This piece is about using video games as educational tools and (hopefully) leading to job creation and talent retention around Lansing.

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In other news, I rode a horse last Monday.

This was my first time riding a horse that wasn’t attached to a rope on a pole and walked in a circle (best guess, that happened when I was under the age of ten).

A friend rides weekly (but not weakly…Ugh.  Sorry) at C.H.U.M. (Children and Horses United in Movement) Therapy near Lansing (not to be confused with C.H.U.D.).

My friend (nor I) does not ride for therapy reasons, she just attends weekly riding lessons.  She asked if I wished to attend, and always looking for real-life experiences to enrich my writing and self, I said yes.

It was quite the experience.

I certainly used a few muscles I never knew I had (which I was told is part of the idea behind riding as physical therapy).  The next couple days after I rode had me hurtin’, but I enjoyed myself.

I gotta say–horses are BIG up close.  Being on top of my mount, Gunny, was equally thrilling and terrifying (at first).

He was standing still when I took this, relax.

But, Gunny was a friendly horse — and he certainly liked it when I fed him a few carrots after he was done carting my bony butt around for a couple hours.

What did I take away from this experience? Aside from realizing how big these animals are (‘specially when you are only average height like me), I was glad to experience what it is like to ride something that is very much alive and has a personality of its own.  If Gunny wanted to slow down–he slowed down.  If he wanted to ignore my “go faster” commands, he did.  That’s a world of difference from a bike or a car.

Learning how to steer was a good education too–not that I plan on writing volumes of fantasy involving tribes of horse riding people any time soon, but it was a nice addition to the ol’ writing tool box.

Would I go riding again? Certainly.  They run a tight ship over at C.H.U.M., and while I was nervous at first, I felt very safe and eventually learned to just enjoy the ride.

The brief hiatus during December was nice. It gave me a chance to get a little bit ahead, although not as ahead as I was hoping for–but that’s the holidays for you.  Still, I’m glad I gave myself a bit of a break.  It was nice.

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I’m still going strong with the Year in Pictures challenge on Flickr. Here is today’s picture, taken at the Fish Ladder in Old Town.

You can see the rest of my Year in Pictures here.   I’m having so much fun doing this project, I’m very happy that I decided to give it a go.  I’m taking photos daily and messing around in Photoshop on a regular basis, which is a great thing.

And I’m experimenting more/taking chances as well when it comes to photos.  Case in point, this picture below, in which I used a “texture” in Photoshop.

Someone had a bunch of free textures on their Flickr page, so I decided to use one.  I like this picture a lot (even if it is a bit creepy), I may get it printed and framed for myself.

The concept is that you take and upload a photo every day, for 365 days.  After the end of the year, you have a nice little collection of your photographic adventures.  Never one to back down from a creative challenge (says the three time finisher of National Novel Writing Month), I jumped at the chance to take part.

First Coffee of 2010, drank from my Attack From Outer Space mug.

I created a set on Flickr to hold all of my own photos, so keep checking that out every day for a new picture.

Will I miss days? Probably. Stuff happens and I’m not going to worry about it if I miss a day or two.  This is for fun and a good excuse to get me out there and take more pictures.  Photography is one of my favorite hobbies and I’m happy for a chance to do it more often.

This project may be the push to get me to finally buy a decent SLR camera.  I’m just using my Sony point-and-shoot for these.  I’ll probably have a few taken by my phone, but I don’t want to do too many of those.

I’m having fun so far–I was up nice and early, taking photos of my old typewriter and messing around with the manual settings on my camera.  I haven’t used the manual settings in a long while.  Then I played around with the picture in Photoshop.

picture of my Underwood typewriter. I do not know its age.

I deleted every color channel except blue in Photoshop and then messed around with the shadows and highlights.  I like the black and white look more, it fits the old time look of the typewriter.

This is exactly why I wanted to do this project: it is making me experiment with photos more.

Happy New Year!