See ya on the other side.
Okay… I want to set this tradtition good and now… my annual giant annual recap of doom. After my recap this year I've got an important announcement to make, but still the year needs recapping… so recap I shall!
Where to begin? How about January! That's where the year starts! So I should start there…
January.
Before 2005 started, I quit my job from UVa. Within the next 5 months I'd be going to school. And I felt the need to get out of that stress hole. I feel it did wonders personally. I wasn't so tired anymore. It did it have it's downfall however… but I'll get to that later. The job I took up was another delivery type job (very handy they be). However, I worked only a handful of hours per day, and then only a few weeks before the place closed… so… suxxor!
Sadly however… our friend Chyler died in the later part of the month. He was good kid, and he is missed.
February.
So… hunting jobs… and hunting mobs in World of Warcraft! Who'da thought a year after starting FF-XI, I'd be playing WoW? Anyways, things weren't looking too good. Was having troubles getting a job. Kinda hard when you tell peeps “I'm leaving mid-May.” I perservered tho…
March.
Got a job a St. Maarten's Cafe. A restaurant owned by a good family friend, and place I've hung out at for years. Grunt job… washing dishes… not the best work, but it payed my bills.
April.
I keep on working at Maarten's. Having a good time. Not playing WoW anymore… picked up FF agian for a bit. Nothing too exciting…
May.
Hooo boy… MAY! May is always an awesome month for me each year… not sure why. Aside from it being my birth month. I just love May in general. This May though…. this May was the most awesome May ever. And not because Star Wars: Episode III was great… but another reason.
I moved. Moved far away from Charlottesville. Moved away from my parents. Moved away from everything I'd known and held dear. There was huge rant about that by the way. Probably the best rant of the year, and my best all around. I moved to Winter Park, Florida. In this little burg outside Orlando, is the school I now attend. Despite the terrible heat, and lack of terrain (I REALLY miss mountains), it's all fairly cool.
June.
Classes finally start. Looking back, those Gen Ed courses were exceedingly easy by comparison to what I'm in now… but that's to be expected. I had a lot of fun, met a bunch of new peeps from multiple degrees, mostly Film (my roommate's degree) and Digital Media (my own).
Sadly however… within my first week of class, my grandmother, Lois MacKenzie, passed away. Figures something like that would happen as soon as I leave home. I'll be going to visit that branch of family this Christmas, so that'll be a odd experience.
July.
Gen Ed classes continue. I kick some ass in my labs, outshowing most of friends with my awesome skills… considering they weren't DM students, I don't think that's saying much. Otherwise, really nothing else to state about July. Oh… wait… I lie.
We had a week off for the 4th of July holiday. I spent most of the week at home, but when the weekend came, I took an 8-9 hour drive to Atlanta to visit my good FF-XI buddy Justin (otherwise known as Junkbunny). That was a pretty neat experience. On the way home, I drove through Hurricane Dennis.
August.
Finally… core Digital Media classes. Started out with the first month of Computer Graphics, under the tutelage of Eric Rosenfeld. I learned me some Illustrator and Photoshop. And it was cool. I also had Design and Art Theory (Taught by Lane and Mike). It was neat, and I had a chance to show off my keen doodling skills upon my unsuspecting classmates. I also started to befriend a fair deal of my classmates… at this point namely a guy I knew in my Gen Ed by the name of Joe Purpora. I also met Joe Laurino, whose a crazy New Yorker.
It also rained really heavily for 10 minutes as this thing called “Hurricane Katrina” passed over Florida. Needless to say… the next few days after that were… uh… interesting…
September.
The learning keeps on going. This time… I delve into After Effects, as was taught by Keith Richardson who looks like my dead uncle Neal. Also took a class on Networks and Operating Systems, taught by Duffy and Fabian. After Effects is awesome… and I learned that Linux is good for being a file hosting machine.
Nothing too exciting about September otherwise.
October.
Umm… prolly the most boring month of the year. Began Introduction to the 3D Arts (Scott Cook took the teaching helm this time around), and had an online course about Entertainment Business.
Also, this month, I befriended one Jason Hughes, another fellow classmate. (And to any other classmates who I haven't named at this point, I just list these guys cause they's the one's I hang out with all the time. Y'all is still cool with me.)
November.
WILLIE FREEMAN!!!! Willie, taught “Advanced Web Design 1,” which is Flash. Willie rules! Willie is awesome. And I absolutely love Flash because Willie taught this class awesomely. I learned a lot, and this really reassured the fact that I want to do Web.
I also finished up I3D. Scott is a crazy, funny guy. He is however very dry. Almost “Ben Stein”-ish. I wasn't too taken with 3D.
By the way…. Willie Freeman is teh roxxor. In case you didn't get that.
Also… Mum and Dave came to visit for Thanksgiving. They got to meet my oddball group of friends. I ate good food (for once), and fun was had by all.
December.
And thus the year comes to its close. And it sure is ending with a hurrah unlike any other. Due to a 5 day break at Thanksgiving, and then another break starting on Dec. 17, there was a need to shove 4 weeks of classes into 3 weeks. SO… I've been going non-stop basically since after Turkey Day. Granted, my classes are fairly neat.
Matt Foreman, who is another awesome teacher (probably my funniest thus far), teaches Fundamentals of Web Design. Under his guide I've unleared and relearned HTML and now have added CSS to my belt of web technology that I can harness. Matt is awesome too. Probably just as awesome as Willie. They're two different kinds of awesome though.
In addition to Matt's rambling about XHTML and CSS, I have to listen to Andrew Barras' prattlings about making stuff for games in Game Content Creation (which is a two month class). It's neat. It makes me enjoy 3D work a bit more since it makes it easier. Other then that, I'm still looking at web as my trade of choice. A trade that relies a lot on graphics and stuff of that sort. Stuff that's a lot nicer to do on an Apple PowerMac G5! Which is a type of computer I now proudly own! That's right! SUCK IT GATES!!!! HAHA!!! But I dirgress… (hehe… I own a PowerMac).
As of my writing this, there's less then a week to break, and I fly home to C-ville on Monday. Looking forward to it. Really am. It's a much needed break after these past few weeks. Its been an interesting year to be sure, and things are looking cool for the next. Wow…. 2006…. seems like only yesterday in 2001 I was graduating High School, and now here I am in college learning my future trade. Crazyness.
So… speaking of future trade… let's talk about something to do with that shall we.
If you can remember to the beginning of this thing, I said I had an announcement to make. Well here it is. The murf-STUFF you are looking at right now… this website you are looking at with your own two eye
s… is done. Finished. Sayonara, See ya never again. You won't be seeing an update here for a while. A good while probably.
When ya DO see that update… it'll be pretty. More pretty then it ever has been before. I'm tearing down the very foundation that the site is built upon and starting anew. Built fresh, from the ground up. I'll now toss shiny acronyms and phrases at you like “standards-compliant XHTML” and “CSS,” “PHP,” and “MySQL!” A reworked forum (again)? Yup… that'll happen too! Then there's that dern “F-word” (FLASH!!!) that'll be coming to the site. The content won't change. Nope, no sir. Just reworked, and redone into a new layouts all around, and a chance to make things easier for me to update, easier to navigate, easier to redesign, and more. I'm going all out!
So, when will we be seeing this massive update? Who knows! Not I! I've already begun planning layouts and what not. I will say this. Expect the beast to arrive before I leave Full Sail (June 2006). And for those of you who follow the site, but don't check it… believe me. You'll know when it happens. I won't let you not know!
But murf! What about new content? We haven't seen anything for a while now!” You may be shouting. I'm not so unprone to not give you new stuff. But it won't be here. I'd reccomend you go see my account at deviantART [link] for that.
As for now though. I hope you enjoy these next few months to bond with this horrid table based design and the issues I've had with it. Believe me… I will not miss it. Also… (although you're likely reading this post holiday) have a good holiday season, and I'll catch y'all on the opposite side of the coming update, or on the forum…. either one really.
-Davis Murphy
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