Day 186

Holy long day Batman! No really, it was a holy long day. Today I was working at my church making a video. This video has a specific purpose, but while we are shooting, were doing some stuff for other upcoming videos.

Most of what we shot today was interviews. Tomorrow I'm going to shoot a bunch of b-roll to cut in, but today was just interviews. Great stuff too. This video is about our student ministry, which is freaking awesome. Check out www.summitstudents.org and find out what's going on with them. It doesn't do any justice to hearing the stories from people though.

While all this is awesome, today's aweomosity is actually going to be fake trees. What!?!?! you say? Well, for those that don't know, when you are shooting an interview, there isn't much you can do to make it visually interesting except change the lighting. When lighting, you are more trying to control the shadows than anything else. The other major focus is the background, it has to be visually interesting. The way we did it most today was shooting light (usually with colored gels) through fake trees. When done properly, it looks really cool.

So, be awesome and creatively use some fake trees!

Have a great day, talk to you tomorrow!

Day 185

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Oh wait, I said that yesterday too, didn't I? Oh well, I still mean it.

So today's awesomosity has not actually happened yet, but I know it will be awesome for several reasons. First, the awesome of the day goes to....(drumroll).... Bad Dog Pictures!

First, great name. They even have a great web address, www.GoBadDog.com. Right? Second, on their homepage there is a picture of a camel wearing a Bad Dog hat. Awesome.

So, by now you are wondering what is Bad Dog? Well, for my purposes it is a rental house of high quality video gear. They have everything from cameras (anywhere from $200-$1600 per day) to lighting, to audio gear, to grip gear, to whatever you need to make a skating video or a full-length feature film, though the feature would get mighty expensive.

I am renting the gear for a job I am doing for my church. I don't know how much they want me to talk about it, so I'll just leave it at that. It will be a great video, and I am excited they are going full quality with this thing. We will be renting the brand new Sony Z-1 (I am REALLY excited about this, if I had an extra $5000, this is totally where it would go), which is quite a cool camera and I am really excited to get to play with it. Here is a picture of the sexy thing:

OOOOHHHHH. AAAAAHHHHH.

Here I am getting stuff done at the folks house, since Bad Dog is out this way, but now I gotta go get this bad boy.

Day 184

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!! I hope and trust you all had a great New Year's Eve. I had some fun. I bartended last night, and we were WAY busier than any of us expected to be, which means that life sucked from 9pm till about 2am, but then I counted money. Not that it's all about money, but it's nice to make a lot of it in one night, ya know?

Anyway, today I have been just chilling. Great day. I did wake up in time to watch the Winter Classic, the annual NHL outdoor game, this year it was the Red Wings (BOOOO!!) and Blackhawks (also boo, just not as much as the wings). Wings won 6-3. Now, the idea of an outdoor game is awesome, but not the awesomosity. The game was on NBC, and every commercial break, they advertised some upcoming SNL special. They kept showing the Payton Manning United Way commercial, which I had heard was funny and have never seen, so I looked it up and found the awesomosity. First, the United Way commercial:

Isn't that awesome? What is more awesome is that NBC has finally figured out that putting their videos on their website can be a good thing. And they have pretty much every clip that has ever been on SNL online. Go to their website and kill a few hours. It's awesome.

I wish all of my many readers a fantastic new year! Have a great day!

Here is me chilling out all day.

Day 183

So, I got a good night's sleep last night. I went to Llywelyn's for our private Christmas party (there's a whole company party in January at the Tin Can downtown, that'll be fun) where we exchanged secret santa gifts and such. Good times, I got a coffee mug and a bunch of good coffee. It was great.

So, this morning I wake up, shave, shower and head over to Sean's. When I call him, he says we should take the day off, it is New Year's Eve, after all. I say ok, then borrow elephantmanjr (his Mac) so I can work on continuing to learn the awesomosity of Adobe Creative Suite 3.

I'm hungry. So what do I do? Head on over to one of my favorite places in South City to get breakfast anytime, South City Diner. If you have never been, it is extremely awesome. They have high quality food (I had biscuits n' gravy and hash browns) including real, hand-made milkshakes. It's great.

The decor is fantastic. It is covered with old school pictures of Marilyn, Dylan, Dean, Frank, and the like. There are old toys and models, plus the place is comfortable. Great stuff. I highly recommend it if you get a chance.

Now I'm off to finish laundry, maybe clean a bit, learn CS3, hopefully nap and then bartending tonight at Llywelyn's. Have a great and SAFE New Year's Eve!

Day 182

I am assuming you all know what today is. Yes it is December 30th. This is also the 6 month anniversary of the Awesome blog. So, I'm gonna give you a few quick awesome stats (thank you Google Analytics!) before I get to today's awesomosity.

Since June 30th, 2008 there have been:
2,602 visits, including today
924 absolutely unique visitors
3,640 pageviews
1.40 average pageviews per visit
1:52 average time on site
35.47% new visits

All these stats come from people:
in 45 countries/territoties (Spain 2nd behind U.S. with 22)
1,309 Internet Exploere users (50.31%)
1,092 Firefox users (41.97%)
868 are direct traffic
608 are Blogger referrals
335 are Google referrals

Of the Google referrals:
33 searched for "www.todaysawesomeness.blogspot.com" (why they didn't just go straight there, I don't know)
6 searched for "ben muehleisen blog awesome"
and 4 came from people who searched for "www.tshirt.woot.com

As far as the ads go, I have been at $18.03 for quite a while, so click on those ads, I don't get a dime until I hit $100.

My best day in number of hits was November 14th, with 43 visits. Second was December 8, with 40 visits. Third best day was early on, July 11th (one of my personal favorite posts) with 39 visits.

I hope you have been intrigued by some cold hard facts. I find it amusing (and a little shocking, really).

Now, of course, the awesomosity. Vaccinations.

I had to get some shots this morning for my upcoming Haiti missions trip. Having already had some (most kids get a bunch of them, though apparently now, people think the Measles vac. causes autism, so parents aren't getting it.) I had to get 3: flu (my first time ever), Typhoid (no one wants that) and Tetanus (rust is everywhere). All of them in my left arm right next to each other. It is sore. I can hardly lift my left arm, luckily I don't have to.

So why are vaccines awesome? They keep us healthy, and hopefully prevent things like the Black Death from happening again. Here is what the CDC (Center for Disease Control) says about vaccines. Traveling abroad soon? Check out this site for recommended vaccines for your trip. There are a lot of dangerous diseases in other countries, and we don't want you infecting us back here in the states.

Well, here I am in the waiting room, anxiously awaiting many needles. Hooray! Have a blessed day!

Day 181

Great afternoon everyone! I blog to you today just before a late lunch at the office. Mmmmmm, Imo's.

Now, you may or may not notice a few newer things about the ol' blog today. One of them is the awesomosity. First, the just cool thing, not the official awesomosity. A new poll. I'm glad to hear you all want me to keep the address the same, though I may eventually buy a domain and point it here, we'll see.

The other, you may notice, is at the bottom of all my posts. A way to rate my blog. Hooray! Now, you can finally easily give me feedback about my posts. I really want to know what ya'll think, so, just use those handy stars at the bottom of the posts, we'll see how it goes.

This is a technology brought to me (and therefore, you) by outbrain. It's pretty cool. Not only does it allow you to rate it, but it will tell me statistics about it, organize a "most popular posts" widget over there on the right, and it gives you some suggestions about other blogs you might like. According to their website, they say it is kind of like Netflix or Amazon offering suggestions based upon what you have bought from them. Pretty cool, huh?

So, now, ya'll need to vote on what you think about this here post. It's easy. Just click on a star rating below. Thanks in advance. Oh, and go vote on the poll, it only takes a second.

Have a great day!!

Day 180

So today was Celebration Sunday at our church. We took a look at what God has done in our church and the lives of some of our members over the past year. It was fantastic. I did help a little and made some slides, this one has the definition of "Celebrate"

We had confetti playing on the screens and balloons all over the stage. It was a party! One of the things we looked at was Psalm 145, which is awesome, but not my favorite Psalm. That distinction belongs to Psalm 103. I won't put the whole thing here (just a link to it), but I will put the first five verses:

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-

3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,

5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

And trust me, the rest of it just gets better.

Task o' The Day: What do you have to celebrate over the past year? What major events have happened good, or bad? What can you learn, what have you learned? Are you getting closer to that person you have always dreamed you would be? Are you at least making steps? Tell me if you want, but this is a task that everyone should do regularly, and the end of the year is a logical (if nothing else) time for it.

Have a fantastic day, enjoy it.