A Yankee in Texas

Photo Shoot: Cody Lawson

jeremy — Fri, 21 May 2010 07:01:31 +0000

A few weeks ago I posted on Craig’s List that I would take any local bands photo’s for free if I could use them as part of my portfolio. Cody Lawson was one of the first people to contact me and about a week later I met up with him in historic Gruene, TX.

You can see the whole set here.

– Jeremy

Office Minimizing: Before and After

jeremy — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:18:02 +0000

Before:

After

Office Minimizing Part Three…

jeremy — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:14:48 +0000

So part three of my office project was to reconfigure the layout of the electronics. I drilled a hole in the first shelf so that I could put my external hard drives up there and free up some desk space. As you can see from the photo I still have some cable management to sort out but all in all I am happy with the small but dramatic change.

You can also see some more stuff made it’s way back in to my office. Basically some books I am not ready to part with and some DVD’s I am in the process of converting to a format that can be played on our Apple TV so they can be stored.

Let me know what you think. Probably this weekend I will work on the cable management so look for one more post.

– Jeremy

Office Minimizing Part Two…

jeremy — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:58:50 +0000

Today was mainly dedicated to sorting the items from my office in to 1 of 6 piles:

Keep: Move back in to office
Keep: Not sure where it’s going
Keep: Storage
Going: Sell / Donate / Give Away
Going: Recycle
Going Trash

I was able to work my way through all the stuff and pretty much get everything in to one of those 6 piles. I still have a stack of notebooks to go through and a stack of business cards to sort out.

– Jeremy

Office Minimizing Part One…

jeremy — Sun, 16 May 2010 05:57:25 +0000

I’m not sure why but recently I have developed a huge aversion to clutter and really disturbed about the amount of “stuff” I own. My office, for example, is the one place in the apartment where the majority of the contents are “mine”. It had become a collection of things and basically a place that I really didn’t want to spend much time in because of how out of control it had gotten.

The first step in the process for me was to remove almost everything from the office. Obviously I know the computer equipment will be staying. A later step in the process I will be reorganizing and rewiring the electronics.

I moved everything to our currently unused second bedroom and after dusting the shelves I began sorting through my books. I found a few web programming related books that are now out of date (aka technology has changed radically since the book was published ) I set them aside to be taken to Half Price books. All the computer and business related books I felt would be useful to me I add back to the right side of the shelf. I chose to use some of the smaller business related books as a bookend for the larger programming books. On the left hand side of the shelf I added back all my “comics” and used a spindle of blank DVD’s for a temporary bookend.

In part two I will go more into the process I am using to sort my “stuff”, some of my thoughts on how responsibly dispose of the “stuff”, what I hope to achieve and of course my updated progress. I have a feeling this small room is going to take a lot longer than I think to “minimize”.

– Jeremy

Goose…

jeremy — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:33:44 +0000

I snapped this shot at the pond today. I will be posting more from this set tomorrow.

– Jeremy

SXSW Photos…

jeremy — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:49:26 +0000

Just outside my office window the SXSW music festival has invaded 6th Street. After work I decided to go see what there was to see and I brought my camera along:

This guy had a portable amp and was wailing on the harmonica.

Is it just me or does he kind of look like Steve Jobs?

This dude is kicking it old school with a “Boom Box”

I can only describe what this guy and his buddy were playing as Folk Death Metal.

And what would a music festival be without some Free Hugs…. ( No I didn’t get a hug )

Check out the full set here.

– Jeremy

Employment…

jeremy — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:39:52 +0000

Almost 6 months to the day of my “Lemonade” post I was offered a position at FG Squared ( fg2.com ) as their Senior Web Applications Developer and I accepted. It’ s been a big change going to work everyday after being off for over 4 months. It’s been a week and my body is starting to get used to my new schedule. Getting up a 7am is getting less painful. The commute is 45-60 mins each way so I’ve been loading my iPod up with podcasts for the drive and while I loath traffic I’m at least making the best of my time in the car.

– Jeremy

Coworking at Cospace

jeremy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:16:59 +0000

The past couple of days I’ve been coworking at Austin’s newest coworking space Cospace. I am loving it here. It’s nice to get out of the house and be in an office style environment with people to interact with.

Things are still pretty quite here at Cospace as they’ve only been open for 4-5 days. There definitely seems to be a lot of interest in Cospace so I expect the space to start fill up on the next couple of weeks.

I will be hanging out here for the rest of the month so if you are in the area swing by and check out Cospace.

– Jeremy

Growing Wheat Grass: Expanding

jeremy — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:09:07 +0000

So with my experimental planting of wheat grass looking good it’s time to expand a bit. I cleaned and sanitized two 11″ x 12″ trays that we used to start seeds for our balcony garden last year.

For a comparison all three trays from the first planting will fit in to one of the new trays with room to spare.

To get things started I have 3 cups of wheat berries soaking overnight.

In the morning I will rinse the wheat berries, they will sprout in a about day and be ready to plant in two days.

– Jeremy