(23) Relief

Posted by Ivy

Wow, I fell off the wagon with posting. I would blame coding, but Phoebe has kept up with her 30-Day project in spite of having far more newspaper images to work through than I did, so really, no excuse.

That said, today is probably one of the best days I’ve had all semester long. Scratch that. It IS the best day I’ve had all semester. This is for two reasons.

1) I don’t have to wear a leg brace anymore! This is the first time in exactly two months that I haven’t had some sort of immobilizing contraption on my left leg, and it’s a wonderful feeling. I’m so free! Take that, irresponsible SUV drivers of the world.

2) I finished coding all of the photos from my thesis data set! There were 635 total, and I made a 65-page spreadsheet cataloging them all (this is much longer than my thesis currently is, which is kind of depressing, but I won’t focus on that part right now). Now I can start actually analyzing stuff and learning things. Yay!

Fittingly, on the day I finished coding, I also got my film back from the Tennessee trip I made in order to get 548 of those images. But those (except for the very next one) will get their own post.

My little workspot in the Vanderbilt library. Disposable cameras can’t handle closeups.

(22a) Update!

Posted by Ivy

I did take some photos yesterday before midnight (of a very tasty pasta dish I created), but have yet to actually upload to the blog. So I get half a point for 30-day fulfillment.

I should also be getting my film from the epic Thesis Road Trip back tomorrow! Hooray! I still don’t know if any of those photos actually came out, but we’ll find out soon enough…

In totally unrelated news, I’m going to Texas a week from today…for ten whole days (whee!)! I need to get some serious work done before then, though.

(22) What's Up, Doc?

Posted by Ivy

I got hooked on documentaries of the nature variety when I was about eight; my great-grandmother bought me a two-part VHS series called “Life in the Wild” (which you too can buy on eBay for just $3.25). It wasn’t exactly the greatest nature doc ever, and I’m pretty sure the filmmakers used unethical tactics in it at some points, but before I watched that, I’d never heard of Kakadu, or Kruger, or the Camargue. PLUS, one of the sequences was shot in the Everglades, and as a kiddie Floridian (Flor-kid-ian! Ha! (please don’t judge me)), I was very happy to see my state represented (even though I still think they threw a rat into the water for a gator to eat).

In 2000, when I was thirteen, a Boston affiliate produced a series called “Wild Europe,” which I found equally fascinating, for the simple reason that nobody ever talks about European wildlife, except to mention hedgehogs in England and wolves in Romania. All good documentaries should shed light on the unknown or unexplored; that’s just good journalism. The program (sadly) never been released on DVD, but, again, if you’re interested, you can buy the complete six-VHS set on Amazon. Note that the quality of this one is, shall we say, a step up from the previous one, as denoted by its pricetag.

When I got to high school, I was introduced to the BBC, which takes nature documentaries right up to eleven on the Nigel Tufnel scale. I’d say that The Blue Planet, which I first watched in my Marine Bio class, is the best of the bunch…except that David Attenborough, narrator extraordinaire, and his team have also produced the fantastic “Life…” series. I haven’t seen all of this series, unfortunately, but if they’re all anything like “Life of Mammals,” which I own, I assume they must be pretty groundbreaking and excellent (that’s the best thing about BBC pieces—they’re not content to just go out, sit in a blind and film…they have to get new material that nobody has EVER filmed before. Hence, the feature on the inside of a platypus’ den, and the one about cave elephants. CAVE ELEPHANTS!)

The whole point of this long discussion was that I discovered over the weekend that putting nature documentaries on while I work on my thesis makes for excellent background noise. Maybe it’s the British accents, or the simple fact that I’ve seen them before, so I don’t get distracted trying to follow along with a plot. The only problem with this plan is that I don’t have my own copy of Planet Earth, which is also a strong contender for the title of BBC’s Best. This is a serious oversight on my part. I’ve seen all of the segments, thanks to borrowing friends’ copies, so it fit my ‘not-too-distracting’ criteria…but I didn’t have the actual set. Ugh.

Fortunately, 9th Street Video (which awesomely kept its name despite moving to Hitt Street) came through for me.

My living room table is messy.

And when I do have time to invest in watching a NEW documentary series…I’m turning towards everybody’s favorite photo pan-and-zoom man, Ken Burns.

Yes, he seriously set back multimedia production, but his Civil War piece alone makes up for this problem. I’ll let you know more about the Baseball one when I finally finish it. Then I can start on the National Parks set, and by then, well, hopefully the BBC will have something new out.

(20) We Interrupt This Programming…

Posted by Ivy

Tonight is the night of the Oscars telecast.

I admit I wasn’t as jazzed up about watching it this year as I have been in the past, but I still enjoy the show (mostly because I love montages, and the Oscars are full of them!).

I had been watching for about an hour and a half when my cable signal went dead, along with all of those in the apartment complex where I live.

This might be a sign that I should be doing more coding work and less TV watching. I like to think I was doing a good job balancing the two, though.

(19) People without People

Posted by Ivy

Some photographs answer questions. Others raise them.

For those not in the J-School, these photos were both taken in the bathroom on the first floor of RJI. In the same stall, actually. There are so many questions arising from the photos (I mean this unsarcastically) that I had to take and share them.

I should note that the presence of the urinal here is actually the least puzzling of all. I’m assuming it’s part of the Mizzou initiative to provide for its transgender population, since RJI was completed approximately around the time this motion was approved. (I could be wrong, though, so don’t hold me to that).

But why is there a coffee cup in the stall in the first place? Why are there TWO? They’re not even from the same establishment—one has a black lid and one has a white lid; one has a hand protector (what are those cardboard things called?), and one doesn’t. And who brings coffee (or tea) into the restroom with them, anyway? I suppose maybe I could understand this if you were in an airport or something, because I wouldn’t want to leave my drink unattended in a public place. But people leave stuff out all the time in RJI. Besides that, why would you leave the cup behind? If it is in fact empty, why couldn’t itsimply have been thrown in the trash? I just don’t get it.

I guess some things are beyond my ken.

(note: Yes, the cup is out of focus in the second image. I am duly ashamed for not seeing this when I took it and thus for not correcting the error. But I had to post it anyway).

(18) Work and Play

Posted by Ivy

I said yesterday that I was singlehandedly keeping Columbia recycling in business—today just solidified this. I printed off 500+ PDF files of newspaper pages, all of which will be unceremoniously placed into a blue bin somewhere on campus in about a month.

Then I went to the library and found MORE books for my lit review. Oh gosh.

Fortunately, tonight is Top Ten Wines night! I haven’t gone in a few weeks due to the Olympics (figure skating, naturally); I had missed the fun times of ping pong and sangria with the J-Schoolers.

As always, I had to make these black and white due to excessive graininess due to my camera not being able to go above 800ISO and my lens not being able to open past f/3.5.

GRAIN

Dance parties breaking out, photogs documenting, epic matches of ping pong…it’s all too much to keep track of.