A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

I have lived in a cozy little town house in Parkmerced all of my life. The neighborhood is made up of ever repeating patterns of houses and courtyards with hidden passages and corners scattered all over the place. It's a very nice place to wander around in and you will easily get lost unless you've done some exploring of your own. The community extends to a large lake/golf course on the west side of the village and this is all very close to the packed SF State University campus. My house, being only two blocks away from the campus, means I've had to pass by it everyday and watch the college kids as they partook in their nice quiet college activities (I also have had to be neighbors with a few noisy students). In this neighborhood every house is the exact same, all painted the same colors, all with the same square footage, and all with the same courtyards and garages, making it seem like you're living in some gated communist society (a lot of old Russian people do live here).

This neighborhood has shaped me and the way I view my outside world for life. I can say I am who I am because of the neighborhood I live in. I am packed close to my neighbors and have developed life long relationships because of it. Because of all these experiences with neighbors and exploring as a young boy I am the man you see today. The quiet and transient courtyards are always a reminder to me of all the time I've spent playing in them as a child. Now I just like to go for a walk or a light jog up and around the pathways, and I am always running into someone I know.

A Whole Lotta Advertisements

There are very few advertisements I can enjoy, but there are a couple that do stand out to me as original and creative, or simply ones I don't mind listening to or watching. True, there are TONS of advertisements I see and hear on the daily, but most of them are easily marketed without any effort so often they won't stand out at all. Television ads for example are now getting very creative; using many different fast paced shots, angles, and pictorial titles with flashy pictures to market something quickly. I enjoy any well made commercial that ventures outside of the box to entertain me or keep me guessing as to what they are actually advertising!

This video is of two ads in the British Television Ad Awards I went to see last year at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. There was a whole lotta advertisements that were just plain silly but some stood out as very well made and kept my full attention while I watched.

This six minute long advertisement won third place in the advertising awards for its perfection because it was all filmed in one take and tells a story about a whiskey company, (that isn't too interesting) but I enjoyed watching it because I wondered how many takes it must of taken them to finally get everything right.

GOALLLLLSSS

Hello again World Wide Web my name is Ray James Fleming and this is my very first blog entry on my very first blog. I'd like to lay out some goals I have for this blog; some measurable ideas to help me stay focused and I'd also like to share all of these ideas with you so I can receive feedback on all of my ideas. YES this is going to be a big learning experience for me and I appreciate that you will be apart of it by simply watching me grow over the next year and into the great beyond (if I get popular enough). First goal I have in my mind is to update this blog daily. I am getting sick and tired of Facebook mostly because I've already mastered it and a lot of the time people like to abuse it to show that they have more 'status' than you. This is so not cool with me so I'm thinking a blog is the perfect place to give more accurate updates on myself to the rest of the world and I can accomplish my first goal easily by staying off of Facebook, bookmarking my blog, and even if I have nothing to update on my blog for any given day, at least visiting it to see how I'm doing. For a long term goal I am hoping to gain popularity, and to maintain that popularity so people can watch all the positive things I am accomplishing. BUT I have already forgotten something important. This is all apart of my Year Up; an intensive program I am currently in that is helping me to learn and develop in a professional environment. And if you don't mind again I am going to lay out some specific goals I have during the program. In my tech class we are learning a lot of important terms and researching some of the basic elements in technology and computers. My specific goal for now would be to read the textbook from chapter to chapter and take some detailed notes whenever we get assigned it because I like to slack on my notes because I think I already know whats in the book but the truth is I don't know half of it. In my business communications class I want to participate more in class because I have a lot to share but sometimes I don't know how to share it. And finally, for my pro skills class I would like to give my full attention and also more participation in all of the group assignments we will be having. So there you go, all my goals are measurable and its going to be a little bit of a challenge to accomplish them all but I know I can do it because I just said so.