What am I doing down here, you ask? Well I got a job with the campus IT Department and have for the past week been working the Help Desk phone line. So if you called for help and got a steamy, lucrid man’s voice on the other line… it was 100% most definitely my lungs breathing hotness upon your eardrum by way of my good bud Alexander Grahmcracker Belt. I don’t know why he likes being called that, either, but he always insists when I blog about him that I use his nickname that his wife uses. And no, I don’t know where that name came from, and I probably don’t want to.

Anyways it’s been pretty good so far, though it’s a bit daunting answering peoples calls like that. In terms of computers, I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy. I wouldn’t know a quad-core from a pelican, or even a Super AMOLED from a pelicula. But I can tell you the subtle differences from Adobe’s CS4 and CS5 packages and use all of them proficiently. There’s another group of people who got hired who are working on capturing, photoshopping, tutorialing, and blogging how-to’s about our new “social” education platform we’re replacing Blackboard with for next semester. And they keep asking me for help with photoshop, wordpress, or whatever else. Why couldn’t I be there? *Sigh* Maybe I’ll talk to mi boss ’bout it.

In other news: as of next Sunday I’m homeless, which is pretty weird. First, it’s super weird spending my first Summer away from home. And to add, I have nowhere to live here, either. I had a housing contract to live in Eagle Landing for Summer, but I didn’t get into the class (photography) that I wanted to, so Res Life is saying I can’t live in campus housing. See, in the agreement you have to check that you will be attending classes, otherwise you’re on your own. The only exception they’ll make would be if my boss tells them the IT Dept is “sponsoring” me to live on campus, which would involve them paying for my meal plan. It’s all just such a big hassle that my parents and I finally decided it would just be better if I got my own apartment that I could keep for the Summer and then maybe room with someone next semester. Today my dad and I were out scouring the Fredscape for apartments and we found some surprisingly good places! This leads me to my next point…

My good friend Williamson McDungheap (AKA Will) got into Mary Washington! Now I don’t know if he’s going to choose here, but that’s super cool for him. If he comes down, who knows? Maybe he’ll end up being my roommate next year. Time, patience, talking, thoughtfulness, and flatulence will only tell!

I can’t think of anything else at the moment… they didn’t clean up Eagle Landing any before they moved us in… I found peoples’ clothes in my drawers, for instance. The third episode of Neature Walk was released from vicscrappyvideos! Woohoo! IT’S A BEAR. I THINK. I’ll post more about ideas and projects coming up soon…

I’m thinking of getting a Canon Rebel T3i (600D), that would be the most amazing thing ever. Either a Rebel T2i or T3i… though the swively screen is neat, I’ve heard the T3i is a little better with video, which is what I really want from my first DSLR camera. Now I just need money I have no doubt all of our videos would be a billion times cooler if we had anything better than the DV camcorder. Not that the hardware makes things automatically cooler, it’s just hard to find inspiration worth being reviewed by people with that thing. Bleh. We’ll see. (pictured is the T2i, of course)



Happy Trails,
Sam.



PS – Here’s a picture of an alien colony I took:

The amazing new trailer for Sheryl

The original

Enjoy!

Happy Trails,
Sam.

“When Sheryl Attacks!!!” is not necessarily a new movie concept for Will and I. The original idea was actually created by our good friend Nathaniel as far back as seventh grade! During this time period of 7th & 8th grade, we had a habit of filming super terrible amazing movie trailers in front our webcams and uploading them to Google Video. And thus we once again came across this….

Now if you can make any sense of that trailer, you’re a miracle-maker, because I had no idea what was going on the entire time. This particular trailer was actually made by Will and Nathaniel, and I’m only in it for a few frames. Just thought I’d share!

Happy Trails,
Sam.

You may remember I posted a while back about us doing a National Treasure parody/sequel entitled “National Treasure 3: Book of Secrets 2″. We’ll still hopefully do that project someday (a sweet summer project in DC, maybe??), but just today I ran back into the project I showed you a screen shot of, and figured I’d just post the whole cool-looking 5 second clip! (for some reason Vimeo is showing it in lower res than it is, sorry! )

Nicolas Cage cast reveal from Sam Rodgers on Vimeo.

We’re currently working on a project we’re hoping to submit to the UMW student film festival. Entitled “When Sheryl Attacks!!!”, it’s a horror movie about a family who accidentally buys a demonically-possessed Christmas tree. Needless to say, the blood begins to flow. We think it’ll be awesome!

In other news, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One” just opened last night at midnight, and my sister and Will are coming down tonight so we can all go watch it together. Should be some fun stuff! Maybe some more Sheryl planning… hmm…

Happy Trails,
Sam.

The original theme

It’s pretty funny and cool looking in my opinion, and it got Will McCarry jealous as to why I “made a cooler theme for Billy than for me! Mine just has a weird cat thing in the header!” That combined with my previous mention of how I wanted to hack some other themes got me actually wanting to do it. So I am.

I’m currently making a Star Trek theme and a theme for Fringe. I decided (after much intense debate) that I’m going to give the Fringe theme to Will. I mean, really, he can have the Fringe theme, I have the LOST theme, and LOST is better. So anyways I’m basing the Fringe theme off a pretty popular theme right now entitled Aqua Blue, and the Star Trek theme off a theme I’ve previously used entitled Inanis Glass.

Aqua Blue for Fringe	Inanis Glass for Star Trek

I see exactly what I want to make each of them, though I have a feeling both of these themes are gonna be kinda hard/confusing to make. I also don’t know exactly how I want to go about implementing the theme, because I kinda want to keep the LOST theme up. If there were a way to select a theme at the homepage or something, that might work. Though that might involve making separate blog directories, and then I’d have to worry about RSS feeds and page views and links matching up and other stuff… blehh we’ll see, I’m only just now starting to work on them. I’ll keep ya updated!



Happy Trails and Namaste,
Sam.

PS – If you’re wondering what happened to that home page project I had going a while ago, well… it’s still being worked out. Once I get some serious free time from homework and classes I’ll be able to really sit down and start dat der coding for it.

In preparation for the album, our quite good friends Mel Kobran and Nathaniel Tonelli worked on an album cover for the CD. You can see the finished back cover/cover (respectively) for the album below. They did a really great job, and Mel did a great job putting it all together in Photoshop. All the elements are real, from the hand drawn planes to the coffee stain (which is actually an orange juice stain, but who needs to know?). As always, click to enlarge and by doing so, enjoy.

While they worked on the cover, I simultaneously worked on designing the inside of the album booklet. I finally finished yesterday at 4 AM, and figured I could share a few of the pages with you. But I won’t share them all, some surprises should be left for when you get your hands on a copy of the album!

In Flight booklet pages 1 & 2

In Flight booklet pages 5 & 6

I think it turned out quite well, but then again I am a bit biased. So far the response has been positive, though, so that’s a good sign. Regardless it was a lot of fun branching out into the design of album art. The awesome photos from the booklet were taken by Mel as well. She’s a photography major at VCU, so go over to her flickr or some place and support her. Another friend of mine, Billy Bacci, is also releasing an album soon (he claims next week) and has asked me to do something for him. I can smell another late-night-team-album-art-creating venture coming! Where’s my album? It’s coming…

So go pick up a copy of In Flight from Will, and I’ll keep everyone else updated on where they can download a copy of the album on the interwebz. Soon, very soon. In fact by tomorrow. No joke. I know, it’s crazy how much I’m suddenly blogging. And yes, I realize I’m just having a conversation with myself at the computer.



Happy Trails,
Sam.