up even later taking pictures! The first day of Fall was yesterday and the official equinox happened just after 11pm. NASA said that 6 hours after the equinox was when this year's harvest moon was to happen (the closest correlation between a harvest moon and the fall equinox in decades) meaning it was going to be a brilliantly lit night with the "Harvest-est Moon" and lit coming both from the full moon on one horizon and light from the nearly-rising sun on the opposite horizon.

I went out and took photos of it, some at the actual equinox and then one at the harvest moon's peak, but unfortunately it was a really cloudy morning. Honestly, though, the photos came out brilliantly nonetheless! XD

11pm

5am

Sky Hawks

We FINALLY got to present our 30 second action sequence clips in class today a week late. I did mine last Tuesday in ten minutes while I was freaking out thinking it was Wednesday and that class was about the start...and then it turned out I didn't have class, and then the next day the server was down and we couldn't turn them in anyway. I also found out last Wednesday that they were only supposed to be 30 seconds long, and I'd made mine a full minute. So, instead of spend my extra week making a much more professional video, I took my minute-long super-rushed action sequence and amped it up to double speed. Voila! 30 seconds!

Needless to say, it was a hit.


And then later today I worked on the bump mapping, texturing, and specular mapping of my fourth-ever 3D model! It's supposed to be a lower resolution model (like for video games) witha bunch of hand-made tricks to make it look higher quality. It's nowhere near done but here's what it looks like so far!

Volleyball

Today I played with the pep band at our first-ever pep show for the UTD volleyball team! It was pretty cool, but MAN was I playing awfully today. Our venue was also weird...we were in the main foyer of the gym building  rather than in the gym itself and we stopped playing once the game started. The free pizza was nice, though! :-D

Dr. Stone going after the pizza

The only other thing I had today was 3D modelling and texturing...and we're finally getting ot the texturing bit! I'll post my progress tomorrow once I start working on the texturing, etc. for the model we started on two classes ago.

Phew

After the last several days, today's slacking off felt most excellent. I got all my homework done that I needed to like my new blog post for my blogging class, but for the most part was on an internet binge. I did a ton of managing on my LGBT artists group and of course got to my one class of the day 10 minutes late. I was tired!

I was also unprepared for class because I was confused about the assignment, so while everyone else presented their assignments I started my assignment, finished it, submitted it to the server, and presented it. My professor loved my on-the-spot website proposal (complete with graphics, HTML, and a word document explaining the use of the site) and the class found me entertaining (judging by their laughter). Let's hear 3 cheers for being lazy then pulling it all together just in the nick of time for an A+ and applause!

(By the way, I did the exact same thing with today's blog post for school! XD) Oh Alex, will you ever learn?

Dallas PRIDE!

Happy birthday Caroline! She turns 8 today! I'm going to miss her party tomorrow for school, but she's super excited! XD

So I spent the last two days at Oktoberfest performing, and then today I spent six-and-a-half hours at the Dallas PRIDE Parade and Festival. Shoo wee I'm pooped!

The whole thing was a ton of fun...I've never been to the Dallas festival before and I'll definitely be returning. I was supposed to be meeting 8 or 9 people there from the LGBT artist group I run on deviantART, but there were so many people there I wouldn't have been able to spot my own family members, let alone anyone I'd never met in person before.

Seriously, there were so many people there...it was the thickest crowd I've ever been a part of. It felt like I was IN those old videos of Woodstock. It was ridiculous! In the morning (it started at 11am) there were probably less than 100 visitors, and by the time the parade started there were several hundred if not 1,000, and when that parade finally ended, holy crap. There had to have been at least 10,000 people in that little park! Don' believe me? Every picture I took that wasn't zoomed in on something looked like this:

(click to HERE see a larger version on deviantART)

I was only there for  a few minutes by the time I found the beloved HRC (Human Rights Campaign) booth. They asked if I was a member and I said yes but that I never donate because I don't have a job and I'ma full-time student, but they used some mental ninja powers on me and I donated $35 on the spot. What put me over the edge was the adorable little HRC canvas purse/bag that I got for my donation. I love it! I also ended up signing on as an official HRC volunteer for future events.

Apparently determined to bleed myself dry, the very next thing I did was buy thigh-high tube socks with rainbow stripes on them...and then a purple tee-shirt with a saying on it that I can't repeat in polite company...and then a $10 cheeseburger from the Chili's booth. >_< I did save a lot of money by not buying any water, though! Every bottle for sale was $3 but I was able to mooch a ton of free bottles of water off other booths as well as an energy drink or two and saved like $30 doing so. I also won a whopping $2 cash on a game! :-D

I also got a ton of free stuff, and kept having to refuse offers of extra bags...I got so much stuff that I had to return to my car three times just to unload!

Here's some more of my photos, most of which were from the parade (on a bit of the road that had no shade and thus was a small pocket of NON-crowd where I could easily snap photos).

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

Click HERE for larger version

I took something like 450 photos and videos and most of them haven't even been filtered through yet. For those that I HAVE looked through, I've put them in a facebook album. If you want to see those go to my facebook album for the festival that has about 30 pictures in it so far.

I had lots of fun, the music was great, the people were fantastic, I felt at-home. I eventually had to leave because I had already spent more money than I'd meant to, I was getting hungry again, my allergies were kicking in, and it was starting to be painfully obvious I wasn't going to meet any new friends (or find the people I already knew) because of how incredibly crowded it was getting.

Oktoberfest Part II

Oktoberfest all day today again! I got up, showered, and went straight there in my lederhausen (be careful if you do this - the straps make it feel like you're buckled even when you aren't), danced at noon for an hour, danced at 3:30 for an hour, and stayed for the late shift at our booth selling German potato pancakes. You know what? Potato pancakes are super yummy. Just make sure you dip them in applesauce. That's the real German way (or just straight up). Not like all these gringos we had eating them with sour cream! :-P

One of the kids in our troupe doing some free-style
spinning on the big-tent dance floor during our break.

My brother Joseph cooling off after the children
group's second (last) performance of the day.

Some of my fellow potato pancake cooks.

Go see a bunch more photos in my facebook album here and catch a bunch more (including some of ME) in my mother's facebook album here!



.

Oktoberfest

Today I danced with the Alpine Dancing troupe at the Addison Oktoberfest. I felt really sick for most of the night, but I still made it through both performances. I had two groups of women take photos with me tonight(less than normal, actually!) The first group were all on vacation here from South Africa! Sadly I didn't have the presence of mind to ask any of them to take a picture with my camera also, so for the third year in a row I have no proof.

The dances went pretty well, but in between our performances I had to go and sit in my car for an hour to avoid vomiting on someone. I think that makes me one of few people that can say that they went to Oktoberfest and sat in the parking lot listening to NPR rather than join in the festivities. I mean, I would have...it just wasn't in me tonight. Although while I was out there I gave a homeless woman twenty dollars, so there's that. In the end I didn't really do a whole lot other than dance and sit today. Oh well. Got some neat photos at least.

I was SUPPOSED to also go to the Dallas Arboretum today but apparently I was impossible to wake up so my family went without me. It's a ton of Kodak Moments lost, but that's alright. I woke up feeling sick, too, so it may not have been very enjoyable.