How is everybody? Is finals week going well? I hope nobody has the flu, it’s starting to spread around like crazy. :\

So I just wanted to say that I decided to change my theme today. The last theme had way too many bugs and just didn’t feel natural as a blog. Unlike my previous themes, this one was not built from the ground up. I decided to use another theme and give it my own twist. The theme I picked was Pixel by Samk. It’s an incredible yet simplistic looking theme that I was able to easily modify with a little bit of studying and patience. I’m no good at creating code, but modifying it is a different story. I decided to go for a more spacey/futuristic looking theme. The original idea was to use a take a picture of myself with a night sky. Knowing that I look like a mess right now, I knew that was not going to happen anytime soon. Instead, I looked around my photo archive and found a huge panoramic picture I took of Belton Lake at night. I was bored that night and decided to take a trip to the lake to take my mind off things. It’s a really wide picture, so you can’t really see the full scale and view of the lake in the theme. The reason why I chose this picture is because of the the clear night sky. Perfect for adding stars. So after a few (maybe six) hours of hard work and modifying, viola! ruizwashere v8.0. :)

So take a look around, the feel is new but the content is pretty much the same. If you see anything wrong or weird-looking, just let me know. Oh, just in case you didn’t know, I had my wisdom teeth pulled the other day. It’s healing, but it takes forever. I started eating solid food yesterday so I’m starting to feel good again. I guess I better start studying for my English exam tomorrow. It’s not the final exam unfortunately, those aren’t until next week for CTC students.

I’m also going to reactivate my Facebook next week when the semester finally ends. I was tempted to do it now but I don’t want to get sidetracked. ;)

Stay well, stay healthy!

[SinglePic not found] This is one of the shots that I took with my friend Thomas while we were out on a downtown photoshoot. This wasn’t one of our originally planned shots, but the view of the alleyway as we passed by it was simply stunning. After we were done with this spot, we tried going deeper into the alleyway, but then we suddenly started hearing loud phone dialing and bright camera flashes, the work of a menacing security camera. It gave us quite a scare. We had to run and take photos elsewhere. The eyecandy version took about 2-3 hours to edit in Photoshop. I’m not too good at this, but I had a lot of fun enhancing this picture. Added a light streak and a burst of lens flares. I tried to add a sense of depth to the light streak as if it was coming in from a distance but I kinda failed, the angle doesn’t look too natural. I will work on it and improve on future works though.

These works can also be seen on my deviantART: Original | Eyecandy

Incase you haven’t noticed, though they might appear minor, I’ve made some major changes to the site. Here’s a list of changes.

• Comments system has been greatly improved. Users will no longer need to register to comment. I deleted the current user database and upgraded the comment system to the DISQUS engine. If you were previously registered to the website, you will not be able to log in anymore. You can now login in to comment using your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, Disqus, or OpenID account instead. If for some reason you don’t happen to have any of these account types, you can simply comment as a guest. It’s really neat, convenient, and it just works. Don’t believe me? Try it.
• Re-designed the site footer for easier navigation. Something I should’ve done from the get-go. It looks much better than the simple font that used to be there.
• Enhanced sidebar. The sidebar now features my latest twitter update and easier administration login, which will be used only for me now because of the new comments system upgrade.
• Still currently working on the about pages. All of the pages about myself and the website are outdated. Some information is now incorrect and misleading. I am revising them all so that it is easier for visitors to read and learn about myself, as well as ruizwashere.com.

That’s it from me. I have a lot to study for now. If you want to follow and catch up with me, then please consider following me on Twitter. I’ve just started, and I find it addicting to update. Thank you! :)

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Currently Listening To: Kate Havnevik – You Again

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It’s taken quite a few sleepless nights of designing, coding, troubleshooting, and hair-pulling, but the new ruizwashere is… HERE!

Version 7 is finally up and running for the most part. Over the next few days, the site layout will go through a few more visual tweaks and edits, giving it a more professional appearance. These tweaks include redesigning the footer, teaking the archive pages for easy navigation, and updating the login/register page. I’m really proud and fond of this design, please let me know what you think of it. If you encounter any bugs, errors, or design flaws, just let me know.

Yesterday, I finally took the initiative to buy a DSLR camera. I now have a Nikon D60, which is a great beginner camera for me. I’m not exactly a professional photographer, but photography is something I really want to get into. The camera isn’t TOO hard to operate, but I’ve finally realized that in order to get those perfect shots that you want, you have to WORK for it. The 18-55mm lens is pretty good to start with, but later I want to buy a 55-200mm lens so that I can produce shots like THIS or THIS. (holyyy sheeeit!!)(UPDATE: Scratch that! I want a AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G lens! This is EXACTLY what I need. Here’s a Flickr pool filled with pictures taken with this lens.)

Here’s a some shots from my first day of use. Just keep in mind that many of these photos are just straight-up NOOBSHOTS, so please, no deep criticizing!! Remember that all I have is the 18-55mm kit lens that came with the camera. I’m going on another photoshoot session later today so that I’m able to experiment a bit more and post up some more shots. I’ll keep in touch. -Ruiz

 

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Currently Listening To: Fabolous (ft. Drake) – Throw it in the Bag (Remix)

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(click to enlarge)

The good: My mom is actually using technology. Well imagine that.

The bad: She only knows how to use the mouse. I still have to type in the website address for her, apparently it’s “too difficult”. She still does not how to use a DVD player.

Haha. And on a side note, I also wanted to note that I did some tweaking to the site. Registered users can now upload their own photo for display with their comments. It took forever for me to find out why it wasn’t working. When uploading, try using a small photo first. For some reason, you get an error whenever you try to upload a ginormous photo. I still need to work out the bugs with that.

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Currently Listening To: Fragma – Toca Me (In Petto 2008 Remix)

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