The past month or so has been… busy.
In case I haven’t mentioned it (or you didn’t read the previous post), since early September I’ve been studying for the NCEES Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. This is the thing you’re supposed to take after college so you can start working towards becoming a licensed Professional Engineer in the US. Specifically, I’ve been studying to take the Mechanical Engineering exam. It’s kinda the generalist engineering exam and can be a pain to study for since it covers so many topics. I had about 6 weeks from when I signed up to when I actually took the exam, which was more than enough time. I took it in mid-October and was told I passed, which is all they really tell you. No score, no percentile compared to other test-takers, nothing.
I also ended up getting a new car. A Hyundai Ioniq 6, fully electric. The registration on my old, 2006 Dodge Dakota was just about to run out and I needed to get a new car before the end of November if I wanted to avoid getting a new registration for it. Despite planning to do this for a while and knowing what car I wanted, the actual car-buying process happened over about a day of me stressing and worrying and hoping that I got the paperwork right, that I didn’t mess something up, that I was going to get approved for the loan. Everything worked out, though, and now I’m gonna be paying off a debt for the next 5 years that will likely keep me from moving out for a while. Such is life, I suppose.
I also stopped streaming during this period, and I still haven’t started again. It’s not that I don’t enjoy streaming anymore, but perhaps I was a bit burnt out on it. Keeping a schedule streaming twice a week for several years starts to wear on you, especially when you don’t really see an appreciable difference in the metrics from when you started to the present. I’ve streamed a couple times with friends, but I think that’s where I’m going to end up sitting from now on.
Frustratingly, I’m still not done with the second video I wanted to produce this year, of which there were intended to be three. There’s a few reasons for this: a lack of energy and time due to working a day job when I could be filming, the encroaching darkness of Daylight Savings Time and winter in the northern hemisphere making daylight hours scant, my generally late sleep schedule. The biggest issue, however, has simply been scope creep. I didn’t take the time before writing the script to narrow down the scope and the shots I wanted to make, and as such the video meanders a lot and requires a lot of shots. Due to that, I’ve had a lot of problems getting out to locations I want to film in, partially due to the aforementioned time-related issues.
I did, however, manage to get out to a waterfall on a lovely, if unseasonably warm, day last weekend. That should be the last scene I need to travel for, thankfully; the rest I can film around the house. And with Thanksgiving weekend coming up in the US, I’ll have 4 days or so to film what I need and start the editing process, which should be a lot quicker; I’m loathe to actually film, especially if I’m putting myself on camera, but editing is something that feels a lot more natural to me. Hopefully, that video will be out in a couple weeks at most.
Part of the reason I haven’t updated the site very much recently is because I simply haven’t been doing as much photography lately, and even less of it that I’ve really felt was worth showing off. However, the other night I had a lot of fun walking around the city I work in after I finished up my own work and taking photos. Street photography per se is generally outside my purview, as I’m not much of a portrait photographer and tend to be too shy or nervous to ask people for photos, let alone just take photos of unsuspecting people. I also don’t really get many photos around sunrise or sunset, so this was a bit of a departure for me. However, I did find myself focusing on the non-human subjects more than the human ones, as I expected. I sat down and edited these last night and am fairly happy with them, although I don’t know if any of them are really portfolio-quality, at least not for the sort of portfolio I’m looking to build right now.
I’ve also been focusing a bit more on why I like my photos. I’ve found a rather long (~6 hr) video on YouTube about photo composition, an excerpt from a video course on the matter. While the course is in black and white and I’ve certainly been doing a bit more of that to try and simplify and understand how I’m getting the results I do, I think part of the reason I like a lot of my photos is due to the colors at play. Part of the reason I shy away from doing sunrise and sunset photos, I think I’m realizing, is because I actually enjoy the high-contrast shots you can find at midday; my friend who is recently getting back into doing art was the first to point it out, but most of my portfolio photos are extremely high contrast.
I’ve got some more work to do, but the end of the year will likely be focused on taking some time for myself and relaxing, focusing my efforts on personal projects: photography, video games, making videos, and working on a tabletop RPG campaign idea I’ve had for a while.
I hope you all are taking care of yourselves. The world is a cruel and confusing place right now, and everybody can use some care and love. Be politically active and show your politicians that you care about things, hold them accountable. Free Palestine, support a ceasefire and the two-state solution. Have a good Thanksgiving if you celebrate, and if not have a good week.
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