le blog

Feb. 9, 2012

When my aunt came to visit from Greece back in November she stayed at the lake house relaxing most days. Back on the island, she works very hard at the main supermarket. She was excited to visit us and finally get to put her feet up. One day, Meli and I took her to get a pedicure/manicure. She couldn’t believe so many hands were at work– massaging, cleaning, polishing, painting!  She absolutely loved it! She also really loved to spend time in Central Market and look at all the fine cheeses, meats, etc… I loved the things that made her go WOW because to me Greece is the most amazing WOW in the world!

Her last week in town, Father wanted to get his little sister a gift that she could use back home. He said iPAD! ….First of all, my Tia Christina doesn’t even have an email address! She never ever gets on a computer! Setting up the iPad at the Genius Bar was one of the most painful things I have ever watched. Switching from Greek to English alphabet and so many things unknown: touch screen interface, apps, itunes, etc! … I had no idea that back home she would be taking amazing photos of the town, my yaya, and send us images from great snowfall in Crete! ….And then today she sent a video of my yaya by a fire place! The composition is just right and the message is wonderful!

My mother has always kept up with the technology of our times and “liking” all our videos, posts, photos. She is part of our lives face to face, phone texts, and on the interweb! I love my family for not being afraid of technology and making an effort to stay connected! P.s. They barley have wireless on Crete!

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8hOa0u2Jc&feature=youtu.be

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Jan. 22, 2012

Project: Rice College Battle Video
The Challenge: fitting 11 students in a 2 man green screen!
Items Needed: Green screen, lots of lights, a mighty fine Director (Melissa) and some imagination!
Role play: 11 students, representing each residential college at Rice rose for the challenge…on a Sunday morning. They look so happy and cheerful but in fact they had to act out talking to someone who was not standing next to them, wait for lighting adjustments on each shot, be surrounded by green for 4 hours and  be silent on set while any dialogue was going on. We were going for the imac vs. pc commercials–a pure white backdrop. We new a green screen, if set up correctly, would achieve the best results. Lighting is key, and it was constantly changing as the actors (11 of them) moved around the screen. We shot 3 students at most at a time even though the scene would later have 6, 7,.. 11 students. Mad kudos to everyone who helped and this great group of kids!

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Jan. 15, 2012

I wanted to share a note about an amazing and talented jewelry designer that also happens to be a wonderful friend, Marie Myers. Marie is a loving mother and wife, HP Executive, UST shining star, and a jewelry designer exdroniare @MarieBruns! My sister, Melissa met her first while attending UST shining star (University of Saint Thomas).  Melissa is all about style and good quality pieces and she noticed Marie’s jewelry was amazing! Marie collects the best pearls, gems, beads, and milagros from all over the world. She has such a passion for creating jewelry for women to wear at every occasion. We take photos of her beautiful jewelry but it was so nice to come out and take headshots of the mastermind and the smile behind Marie Bruns jewels!: )

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#567 reason my sister is legit. I was creating a new tab for the optixstudios website (check out “Latest”-tab!) and by accident I saved the new tab’s html code to the commercial tab erasing it and all the formatting I had spent many hours on! AH!! mini-heart attack. Melissa was like, “easy. go to google cache they keep a copy of each page and should have old pages.” I was thinking..no way sounds to good to be true! what the heck is cache anyway?! Now I know! Thanks to my sister and her random knowledge of all things I found this site and had my page back in freakin’ seconds http://www.blueverse.com/2011/02/14/how-to-find-old-site-content/

 

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Europe TwentyEleven from optix studios on Vimeo.

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dear diary,

i ate a delicious pb&j yesterday. it took 5 min to cook. fancy kroger brand crunchy peanut butter and jelly spread, like yoga in my mouth. it got me thinking. i do enjoy those pb&j’s.

xoxo,
trolly