EPKPhoto’s Tidbits

Yet another year at RIT has come to an end. After an adventurous time storing furniture in Rochester and loading my car to its brim, my Dad and I are on our way back home to Virginia. Overall, my third year at RIT was an excellent one. Now that summer is about to begin, I am ramping up for a 10 week experience working for the FBI. In about a week, I will be moving again to Alexandria, VA. From there I will be able to commute to FBI headquarters in DC and the FBI Laboratory in Quantico. I am truly looking forward to this experience working for another goverment agency, which may eventually turn into a career.

I also have quite a few personal projects planned for the summer. I want to make a couple of my web development projects publicly accessible, do some more remote work for NASA and the RIT Honors Program, experiment with all sorts of things on my Linux servers, and better develop my photo printing skills and choice of inkjet papers.

If you had not guessed, I returned safely from my 10 day spring break leadership trip to four cities in Europe. I have been editing my photos from the trip as I have had the chance. Sorry for the delay, but to say the least I've had a lot going on lately ;-). As I finish them, I am posting the photos in this gallery: CIAS Honors in Europe. Right now, the first 2 days worth are there for your viewing pleasure. Eventually, I hope to leverage the functionality of my hand-coded gallery system to include tags or descriptions under most of the images to give you an idea of what we saw. The trip was amazing, so keep checking back for new photos to be added!

At the request of members of the Honors Publicity Committee, I put together a little write-up about myself a few days ago. I had enough fun constructing the article that I'm posting it here for others to read. It is a nice exercise to write about yourself every now and then. Enjoy:

So there's this guy named Eric P. Kerby. Some of you know him as that third year honors student who is a VP on council and makes the honors website tick. A few more of you will know him as that CIAS photo tech student with a camera at honors events. So for those of you who want to know more about this tall, red-haired chap, read on.

Eric is one of those nutty art students who studies Imaging and Photographic Technology and somehow ends up with a Bachelor of Science degree. In his freshman year at RIT, he began working for ITS to support Macs on campus. He still holds this job and has a knack at making an ailing Mac feel top notch. Last summer he went down south to Hampton, Virginia to be close to home and work at NASA Langley Research Center. Hundreds of photos and a dynamic website later, he returned to RIT to mentor incoming freshmen. In his spare time, Kerby tends to stay busy with way too much web programming. He loves to surround himself with technology that he uses in innovative ways. Somewhere in there he finds time to keep his various Linux servers running at their best, especially the one that drives his website, epkphoto.com. These days you can often find him in his Perkins apartment following the latest environmental issues (you should read his senior high school speech lambasting corn-based ethanol) and listening to podcasts and country music.

Last night I posted 42 of the photos I took at this year's Honors Ski Trip. Every year, the RIT Honors Activities Committee plans a day trip to the Bristol Mountain Ski Resort. Thankfully I came back unscathed despite my somewhat comical trips down a couple of the runs at Bristol. I only took photos for a few minutes on the trip. The rest of the time I was skiing or trying (ie., failing) to capture some decent video. I continue to have an appreciation for skilled videographers as I stick to the art of still photography. Enjoy the photos!

Another gallery on the site: photos from National Portfolio Day 2007 at RIT. This past Saturday a group of us CIAS Honors students sold concessions at the event that garners hundreds of visitors from high schools in the western New York for portfolio reviews. Our honors group was selling food, drinks, and candy to raise money for a trip to several cities in Europe this coming spring. We plan on visiting any alumni we can and studying culture and architecture in Prague, Krakow, and Budapest. In the meantime, it's exam week here at RIT. In just a few more days I'll be heading home for the Fall/Thanksgiving break. It has been a busy quarter, and I have plenty planned for the break…so not much will change

The quarter keeps chugging along here at RIT. As usual, things continue to get busier as we get closer to finals week. Earlier today I met with three of RIT's trustees to discuss the Honors Program with a small group of other upper class honors students. We described a wide range of topics from the program's benefits to its shortcomings to see if the trustees should invest their time to push it to the forefront of RIT's agenda. I came away from the meeting with an improved understanding of how the trustees operate and their perceptive personalities. In other areas of the blogosphere, Blog Action Day has been underway. To that end, I'm closing this post by reminding you to read up on my history of ethanol articles. It seems I don't post my thoughts on the environment often enough, so I'll try harder in the future!

After weeks of waiting, you can now see the photos I took during this year's RIT Honors Program Freshman Orientation on my website. In my typical fashion, I have posted a ton of photos (349 to be exact) instead of whittling them down to the best of the best. For those of you who participated in the events, there's a good chance you're in a few of them. Enjoy the galleries, and let me know if you want digital copies of any of the photos.

I'm a bit overdue for a new photo gallery on the site, so I took some photos at the RIT Honors Fall Picnic this past Sunday. Big Dave helped by snatching my camera for a few shots…so try to guess which are his :). Another tidbit for those who care, I recently added text messaging to my cell phone plan, so feel free to flood my number with texts. If you need my cell #, it's listed on my contact page.

Classes have been in session here at RIT for a week now. Tim and I moved in without any major issues. I'm actually impressed at how well we fit into our apartment. Honors Freshmen Orientation also went well…and gave me way too many new names to remember. They're a cool bunch, though (any freshmen reading this?). Now its back to the old game of juggling classwork, honors work, ITS work, and crazy-college-random-fun :). Week 1 went smoothly, so I think I'm up for the challenge. Now I just have to get around to posting all those orientation photos that are still unedited.

Summer flew by as usual. Here's a quick note to let people know I'm heading back to Rochester tomorrow. I'm still packing and preparing for the day on the road. I'm excited to see everybody at RIT again, especially since classes don't start for another two weeks. After I write this, the computer is the next thing to be packed…so if you need to get a hold of me, I advise calling my cell.