Break-In Gone...Good?

Gonna admit, this was refreshingly awesome to see.  For some reason I found it in the WTF? part of Reddit, which I really don't think it belonged there.  It was a bit odd, yes, but not WTF worthy.

Disarmingly Honest College Kids Caught

Paying For Stuff In Deserted NJ Store

Basically, a group of five, black college age males approached a store that still looked like it was open in NJ.  Testing the door of the well lit store, they found it open, and proceeded to enter to make their small purchases.  When no one came to the register, when they openly had the opportunity to steal as they pleased, they actually made an effort to show to the possible cameras that they were leaving the correct payment for the items they were trying to buy.

The one shown in the picture above actually dug out change to add to his payment, telling later that he was just remembering to add the tax on.

Situations like this, where human error from many parties involved could have ended in jail time and jobs lost, just ended up in satisfied customers and a surprisingly grateful store operator.  The woman that ran the small store actually took her time to find the four gentleman, thank them profusely for their amazing honesty, and then gave them each a gift card to spend at the store in the future.

Honesty is the best policy after all!

Graphic Design

Graphic Design has been something I've been in love with since my mother brought home my very first graphics program way back in my freshman year of highschool.  Funny as it may be, I still use that first graphics program now 10 years later, but I can at least say I know the program like the back of my hand.

None the less, Graphic Design was the second major I had switched to in college, coming off my doused hopes of being a music major with my complete and utter inability to sing in tune.  There was a vocal class all music majors had to pass with at least a C, even the instrumental majors like myself, and after getting a D in the lower level of that class, I knew I was doomed.

I actually quite enjoyed my time as a Graphic Design major, loving the art history classes I went into and the multitude of Graphic Design specific classes I enrolled in.  I remember one of my favorite assignments was making a flash animation to go with any 15 second piece of music you chose.  There were plenty of snippets available for the class, but I ended up choosing the Synyster Gates guitar solo from Seize the Day.  I'll admit it was awfully rushed, since I was pretty sick at the time, but I still had fun with it.

Sadly, since it was a while ago, I no longer have it in my photobucket, or maybe I deleted it since it was a bit lacking, but who knows I guess.

Oh heavens, I found it, and I'm almost hesitant to post it, but shall just because I spent the time going through 50 pages of my photobucket.

Thankfully, that was probably the worst of all the animations I created, but yeah, I was incredibly new to flash at that time.

Another project I quite enjoyed was one where we had to make soda can covers encompassing a certain theme.  It was a branding project, where our labels would be put onto 3D cans in a special application.  One had to be for a subtle, gentle drink, while the other had to promote energy and hyped excitement.  My subtle energy layout didn't go over too well, being it was too full of light colors and the such and it was hard to differentiate one thing from the next.  My energy layout though was highly praised by my teacher, actually taking me aside to tell me how well I had done with the crazy neon colors against black.  It was a big deal for me then, considering my teacher was a hard ass to say the least, and never seemed to really get excited over anyone's projects.

Finally, my latest bout of graphics has come from my time on Gaia Online.  I make lots of graphics for users there, and usually will accompany it with a load of BBCode for the site.  Here are a few recent examples I've come up with:

Whether it's making something completely from scratch like the first 3, or simply editing an image like the last two ( and yes, I picked League examples cause I just freakin' love League ), I'm addicted to making graphics.  Sadly, the only reason I never stuck with the major was because of my Design teacher's repeated reminders of how hard it was to break into the world of graphic design, over and over, which eventually just led me to believe I was better off pursuing other things.

Still, the idea of freelancing my abilities, making logos for companies or pawning my abilities for cash on deviantart is always an option, although I doubt online soliciting of my skills would be much easier than the difficulties my teacher preached of in the real world.