Still got a lot of the world to see...

I was reminded courtesy of a Facebook applet that I still have a lot of the world to see... Need to get started on that.

Bits and Pieces

In case some of you haven't noticed, I'm now twittering, which amounts to writing the occasional update to what I'm doing with my life. The "tweets" as they are called show up in the right column over there. Go check it out.

Also, I bought my own domain name this weekend, matt-cook.com. You will all want to update your bookmarks to get to my blog which is now at http://www.matt-cook.com. I'll also find some time to get an actual Web site up at www.matt-cook.com. Eventually.

TaTa, and happy Monday.

Cleaning House

No, this isn't a post about my favorite dusting devices. Nor is it about the fact that I need a vacuum cleaner. Badly.

This is a post about Communications Career Day. I cleaned house.

I didn't really know what to expect going into the luncheon today, an annual event at which the Communications Department gives out a few scholarships and other awards to its students for their work over the year(s). I guess I thought it would be nice to win a scholarship.

Well, fortunately and maybe amazingly, I won three. It's basically incredible, because I'm losing my Tennessee Lottery Scholarship after the fall semester. Unless, of course, Tennessee's lawmakers get off their duff and do something with the scholarship revision legislature instead of passing it from one committee to another, to the Senate/House floor and back again.

So assuming that our state government will follow its style of incapacitation, I needed these scholarships pretty badly, if for no other reason than to save the money from fall for spring.

I'm going to bet that not too many of the Communications faculty read my blog on a regular basis, but if you're out there, thanks for thinking of me.

Photo Lesson for Wednesday

I know that there are myriad photo lesson Web sites out there in the vastness of the Internet. (It is a series of tubes, after all.)

Today I reminded of a very valuable lesson about the importance of white balance that I think the world should at least have the opportunity to read. So with a little Fleetwood Mac on the iTunes (Don't Stop/Yesterday's Gone - the live version with what sounds to be a marching band accompanying them) let's get down to it.

Backstory: As I was riding my bike to Gooch today from my voice lesson I passed the awesome tree shown above, which is right outside of the Honors Center. You can tell spring is coming just by looking at the tree, and for once I noticed it. Hey, sorry tree. I've been busy lately.

So as luck would have it, my camera was waiting for me in The Pacer office. I let Will borrow it yesterday to photostaff Cheryl DeYeso's art show. He left his in that place that he lives. Not sure where that is exactly...

Anyway, I get up to the office and throw my stuff in my chairs—yes I need two, one for sitting and one for stuff—and then grab the camera.

Unsure of go about shooting the beauty in the world outside, I headed to Tomi's office for a morning Reese's break. Then it occurred to me: Tomi's window looks down on the tree, adding a unique perspective to my tree.

"Perfect!" I think. Only there's one problem. The blasted rain has covered Tomi's window in a stippling of water droplets, but I decided they would just have to add to the effect.

I saddle up to the window and move the blinds, then take my first few shots. It takes a little time as I wait for students to be out of the shot (or in the shot if they are interesting enough).

Tomi comes in about half-way through my shoot.

"What are you doing?!" she asks in a typical Tomi voice that could just have well been asking why I had been stupid enough to staple my fingers together or something.

"I couldn't pass up the opportunity to shoot this tree. Have you noticed it lately?" I responded. Her curiosity satisfied, we both went about our business like nothing was strange about me hovering over her computer desk to photograph a tree. She's cool like that.

The lesson here: I kept wondering what I could do to fix how gray/blue my first few photos were. I couldn't capture the light as it actually showed up in front of me, and it was frustrating. But then I came to my senses—too blue (cool) means white balance! A quick switch from auto white balance to the cloudy preset was all it took to yield the difference shown in the comparison photo at the top of the post. Pretty much awesome.

That does it for today. Just remember to keep white balance in mind when in the field on a cloudy day!

The Future

Ever wonder what the future may have in store?

Boy I sure do.

In case you are wondering, this post is only semi-professional in nature, but I didn't want to go to the trouble of using Dreamweaver to update my mCook Web site. I know. I'm a slacker. Whatev.

So anyway, back to the future. (It's good to be punny sometimes.)

At some point in my life I stopped daydreaming on a regular basis about how I wanted my future to turn out. I don't know why; I don't know when. I just stopped. Maybe I was disillusioned, maybe hurt from a relationship or two...but regardless, I stopped doing it on a regular basis.

Now, "regular basis" are two key words there. I still daydream from time to time, and I do think about the future, but these days I'm more apt to be planning for the future instead of dreaming, waiting for it to come smack me in the face.

A few things have made me aware of this:

1) Spring Break free time. Spring Break has been good, mostly. I haven't accomplished nearly as much as I wanted to/should have. I need to read more about Berlin. I definitely need to get caught up in meteorology. I'm like four labs and six chapters behind. No joke. But the break has had its high points, too. I've had three birthday dinners, and my birthday was a week ago. That's pretty amazing. Take my advice: turn 21 as often as you can. People like to feed you at this age, apparently. Other than just my stomach, the rest of me has enjoyed the break by relaxing, sleeping in, playing cards/catch with K and family. All of the free time has given me plenty of opportunities to think, and that has been the primary reason for becoming aware of my lack of future-dreaming.

2) The second reason for remembering how I used to think my future would turn out came about from an unlikely source —pulling a box of cards off of my bookshelf last week that haven't been used since middle school. Back in the day, a couple friends and I would spend every day we had off from school and half the summer playing cards at one of their mom's office in downtown Martin and then go (religiously) at three o'clock to the local card shop (at the time) Home Plate. This was our heyday of dreaming and (dare I say) scheming. We started playing guitars. We started wishing we could drive. We started thinking about girls. (Well, at least I did.) And then high school came. And we lost one of our friends to a move to Massachusetts. And then I got bogged down with school and stuff (and girls...and band...etc.) And somewhere in there the blinders were put on so that I couldn't see much past graduating high school.

3) The final reason for becoming aware of the lack of future-dreaming is that my brother-in-law Blair told us tonight that he won't be going to UK for grad school, at least next year. He's still waiting on East Carolina University, which is another fine music school. The trouble is, the geography program at ECU isn't stellar and it doesn't have the focus that I want for grad school.

As you can probably guess, I let myself dream a little when he said he was applying at UK because UK has an excellent grad program in human geography, and so I started looking a little closer at what they had to offer. I had a dream. There's no telling what may happen with that dream. I would be happy even if the four of us (B, my sister, K and me) didn't end up in the same area after we leave Martin, but I can't help but think that it would be much more fun and enjoyable if we all did end up in the same place.

The odds aren't exactly stellar for us ending up at the same university, given that there are only a handful of universities with great music schools and great human geography programs. Dreaming was fun for a while, but realism inevitably settles in and sets up shop.

I am a self-described realist; others often confuse this for pessimism. Some people wonder why I am a realist, and I'm not entirely sure why I see the world the way I do, but I suspect that it comes down to change and how it is handled. Change has made me strive to see what is real, what is out there in black and white, instead of what would be ideal.

Change has made me a writer, an editor, a geographer, a traveler, a Germanophile, and lately, a supporter of the Democratic party. There, I said it. I want Barrack Obama to be our next president. But enough politics. In high school, and certainly in middle school, I would have called you liar if you told me I'd be all those things in 4-8 years.

I don't have a witty saying to end this post, and I don't really want to search for an inspiring JFK quote to show that maybe there is still some hope for the future.

But I did anyway.

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." ~John F. Kennedy

Water, water...

Live, from the Dixie, it's Tuesday night!

I'm sitting in the basement of the Dixie Carter, set to perform in under an hour for the West Tennessee Higher Education Symposium's annual choral festival. As interesting as that is...it's mostly hot and crowded.

Which leads me to my point: Water is amazing.

I realize that was a poor transition. Get over it.

I've beeen meaning to blog for the last two weeks about how amazing water is. Meteorology in particular has heightened my awe of the precious molecule H2O.

I drink around two to three liters of water a day. People say that is great. I say they should drink more (cough cough, Karen...) The body is made of what, 50 to 70 percent water? And yet, people pump themselves full of dehydrating carbonated sugar water (e.g. soda) instead of the good stuff. Granted, I'm a little susceptible to the ole Diet Dr. Pepper, but I still drink water like it's going out of style.

But water does more than just fill our bodies and make us feel guilty about not drinking enough at New Years.

Water destroys mountains. Water fills deltas and river beds with silt, making regions like the Nile, the Rhein and the Mississippi fertile enough to support millions of people through agricultural production.

Water makes geologists and physical geographers look bad, because their precious rocks and landforms are no match for water. Most earth scientists will claim that they embrace water's effects, but I suspect they are just covering their envy of its power.

Basically, water makes me happy...so respect that.

Let's play catch up

So, as promised nearly two months ago, I'm uploading photos from Reelfoot today. It's the first real chance I've had since before break. To my defense, I was gone and busy for most of the break. Now that I'm back, I'm swamped with homework and myriad other things. Just know that I'm slacking off for you. Check out the results here.

With any luck I'll be able to go through my photos from Choir Tour and upload them to Flickr in the near future. Then I would like to record some thoughts about California, Arizona and Nevada in the blog. We'll see what happens.