Mike Branski » Life

Two Weeks of Creativity – Day Two – Big & Small

Mike Branski — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:05:59 +0000

Continuing along with the Two Weeks of Creativity, here are yesterday’s entries. The theme yesterday was “Big & Small,” chosen by Brad and reviled by him shortly thereafter. Nonetheless, we trucked through it and both got our exercise done.

Day Two - Big & Small

Both of my sources for this theme’s entry are from Flickr. We have small plant by baarah, and Sequoia Wonder, Big Trees State Park, California by moonjazz.

Brad’s entry was significantly different than mine, and I like how his turned out. He also did more creative work in Photoshop as far as image compositing and editing goes.

Brad - Day Two - Big & Small

Let me take this moment to deviate from the topic at hand and say that I am thoroughly confused by WordPress’ image library tools. I just want to upload an image, provide a thumbnail of a dynamic size (so, have WordPress generate a custom thumbnail size), and have a click-through to the full-size image if I so choose. This has to be possible – I have a feeling I’m just missing something. Since this is the first I’ve really used it in a long time – we’re talking years – I think that’s a safe bet.

Two Weeks of Creativity – Day One – Flowers

Mike Branski — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:38:24 +0000

I was talking with my buddy Brad on Sunday after I took my girlfriend to the bus station for her two week trip back to Canada. I told him how I was bummed out that we were going to be apart again, although I was happy it was only two weeks this time instead of five. Time will likely fly by (and it already seems to be a bit!) since I’ll be so busy with work and getting settled into our new place, but Brad decided it could use a little bit of a fun boost, and so Two Weeks of Creativity was born.

Yesterday was the first day of the creative exercise, meant to both help pass the time and give ourselves a creative “break” from work and the other necessities of day-to-day life. Yesterday’s theme was “Flowers”, and my entry is below, which is followed by Brad’s.

Day One - Flowers

I found the picture of the lily from an AKVIS tutorial and modified it to expand the background.

Brad - Day One - Flowers

A blog about a cat

Mike Branski — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:02:59 +0000

I had one once, named it Ping. Started chewing on my cords. So I got rid of it. Replaced it with a flash drive. Also named Ping. It was a win-win situation.

The Rested Traveler

Mike Branski — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:11:55 +0000

Arrived home this afternoon from our annual family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. Probably the coolest part of the trip was getting to stand in the now-empty Lake Delton. On the Ducks tour, I learned that the lake was drained in just four hours, causing an area of the Wisconsin River to go from 65 feet deep to a mere 6 feet, due to all the sand Lake Delton washed out. I ended up taking a number of pictures, as that’s something I’ll probably never get to do again; I’ll process and post those when I get some time.

Being able to walk in a lake that I’ve visited and fished at almost every year since I was a little kid was a very surreal experience. The lake was largely overgrown in many areas with patches of grass, and the rest of the parts were sludgy, unstable expanses of sand and dirt. Stepping in many of the areas, you could look down and see the whole bed of sand shift under your feet. My foot got sucked down in more than one place, and, not surprisingly, apparently a woman wasn’t careful enough and was sucked into one of the sinkholes at some point after the flooding.

We also caught a walking stick.

Helio to T-Mobile

Mike Branski — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:48:41 +0000

I just switched from Helio to T-Mobile 10 days ago. Maybe I’ll write more about my overall experience with Helio later, but the reason for the switch wans’t exactly voluntary. Helio recently merged with Virgin Mobile, which I thought to be great news (although I’ll miss the Helio name) because it would bring much-needed mainstream support to the company, among other things. Unfortunately, approximately two weeks prior to the public announcement of the merger, their service took a fast nose-dive, so bad that I could no longer make calls in my house (used to get around 80% of full reception), my text messages would constantly fail, and my 3G connection was intermittent at best. The phone I picked up with T-Mobile is the BlackBerry Curve. It has wi-fi, but no GPS. Oh well, otherwise I love it. Next stop? Android.

Out of the game

Mike Branski — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:35:34 +0000

Forgive the lack of posts lately; since March I’ve been very tied up. At the beginning of last month I had all 4 wisdom teeth pulled; the surgery went well (local anesthetics) and the recovery went even smoother. After playing catch up from that, two weeks ago I came down with bronchitis, and I’m still suffering the remnants of the cough.

Busy things in store for this spring:

Updates to my No Spam plugin (and one or two new ones, too!)
Launch of wedding photography business
Personal photography portfolio site
Possible migration of this blog to Left Right Designs as posts lean more towards a technical nature
…and much more!

I forgot about this

Mike Branski — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:55:57 +0000

I wanted to make fun of the site and the people who take it waaaay too seriously, so I put up something that was different than most of the photos there. I get a kick out of the results. Turns out to be hot all you have to do is something different; women love rebels. Epic.

I hate Helio customer service

Mike Branski — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:54:58 +0000

Me: “I have $150 in charges that shouldn’t be there and I need to find out why this keeps happening”
Them: …long pause… “So you want to know where they’re coming from?”

Of course I want to know! Seriously WTF?
On December 4th I paid November’s bill (Nov 3 – Dec 4). On December 14th I paid for December’s early because there was some shuffling of accounts. I get my bill today and it reads $190,when I really only owe $70. So I call them, get someone who seems to notice the problem, but then get disconnected after 15 minutes on hold (my fault).

So I call back, and I get someone who sounds like they’re still in high school and are failing every course dealing with logic and common sense. Now she tries telling me that payment on December 17th was for the previous month (November), and I’m telling her that no, it isn’t!

Speaking very slowly and deliberately, I ask her if she can see the payment I made on December 4th and state that payment covered November. Then I proceed to December 17th and confirm the second payment and state that one covered December. It’s at this point I really think I lost her as she put me back on hold and I’ve been waiting ever since.

It Can be Done

Mike Branski — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:45:15 +0000

Tired. Too often I refuse the body’s natural action of going to sleep, putting it off until exhaustion overtakes me and I succumb to the primitive hobby. The advent of mobile technology only reinforces this.

- Sent from my Helio

Time Sink

Mike Branski — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:40:50 +0000

I just printed up a sheet of 9 blocks made in Word that say “You are a valued member of this company. ” and randomly put them on people’s monitors over lunch. I think it will boost morale.