Moved Locations

It has been a while since I was on this blog since I recently changed locations. I did not realize that people actually read this blog, but apparently they do so, if you are interested feel free to check out my two new blogs:
dfox1992.wordpress.com
and
dfoxphotography.wordpress.com

The photography one is a kind of portfolio for my own work and the first one is a compendium of random stuff much like this blog. Enjoy!

New Years Resolutions for 2011!!!!

2010 was quite an interesting year. I had a breast biopsy done, became best friends with Melissa Graziano, graduated from high school, started my first semester of college, joined a sorority, got appendicitis, and met my amazing boyfriend Law Griffith. Looking back, I would say the good things from 2010 far outweighed the bad, but I can not wait for what 2011 has in store for me. 2011 is bound to be filled with great memories and fun times. But it will also be very productive. I have several goals that I am determined to achieve by the end of this new year.

1. Become a lomographer and bring my camera with me everywhere I go, never missing an opportunity for the perfect shot and practicing my photography until I have mastered the art.
2. Bring my sketchbook with me to almost every place I go and draw or paint or do something art related any time I am bored, thus perfecting my art skills and experiencing various mediums of art.
3. Quit biting my nails because my hands are so much prettier when I don't bite them and it looks more professional.
4. Keep my room clean and organized because I am more focused and happy when my workspace is clean and I am determined to be focused this year.
5. Get all A's and B's in my classes for Spring, Summer and Fall of 2011 and bring up my GPA despite the beating it took this year due to being unfocused and appendicitis.
6. Be as healthy as possible: Take my vitamins every day, go to the gym three times a week or start running every day, get enough sleep, and eat three meals a day at least ESPECIALLY breakfast which I have never done before. No more appendicitis issues and I need to gain weight. Health and fitness are very important to contributing to a good year.

I am excited to see how 2011 turns out for me and I am determined to make sure all my resolutions come to pass. Wishing everyone a happy new year and I hope the world gets their resolutions completed by 2012 :)

Homemade Color Filters forPhotography

Here is a great article I found on how to make your own colored filters for photography purposes. I plan on trying this very soon as it uses cheap materials you can probably find around your house. The instructions are simple and should be simple enough a project to do.

Homemade Color Filter from DIY Photography

Flowers :)

My grandma had been feeling sicky-poo so me and my mom went to a local U-Pick to pick her some flowers and one of my favorite subjects to photograph is flowers. This year, 2011, I am determined to step it up with my photography, and practice makes perfect.

Lomography

Urban Dictionary defines it as:
a type of art photography in which color is emphasized. Traditionally, cameras such as the Holga, Lomo, Colorsplash, and Supersampler are used to create strange and unusual photographs. Lomographic photos are primarily characterized by vignettes (blurry and faded edges), random subjects, and nonadherance to traditional photography rules.


I recently went to an Urban Outfitters with a friend who is a photography major at Ringling College and was looking at their Fisheye Cameras for about $48 and she said that she had bought one and told me it actually worked pretty well and I have another friend who owns a Diana camera and I know for a fact that it works well. These Lomographic cameras are considered toy cameras but I have seen some of the photos taken online and was very impressed with the artistic side of this photography. I immediately put them on my wish list and since they are not the most expensive film cameras in the world, they are actually reachable goals. I think my favorite aspect about this "lomography" is the philosophy behind it: Take your camera wherever you may go and just go about capturing life at its greatest moments and most banal and realize how amazing it really is. Art is supposed to show you just what the world can offer you and this unconventional approach manages to do just that. It views the world in a different light. A light I sometimes look through and wish I could capture. The reason I am so into photography and art.
Here are some examples of lomography I found online. NONE OF THESE PHOTOS ARE MINE





Rules of Lomography as Stated by the Lomographic Society
1. Take your camera wherever you go.
2. Use it any time - day and night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your everyday life, but a part of it.
4. Try the shot from the hip.
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
6. Don't think.
7. Be fast.
8. You don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film.
9. Afterwards either.
10. Don't worry about any rules.


Basically, go nilly-willy. Have fun and be unconventional. Just whatever comes to mind. I'm sure you can do this with a DSLR camera as well as long as you use self control and do not look at the pictures after they have been taken, but these cameras are so simple and the simplicity of them is what makes their creations an art.

Finals Week

Stressing, studying, think think thinking. So much stress in just two weeks. In these two weeks I prove that I have been paying attention in class and diligently reading my books. Sure, I haven't necessarily been to every class and I may have skipped a chapter or two, but now I get to catch up and show them what a genius I am. Now I get to see if those nights I chose to stay in instead of party really paid off and they will because I have high goals... except maybe in math. Today is my first final exam for my ecology lab and like always I've put studying for it last minute. I am studying for it now, but as I'm looking at the material I have a feeling that these two weeks are going to go a lot smoother than I thought and I am going to end up prouder of myself than I believed I could. I just hope this feeling is right. Now enough writing about studying and actually getting to it!

No place like home... for the holidays only please

I’m Puerto Rican so I have a very extensive family. And most times I just want to run away from them all, pretend like they don’t exist. But every year when it comes time for the holidays, meaning the important ones like Thanksgiving and Christmas, there is nothing more I love than to be smothered and surrounded by the hundreds of people that are related to me in some way or another and feel that because of this relation they have some say in my life and what I do with it.

I just cannot imagine Thanksgiving without a full house and too much food that somehow manages to get completely devoured. Without the craziness, I feel it would not be the holidays.

The same goes for Christmas. I can’t picture a Christmas without every child running around like a crazy person barefoot and screaming, wrapping paper floating behind them. I used to be one of them and I have so much love for these memories.

My family may be huge and irritating and meddlesome and critical but they are also loving and forgiving and loyal and definitely a force to be reckoned with.  I wouldn’t trade my family for any other as hodgepodged and crazy as they are. It just makes me sad that it takes a major family holiday for me to realize that. I really will try to remember it more often

Medical Marijuana

As a child, I was always told that the reason marijuana is deemed illegal is because of the dangers it poses to my health. However, as I got older, I found out that marijuana is sometimes prescribed legally by physicians after certain kinds of medical procedures or for specific medical conditions. If marijuana is so harmful to a person’s health, why is it that doctors prescribe it for medical purposes? Are doctor’s putting their patients at risk? I decided to research what the medical uses of marijuana are, how they positively and negatively affect the patient and how effective its use medicinally is.

The first thing I looked into was the history of marijuana use in medicine. According to Sula Benet in her paper “Early Diffusion and Folk Uses of Hemp” (hemp being another name for the cannabis drug), the drug originated in Asia and Africa, working its way into Europe as a kind of “cure-all” medicine because of the properties it had on the user. It was used after pregnancies, for headaches, earaches, tranquilizer, prevent convulsions, and even fevers. For a very long time, marijuana was used only for medicinal or spiritual purposes. It was not until very recently that people began using it recreationally and the question of health risks came into play.

I felt that I needed more current information about how marijuana is used in the medical field now. On ProCon.org I found out that it is used for a variety of different diseases and medical conditions from Tourette’s , migraines and arthritis to more serious diseases like multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and AIDS.  Basically the calming effect of the cannabis drug helps these patients by subduing some of their more severe and uncomfortable symptoms of their disease such as getting rid of migraines by releasing pressure built up from stress, behavioral problems, nervous tics, and even, surprisingly enough, balance. 

The Americans for Safe Access (ASA) states in a booklet of theirs, “Cannabinoids have been shown in animal models to measurably lessen [multiple sclerosis] symptoms and may also halt the progression of the disease. In Maria Ceballos, PhD’s article “Prevention of Alzheimer’s disease Pathology by Cannabinoids: Neuroprotection Mediated by Blockage of Microglial Activation" published in the Journal of Neuroscience in February 2005, she argues that “cannabinoids succeed in preventing the neurodegenerative process occurring in the disease." However, Helen Phillips in her 2009 article, “Medical Cannabis Is a Blunt Tool,” published in New Scientist magazine states that THC, the chemical in marijuana that has such a controversial effect on humans, creates problems between the signals from our brain to our nervous systems and other parts of our bodies affected by these diseases using prescription marijuana.

As a kid and teenager, many “effects” of marijuana were told to us about the effect of marijuana on our bodies and to our health by our parents, teachers, and the media. For example, if you smoke, then your DNA will change. If you smoke, then your grades and attitude about life will go down, or if you smoke, you will get fat. Also, if you smoke, you will become addicted. After a lot of research I found that the only one myth that I had been told was true: if you smoke, you take the risk of acquiring a respiratory infection or even developing lung cancer.  According to a survey done by Joel Simon Hochman, M.D. in his book Marijuana and Social Evolution, many college students saw an increase in their grades mostly because of their positive outlook on life after they started smoking on a regular basis. B.R. Elejalde disproves the myth that using marijuana can change your chromosomes in his article “Marijuana and Genetic Studies in Colombia: The Problem in the City and in the Country.” What did cause abnormalities in those who smoked were those that also tried more synthetic drugs like LSD. The problem there is that marijuana is sometimes seen as a “gateway drug” but it does not actually do the damage of the drugs most commonly tried after it. In fact, Elejalde proves that marijuana has no negative effects on DNA, reproductive capabilities or libido whatsoever.

Different views exist on whether the use of cannabis as a medicine is safe or not, however I feel that the arguments made against have not been very strong or well-informed. For example, in the Eagle Forum, the brochure “Facts You Need to Know About Marijuana” mentions that it has ill effects on a person’s chromosomes, reproductive organs, and lungs. On the other hand, Frank Lucido, M.D. says in his article "Implementation of the Compassionate Use Act in a Family Medical Practice” that cannabis has historically been safe and effective as far as medicine goes, that it might be a more cost-effective solution than other pharmaceutical drugs, and it might possibly have less negative side-effects.

Finally, to conclude my research, I went straight to the source of my questioning: an officer who helps out with the D.A.R.E. programs at schools. I confronted him with the research I had found regarding marijuana use, the ill effects, and positive effects. Then, I asked him whether there would honestly be any problem with using marijuana, as far as a person’s health is concerned, as long as it was not smoked, but rather taken orally. His opinion was that, although he felt that it should not be used medicinally, the health effects would be greatly decreased because the chances of developing lung cancer would diminish.

After conducting all of my research I was able to determine that marijuana is a natural drug that has been used for centuries all over the world to cure all sorts of ailments that affect humans on a regular basis. I found that studies are being conducted to see how helpful the cannabis drug can be in preventing, stopping or halting the acceleration of more serious medical conditions and that thus far, not enough studies have been made or completed. I also was able to discover that many of the effects told to us as children are not true and have been scientifically proven so.

My research has led me to think that more research should be done regarding the medicinal uses of cannabis. Perhaps those in the past were right and this natural drug is an answer to all our problems. Or maybe it just can help ease the pain and comfort those that have serious ailments. However, I do feel that it should not be handed out to just anyone who gets a headache, or at least should have some laws that come with it. Just like alcohol, marijuana does impair the user and therefore no one should drive or operate heavy machinery while under its effects. Also, if more research is done, scientists may be able to find a way to use marijuana without any harmful effects to a person’s long-term health.

Phi Mu Definition

The definition of a Phi Mu girl: Cute enough to make you look twice, Sweet enough but not too nice, A lil crazy but not to wild, The kind of girl that will make you SMILE. A girl who believes in the basis of Love, Honor, & Truth. A girl that is cute but not a push over. Respected yet fun to hang out with. A lady that is dressed to impress, that can still make you laugh.

Creepers

The very strangest people insist on occupying this Earth with me. I don't know if anyone else has quite as many experiences with creepers or maybe they just aren't as aware of it as I am, but at least once a day I encounter a creeper. It's like a rule for my life or something! Today I was driving to this appointment I had to go to for work and, as I was waiting in a turn lane, I caught this guy in the adjacent lane looking at me and when he realized I had caught him he pointed at me and waved and gave me some weird creep-o smile, so I could do absolutely nothing else but smile sorta kinda funny back at him and wave like I was weirded out, which I totally was! So I carefully ignored him for the rest of the time but I sneaked a peak as I was turning and the dude was on his phone, smiled at me again and pointed at me like he was talking about me or something... Very strange people out in this world. And, Creeper, if you are reading this: next time please roll down your window and say something to make me NOT think you are a creeper. OK, bye now :)