Here are a couple of video’s I took a Bridger a while back. These were the first two video’s I’ve ever taken with my camera while snowboarding, which is not a particularly easy thing to do. Even though my camera takes pretty decent movies it is quite awkward to hold.

Don’t worry Mom, both of these were taken in the safest possible manner. Hopefully my including these video’s here will inspire the weather to produce snow here because we could use some.

Editing pictures certainly seems to have come up a lot recently. I have a few things to say.

1. Technically, if you want to know the truth, most of my photos are “retouched”. Picasa by Google has a button called “I’m feeling lucky” that does some good things to colors and contrast and I usually will hit this before I post a picture.
2. What is a picture anyways? Its certainly not “reality”. I mean we don’t even ever experience technical reality. Our eyes and all their complicated mechanisms and our brain always process “reality” before we are able to perceive it.
3. Since a picture is not “reality”, but rather something close, at what gradation of “closeness” does it actually cease to respresent what we would consider “reality”?
4. If I take a picture does it make it any less realistic if I tweak a few things? How about if I change a lot of things?

When I get some time I’ll post some side-by-side images of before and after to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.

On a separate note, I saw a good talk last night by Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin on white privledge and institutionalized racism. I particularly enjoyed him saying

“George Bush is the poster child for unearned white privledge in America”

The great thing about that quote is that it is true wholly separate of his policy, so it’s something everyone can agree on! Yeah!

Allright, now I have to finish getting ready to teach in 35 minutes.

Its been a good weekend. Yesterday it snowed hard all day long and made for a wonderful (and tiring) day. Today offered another chance to explore the slopes of Bridger Bowl. Now that school has started I have to make the most of the weekends because my opportunities have been reduced.

Here are some pictures I took today. It was a lovely sunny day and the new snow was looking mighty fine. The drive to Bridger is quite nice as well. You go through a little pass and to the other side of those mountains that you see in the first picture there and you are in a fairly rural and scenic valley with a number of small farms with horses, cattle, large hay bales and the like. It would be an excellent place to own a house, that is for sure.

So school starts back tomorrow and I have my longest day of the week. Two classes to take, one to teach, and an hour to spend in our school’s math learning center. But it’s all over at 2 so thats not bad at all. Not a whole lot of homework due yet and the class I’m teaching is still at the introductory part so everything is faily mellow.

Today is the first day of classes at MSU.  I have tuesdays and thursdays free so I don’t actually start until tomorrow. I have class at 9, I teach at 11, a class at 1:10, and then I’m done. Not a bad day really, I remember I did the mon, wed, fri schedule in undergrad and it made for some hellish days, but I think this schedule will be quite reasonable.

Its good that I have a free day today because I have a to-do list with approximately a million and one items on it. I’m not going to Bridger today so that I can make a dent in this list. Which will put some pressure on me to actually accomplish things because if I don’t, well, then I should have been at Bridger. (Which got 3″ of new snow yesterday which made for a lovely day).

We did some snowshoeing around Yellowstone yestery. It was quite interesting. A beautiful sunny day that wasn’t too cold if you kept moving, ( I think the temperature was probably right around 0 or maybe a little in the negatives).

Also, In the top left if you look under “pages” you’ll see I put some information about the class I’m going to be teaching starting this friday.

Happy 21st Birthday Davy! 
Here are a few pictures from Bridger from today, they aren’t the greatest but I wanted to at least get something out there. I have managed to make thumbnails as well, which is an improvement over my last post with just the links.

Also:

This is me appearing in the Daily Photo from January 5th on their website.

It is a still from the “Daily Video” from the same day, where your’s truly appears at the end. This was my very first day at Bridger and I made it on their website, pretty cool I think.

Here are a couple pictures of the Blue Ridge Parkway I took from the plane on the way to Bozeman. (I’m pretty sure this is the Blue Ridge Parkway, I don’t know what else it could be)

I had been waiting to try to write much on here until I got it to look exactly how I want it.

I don’t know if its ever going to look exactly how I want it, but this template looks pretty reasonable so maybe we’ll go with this for the time being. Also Mom has already posted comments, so I must keep the fan(s) pleased.

On that note, today myself and 4 fellow math graduate students ventured into the wilds of Montana at our local ski resort, Bridger Bowl. (whose website is available at www.bridgerbowl.com (highlights are video of the day and the snow report)) This place is pretty amazing. Its quite large (1500 acres…that is 10 times bigger than Sugar Mountain NC), quite uncrowded, quite close, and since I have a season’s pass relatively cheap.

I need to bring a camera out there. Today would have been a good day as it was relatively sunny. From the top of the lifts looking out you can see about 4 different mountain ranges, its pretty neat, I feel quite lucky.

I’ve gone there everyday since I’ve been in Montana. I’m hoping I’ll get tired of this before school starts, although thats unlikely. It is seriously not crowded so far. The weekend was free from lift lines, and the weekdays so far have been downright desolate.

Well this is my first “real” post. I hope everyone that has actually read this far has found that bit of prose not too boring, and possibly even enjoyable. Wish you could all be out here with me.

A continual work in progress. Thoughts will be minimized to avoid waste.