MISCELLANEA

October 30 , 2008

Some major updates to the site include a reference to my ongoing Photography and Design Blog at zrgphotography.blogspot.com. Also, check out some new photography galleries, such as this trip to the southeast corner of Idaho in the late fall.

July 31, 2008

I finally completed a second version of my short animated film "Five Feet High." Check it out. I was responsible for everything that showed up on screen (and the sound design). Other animation projects to watch include "Higher Than Noon," a machinima western.

Also, I have started posting some additional photography and design work at a zrgphotography.blogspot, of which a current project to model and animate Wall-E, from the Pixar movie, for a cameo appearance he will make in a project I am working on. Check this out as well.

MAY 20, 2008

Some new things on the site include a photo gallery about our trip to the Comb Ridge area in southeastern Utah to find undiscovered anasazi ruins. No completely undiscovered stuff, but some new sights nonetheless. Read about the trip here.

Also, I completed my MS in Computer Graphics from the University of Utah. For the final semester, I finally got to make some films and animations. A short machinima animation starring John McCain and Hillary Clinton has been getting a fairly decent response. You can watch the completed film The Passion of the McCain" here.

Additionally, other films that I worked on are detailed at my Computer Graphics page, or in my Media Gallery.

JANUARY 28, 2008

It's been three months since I've looked at this site, which I attribute to an overwhelming amount of work at school, etc. I will get some of the past semester's projects posted, including the code for my past OpenGL classes, and the Bezier and B-spline C++ code. For now, I'll start this little widget.

OCTOBER 28, 2007

Bottled some homemade Imperial India Pale Ale today - tasted pretty good. Also, carved a pumpkin.

OCTOBER 20, 2007

Last week we took several days off for a camping trip through Nine Mile Canyon east of Price, Utah to look at Fremont era petroglyphs, and then up to Flaming Gorge for some fishing on the Green River. You can read about it here.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2007

The great wine stomp is coming up this weekend, at which I hope to do a better job of documenting the event than before, and post something about it. For now, all I have to note is that a.) the House Small Brewers Caucus exists, and b.) there is no representative from Utah in the caucus. This shouldn't be viewed as news.

SEPTEMBER 9, 2007

Two weeks ago I did some aerial photography for work, mostly doing wholesale oblique photography around Park City, UT for a lodging web application that I am working on. Details to follow, but in the meantime here are some cleaned up images from the helicopter.

View the Wasatch Mountains Aerial Photography gallery.

Augustt 21, 2007

Some images from a hike up Mt. Raymond in the Wasatch Range can be found here.

August 19, 2007

I started organizing recipies into a food related blog - Garlic Is For Heroes - where I will add recipes, food photos, and similar things as I eat them. Hopefully I can get Ann to post some of the stuff she cooks as well, as she seems to be more of the lighter summer chef while I tend to cook the heavier winter fare. Most of the images I will host off this website, and can be viewed in a seperate gallery here.

Visit Garlic Is For Heroes

June & July 2007

Between June and July Ann and I did some extensive traveling around the western United States, the least of which was to Montana to get married. I put up a couple pages describing the festivities, and several photo galleries from the couple weeks we were out of Salt Lake City, including Bozeman, Montana, and Monterey, San Francisco, Point Reyes, and other northern California locations. Check it out here.

March 21, 2007

We were able to escape from the city for a short trip to the San Rafael Swell area of Utah, south of Price. The Swell is a anticline (area of uplift) about 70 miles in diameter that is bisected by I-70 west of Green River. We went to the northern part, dominated by The Wedge, a local area of uplift, cut by the San Rafael River to form the Little Grand Canyon.

In Buckhorn Draw, there is a large panel of Barrier Canyon pictographs, as well as some Fremont petroglyphs. While exploring a side canyon we found some undesturbed petroglyphs in good condition.

We also hiked up the San Rafael River, starting at the intersection of Buckhorn Draw and the river. There is a more complete photo gallery here.

March 14, 2007

To celebrate Pi Day I baked a cake. It is round, and made of three different kinds of chocolate (bittersweet, unsweetened, cocoa powder), one kind of flour (white), and four kinds of dairy creams (heavy whipping cream, sour cream, buttermilk, skim milk). Get it?

January 16, 2007

I've completed rendering several sequences, and cut together a reel for 2007. Check it out.

January 6, 2007

Over Christmas I was able to cook Christmas dinner twice, which is fine as the more meat the merrier. First up was a Honey-Brined Turkey with Giblet Cream Gravy. The gravy caused some worry, about the time it went from normal brown turkey gravy to white creamy gravy, but with some help it turned out tasty. Two days later, I got to revisit a prime rib roast that I cooked this time last year, based on a recipe from The Fort, a restaurant near where I grew up in Colorado.

The Standing Rib Roast With Winter Vegetable Crust turned out equally as tasty as the turkey. My roasting temp was as follows:
1 hour - standing at room temperature with crust
20 min - roast at 500 degrees (F)
3.5 hour - roast at 325 degrees (F) until center about 120 degrees (F)
30 min - standing covered at room temperature
which gave a nice medium rare roast. The concept of the half-hour at 500 degrees is to sear the roast and lock in the juices, which I did despite that research shows that this isn't true. The most moisture is retained by cooking a big slab of meat at 250-275 degrees (F) for much longer, without the initial searing. I might give this a shot when I have more time.

January 1, 2007

My new site is up and running. And there is a new year up and running.