Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

Happy New Year! and New Hardware!

I guess another year has come to an end.  Looking back I had a pretty good 2009, especially the last week.  My wife and I went up to Michigan to spend some time with my family during Christmas.  My brother and his wife were home from China so it was great to spend some time with them.  They made it back safely to China but apparently their sleeping routines are a little off.  I guess that happens when you fly half way around the world…

HP pavilion elite 9290f

HP pavilion elite 9290f

Not long ago I bought myself a late birthday/early Christmas present.  My old hp pavilion (probably 6 or 7 years old) needed an upgrade.  It served me well and I never really had any major problems with it until I crammed it so full of programs and files at the end that it really started to slow down.  So I shopped around and decided to go with another hp.  Since I plan to have it for awhile I decided to go all out and I got the Pavilion Elite 9290f while it was on sale.  So far it has been awesome.  It came with Windows 7 which seems to be pretty smooth.  Plus I got a copy of Adobe CS4 and MS Office at a great price because I’m a student at IUSB.  Everything has run really well so far.  I can’t believe how much faster everything is compared to my old computer. I’m actually typing this post on the new computer.  It’s set up in the “command center” at the moment (also known as the living room where I have two computers, an LCD monitor, Wii, Xbox 360, and TV all set up and ready to take over the world.)

dell 2209wa

dell 2209wa

The desktop didn’t come with a monitor so after getting some cash and gift cards for Christmas I talked to the fine people at Dell and they offered me a great sale price on their IPS panel 2209wa  monitor.  Apparently it is a pretty decent monitor for photo editing without a huge price tag.

Now, as Christmas break draws to a close, I’m going to try to get all the computers and the new wireless printer we got at Sam’s Club to connect to each other through the magic of a wireless network.

Back From a 2 Month Hiatus

Well, it’s been almost 2 months since I’ve even looked at my website.  I’ve had some news items to share but apparently not enough time to share them.  Not a lot has happened in the studio since my last update but plenty has been happening in the “real world”.  Track season came and went.  My team finished 7-2 on the season and we ended up 4th at the conference meet.  I finished my class at IUSB.  I finished my duties as a Reading Recovery teacher for the year and completed all my paperwork.  I began another season of grass mowing and other yard work.  I spent some time on the Internet studying fantasy baseball stats and getting used to Firefox.  I finished the yearbook at school and worked on the Black Lab website and finished a few minor graphic design jobs.  Now I have to finish my required technology days before summer break officially begins.  Then I’ll have to take another class at IUSB.  In the near future I hope to get back into the clay studio on a regular basis.  Today I worked on my trimming chuck.  Tomorrow I hope to finish it and get some clay ready to throw.

Now I’m sitting here at the old computer that I’ve pieced together.  It started as my original college computer (2000 AD) so it’s far from top-of-the-line.  I added some RAM, bought an LCD monitor and laser mouse while browsing garage sales and bought another Linksys USB adapter from ebay.  I decided Windows ME wasn’t what I wanted so I installed Ubuntu 8.10 and even got it onto the wireless network here at home (mostly by pure luck?).  Now I can surf the net while my wife is “doing research” which looks suspiciously similar to finding coupons on the Internet.  Ubuntu has run smoothly so far considering the ancientness of my machine but I haven’t exactly been editing video or playing the latest video game.  I plan to get a little more experience with Ubuntu and the world of Linux and the universe of Open Source software this summer.  First step: figuring out how to use my printer without unplugging it from the main computer and plugging it in here.  Second step: downloading and installing some of the 304 updates that the little red arrow says are available.  I better get busy…

Mid Winter Update

Well, it’s been a while since my last post so I thought I should give a quick update so you don’t get too worried.  I just started my next class at IUSB.  I bought myself a new game to distract me from getting things accomplished.  I shoveled snow and tried to stay warm on the snow days that we had this past week….

I’ve also been working on a couple projects all at one time.  In the clay studio I’ve been working a few items much larger in scale than anything I’ve previously done on the wheel.  I got a book from the library about XHTML and CSS so I started designing a new site.  I’m also trying to set up a time to go paint some dogs on a wall for one of my friends.  As I was typing this I helped my wife set up her own blog to use for her kindergarten class.  Once I finish some of these projects I’ll try to put up some pictures….

Photoshop? Free? On the Internet?!

I was walking through CVS one day and picked up one of those computer magazines that always has a list of cool apps or gadgets or sites.  I noticed one of the cool sites on one of the cool lists was Photoshop.com.  It mentioned that  you could edit your photos online…  for free!  Of course I was interested since the school I work for probably doesn’t have the extra $ to buy me a copy of Photoshop and a computer decent enough to run it.  For Pete’s sake, we barely have enough to keep the toner cartridges stocked.  So anyway, I decided to check it out. [Read more…]