Phone Photos

0618112034a Took only a few photos this weekend with my phone, so you can probably assess the quality right there. If you think about it though, phone photography is really just another way of expression, and I don’t think it always means “I was too lazy to pull out my real camera” or even “I can’t afford a real camera.”

0618112034a Took only a few photos this weekend with my phone, so you can probably assess the quality right there. If you think about it though, phone photography is really just another way of expression, and I don’t think it always means “I was too lazy to pull out my real camera” or even “I can’t afford a real camera.” I think the point behind such “low quality” photography is that the situation was meaningful enough for me to try to capture what was going on. (“Low quality” is another concept that could be discussed forever: when the first digital cameras came out I was taking photos that were 640×480, but it allowed me to shoot as many as I wanted for free. What will we be calling “low quality” in the future?) I thought they were cool, so I’d like to share them. In other news, I’m considering moving [I have moved, 2014-02-04] my Blogspot blog (which has been up seemingly forever at http://protichnoctem.blogspot.com) to this Drupal website in order to consolidate things. I would probably leave the blog up as an artifact and a link to here, but this would also mean changing some Google Account settings around. I’d welcome any feedback on the idea. I used to host that blog on my Geocities (remember them?) account back in high school, so this isn’t such a bizarre concept. They do take care of server stuff for you though. 0618112034 0618112034b 0618112035 0618112039 0618112039a

[activity] Sold one of my photos

Last fall after the second UND Fall Classic CX race I was contacted by Flint Communications in Fargo, ND about licensing this photo for use in an ad campaign. Long story short, the ad came out sometime this spring and I finally found it a few weeks ago at https://www.bcbsnd.com/blueinsight/campaign/.

Last fall after the second UND Fall Classic CX race I was contacted by Flint Communications in Fargo, ND about licensing this photo for use in an ad campaign. Long story short, the ad came out sometime this spring and I finally found it a few weeks ago at https://www.bcbsnd.com/blueinsight/campaign/.

Thanks to Pat White for unintentionally modeling. I don’t think this will jumpstart my photography career but it worked out pretty well.

[activity] Teaching Geology 101 Lab this summer

I will be teaching a lab section of Geology 101 (Introduction to Physical Geology) at the University of North Dakota for the first summer section (16 May to 24 June). We (the instructors) are earning pretty much the minimum possible in order to have the class with so few students, but it should be a worthwhile experience.

kamelseesv has been updated

After a little bit of troubleshooting yesterday with some input files, I’ve updated my kamelseesv script to add a few more lines about the output format (latitude and longitude will appear reversed in the KML file, but they are really in X,Y format instead of Y,X format) and to allow you to view/download the result rather than copying and pasting into a text file. This should let people preview converted datasets without having to save each and every one of them.

[activity] Too Flat, Too Furious 2011 (April 30th, May 1st)

The weekend was a half-success (only because we woke up to snow and ice on Sunday and had to cancel the road race).

As Race/Event Coordinator for the UND Cycling Club:
– Organized the UND race weekend on April 30th and May 1st, including a great number of things listed here.
– Kept the criterium course mostly free of cars (need more volunteers to be able to do this at the Ralph Engelstad Arena next year.
– Got some folks from out of town to show up and race the open USAC categories.
– No serious injuries even though there were several crashes.

As member of the UND Cycling Team:
– Placed 1st in the men’s category C race after a crash behind me in the last lap (that’s racing).
– Fourth rider on the 2nd-place men’s UND team in the 2011 North Central Collegiate Cycling Conference Team Time Trial Championships.

[portfolio] END-SPAR 2011 poster

The background to the 2011 END-SPAR (Extreme North Dakota Spring Primer Adventure Race) poster was an idea Andy Magness had that he hired me to put together. I couldn’t find a good shoe image so I took a photo of my own Inov-8 show to throw on there.

Flower image: 1st Crocus by KitAy on Flickr.
ENDracing logo: ENDracing.com

All text is by Andy.

[activity] Employee of the Month at Northern Heights Rock Gym

The “management” (and I use this term loosely because I don’t think they want to be called “management”) at Northern Heights Rock Gym started an Employee of the Month program this year, and I’m the winner for April, which means I get my own special parking spot* and some cash. For a volunteer-only business, this is as much as they can do for us, but I think it’s a great incentive.

*I do not get a special parking spot.

[activity] 2011 UND Scholarly Forum

Presented a poster during the 2011 UND Scholarly Forum, hosted by the Graduate School at UND.

BURTON-KELLY, M.E., J.H. HARTMAN, and A.E. BOGAN. 2011. Determining temporal and geographic limits of fossil freshwater mussels of the family Hyriidae. The Graduate School Scholarly Forum, March 8 – 9, 2011, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA, p. 73. Abstract and poster PDF 9.5MB

There were only three of us from Geology and Geological Engineering, so next year we’ll have to represent better.