Letter for Mark

I first met Mark Motley at the lunch tables of Santa Margarita Catholic High School my first week freshman year. I had no friends and he struck up a conversation with me. Most recently. I shared an Anthropology class with Mark at Saddleback College Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I saw him at noon on Tuesday, less than two hours before he left us.

I have heard and read some ignorant, hateful, and cold comments from people who don’t know Mark but have heard the news. Let me say this: Mark did not do drugs; that Tuesday morning, Mark did not have a hangover, nor was he angry or in a hurry. Mark was a regular kid with good grades and normal hobbies and interests. There was no chip on his shoulder or major flaw in his personality that lead to his death. He did not deserve to die. Do not spit on a man’s grave, especially before he’s even been buried. I’m offended by commentators who try to justify an accident as some karmic retribution.

I’ve known Mark for five years, since high school. He told me he wanted to pursue a career in software engineering or technology, perhaps relating to networking or online services. He enjoyed his Computer Science classes at Saddleback. He didn’t really watch primetime television like Lost or Heroes, nor did he enjoy reality shows, but he did like to talk about Ultimate Fighting Championship. Mark liked a lot of hip hop and electronic music, and we’d talk about Daft Punk and Justice, or some old-school Tupac.

Mark worked at a nearby Albertsons, and I’d occasionally see him there. I’ll miss him in my class tomorrow, as I’m sure his friends whom are coworkers will too. My condolences to the family, as well as the family and friends of Zack. I didn’t know Zack well, but may he rest in peace.

R.I.P. Mark M.

This afternoon, at 1pm, a male 18 year old driving a silver Mustang clipped a tree, lost control for 300 feet, and slammed into another tree, killing himself and his 16 year old passenger.

I was in class with Mark this morning, taking an Anthropology test. He patted me on the back when he finished, and I just nodded and didn’t look up. In fact I barely remember his face because I was busy with studies the entire morning. He left at 11:45am.

 Rest In Peace.

Zoo

I went to the Zoo on Saturday, with Lara. I had to observe primates and record data for an Anthropology class report. It was a bit of a drive, but the trip was worth it. It took Lara and I the whole afternoon to go all over the zoo grounds to cover all four subgroups of primates for data, but after, we were able to check out different animals and things. Before that, we had visited a nearby Museum which had exhibits about the history of mankind, with some links to primates and now extinct ancestors. It was very interesting. Lara and I took a ton of pictures. In fact, somehow I have more pictures from the museum than I have of animals.

I felt really stupid, getting home, when I realized while reviewing my pictures that my camera had been set to Auto the entire time, and not Shutter. All the pictures of moving animals were blurry. I definitely need to get used to customizing the camera settings for different scenarios. I’m used to shooting pretty stationary objects or people posing. On the bright side, Lara did capture a video of a sea otter playing with a ball. I’m still bitter that the pictures of the leopard are blurry though. We were literally 6 inches away from its face, only a fence between us.

Since Flickr has a file limit of 100mb per month, I plan to upload pictures to Picasa Web Albums from now on. The site in itself isn’t nearly as well established nor designed as Flickr, in my opinion, but the application / web-service partnership is very convenient and useful. The Picasa interface is nice. A big gripe I have about Mac photo management applications such as iPhoto or Aperture is that they make copies of every photo. I would like to use those applications to simply browse and edit photos, not make professional projects and have multiple exported versions. Well, Aperture is for professionals, but iPhoto should have better management. What’s the use of having an iPhoto picture database file that is pretty much unaccessible by other applications and programs, as opposed to folders of files?

Blog Update

Changed up the blog’s looks again. Switched up the template, new icon and font. Cleaned up some old photos in that section.

Listening to The Protomen. You should seriously check them out. Yes, I just broke the fourth wall to tell you that. You need to do it.

Otherwise, I haven’t been blogging much. Not gonna lie, twitter has been the source of all my life updates. I rarely have the patience to sit down and write a whole blog anymore, pity.

Look at me, I’m writing in one-two sentence paragraphs. Pathetic!

I got to stop.

Anyways, I’m starting work on a new online webcomic called slapadash.  It’s a long URL, I know. I am so broke I can’t afford my own domain name. I’m not even sure about the process in obtaining one. For a shorter URL, I have registered a tinyurl

I originally wanted to call it simply slapdash (which is an actual slang term, doncha know). Oh well. Making an intentional misspelling has been useful in obtaining a unique e-mail, twitter screenname, etc.

Not much else new. Classes are meh, life is okay. I’m eating bad as usual and having fun in photoshop. No new videogames to talk about really. I cannot wait for Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 but, of course, Blizzard will probably  release those in 2020.

Valentine’s Day