A HUGE amount of exciting things have happened in the past 6 months.  In Mid September, our daughter Evelyn was born, a few short weeks later, I announced my departure from PLSN. Then, as the new year rang in, I announced my new position at Director of Marketing for A.C.T Lighting.  Since then, it has been whirlwind.  New and exciting things happening on all fronts and challenges never experienced before.  It is hard to catch your breath sometime with everything that is going on.  I am kind of surprised I had a moment to log in and blog for a hot moment!

I am thrilled about what the new year has brought along with the advancements Evelyn is making.  I’ll get better at sharing her progress along with some of the other things I am working on outside of work. Time to finish Sunday strong and to prepare for another busy, yet fun week of work.

I am gushing with joy. I recently received images of my completed case design from Armando Cases. For the longest time I have been thinking about a secure and easy way to transport my grandMA onPC setup.  Looking at the photos, you may think it is an over kill.  Well, these are just images of the completed case still at the factory.  As I write this, the case is on its way to me!

Once I get it in, the real fun begins with filling it up with bits and pieces to make it a fully functional grandMA onPC setup with 8 universes of parameter control, full tracking backup, battery backup, 8 ports of 5pin out and all the cabling in one place. Again, you may be thinking this is still over kill.  Say or think what you like, but this self contained system should be able to handle any medium sized rig with no problem.

I’ll have more photos up after I get the case filled with the innards. So stay tuned.

During our three week vacation this summer, I got I to a habit that I have been meaning to get back into, reading. Sounds stupid right?!? I do that day in and day out for work. While nice and informative about the industry and what is going on, I wanted something different. Something to disconnect me from work and satisfy need for mental adventure.

While up in Copper Harbor I started to read one of my favorite books for my younger years, My Side of the Mountain By Jean Craighead George. it was the perfect setting being in Michigan and reading this book. It always reminded me of our summer house and the great outdoors and adventure.

In a nutshell, the book is about a teenager that runs away from home, the big apple to live off the forest in his families abandoned farmland deep in the Catskills mountains. He comes with nothing but the knowledge of survival skills and living off the land. Thought the course of trial and error, visits to the town library and picking things up along the way, he makes it on his own while training a falcon to be his friend and fellow huntsman.

It was a great escape from the real world and the reading materials that I normally dive into. Yes, it is a preteen level reading material… so what, I still love the story and always wanted to “try” it out.  Little to late for me, but still a great escape to relive through the book.

Have you been over to my company page lately, (www.justinlangdesign.com)? Photo work has exploded over there!  I have a number of new galleries for the past few months.  A bunch of the work has been taking photos for DJ’s in the DC market.  It involves late nights, but thanks to an understanding wife and puppy, they don’t mind.  I just have to keep paying the Netflixs bill and they’ll be happy.

Doing these club photos, I quickly realized that the people I am taking photos of, want to see them.  Of course, like any good business man I had business cards on me to hand out.  But they are my old dual purpose cards for the design firm and my iSquint blog. Yes, I am still regretting the choice to combine them into one.  Honestly, I made it confusing for anyone that received one.  Something else that will be fixed sooner than later.

To help people find their photos that I have taken from that night, I created a simple business card that tells them two things

1. Thanks for the smile!
2. Where they can find the photos when they get home.

On the back of the card, I included a url for the nights events. Now I didn’t print “personalized” cards for each event. That would be CRAZY expensive and also, I don’t always know when or where the next event will be. So I left room to write in a quick detail where people can place that entire url into a browser and find the photos.  Yes, I’ll have to write them in, but I can do that at the start of the night. Why this way?

Mainly because of the new, shorter url that forwards to the main company page, (www.jlphoto.co).  I was worried that people might put in jlphoto.com, which is NOT mine, jlphoto.co is though.  So the url on the back clearly explains the correct url to find photos.  I did the shorter url as putting the main domain name, (justinlangdesign.com) is a “mouth” full and a bunch of characters to type in.  Also, the new url explains in a bit more detail what this segment of the business is.

Last thing, you’ll notice that going forward, all proofs will have the new url on the bottom right. In addition, I took a tip from another photographer and placed a different kind of watermark over the photos at about 15% transparency… my thumbprint! Why, while I want to share the photos and allow everyone to see them, I don’t want them to crop out my url and share the photos everywhere. So, over top is my thumbprint to protect my work and HOPEFULLY persuade people to purchase prints!

After a couple months of development and finding time to work on things.  I am proud to show off my new site design for Justin Lang Design.  It is a basic shell at the moment with new features being added as time allows.  For now though, you get the basic idea of what we offer over there.

It is  amazing what happens in a week.  Last week, I was saying it is to damn cold to go outside. A week later, it is a bit warmer and thus time for shorts!  What really surprised me was how quickly green came back to the trees in the backyard!  I have also noticed that the dogwoods are just getting ready to fully sprout.

No more dreary days of winter, spring has sprung and I am ALL SO READY FOR IT! Good time to get the cameras all charged up and ready to take some springtime photos.

Original Pasty

Crust

• 3 c. flour
• 1 1/2 sticks butter (cold and cut into bits)
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 6 tbsp. water

In a large bowl, combine flour, butter and salt.  Blend ingredients until well combined and add water, one tablespoon at a time to form a dough.  Toss mixture until it forms a ball.  Kneed dough lightly against a smooth surface with heel of the hand to distribute fat evenly.  Form into a ball, dust with flour, wrap in wax paper and chill for 30 minutes.

Filling

•      1 lb. round steak, coarsely ground
•      1 lb. boneless pork loin, coarsely ground
•      5 carrots, chopped
•      2 lg. onions, chopped
•      2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
•      1/2 c. rutabaga, chopped (can substitute turnip)
•      2 tsp. salt
•      1/2 tsp. pepper

Combine all ingredients in large bowl.  Divide the dough into 6 pieces, and roll one of the pieces into a 10-inch round on a lightly floured surface.  Put 1 1/2 cups of filling on half of the round.  Moisten the edges and fold the unfilled half over the filling to enclose it.  Pinch the edges together to seal them and crimp them decoratively with a fork.  Transfer pasty to lightly buttered baking sheet and cut several slits in the top.  Roll out and fill the remaining dough in the same manner.  Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Put 1 tsp. butter through a slit in each pasty and continue baking for 30 minutes more.  Remove from oven, cover with a damp tea towel, cool for 15 minutes.

Milwaukee Journal March 28, 1943  Welsh

Deciding what to do for a new years resolution is hard. I am kind of mixed about starting something new just because it is a new year. Though, it is a good time to start a new set of goals since everyone else is doing it!  This year, rather then setting new goals, 2013 is going to be the year of focus!

I love starting new projects. The problem is, I never seem to finish them.  I always seem to get side tracked by little side projects. It’s time to set them aside and focus on the big picture. GETTING THINGS DONE. So my New Years Resolution is this… I am picking 5 things that I want to get done for each part of my life, personal and professional. So here it is…

Personal

1. Leveling the House
2. Sealing the outside of the basement
3. Building a Fence
4. New Tankless Water Heater
5. TK

Professional

1. Get Lite Resources up and running (the rental business)
2. Learn my grammar
3. Grow my name/brand
4. TK
5. TK

While the lists may not be complete, these are things that I know I want to get done.  Sure, small things will pop up and need to get done, that is fine. But the wasting of time with little projects that seem to eat hours up needs to stop. My time is valuable and an hour here and there just is not effective.

So here is to a New Year and to focusing on what matters. Wish me luck!

I keep getting asked, “What do you want for Christmas?” I HATE trying to remember what I told everyone!  Then of course, there is the hunting for links, putting them into an email. IT SUCKS.  Of course it happens, I start stumbliling around the interwebs and find something else to add to the list.  Time to send out an updated email. AGAIN, that sucks!

SO, I created a pin board on my custom designed pin board designed after Pinterest.  I like Pinterest, but hate some of the elements of it.  Long story short, yes, I have my own Pinterest! ;)

So what do I want for Christmas?  Check out my Wish List Pin Board.  Make sure to bookmark it because I am still adding to it!

Some blog huh?!  Last update was almost two months ago.  Something has to give with the limited amount of time that we have in a day.  In fact, I am kinda surprised I have time now to write!

Let me re-phrase that… time to write for PERSONAL use.  A majority of my day is spent writing.  Pounding away at the keyboard.  You know those walking fingers from the yellow pages?  That is how my fingers feel lately, like they have walked miles and miles across the keyboard.  One of these days I’ll have to put a pedometer on them just ot see how far they have “walked”.

Some other things that are keeping me busy are the videos.  SO MANY VIDEOS!  Each trade show I go to, I seem to come back with more and more each time.  It is a wonder that I turn in any of my assignments on time!  Video is fun, but takes a whole different work flow.  Just when I get one batch of videos out the door, I get 10 more hours of video to sift through and “produce”.

A sudden realization… I AM A FILM PRODUCER… and cameraman, lighting director, director of photography… Getting the picture, a one man film studio.  Maybe Film studio is a bit more credit than I deserve.  Let’s go back to the roots and just call me a blogger, or a multimedia blogger at best.

Time to put another pot of coffee on.  It’s getting to working hours and deadline approaches.