This week was much better than the last couple.
Monday: I'd had enough of the situation that has been bothering me for the last two weeks, so I decided to take action and wrote a letter to the other person over the weekend. That day I printed it off with the intent of giving it to her on Wednesday. The printer that handles regular (non-photo) paper in the Photo Dept. is one of three in said department that are inaccessible to students, so you have to go to where the printer is housed (what is known as The Cage, where the studio techs are based, and where you can sign out or borrow some equipment). When I went to pick up and pay for the page that I printed (regular paper is 25¢ per sheet), the studio tech who retrieved it, Jake, asked about it, and I told him what was going on. He sympathized, as did Alex, who was about to start his shift in The Cage. They both encouraged me, which I appreciated as I needed all the support I could get my hands on.
The final product for my project for APC is going to be a video (a slideshow, to be exact). Because it's my thesis project and will be going in a gallery, I want to stay as far away as possible from programs that are geared toward the average consumer, e.g., iPhoto. Yes, they do the trick (and as far as photo organizers that are geared toward the average consumer go, iPhoto's pretty awesome), but when you consider the two things that I just mentioned (thesis project and gallery show), as well as where I am in terms of my skills and what I ask of a computer program, I need something a bit more powerful. I knew that the computers in the Photo Dept. computer lab don't have video editing software, so I decided to ask at OSAS to see if they knew who I could ask about which programs are on which computers at which campuses. I was directed to Multimedia in North Block, which is one of the more interesting places to try to get to, as you have to make sure to take the right set of stairs once you're on the second floor of said block. I took the wrong set, backtracked, took the correct set and found Multimedia's equivalent of The Cage. After pausing to catch my breath, I asked about the software that I needed. NSCAD has Final Cut Express (which is geared toward the passionate amateur) and Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 (a professional-grade program) at the Academy Building, and Premiere CC at Port. Creative Cloud (CC) isn't backward-compatible with CS6, so if I started working on the video component of my project there, I'd be limited to working only at Port.
Since I was in the area, I stopped in at the Dawson Print Shop, said "hi" to the studio tech, told him about my project and had a look around (nothing much has changed since I was in there last).
Tuesday: I ended up not needing the letter that I'd printed off the day before, as the other person decided to take matters into their own hands and talk.
That day was election day, and because I'd never been in an election office on election day before, I decided to pay another visit to Labi Kousoulis' election office. I asked about what was going on that day (mostly making sure people got to the right polls and answering questions), and was told that there would be an end-of-election party that evening and that I was welcome to come.
I spent the afternoon prepping for the next day's work-in-progress critique and then went to the party.
They had CBC on on a big-screen TV and a lot of the party-goers watched the results come in. By 10:00 PM it was all over (which amazed me, as I'm used to having to call it a night before the election has been called) and Darrell Dexter had lost spectacularly: Stephen McNeil (Liberal) is NS' next premier. Also, Labi won. I'll admit that when Labi showed up, I got a bit starstruck: although I met Greg Thompson when I was a kid, I'd never met anyone I'd voted for (although Greg was a good MP, I have never voted Conservative in a federal election). After we chanted his name, he spoke, thanking those who volunteered. I congratulated him on my way out.
Wednesday: We usually start the day by discussing the week's reading, but that didn't get done this week and we more or less went straight to the critiques after going over the plan for the afternoon (a field trip to the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery). Mine wasn't until 11:15, so I spent some time in the Photo Dept. computer lab and, when I couldn't stand the chill anymore, visited the SUNSCAD office to ask whether Crit would be available at NSCAD (while the newspaper started out as a NSCAD student publication, due to various mistakes by the people running it, the paper is now published by the Khyber).
I then headed over to Adrian's office. My meeting with him went very well, and I was really glad that I'd copied the tracks that go with the photos that I've shot so far to my external hard drive.
After lunch, we took the bus to MSVU. Currently, the MSVU gallery is showing work by August Sander on the upper level of the gallery (work from the Canada Council Art Bank is being shown on the ground floor). A woman from the gallery spoke about Sander's work, and we were done a couple hours before class was officially over. I talked with Adrian about some course-related stuff, and he helped me get the right bus to go back downtown (I'll never forget the time I took the bus to get to the Halifax Shopping Centre--although I took the right bus, without realizing it I got the one going in the wrong direction). I had to wait awhile, but I didn't mind as it was a nice day. Once I finally got back downtown, I wended my way over to the Academy building, asked where the computer lab was and spent almost an hour playing around with Premiere.
Thursday: As mentioned last week, I've given up on getting homework done on Thursdays this semester. Instead, I visited Java Blend Coffee Roasters, which was a bit of a walk from my place (about an hour) and had an amazing decaf cappuccino. Java Blend supplies the coffee for my favourite café in St. Andrews, Honeybeans, and I found out that the coffee is also available at the Seaport Farmers' Market. Afterward, I headed to NSCAD and attended this week's Queer Collective meeting. One of the things they're going to be working on is posters raising awareness of bathroom accessibility for trans* people, and I volunteered to design the posters, as I have experience working with InDesign. This is an issue that I've never thought about, and although I'll admit that I know nothing about it, I want to learn.
Friday: I started the reading for APC and came up with a plan of action for this year's Nocturne.
Saturday: That day was so slow that I'm amazed I got any work done. I finished the reading for APC.
Sunday: I reshot a photo for my project, went through the resulting images at school and chatted with a fellow photo major.
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