ruizwashere

Origami Killer

Ruiz — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:12:26 +0000

Hello again. As always, I hope that everybody is doing well. The weather has been humid and ugly all day today. Here’s a quick photo that I wanted to share. It’s an origami figure that Eunice created for me. The figure is based off of a dramatic thriller-type video game called Heavy Rain. For the past two nights, Anthony, Matt, Raymond, Thomas, and I have been playing this game nonstop until we beat it. The game is really incredible and kept all of us on the edge of our seats through the entire game. It’s a really fun and suspenseful game that gets everybody indirectly involved. The storyline is truly an incredible experience and will keep you thinking for days to come. If you have the chance to play this game, then you really should, especially with friends!!

So anyways, I finally finished my application for Texas A&M University. It took weeks for me to finish it and I’m glad that I nailed it before the deadline. I also applied to University of Texas San Antonio, kind of as a fall back plan just incase things don’t work thing. It’s crazy that it took weeks for me to apply to A&M, but only minutes to apply for UTSA. I did not apply to University of Texas at Austin because I missed the deadline (or laziness) or Texas State University because it did not offer what I needed. Well nonetheless, I’m glad that I finally have all of my college applications all squared away and I don’t have to worry about them any longer. The only thing left for me to do cross my fingers and pray that I make it, here’s to hoping! :)

Please stay happy and healthy everybody! I’m going crazy. I’ll see you soon..

Exit

Ruiz — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:36:10 +0000

Hello again! I hope everybody is staying well and productive. I’ve been really lazy these days unfortunately. -_-;;

I wanted to share another photo that I took of Chloe. This picture was taken in San Marcos before we took a trip to San Antonio. The reason I’m showcasing this work is because I’ve recently been studying a lot of different techniques in Photoshop that can really take my photography to the next level. The style of photos that you see in the covers of magazines and publications is what I’m trying to shoot for here. I want to try and create a more artistic look, as if the photo were to be painted onto a canvas. I’m now practicing on improving facial features of the subject too. One thing I refuse to do is change the shape or body of a subject. God blessed each of us with our bodies and gave each of us our own distinct look. One thing that I don’t believe he exactly blessed us with are temporary dermatological defects such as acne, scars, rashes, etc. Features like these don’t help a photo, which is why I’m more than willing to remove them. Amazingly enough, Chloe has incredibly clear skin and I did not need to retouch it. The only thing I did was darken her makeup to make it appear more bold, made her lips slightly more pink, and gave her hair a brown tint to match her outfit. Basically it was just a play on colors. There’s no way that I could make her more vibrant than she already is and I love it! It took an extremely long time to clean up the cement and give it a uniform look, but the result speaks for itself. Hopefully my pictures will continue to improve over time, so cross your fingers!! Tell me what you think! ;)

The title of this picture is called “Exit.” Sometimes I feel that my life can be somewhat of a maze from time to time. Whenever I get stuck in a situation, it can be hard to find a solution or the proper way out. Nonetheless, if I stay strong and keep telling myself to work hard enough, I will eventually find the proper exit out of it. With this photo in mind, I hope that everybody can find the solutions to the problems that they have in life, so that they can find their proper way out. :)

Shopped: Where I Graduated

Ruiz — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:09:18 +0000

Chloe and I visited the Tower of the Americas during our weekend trip. We watched the sun set over the city as it began to brightly light up. Afterwards, we visited her neighborhood and she gave me a guided tour of her high school. The school was pretty darn big, roughly 1.5x the size of Killeen High School. It was a great experience to have her show me around and tell me about her cherished high school memories and experiences. In the background of this photo is an aerial view the San Antonio Alamodome, the place where Chloe graduated from Judson Senior High School on Wednesday, June 4, 2008. I hope this picture serves as a reminder of how far she’s come since her high school graduation and that she continues to go even further! :)

Riverwalk

Ruiz — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:05:03 +0000

Hello! I hope that everybody is doing well. I’m know I’m still slacking a bit when it comes to rollin’ out the blog posts, but you can still see my effort! ^_^;;

So I spent the past weekend with Chloe, and I have to say that it was awesome! From awkward Salsa dancing in San Marcos to seeing the entire city of San Antonio light up beautifully at night, it was all an amazing and unique experience. Chloe pretty much summarized up the entire weekend on her blog. It was incredible being able to travel the city with her, meet some of her family, and experience high school as she lived it. :)

These are just a few of the pictures that we took over the weekend. None of these pictures have been edited or Photoshopped, with the exception of stitched panoramas. Enjoy!

Oh, and you want to see what San Antonio looks like during the sunset?

Disappointing

Ruiz — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:24:01 +0000

Wow, I’m very disappointed with myself. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to write another blog post. I apologize. So many things have been going on with my life and I just haven’t felt like blogging like I should have. Well, don’t worry! I’m glad to say that over the past few weeks, I’ve been slowly getting established with a new lifestyle. My activities, interests, and habits have been changing all for the better.

I need to get back into blogging my thoughts more. So with that said, you’ll see me posting a lot more entries along with more photos. The weather hasn’t been kind to me these days. Unkind weather = less photos. But It will all change soon, the weather will start to get warm again next month which will call for more opportunities to take pictures.

So, a quick run-through of things that have been going on with me:

I’m dating again. Yeah, I know right? It’s been over 20 months since I’ve last dated. I always knew that it was always best to wait and I’m glad I did. It hasn’t been that long, but I feel that we’re growing closer to each other very rapidly. Because she resides in San Marcos, we don’t get to see each other as often as we desire. But whenever we do get to see each other, everything just falls into place… perfectly.
Trying to fill out college applications like crazy. Sigh, I hate all of this last-minute crap. I don’t want to go anywhere that is too far from home. I feel that it would be an inconvenience. Current universities I’m looking into at the moment: Texas A&M University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas San Antonio, Texas State University.
I suck at Street Fighter. *gasp* No way!! Way. I’ve been practicing a lot for the upcoming tournament at Arcade UFO on the 20th which is only four days away. It seems that the closer I am to the deadline, the more worse I become. I’ve been practicing a quite an amount but I just don’t feel that I’m up to par with the fierce competition that undeniably will be there. It may just be fear or pressure, but I’ll definitely try my hardest. I can’t let my partner Anthony down. He needs a good partner that he can depend on.

That’s it. I’ll conclude with a panoramic photo that I took a few weeks back with my friend Melly. It could have looked much better, but a cop stopped us and made us get off the highway. Major cool points to anybody who can figure out which intersection in Killeen this is. :)

I believe that:

Ruiz — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:12:41 +0000

“The world would be a depressing place if we never had to fight for what we love.”

-Ruiz

Shopped: Seed to your Heart

Ruiz — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:54:12 +0000

Click to enlarge

So… Can I plant the seed to your heart? ;)

Just in case you didn’t know, the plant was not Photoshopped. Each picture was hand drawn with a LED multi-color flashlight while being captured by the camera. You can tell I’m not a good artist, I had a hard time drawing the heart correctly! :(

Workstation flow

Ruiz — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:04:42 +0000

Can you believe the weather here in Texas these days? We’re reaching lows of 19 degrees! How is that even possible? My fingers freeze within ten seconds of walking outside, it’s crazy!!

Ack, I’ve been away from my blog for quite some time. For the past few days I’ve been thinking about all kinds of things I want to write about but I’ve just been so lazy. Keep checking back though!

Okay, so this time I just wanted to share something small that I found recently. I regained access to my old Photobucket account and found a lot of old pictures that I took of my workstation over the years. I liked taking pictures of my workstation the same way MySpace users obsessed over taking hundreds of pictures of themselves just to upload a decent profile picture. I’m glad I did, because now I get to see how much I’ve progressed over the years along with how much money I’ve blown. :( So yeah, not really the most interesting thing in the world but take a gander at it if you’re curious. They are in order from oldest to newest and there’s descriptions on each picture. I don’t have accurate timestamps of every photo but I know the earliest was taken no earlier than 2005.

Stay warm!!

Devo’s 21st Birthday

Ruiz — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:45:33 +0000

How is everybody? I hope that you all are doing very well and kicking things off right this new year! ^O^

Yesterday was such a lazy day. I had so much to do and ended up doing nothing at all. My laundry is still dirty and I still need to visit the school to inquire some info about financial aid. Though I was pretty dead during the daytime, things started to become lively during the night. Matt and I decided to treat our friend Devo, who turned 21 yesterday, to a small birthday surprise. Nothing too big, just cake, snacks, and a great time together with the rest of our friends. Happy 21st Devo! :)

New Year, New Computer

Ruiz — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:17:46 +0000

For the past few days I’ve been working on upgrading all of the current computers in the house. My mom and my sister Eunice were always nagging about how they need a better computer. To be honest, I was nagging to myself about my own computer. Well, something had to be done. So all of the computers in the house were upgraded in a hand-me-down fashion. My sister gives my mom her computer, I give my sister my computer, and I simply build a new one. :)

My new computer doesn’t exactly need much, just needs to be faster and more reliable. I don’t play any games on it, but I do a lot of high resolution image editing and some potential HD video editing. All I needed to purchase was a new CPU, RAM, and Motherboard. In layman’s terms you could say that means a brain, memory for it, and a skull. I had everything else. I’m stocked up on hard drives and power supplies. I don’t do any PC gaming anymore so I could still use my old graphics card without any problems. And of course, the my new Antec Mini P180 White which I reviewed not too long ago is here to stay.

All of the computers in the house were upgraded to Windows 7. Home Premium for my mom and sister, Business on my netbook, and Ultimate on my desktop. I have to say, it feels good to have a unified, up-to-date home network. :) Below you’ll find the specs for my new build as well a gallery of of it being put together.

CPU: Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz @ 3.4GHz
Motherboard: MSI P55M-GD45 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) DDR3 PC3 12800 @ 1600Mhz
HDD: Some Seagate 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0 I should probably upgrade soon
GPU: XFX GeForce 8600GT 256MB 620MHz Core 1600MHz Memory
PSU: BFG 450-Watt ATX
Case: Antec Mini P180 White