Estonia rambling

Its been one day back since my trip to Estonia. The trip as a whole was more fun than I could have asked for. There was nothing quite like hanging out with 14 of my friends in a completely different country. The main purpose of the trip was to participate in the SELL Games. It is sort of like a student olympics that is shared among (I believe) Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The games are open to all countries but you have to be a student to participate or a recent graduate from within the previous year.

In total there were over 1500 athletes from 66 universities along with 16 countries represented. It was a pretty cool experience and unlike anything I had ever done before. Unfortunately I didnt get to see any of the other sporting events other than basketball. We had games with only a few hours break which left time for getting food and resting a bit. My days were pretty much spent at the A.Le.Coq Sports Facility in Tartu. My team and I played against some European professional and national players as well as some NBA prospects.

The tournament as a whole was much more serious than I had anticipated as we were there mainly to have some fun. We didnt really stand much of a chance considering we were substantially outsized and playing against professional grade talent. Most teams didnt even play a single guy who was shorter than our tallest guy or that couldnt dunk. We did however play competitively for a couple of our games until fatigue began to set in. Most teams had 10-12 guys and we only had 8 at least until one of our players was injured early on. Playing with 7 guys was quite difficult. Despite the fact that we didnt win a single game and in one game took a 60 point beat down (by a professional team who took 2nd overall) we still had some positives we could take away and we can carry into summer practice and next season.

The hospitality we were shown in Estonia was fantastic. I met plenty of really nice and friendly people who were willing to sacrifice their time to help me out or show me a round a bit. I even met a native from Estonia who had lived in Oregon which was pretty cool. He was a duck fan unfortunately but I didnt hold it against him. Everything was super cheep there too...especially compared to Denmark. There was a great nightlife and tons of beautiful girls everywhere. During my stay the whether was perfect. I think the trip was a perfect amount of time because I didnt really get into a full vacation mode. Its always hard coming back to reality, for me, if I have been away for too long.

I suppose my only knock against the trip was the food and the mosquitoes. The catered food we had was hit or miss....with a lot of misses. I just went to the grocery store because food was so cheep. Also the mosquitoes were a huge problem the first night and I was practically eaten alive. After some bug spray was located it wasnt so bad.

My concluding thoughts about the country in general was that it was beautiful with tons of nice countryside, that its a place I dont think I could just move to myself and live without the proper motivation, but I would definitely like to go back.

New Discoveries

A few days ago I was talking with some friends about the music video we never made for the song we made (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ_KzLqutLU&feature=youtu.be). Its not like we just scrapped the whole idea awhile back, it was just that every time we were able to get someone to take some video footage it turned out horrible. When I say horrible I mean that it was like the person was so completely distracted with something else that there ended up being lots of footage of the floor, ceiling and other random people and objects. In other words...it was ridiculously worthless. I suppose not everyone has a creative eye for this type of stuff.

So after this conversation I had a renewed desire to actually make this video. I started searching the internet and stumbled across Adobe After Effects. Many may know what this is but for those who dont...its a program that allows you to put in all sorts of effect on video as well as animate thing from scratch. There is a website called videocopilot.net that has a bunch of tutorials and I highly recommend it. I ve spent some hours going through the beginner tutorials and also did some of the more advanced ones. I can totally see how people get addicted to doing this kind of stuff.

The outcome of all this is that I have been searching for a blue or green sheet that I can use in order to have some fun with and maybe make a music video that can be way more interesting to watch.