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andrewysanders · 6 years

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I’m Nine Years Old – Middle Age

As party week powers relentlessly on, today is a look at years 6, 7, and 8, what has come to represent the depressing middle age years …

Life of an Architect – Year’s Six (2015), Seven (2016) and Eight (2017)

Just like all architects seem to really start hitting their stride once they hit middle age, the blog saw it’s best moments during this period … it also saw it’s very worst. Things were going along somewhat swimmingly from a professional standpoint but this was the year that I learned my limit on the things I could say “yes” to … unfortunately, you don’t really learn that limit until after you’ve exceeded it. I was heavily involved in extra-curricular work-related activities in addition to having a really heavy workload in the office. I was on the Board of Directors for the Dallas AIA, Chairman of the Digital Communications Committee for the Texas Society of Architects, on the Advisory Board for 3 magazines, took part of 3 design award juries, and gave 10 presentations at various AIA component events throughout Texas, Florida, Minnesota, and California.

In late 2015, I found out that I had been nominated for Fellowship in the AIA, which was a great honor and a ridiculous amount of work. The package you are required to submit is highly rigorous in its requirements and when completed, is every bit of 40 pages of why you are the greatest thing to ever happen to the field of architecture. I don’t care if you are the vainest person around, it is an unpleasant experience to be so gratuitously self-congratulating. In the end, I found out in early 2016 that I was not selected and in the feedback I received, it all seemed to hinge on the fact that the person responsible for being my advocate didn’t understand the evolving role of digital communication, and was offended that I wrote the following passage in a blog post titled “Your Behavior Matters“:

Pretty much every time I saw the owner of the construction company, he told me he was going to sue me, that he would crush and bury me while laying ruin to my career … He actually called me “son” every time he told me all the ways he was going to wreck my life.

It sucked.

The advocate didn’t feel that the word “sucked” didn’t belong in an application for elevation to Fellow.

After some explaining, I was told to resubmit my without any changes and the person I had spoken with at AIA National said they would be in the room and would make sure that this issue would not repeat itself. While I still took responsibility for apparently telling my story in a way someone who doesn’t understand digital technology would understand, I decided to completely overhaul my submission – and I was notified in January 2017 that I had been selected for elevation into the College of Fellows. If you would like to see some of the pages from my submission, you can read Guess What? I Just Received an ‘F’

While receiving my “F” was obviously a highlight, the hacking on my website began in earnest in 2017 and became a constant and omnipresent issue. Constant interruptions to the site and incredibly slow loads times started impacting the rating search engines like Google and Yahoo use when responding to search queries. June saw the beginning of a slow but steady erosion of the traffic to my site and despite what felt like constant effort and attention, it didn’t seem like anything was working … things just kept getting worse.

My favorite blog post of 2015 is:

Architectural Scale Figures Architectural scale figures play a fairly large role in allowing people to imprint scale on to conceptual design. Of course, this only works when the scale figures you use are the right size.

First off, I call myself a 565 baby and that, almost by itself, makes this my sort of post. This post seemed to beg me to write it for years once I had started the Life of an Architect Playhouse Competition. So many amazing entries were submitted but one overarching issue that derailed the majority of the entries was an issue with the scale of their design. As was typically the case, a scale figure or two would be included and let me tell you that they were hilariously sized – all in an effort to visually address a scale and proportion issue with the entry. In a way, this post was my attempt at providing a valuable public service – I am paying attention. My favorite line was:

These are simply the average sizes of children from birth through the first 5 years of life – so if you were 4 feet tall at birth, you are not the average (if you were 4 feet tall at birth, I’m not sure what you are).

My favorite blog post for 2016 is:

Being an Architect is Hell – My New House Being a residential architect is normally awesome … but not when you buy a new house. You easily see every bad decision the previous homeowner made in shocking detail.

I frequently talk about my own house, particularly how bad it is and how painfully I am aware of all the issues. Just the other day, with specific regards to this very post, that they didn’t whether to laugh or cry while reading it. Personally, I think both would be appropriate. Everything you really need to know about the status of my “new” house can be summed up in the picture above … someone literally must have come to a terrible ending in this room, I know the smile on my face certainly died.

My favorite blog post for 2017 is:

Young Architects Should Work Construction If you are a young architect or plan on becoming an architect one day, I think the best advice I can give you is to find your way onto a construction site – even if that construction site is your own.

Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a contractor. There are few things I enjoy more than being on a job site, and what I learn from every trip seems to dwarf any classes I took in my younger days. I have never worked construction and it is one of the biggest regrets I have from my formative years. I spend considerable effort making up for that void now and truly enjoy pulling out my tools and tackling new projects … I just wish my back felt the same way.

I have established that the next section of these posts is a look at the site metrics with the idea of showing how things have been evolving, and just like you (assuming you’ve been reading all these party posts along with me) I am getting a little sick of looking at these images.

In 2015 I continued my slide in content creation and wrote 67 posts – barely more than once a week. It was about this time that I reflected back on those earlier days and wondered how in the heck did I ever write 180 posts in a year.

The content creation continues to drop … and yet 2016 was the high water mark in terms of visitors to my site. Content creation dropped to 56 posts and yet I still managed a staggering 8,266,564 page views (an average of 22,648 per day). While my workload and extracurricular activities were still piling up and forcing me to spend less time on the blog, I was still on board with using the site as a creative outlet.

…. but it wasn’t much longer before things started to turn.

2017 was a rough year for the website. Not only did I barely manage 49 posts – my lowest yearly total to date – the website came under constant attack and I probably spent more time trying to keep the site up than on any other blog-related activity. I switched server platforms, went through multiple IT web specialists, spent more money on web services than the previous 6 years, all in the hopes of trying to fix what would turn out to be an on-going problem that still exists.

2015 – Year Six Page views – 6,273,242 2016 – Year Seven Page Views – 6,849,825 2017 – Year Eight Page Views – 6,849,825

Year Six, Seven and Eight Countries/ Territories – 237

2015 – Year Six Top Five Cities – New York, London, New Dehli, Los Angeles, Sydney 2016 – Year Seven Top Five Cities – New York, London, Los Angeles, Dallas, Sydney 2017- Year Eight Top Five Cities – New York, London, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles

The Popular Posts

There is definitely a pattern emerging now that I am looking at the content and which ones seem to be the most popular based on page view totals. The problem with aligning popularity with page view counts is that the way the search engines work, once an article becomes popular, it moves further and further up the search results until it is at the very top. This translates into the most trafficked posts getting even more traffic and it skews popularity with accessibility.

Here is the most viewed post from 2015:

Architectural Redlines (219,357 year six page views) Redlines. It’s just a word but if you are in certain circles, it’s a powerful word. “Redlines” is all you have to say to either send some into some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I don’t think I necessarily create redlines like most architects, at least not like any of the ones I know. Redlines are typically created to indicate mistakes or missing work. Since the vast majority of my career has been spent in small firms, I tend to create redlines that are more narrative and collaborative in their nature. Rather than only telling someone exactly what I want them to do, I frequently write questions and present options for consideration. In my mind, these are teaching moments and I will go through all these redlines with the employee rather than simply dropping them off on someone’s desk and expecting them to pick them up.

The most popular post of 2016

The Front Door to Your House is Important (289,626 year seven page views) One of the very best things about being a residential architect is getting to pay special attention to the little things that can take an ordinary project to a spectacular one. Today, we are going to take a look at the front door to your home.

It is not that uncommon that I will share construction drawings and details on the site. These are almost always very popular and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with putting this sort of information out there for general consumption. Frequently the comment section in these posts is where all the action is at – people chiming in with suggestion in the case of this particular post, my lack of thermal breaks in the steel used to create this door had some people extremely concerned. As one of my friends posted one day, I should take the day off and “let Facebook do my redlines.”

The most popular post of 2017:

Architectural Portfolios (188,543 year eight page views) Since it is that time of year and my inbox is starting to get clogged with portfolios that people email me blindly, I thought I would provide some insight into what people like me are really looking at when they see your portfolio. I can almost guarantee it isn’t what you think.

To be honest, I am surprised it took me as long as it did to write a post on architectural portfolios. It’s entirely possible that it simply took that long before I got my hands on one that I felt was worthy of holding up as worthy of setting the bar for consideration. That distinction goes to Danielle Anderson, one of the employees working in my office – although I’m not sure she is all that happy about having her college work on display for hundreds of thousands of people to evaluate.

The number of times I thought about quitting the blog during this three-year window was probably a lot – like in the amount of every day. When I think back to the reasons that I started the blog in 2010, the thoughts that come to mind are learning a new skill set and taking advantage of a new creative outlet. Somewhere along the line things changed and I was the recipient of so many amazing experiences that I felt that I owed it to the people who supported me to keep at this and continue preaching the value of architects while trying to have as much fun as I could along the way. How dare I complain about the hand that was feeding me!! One day I woke up to realize that the blog was no longer something that I felt like I wanted to write, it was something I had to write. I started looking for ways to reinvigorate myself to the process but after 8 years, maybe my interest has moved on to other shiny objects. After eight years, I have 842 published articles and another 47 in the draft section … shockingly, I might have run out of things to say.

Tomorrow will be a look at year 9 – the final year. I’d like to thank all the people who have stuck with me this week for this slog through 4 consecutive days of what is possibly brutal reading. That having been said, I hope you will join me for the rest of the story. If I’ve left out a tale you were interested in, or possibly have a question you would like me to answer, please feel free to add it to the comment section.

Cheers,

This is the third in a series of 5 articles. I think it’s best if you start at the beginning but you are a grown up and can make that decision for yourself.

The Birth Year covers the first year of the site (2010) The Early Years is a closer look at years two and three (2011 and 2012) The Teenage Years is a look at years four and five (2013 and 2014)

from Home https://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/im-nine-years-old-middle-age/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#home

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jaigeddes · 6 years

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I’m Nine Years Old – Middle Age

As party week powers relentlessly on, today is a look at years 6, 7, and 8, what has come to represent the depressing middle age years …

Life of an Architect – Year’s Six (2015), Seven (2016) and Eight (2017)

It sucked.

The advocate didn’t feel that the word “sucked” didn’t belong in an application for elevation to Fellow.

My favorite blog post of 2015 is:

My favorite blog post for 2016 is:

My favorite blog post for 2017 is:

…. but it wasn’t much longer before things started to turn.

2015 – Year Six Page views – 6,273,242 2016 – Year Seven Page Views – 6,849,825 2017 – Year Eight Page Views – 6,849,825

Year Six, Seven and Eight Countries/ Territories – 237

The Popular Posts

Here is the most viewed post from 2015:

The most popular post of 2016

The most popular post of 2017:

Cheers,

This is the third in a series of 5 articles. I think it’s best if you start at the beginning but you are a grown up and can make that decision for yourself.

The Birth Year covers the first year of the site (2010) The Early Years is a closer look at years two and three (2011 and 2012) The Teenage Years is a look at years four and five (2013 and 2014)

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hollywoodgothique · 6 years

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As promised, here are the “shocking” photos that were removed from Hollywood Gothique in order to bring us into compliance Google’s AdSense policies.

Warning: If you’re hoping for some truly jaw-dropping splatter, you may be disappointed. These images are certainly intended to be scary but in a Halloween-fun kind of way that (at least to us) does not seem particularly disturbing.

A word or two of explanation may be needed to explain why these images were removed:

Google does not specify which photographs or text are at issue; they simply identify a page that violates their guidelines and state the nature of the objection. In our case, the problem was “Shocking Content,” which Google defines thus:

Content containing gruesome, graphic or disgusting accounts or imagery (e.g. blood, guts, gore, sexual fluids, human or animal waste, crime scene or accident photos)

Content depicting acts of violence (e.g. accounts or images of shootings, explosions, or bombings; execution videos; violent acts committed against animals)

Content with significant obscene or profane language (swear or curse words)

To us, these restrictions sound as if they refer to photographs of actual events (e.g., “crime scene or accident photos”). Everything on our website is fantasy, much of it unrealistic in appearance, often achieved with pullover masks and rubbery prosthetics. Nevertheless, all of the photos in the gallery below appeared on pages that were targeted by Google. But exactly which photos were causing the problem? Aye, there’s the rub….

If a page had only one or two photos, it was easy to identify the culprit. However, if a page had a dozen images or more, it was up to us to figure out how many crossed the line. Because there is a limited number of times we can submit a page for review each month, it is not practical to eliminate images one by one and resubmit the page for review each time – we could easily have exhausted our review opportunities before purging the offending material. So we simply had to take our best guess.

As best we can tell, images of dismemberment (even if obviously fake) are not allowed. That’s not terribly surprising. What is surprising is that non-violent images can be deemed too “shocking.” In particular, closeups of bloody faces were the only potential offenders we could find on certain pages, which led us to remove probably more facial closeups than necessary on other pages, just to be safe. If we seem to have been overcautious, keep in mind that the first image to draw Google’s ire was not even a photograph but an illustration:

Universal Monsters at Halloween Horror Nights 2018

As you can see, there is no violence, no victims, just classic movie monsters with some red splotches. Creepy, yes? Shocking? We don’t think so, but some people do. (When we solicited feedback from other Google AdSense publishers, several were not only shocked by the image; they were dismayed that we were blind to how “obviously” shocking it was.)

In the end, we opted to eliminate anything that even seemed as if it might be objectionable. We have a feeling that this is a deliberate part of the AdSense strategy: refuse to give specifics that would tell publishers exactly where they are crossing the line, because then publishers could push the limits while staying just inside the safe area. By remaining vague, Google forces publishers to be overcautious, self-censoring anything that might come anywhere close to the undefined line separating acceptable from unacceptable.

In any case, here is a gallery of deleted images. Peruse them and decide for yourselves which ones are too “gruesome, graphic or disgusting.” Fortunately, as long as we have the support of our readers, we will not have to pinpoint specific offenders; we will simply remove Google ads from those pages and restore all the photos that were removed. Google will not ding us for photos on pages not carrying their ads, so we can stay in compliance with them and continue to run ads on other pages.

Beware the Dark Realm

Backwoods Maze

Backwoods Maze: Cyborg

Backwoods Maze: Cybertronics

Into the Black 2017 promo art

Reign of Terror

Sinsiter Pointe

sinister pointe

Sinsiter Pointe

Six Flags Magic Mountain

This post sponsored by a donation from Adam Woebken. Thanks for your support!

Shocking Photos Revealed! As promised, here are the "shocking" photos that were removed from Hollywood Gothique in order to bring us into compliance Google's AdSense policies.

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alldayieat · 7 years

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Regret #1 My biggest regret

Not getting a proper camera to take pictures of my recipes!!! Ughh!!!!!

I thought I could just do it with my iPhone.

And I did. It works. It can be done. BUT!

After I got my real camera a few months ago, I don’t know if you noticed but the pictures got a lot better.

In terms of quality and also with the depth of field.

You cannot blur the background with a phone camera.

Even though the iPhone Plus has that functionality it’s just not comparable to a real camera.

Blurring the background is important so you can draw the viewers eye to a certain point. (Front of ice cream scoop is in focus while, behind is slightly blurred)

Example

Also, if your lighting is not the best, a camera phone can’t hide it as well as a stand alone camera.

The sensor on a phone camera just isn’t big enough to gather the image in low light settings!

Lesson learned? Get a real camera!

Regret #2 Not taking enough pictures

One of the worst feelings is cooking up something delicious and making it look nice, taking the photo and discovering a few days later the photo didn’t do the dish justice.

After this happened a few times, I made sure to both review and also take more pictures than I think I’ll need and from different angles too!

By taking more pictures, I would have more to choose from when going through and deciding what to post.

When I first started, I took literally 2 pictures of a dish and that was it.

If it was blurry or dark, it could not be used!!

Some of these things can be fixed in Lightroom, but sometimes they can’t.

Lesson learned? Take lots of photos!!

Regret #3 Not submitting to Foodgawker right away

I started posting recipes here in early August 2016.

I didn’t submit any posts to Foodgawker until November 2016.

I was rejected many many many times, see screenshot from my profile. My reject list is limited to the last 6 months, so you won’t see any from before February 2017.

It took a good 6 months of practicing and resubmitting and learning from their feedback before I started to get accepted on the first submission.

You can see I haven’t had any rejects since May so I’ve made some progress!! 🙂

I originally submitted my recipes to Foodgawker to grow my following.

But the unexpected consequence of that was improving and learning about food photography.

They even have a submission guide that explains what they are looking for in your photos.

Some recipes remain off Foodgawker because I never went back to rephotograph and update the recipes. One of these days…. I will get around to it!

Lesson learned? Get feedback on pictures ASAP!

Regret #4 Use Lightroom to edit your Photos!!

I ended up starting to use Lightroom after I went to a local meetup on food photography.

They went over some photography basics and walked through how to edit photos in Lightroom.

At that moment, I had the realization how important it is to edit you photos.

From that point on, I began editing everything before posting here and especially on Instagram.

No more taking pictures and uploading directly to WordPress!!

I don’t know why but I must have been hard headed that I didn’t need to edit my pictures.

Lesson learned? Edit photos!!

Regret #5 Not using Artificial Lighting

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poor lighting, unedited

artificial lighting, no editing

poor lighting, unedited

Foodgawker did a good job letting me know my photos were underexposed.

My ceiling has recessed fluorescent lights that are not bright.

They are warm (lighting temperature) and work just fine for the purpose of lighting a dark room.

But for my indoor food photography, they impart a yellow color to pictures (due to the temperature).

They also are not bright enough (not daylight).

So in my situation, a lot of my pictures were underexposed and needed to be corrected in Lightroom.

I’m often cooking in the evening when the sun has set or is setting so bright natural light isn’t available.

This is my setup. I use two daylight (6500k) LED bulbs stuck into a poster board.

It’s cheap and it works.

Ever since making this little contraption, lighting wasn’t much of an issue.

As of now, the only real changes I make in Lightroom are minor. (mostly for the temperature, exposure, and contrast)

Composition and styling remains my ongoing challenge.

Lesson learned? Use artificial lighting!!

Conclusion: 5 lessons learned about food photography

Use a real camera You don’t need a top of the line full frame DSLR, in fact, I started with a compact mirrorless Panasonic GX85, which I bought so it would be easy to travel with and could record 4k video!

Take lot’s of pictures Just when you think you took enough, take 5 or 10 more. You can always delete, but you can never retake (unless you have leftovers. But even that’s not the same!!)

Get feedback on your pictures If you are looking to improve your food photography, I would recommend that you try to submit your photos to Foodgawker or other similar websites. They helped me to get my skills to some sort of a base level and can help you too.

Edit your photos If you’ve never used Lightroom just watch a few tutorials on YouTube to learn the basics. Even with basic changes, you may see a drastic improvement in the quality!

Use artificial lights Here are the DIY instructions that I used to make my lighting setup.

I feel as though I’m at a plateau now food photography wise and have been messing around with different techniques and presentations.

Food styling isn’t really something that makes me excited, hence, the somewhat minimalist presentation of my food.

I don’t anticipate styling my food anymore in the future, but I also didn’t anticipate getting a camera or making videos.

We shall see….

If you liked this post or have any questions, let me know by leaving a comment!

In case you missed them, here are the links to the other lessons learned posts!

Lessons Learned from One Year of Blogging Part 2: Photography and 5 Regrets

Lessons Learned from One Year of Blogging Part 1: Inspiration

Lessons Learned from One Year of Blogging Part 2: Photography and 5 Regrets Regret #1 My biggest regret Not getting a proper camera to take pictures of my recipes!!! …

#blog #lessons

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frontmezzjunkies · 7 years

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My Two Year Old Baby Blog

By Ross

In the year that has passed since I wrote my first year birthday blog (click here to give it a read), I have learned a great deal about the business of theatre and the press that covers it. I learned so much about writing a blog, and writing about theatre. For one, it took the helpful guidance of a few other blogs who post my reviews to teach me how to do a hyperlink. I know that sounds silly, but what did I know? And I still don’t really understand what a ‘focus keyword’ is, or does, or what I should list. Regardless, because of the helpful people at OutBuzz and Times Square Chronicles, my posts look better and are read far and wide. Wider than I could do on my own. Wider than I could ever imagine last year.

With thousands of more readers and visitors, Frontmezzjunkies.com has out performed my wildest dreams. This past year has seen this blog change dramatically from a review-based posting of whatever theatre I could see (or afford), to getting invites and press passes to more theatre than I could ever attend on my own. And I want to thank all of those at every theatrical press company that ever received any of my emails, and especially to those kind souls that responded. I know my place in this theatrical press world, and by no means do I think my blog is so special to demand anything. I am no New York Times reviewer, so my heartfelt thanks goes out to all that helped make this the most special year of theatre going that I can remember.

This past year, I have posted almost twice the number of theatrical reviews than the first year, and the theatre world has definitely taken over a good chunk of my life and my spare time. Just ask my friends, who are thankful that I get to invite them along on so many amazing performances, but who also find it more difficult to schedule free time with me outside of a theatre. I’m either seeing a show or writing about one. Or sleeping. Or doing my day job. Which I still have two of those humming along beside me (I’m a personal trainer and a psychotherapist, for any of you who don’t know).

Some exciting things are in store for Year 3. When asked to submit a number of reviews for consideration for a few unique opportunities coming up (I’ll let you all know when I hear, as big changes are ahead, I think, I hope), I came up with this list. I already submitted a preliminary list to get to the next round, but I need to resubmit in the summer. So I thought I’d share them with you. I had to whittle it down to five, one per category, but here, there is no need. Click on the name of the show to take you to the review, and let me know what you think. Which review is the better read in each category? Not which show you liked the most, but which review was written with a unique outlook or perspective. Which review made you think about a show in a different way? Which review is just pure crap? It’s tricky, cause I certainly have my favorites, but is it because I loved the show, or what I said about it? It’s hard to say. Tell me your votes.

Heisenberg New York City Center – Stage II Cast List: Mary-Louise Parker Denis Arndt Production Credits: Mark Brokaw (director) Other Credits: Written by:

One broadway play

The Present

Heisenberg

Oslo

Sweat

The Glass Menagerie

Dear Evan Hansen

One Broadway musical

Dear Evan Hansen

Come From Away

Sunset Boulevard

Sunday in the Park with George

Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812

Love, Love, Love at the Roundabout

One off Broadway play

Love Love Love

Notes from the Field

Man From Nebraska

Daniel’s Husband

One off Broadway musical

Band’s Visit

Ride the Cyclone

Sweet Charity

Kid Victory

A Streetcar Named Desire at St. Ann’s Warehouse

One Brooklyn/off off show

Streetcar Named Desire

Beauty Queen of Leenane

The Tempest

Escaped Alone

The Tempest at St. Ann’s Warehouse

Which ones do you think are your favorites? I’d be thrilled to hear your opinion. And below are some images of my favorite performances over the past year. Can you guess what shows they are from?

Stay tuned. A lot is in store for year number three of frontmezzjunkies!

#frontmezzjunkies is celebrating its 2nd year anniversary Happy birthday frontmezzjunkies.com My Two Year Old Baby Blog By Ross In the year that has passed since I wrote my first year birthday blog (click…

#broadway #broadway musical #Broadway play #off broadway #theater #two year anniversary

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