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London wants to be photographed

I know I’ve already posted about how much I loved London, but I’ve been going through my photos (I’m slightly click happy so there are 1600 of them) and now I like it even more. I didn’t even have to try. The one above this post looks painted, to me anyway. I didn’t have to edit it at all except for an obvious resize.

I really enjoyed photographing the city, although my greatest frustration during my trip was my malfunctioning camera. It seems to have a problem with battery life. When I say problem, I mean it. Sometimes a new set of batteries would not work at all, other times they would last maybe thirty minutes before my camera would quit. I eventually figured out that by taking them in and out and rotating them, I could squeeze out a few pictures at a time, but sometimes even that wouldn’t work though. I still managed to get quite a few though, although I spent more than I’ll admit on batteries.

I liked to think that I was observant of the world around me before I started photographing everything, but the camera makes you pay attention to the most overlooked items. Even my campus is much more interesting than I had previously thought. My friends have started teasing me because of the weird things I take pictures of, but after seeing one of my better ones, they seem really amazed at how the plainest things can be so interesting. I think that’s cool.

Still, but this is just a random thought, what if I take this hobby seriously and find that I have true talent for it? I mean, friends have been wanting to commission me for their businesses’ promotional materials. Who knows, maybe someday I’d get to see my work featured in magazines or in one of those Miami display board rentals (or New York!). That’s a long shot for now, but anything can happen, right?

Posted by ryan on March 28, 2005

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And so it is

We have returned from Europe. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, London is wonderful and I must admit, I didn’t really want to come back. Anyway, I got some photos and have posted some of them, more will follow later. It’s five in the morning and I’m up because we went to bed at about 4:30 pm after we arrived home yesterday. I don’t think jet lag will be a problem though, since I can just stay up till normal time tonight and be ok.

We had a few issues getting to Russia, a few people from our group had their seats from Philladelphia to London given away will we were on the plane to Philladelphia. Apparently the handoff between American Airlines and British Air was messy. We also arrived in Moscow with six fewer bags than we started with. I was missing my guitar, but eventually we got all of it back. On the way back from London, we were all bumped up to business class which is awesome! I love British Air, I hope they buy out American. That’s all I got for now.

Posted by ryan on March 28, 2005

Viva La Motherland!

Tomorrow morning, Hope and I will be off to Russia for Spring Break! Our church is sending a team there to work with a church in Kirov. It’s been mucho stressful this week getting ready to go, mainly because I had so many assignments that had to be finished early. Maybe the lack of sleep just means I’ll sleep the whole flight and not get jet lag. I was up all night studying for an exam (I did manage to get an hour and a half of sleep) only to have it postponed. “Was I mad?” you ask. Heck no! I may have known the material, but I was pretty fried so I was just glad to be able to go home and rest. I still didn’t sleep anymore, but at least I got to veg for a while.

I know this is totally random, but another Overstock.com commercial just came on and I just have to say, I don’t get it. The lady lets her hair down and tries to say “99 percent of the time” in her most sexy voice, but I just don’t know that it’s doing anything for anyone. Maybe really geeky people are turned on by her talking about percentages, I don’t know. Anyway, It’s probably the dumbest commercial ever…if anyone could even know that.

Needless to say, this site won’t be getting much love for the next two weeks. We are going to be in Russia for a week and a half and then we are going to hang out in London for five days! I’ve never been overseas, so I’m pretty excited. Any body have suggestions for things to do in London? I’m pretty sure I won’t have too much internet access while I’m in Russia, but hopefully in England I’ll be able to check my email at least. Maybe by then, I’ll have some dandy suggestions here.

Posted by ryan on March 12, 2005

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Beautiful Day

The weather is just about perfect today but I’m holed up inside. I did get to go outside while I ran errands and took a couple of shots. I decided today that there are not a whole lot of things don’t make great photos if you put them in front of a blue sky. So there ya go, my photography tip for the day.

Posted by ryan on March 9, 2005

Preaching to the choir

I want you to close your eyes…yes you. Well, ok don’t close them, but imagine they are closed. Now I’m going to tell you a story…

…Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was the internet. This internet was a peaceful internet. The internet browser’s job was help browse this world wide web. All was well and the people were happy.

Then pop ups were born and killed the internet. The End.

Posted by ryan on March 7, 2005

Ouch, dang that’s good

I don’t know how this photo was taken, but it kicks all of my photos…my photo’s are crying.

Posted by ryan on March 2, 2005

Alert to potential mini owners

I’ve wanted a Mini for a while now and while I still can’t afford one, I feel more secure knowing that if I ever get one, I will know how to make sure I get a real one. Counter Counterfeit Commission will help you learn how to spot a fake too. HaHa.

Posted by ryan on March 2, 2005

My name is Ryan Inselmann

Apparently a certain search engine that will not be named doesn’t like it when I talk about it. Last night I rejoiced as I found that I was now near the top of the search page when searching for RYAN INSELMANN! Well, the rejoicing is over. I have somehow been bumped off the first page! C’mon unnamed search engine, it should not be this hard to get a decent ranking for my own name. My site is ryaninselmann.com for Pete’s sake. I don’t even know who Pete is but I bet if I searched for his name, I would probably find his site. In fact, if I searched for my name, which is Ryan Inselmann by the way, I would probably find Pete’s site ranked above me. This is ridiculous. I’m thinking of switching all my search duties over to MSN. They have me ranked second. And my old site is first. And just for clarification, when the little line says posted by ryan, it means post by Ryan Inselmann. Geez.

Posted by ryan on March 1, 2005

Double Edged Sword

Hey, I’ve risen to number three when I google my own name! I’m third only to…you guessed it, CSS Vault. It seems that being linked to from a high traffic site has had an interesting effect on my page rank. I suppose I can’t complain though. I have risen above the IUMA page I set up eons ago. And it has brought me more traffic in the last week than I will probably ever get from people searching for my name. So all in all, i feel I have recieved a good amount of google love these last few days. Now if I could only get listed from keywords people are actually searching for. That may be a while since I probably have to post something interesting for that to happen. Oh well, Snapple and I will just have to console each other. Hooray for number three!

Update: To commemorate my higher ranking I have started a new section on my sidebar called “Google Love.” I hope you enjoy it.

Posted by ryan on March 1, 2005