A Look Back On 2010

I know that a New Year's post after New Year's Eve seems weird, but I'm doing it anyway. This post is kind of all over. I'm trying to analyze a year (and a pretty eventful one at that) in 30 minutes, so bear with me jumping around and having no real direction.

If I had to describe 2010 in one word, I would have to say awesome. Why awesome? I learned so many things and grew so much in 2010. Let's take a look back.

The first thing I want to look at are the resolutions I made last year. The biggest one was giving up pop. It seemed like a near impossible thing to do, but it was actually pretty easy. Because of that I felt healthier, and lost a lot of weight, which was my second resolution, to lose weight. With getting rid of pop and becoming a vegetarian, I not only lost weight, but I feel a lot healthier.

What events happened this year? 1) I graduated high school. 2) I had a life-changing (and challenging) summer. 3) I moved to the cities (big step for me). 4) I got a job as a web developer. Now let's look at those events in detail.

Graduating high school. School is finally over. I was never so happy about that. I had some awesome classes my last semester. I didn't participate in many senior activities, which my one teacher said I would regret. I don't. I'm glad to be out of there, and away from some of those people.

Summer. Camp photographer. One of the most stressful things I've done. It was hell sometimes, but I got threw it, and I grew and learned from it. If it wasn't for camp, I wouldn't have moved to the cities, which has been the most exciting event of the year.

Moving out. Finally feeling like an adult. Providing for myself, learning how to survive on my own, and having some freedom. At first it was scary, but it was the best thing I've done. I've learned so much from being on my own.

A job. Not having any education, and getting a job in a promising field, that was a work of God, and if it wasn't for all the previous things happening, it would have never came about. I no longer have to go to college. I have a job that provides me with what I need, and I enjoy it.

Things I've learned.

This is a long and random list.

1. Pop is bad for you
2. Being a vegetarian isn't that hard
3. Photography is not as easy as you think
4. Food preparation and presentation (plus other genreal food knowledge) (thank you foods class)
5. High school may suck, but it eventually ends
6. There are people out there that like you for who you are
7. You shouldn't change your future plans because of a girl
8. God knows what He's doing
9. God provides what you need
10. Parents provide more then you realize
11. Life isn't always easy
12. Chipotle is awesome
13. Front-wheel cars drive a lot differently then rear-wheel
14. Rush hour traffic sucks
15. Pop music is catchy, too catchy
16. Techno music is awesome
17. Daft Punk is also awesome
18. Money doesn't make happiness
19. Fame doesn't either
20. Pleasing people is an endless and unrewarding endeavor
21. Apple is awesome
22. Snow makes people drive like morons
23. Porn sucks
24. The harder you hold on, the more it slips
25. It is possible to get a job without a college degree
26. Pasta makes for a delicious and cheap meal
27. Don't make five pounds of beans
28. Starbucks is awesome (except the music)
29. Music is how I best connect with God
30. Don't jump off of moving vehicles
31. Don't run around barefoot or leave shoes laying around, bad things happen
32. Tea is awesome
33. PHP is an awesome language
34. jQuery and MooTools great things
35. CodeIgniter is the best PHP framework
36. Vinyl is still around
37. When you live on your own, you have to make an effort to spend time with God
38. Church Music by David Crowder is awesome
39. The Apple store is sweet
40. Coda is the single greatest piece of software for a developer

Those are just a few of the things I thought of in a short time. Some of them serious, some of them funny. Just more proof 2010 was an eventful year.

2010 started off as a pretty normal year. It was a year of uncertainty. I was first going to do college online for a help-desk degree. Then it changed to Photography at Minneapolis community. Then it changed to film at Central Lakes. Then at the last moment, it changed to moving to the cities and working. I was uncertain of what I would be doing, what living on my own would be like. In the end, it all worked out, and I have no doubt it ended in the best way it could have. I know God had it all planned out, and while I tried to resist it for a while, He got me where I needed to be.

This is the wonderful year that 2010 was. It will always be a life-changing year.

Now I look to 2011. Another year that right now looks uncertain, but unlike last year, I look forward to it. I have ideas of what 2011 might bring, but I had ideas of what 2010 would look like, and that changed. So I tread forward into 2011, welcoming it, and ready for what it has in store for me.

May 2011 bless you and me.

Camp Photography

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while. This summer I was a photographer at Camp Lebanon. I have also talked to other people that have been the photographer at a summer camp, and we all seem to come to the same conclusion.

Camp photography is something very unique. Even if you are a photography, camp photography is something completely different then what you are used to.

It's different in the sense that you can't time to take pictures. You can pose pictures, everything is happening so fast, you don't have time to really think, you just have to shoot. You may also be used to shooting in manual, taking a single shot at a time, and saving it to a raw file. This will not work for camp. You have so many things you need to take pictures of, you can't really shoot in manual (certain times are a must though) or take just one frame at a time. You also have so many pictures to go through, and you need to have those pictures usable by people that may not know how to process raw, so you need to shoot in jpeg.

Another thing is picture ownership. You slave all summer trying to get the best shot you can, and then you really don't have much ownership in that picture. That picture is used for promotional stuff, it's given (or at least we did) to people who bought the weekly slideshow, and to any of the staff that may ask for pictures. While I am completely for open source, Creative Commons type stuff, it does get a little annoying to have that one picture you slaved for (example a sweet lightning picture I spent 4 hours to get, in the rain, it killed my camera, hardest shot I have ever got) and then you use it in a slideshow. Then it gets all over Facebook, without any credit to you. With a shoot I slaved to get, it's really annoying that I don't get any credit.

Another annoying thing, I posted small sample images to the web, and put a watermark on it. People would take that picture and put it on Facebook, or print it off. The whole point of the watermark was so people wouldn't do that.

I could go more into copyright stuff, but I'll save that for another post maybe.

Even though I've seen my pictures posted all over the place, I always can tell which ones are mine. That's because I have a certain style. If you've seen my pictures from the summer, you know what I'm talking about. That makes it a little better because my pictures are very unique, so when they are in an album with a bunch of other pictures they may have taken, mine stand out.

But overall. Camp photography is one of the hardest jobs.

Discoraged

I got really discouraged this past week. I tried to get some of my code on an online market place to make a couple bucks, but all my code got rejected. Then I wrote an article for a blog about jQuery and making your pages pop with animation, but that got rejected. Everything was good, but not to the quality they wanted.

This frustrated me because that was pretty much the best I could do.

Then I remembered something. I'm only 19 years old. I haven't really had any schooling on this stuff, I've learned it all by myself. I'll grow. I've already seen some since getting this job.

So what if I don't stand up to the quality of people who have been doing this for 15 years? I've really only been doing this for a couple.

- Matthew Loberg

Look at this Piece of Equipment!

This came out this past week. I went to Guitar Center and tried it. And I walked away saying "Wow!". This DJ controller is awesome. Before I tried this out, I was going to buy Traktor Scratch Pro (which requires turntables and a DJ mixer for it to work), but after I tried this out, I was sold to it.

First of all, Traktor software is awesome. I have the trial version of it and even without any controllers, it's rock-solid. And this has a special version of Traktor designed just for it. The controller is designed is such a way that you don't have to touch the computer. You can browse all your songs on it. You can add effects, set cue points, loops, everything you could do on the computer, without touching it.

It's also got built in jog wheels so you don't need anything else to scratch, but in a near update they will be adding timecode support so you can scratch with a real turntable. And talking about turntables, not only can you mix mp3's from it, it has two analog inputs for CDJ's or turntables. These two features sold me.

All the big DJ's today are doing their mixing digitally using Traktor, Serato, or another program, but only true DJ's are still using vinyl. I wanted to stay true to DJing and also learn on vinyl, while being able to use all my mp3 (because vinyl is fracken expensive).

But all these features came with a cost. For the controller itself, it was $900. Plus a two year warranty (which knowing me would probably be a good idea), it was over $1000.

That is a lot of money, but how much would it cost to match a system like that?

Traktor Scratch Cost

• $300 for Software
• $300 for a decent mixer
• $300 a piece for decent turntables (x2)
• $200 for a controller for effects (x2 if I wanted to utilize it to it's full potential)

That adds up to be $1600. That's a lot of money, but so is $1000.

When I left (I had accountability there to stop me from buying it), Guitar Center (nationwide) got 400 units, and had 50 left. They had sold 350 units in the matter of 3 days. At that Guitar Center they got 4 and had one left.

Then I went back on Wednesday because I had a few more questions about it, and somehow I left buying it, actually putting it on lay-away.

Yeah, I spent $1000 on this. I'm pretty excited to get it, but finances are going to be a little tight now.

Risky

Today I realized that I'm too cautious. I don't like to take risks. I take the easy way.

Today I realized that my life is meh because I don't like to do things that are uncomfortable, different, or would require me taking a risk. I do have a good life. I have a job I absolutely love, and it pays the bills and then some, but I think I could be living a much more exciting life if I said screw it and just did things. But even as I wrote that, something inside of my was yelling no.

This summer was really my first time saying, I don't give a hell, I'm doing it. I became more adventurous, but I still was cautious when I was doing that. I made a big step when I said I'm moving out, I'm living on my own. If I wouldn't have taken that risk, I would be stuck doing nothing, or at least not doing what I am right now. That decision to move out was hard. It was tough living on my own when I didn't have a job. Then I took another chance and put my application in to a web design firm, and now I am working on web sites and loving it.

Looking at those few risks I took and the good that came from them makes me wonder what would happen if I would take more risks.

Looking back, have I made any decisions that have made a negative impact on my life? Not really. I mean, I've made decisions that hurt, or went wrong, but if I wouldn't have made those, my life would be completely different, and I don't think in a good way.

There are things in my life that aren't going the way I wanted them to. I tried to control them by being passive, but it didn't work. What if I would have been active? At the very least it would have been no different at all. So really I lost because I was being passive.

Most of my decisions are also based on other people and what they think of me. Even if I don't know them or haven't seen them before. I've held back a lot just because I want people to think highly of me, or at the very least, not think I'm an idiot. I also don't say a lot of what I think I should say, just because of the chance it might offend someone.

What am I trying to get at with all this? (sorry for my language) Don't give a damn. Screw being comfortable, if other people don't like me, oh well. Don't be so cautious to the point it's hurting you instead of helping.

This is a scary thought to me. I know it's what I want to do, but my logical self says no. But I am rebelling against my cautious side and taking risks.

What does this mean? Well, it first means not giving a damn about what other people think about me. This is going to be the hardest for me as I like to please other people. The second means saying what I want. I often don't say anything because I don't want to sound dumb or because it may have the chance of offending someone. Third it means taking risks. It means doing things I maybe normally wouldn't do and doing things that may be a little uncomfortable. Overall it means being active in getting what I want. Sure things aren't always going to go my way, but at least if they don't I can say I tried.

Watch out for a new me. One that takes risks.