There's something about coming back from a vacation that makes you reflect on all the crazy sh*t you witnessed when you were a-traveling.

Dani and I recently took a trip to Costa Rica to embark upon some traveling and (not so much) relaxation, and had a blast.

Objects in mirror are weirder than they appear

The funny thing about the word "weird" is how subjective it is. To us, it's weird to try to drive a moped with multiple up an unpaved mountain road. To a Costa Rican, this could be a daily commute.

One of the craziest things about visiting the developing world is realizing just how much wild and interesting stuff exists in the world that is so at odds with the day-to-day things we take for granted. Even the most well-traveled of us make silly mistakes when visiting developing countries because there are so many things we don't have to think about in our cushy NYC bubble (like the dumbass named Ivan who drank tap water up in the mountains and got a fun case of intestinal parasite, which I highly recommend as an effective diet strategy).

The things that seem strangest when we exit our bubble are generally daily tasks and routines that are effectively the same as our own... I wake up and get a bagel and coffee where a rural Costa Rican family of 4 might wake up, pile onto an old Vespa, and herd some livestock up the road to sell.

The beauty of Adventure

And that's the beauty of adventure. See, all people are created equally. Traveling outside of your bubble to possible uncomfortable places lets you experience what "equality" really means. For instance, lets take the irony of being a young professional in NYC - you move to NYC because the opportunities are limitless, but it's extremely difficult to make enough money to survive in NYC long enough to take advantage of those limitless opportunities. Day to day life can feel like a massive struggle which at times doesn't seem worth it... until you look at that same life from the perspective of, say, a young rural Costa Rican. A teenager who's entire experience of America can be quantified in low-res YouTube clips and Netflix shows that glamourize our lives. To that teenager, our day-to-day struggle for mere survival and existence is tantamount to their winning the lottery.

Traveling is a Buddy Activity

The best way, in my opinion, to experience this culture shock and really see the world is with a companion. Could be a friend, could be a lover (I was lucky enough to be with my love Dani), could be anyone really. I have a long history of solo traveling, but I realized when I was with Dani just how cool it is to be able to share wonderment and incredulity about little things, and how easy it is to get excited when there's someone standing next to you who is super excited about something.

Adventure is what you make of it

At the end of the day, an adventure is what you make of it... and we made it awesome. Vida, Libertad, y Costa Rica.

Expect a comprehensive Costa Rican travel guide soon, but until then, take a look at some of the awesome sh*t that we saw and revel in awe at my drone piloting skillz.

I had the pleasure of working with royall&company to shoot and produce a video for their College Mentoring Partnership.

A program I believe in

Royall's college mentoring partnership works with individual, underserved students to give them guidance on how to apply for, get into, and finance college.

Royall partnered with local Richmond groups (LEAP, The Church Hill Academy, and The Boys and Girls Club of Richmond) to bring mentors and mentees together, where the mentors used their expertise in navigating higher education to help give students a fighting chance to go to college.

This is a big deal

Seriously, this is a big deal. Navigating the higher education system is difficult, to say the least... which can be compounded by such complications as not-so-great high schools, households without college graduates, illiterate or non-english-speaking parents, or lack of US citizenship, to name just a few. To have volunteers from a company who's entire business is working with higher education institutions for everything from marketing to enrollment sit down and educate under represented high school students on how to navigate the process is extraordinarily commendable (and altogether too rare)

All men (and women) are created equal...

I care deeply about this topic

And I firmly believe that all children deserve a chance to be happy. I'm not saying you necessarily need a college degree to be happy, but going to college does make happiness much more tenable.

Without further ado

Or preaching on my part, check out the video I put together for Royall, and see for yourself how just a few volunteers can make a big difference in the lives of kids.

Whether it be a painting, a sculpture, a photograph... some art pieces have a way of speaking to me. They can impact my emotions - make me feel happy or sad, cheer me up or calm me down.

I always strive to have more art in my home - something about having walls full of art makes me happy. I love looking at different works by different people, and contemplating everything to what inspired the piece to what the thought process was behind choosing the media.

Anyways, point is, I love art. However... art is damned expensive. Even when we're not talking ultra high end art auctions, it's still hundreds of dollars for a decent sized canvas print (let alone an original!)

I figure that there are at least three factors when it comes to the cost of art:

• Size
• Media
• Artist Name

And they all work together to make most art nothing more than a fond pipe dream for me. So, I decided that if I can't BUY it... I'll MAKE it!

The problem is...

I'm not even kind of an artist. I've never painted anything on a canvas and any drawings I make usually end up looking kind of like terrifyingly deformed potatoes.

Not to be discouraged, I decided that dammit, I was not only going to surround myself with amazing art in my home, I was going to do it cheaply, and do it myself!

Art - The Easy* Way

So here it is - a video detailing how I managed to make some pretty nice art for my home, the easy way!

Like what you see? Check out my store to buy your very own Art TryKit and start making your own masterpieces today!

And I generally ferociously promote those brands to my friends, family, strangers, really anyone who stand still for more than 2 seconds.

To me, what makes a brand great is:

• Great Product(s)
• Great Service
• Great Mission

Harry's happens to be one of those brands that, to me, fits all three of these criteria.

I bought a Harry's razor set at a little Mancraft store in Philadelphia like 3 months ago - it came with a razor, 2 extra blades, a travel blade cover, and shaving cream. I haven't had to buy new blades since (which I absolutely would have needed to if this was Gilette).

And the replacement blades for HArry's are super cheap: it's $16.00 for a pack of eight, which is literally twice as many blades as Gilette offers for 20$... and Harry's blades last longer!

So, great product, fantastic customer service (it's really easy to order more blades, and it's never taken more than a couple hours to get a response from Harry's customer service). Now comes the mission.

Harry's works with organizations that help individuals prepare for professional environments. This is an endeavor that hits close to home for me, because I used to tutor at risk high schoolers in the Bronx on how to code (and several of them have just graduated college by the way, which is astounding!). Anyways, Harry's is dedicated to not only having great products, but lifting the community up, which is extraordinarily admirable. Plus, Harry's has hackathons, which I love.

Long Story Short...

I decided to make a funny short video paying homage to Harrys, calling out their excellent products and their awesome app. Enjoy!

I decided to film a single character action scene in my latest video.

I've been kind of lazy lately in terms of trying new things - it seems like every timeI get some time to do something cool, the weather does not agree with me (unfortunately, my lack of studio space makes me beholden to the elements for my Try Everything Adventures).

I did pick up some supplies to finally (FINALLY) finish up my graffiti stencil project, and I storyboarded out another project which should be both interesting and eye opening (though maybe not as humoresque as my usual offerings).

I'll round out this post with a couple of thoughts on laziness... I've been bothered by how lazy I've become (especially since moving to Richmond from Manhattan) and have been putting some serious thought into figuring out why it's so much easier to be lazy down here.

Some Thoughts on Laziness

Laziness is insidious and it is sucky. It strikes when you least expect it, and does so in so subversive a manner that you're usually laid low by it before you even realize. In my experience, it's much easier to be lazy in the winter... a combination of less-than-desirable weather, short (mostly gray) days, and seemingly arduous task of bundling up in multiple layers just to get outside encourage you to think "well, it's probably easier if I just stay in".

I've fallen victim to this seasonal laziness time and time again, and, unfortunately, have sometimes let this laziness bleed through into times of nicer weather and even fewer excuses. What I've learned is that, if you find yourself staying in to watch some TV for the fourth or fifth night in a row, it's important to ask yourself why. In my experience, if you really think about why you're not going out to meet those friends for happy hour, or think about why you're not starting on that new project you've been thinking about, you'll find that the excuses that you naturally turn to are, well, bad excuses.

Another big thing that has helped me in the past (which, unfortunately, I don't have access to currently) is to have some sort of space away from home for your projects... whether it be a studio, a warehouse, a co-working shared space, whatever. Getting out into a new environment can make you massively more productive than staying home, especially if you take the time to minimize potential distractions in that working space.

Well, that's it for today

Enjoy the new video down below, don't forget to comment and share and yadda yadda yadda, and keep adventuring!

This is a big day for me - I finally managed to take the time and finish editing my first ever video. Now, I'm going to caveat this right away by saying that it's not very good. It was more of an exploration of different techniques than anything else - it doesn't have too much of a story. However, content-wise, I dressed it up with like 2 solid minutes of my dog playing in the snow with some smooth jazz playing in the background, so if you're looking for a relaxing, cute dog video... this might just fit the bill! Anyways, here are some things I've learned (or you can just scroll to the bottom of the post to watch the video...)

The Social Media Revolution

First and foremost, film making is a bit silly if you're not going to show it to anyone. Enter social media. Now, social media is great in that it gives you a very easy, accessible platform on which to put your content, and makes it incredibly simple to share it to an inconceivable amount of people. There is a con to this, however, and it is twofold:

1) Social Media is kind of complicated

That's right, the unified social media ecosystem is friggen ridiculous. There was a point at which social media was relatively simple - right around when FaceBook was first becoming a thing, and youtube and vimeo were the only real video sharing sites. Back then, meta tagging was as simple as embedding keywords into a website, and any ridiculous video featuring a portly man dancing to O-Zone was an instant viral sensation. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying things were easier back in those simpler, pioneering days... but I am saying the barrier to entry was much lower. Nowadays, if you don't structure your website and it's content just so (including hundreds of lines of social media meta tagging, website organization, the words you actually write, etc...) your humble offerings to the world get lost beneath all the other hundreds of millions of humble offerings to the world. See, as social media has progressed and evolved, it's become almost a science unto itself - no longer is it enough to dance to music and stick a video about it on youtube. Now you have to actively promote yourself, and individuals who want to share their content practically have to be their own marketing/PR agency. Which brings up my next point...

2) Everyone is on Social Media!

Seriously. 31% of the planet (78% of the US) is on social... damn. That's a lot of people. (~1.6 billion to be exact). With that much social media penetration, how can one little ol blog post or video ever get seen? The answer is, it probably won't. See, the way social media works is it rewards quality, but that has to be paired with volume. It's tough to have a one-hit wonder anymore - you really need to put out content constantly, and make sure that each piece of content you put out there draws lessons from the previous piece of content (read: you must constantly improve your content based on feedback, or lack thereof) Overwhelming? Slightly. Rewarding? Occasionally. Fun? Mostly!

Rants notwithstanding...

I did learn a decent amount about composition from this experience. Specifically, I learned that it's better to have too much than too little footage. I was more concerned with capturing motion than telling a story, and so I had captured very little footage of myself talking... I think that takes away from the story I'm trying to tell (that of a snow day in Virginia). In future videos, I'm going to be sure to try to narrate a bit more, to ensure continuity (and, let's face it, to hear myself talk).

I also learned that when you talk into a camera, you get all kinds of strange looks from bewildered, nosy people... also, if someone sees you setting up a tripod, they immediately assume you're a professional photographer and ask you to take dozens of glamour photos of their family. Maybe that's just a Virginia thing...

Well then, here it is - my humble video offering. May it not be lost in the giant social media shuffle!

Who knew? I've literally never cut a film of any kind before, let alone produced and published one. Needless to day, I'm fairly proud of how this came out! It's not very intriguing quite yet - this really is just the intro. I'm planning on adding more to it tomorrow, and hopefully finishing it by Wednesday. That's right, it's going to be a trilogy - like the Star Wars of amateur filmography (pay attention to the Star Wars easter egg :-p).

The theory of all the things

So I've been mainly trying to put together a decent story to tell, and decided that simplicity is golden - I settled on a fairly average "day in the life" sort of approach... I'm showcasing just how snow impacts Virginia, and briefly explore why.

Without further ado - I hope you enjoy my humble video offering!

For the bulk of my formative years (from around 10 onwards). During my time in Jersey, I learned that schools very rarely cancel for anything short of a natural disaster. We had days were school wasn't cancelled even with a foot of snow on the ground because the infrastructure was just too darned good - my county had the roads pristine by morning, without fail. ='(

I currently live in Virginia, where the words "snow accumulation" immediately sends everyone off into a mad rush to the grocery store to buy necessities: mostly beer, milk, and eggs (I don't really get it, either). Since living here, I've learned that driving in the snow really is a regional skill. After the fiasco a couple of days ago with an inch of snow bringing our nation's capital to a grinding, screeching halt, And witnessing more cars stuck in ditches than I can honestly count, I'm thoroughly unsurprised that a storm the magnitude of Jonas has caused a snowmagedon type situation here in the good old Richmond area. Now while to me 12 inches doesn't seem too crazy, I can understand that with the lack of extensive snow infrastructure (Virginia has a snow clearing budget of $220 million, which is fairly low) most places go into hibernation mode.

Thus, I've decided to document the snowpocalypse in a quick video project, while I wait for the weather to improve slightly to get back to trying everything.

Come to think of it, I've never really done any serious time lapse video shooting or tried to tell a story through video, so I'm going to call this a bona fide try... So enjoy some raw footage and get pumped for the completed project!

So today marked the first true attempt at filming for the vlog. My goal is to make a 10-20 second intro reel (because I feel like intro reels are legit) and put some cool music and effects into it (remember, I'm very much an amateur videographer). So, as all the online resources have helpfully pointed out, all good videos start with raw footage. Thus, I took the opportunity to start filming some raw footage on the ride down to Virginia from New Jersey. IKEA yielded some cool footage, as did some of the prettier parts of the drive. Additionally, my microphone came in today, so I started playing around with that. I uploaded a couple of the more ridiculous/bad/awkward clips of raw footage to my youtube account, and am currently in the process of downloading Adobe Aftereffects.

I've been watching a lot of the cooler videographers out there (namely Casey Neistat and Zach King), and also started working on getting a snapchat up and running (inspired by Justin Flom). I've decided that there are a few powerful motifs in some of the better filmed (and most popular) videos I've come across.

1) Motion

Expressive use of motion is what gives Casey Neistat's vlog series such an interesting twist. While a lot of vlogs feature static subject matter, Casey Neistat used very well composed shots of himself and others in motion to tell whichever story he's telling. Here's an example - it's titled "Jet Blue First Class REVIEW". It's not just him sitting at a desk, cutting in snippets of himself on a plane. He goes out of his way to tell a story form the beginning of the video - taking advantage of makeshift props (his luggage, and, to a certain extent, his child) to demonstrate motion in his story. This isn't just a JetBlue review - this is a family trip that just happened to be on Jet Blue, and Casey just happened to be filming.

As he says:

I rarely write a script or form an approach. I just start with an idea. capturing the reality of a situation or experience is paramount. so I try to embrace the experience, capture it the best I can, then in the edit share what I actually experience. (source)

I personally love how he times his jump cuts to the beats in the music he choose, and the angles he plays with are awesome. Once again, though, I must emphasize that I am not a videographer, so this is really just an average guy's take on what makes Casey's videos cool.

2) Composition

Composition, composition, composition. It's like video real estate. The better a scene is composed, the more fluid the story feels. Take, for instance, Zach King's videos. Sure, he adds some really cool effects with FinalCut/aftereffects/whatever... but those effects would just look silly without the right composition to add context. For instance, this is a really cool video that he and his crew did with Crayola:

What strikes me most is how well the composition flows into the effects. The "home workshop" setup has a very organic flow (I'm assuming it;s just his typical home office setup) that feels natural as opposed to staged. His shots all encompass environmental elements that cement the idea of an organic scene... things like his rubix cubes on top of an open puzzle box, his cat running over the scene, etc... all make the story feel natural despite it's crazy cool SFX.

3) Personality

It's no good making a video if you can't express a little of who it is that you are in it, and this is something that Just Flom does well. I started following him from his Magic Block Party videos... it's basically just montages of him doing magic tricks for a huge block party that he throws in his family's midwestern home. Now I'm all about his snapchat, which is AWESOME (don't take my word for it, take BuzzFeed's word) and his other youtube videos. His magic block party videos really are magic - they are by far his most popular videos (just check out his channel) and really show off his personality... they feel organic just because it's clear that he's just being himself, and having a blast.

So, I have a lot to learn and a lot to do... let's hope I can at least get 20 seconds of high quality video for an intro reel done, let alone make a compelling blog! This is the point of trying everything though... stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying to do things that I've always thought were cool, but never had the gumption to actually take a shot at!

For your viewing pleasure

Enjoy a taste of the raw footage we shot at IKEA today... it's not great!

Get ready for some interesting attempts at video editing... let's hope it doesn't suck!

The title says it all - videography is hard! I was out and about in Philadelphia today (along with my lovely mother, who's birthday it was!) and I tried taking some video shots for my vlog intro reel - epic fail. Firstly, it was cloudy and gross today, so the light was rough. Secondly, it was snowing. Thirdly, it was cold. Fourthly - I'm not a videographer.

Thankfully, I have cute pictures of my dog, Loki, to save this post:

It was Loki's third birthday on Friday (hence the special occasion bowtie)... Happy birthday Loki!

So back to the videography - there was none today. I'm sorry, my fellow citizens - I've failed. I'm heading back to good ol' Richmond tomorrow though, so I'm hoping for some good shots on the road... I'm really hell bent on getting a couple of cool time lapse shots of traveling over a bridge!

I've storyboarded out what I'd like to do - I'll probably clean up my scribbles and share them out so you can get an idea of what I have in my head. I've also gotten the materials together for my first real "try", so exciting updates to come!

In lieu of beautifully crafted shots of me frolicking in front of graffiti walls and gorgeous shots of a waterfront, here's a video of my Mom's birthday, complete with an embarrassingly large candle (that look on her face is a cross between abject fear and rage). And forgive the quality - it's an iPhone video in bad light!

So be sure to stay tuned for other nuggets of fun and excitement - and keep your eyes peeled for some epic Ikea footage!

So I finally have gotten my blog up and running, and, cop out though it might be, I'm going to call this my first "try" for 2016. See, though I have a strong technology background, I've never used either DigitalOcean or Ghost, so there was a bit of a learning curve there that made this particular endeavor non-trivial.

Hold on... what?
So I should probably add context to what it took to actually get this blog up and running, and why I chose this route.
This blog is built on the ghost blogging platform and hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet. I didn't want to make just another Wordpress blog (the hipster technologist in me curdled a bit at the thought of putting together a Wordpress theme for fun as opposed to for profit...) so I decided to dig up what all the cool kids were saying (which obviously, invariably, led me to NextWeb) and I began to weight the pros and cons.

My list looked a little like this:

Wordpress

Pros: HAHAHAHAHAHA
Cons: yeah...

SquareSpace

Pros: Really easy to use!
Cons: Maybe a little too easy? Plus, it costs money =(

Ghost

Pros: This... this has it all! Self hosted instances! Fully customizable moustache API! Asset management! Woohoo!
Cons: ...No idea how to moustache.js.

So, naturally, ghost won what with it's nerd appeal and awesome features. Ghost gives you the option to host a blog through their site (I'm fairly certain trieseverything.ghost.io exists), and, for 5$ a month (the Pro option), you can have a fully managed and customizable (e.g. theme-able) Ghost blog. Now, I personally like to do things the hard way, so instead of taking the easy route, I decided to try to host Ghost on my own VPS (justifying it by repeating "What would Alan Turing do" whilst snacking on powdered sugar munchkins). I generally use DreamHost as my hosting provider of choice, but after doing some research (AKA googling "ghost blog VPS install management") I learned that DigitalOcean has a one-click Ghost install... and the fact that I also happened to find a coupon code for 10$ pretty much sealed the deal for me.
Long story short, I did the one-click install, set up my domain name (still trying to figure out the 301 redirect by the way) and had a shiny new instance of Ghost running! Then came the fun part - the stark realization that moustache.js is actually not that much like angular. I dug deep into my past projects and happened across something I'd written using handlebars.js (it was for a previous job for a confidential client, and so unfortunately I can't show it off), and leveraged that to get a very basic understanding of what was going on. Easy right?...

So after furiously going to town on my powdered sugar munchkins (curse those delicious, tantalizing little balls of delight) and trying to create a Ghost theme from scratch (failing miserably, with many a comedic expression), I decided... to go against everything I stand for and buy a theme.

You see, I heard the song "anything you can do I can do better" from my sister when I was about 6 years old, and I took that message to heart. To this day, I always try to do/make something myself before I go out and buy it (I even went through a phase where I was convinced I could have a legendary art collection by simply replicating famous works before I learned that I am not, in fact, Neil from White Collar). Needless to say, buying a theme felt like failure... until I realized I could make it better! So I cued the music, went into the lab, and mad science'd together a Frankenstein'd monstrosity of a theme that I dubbed "Stanley" (which I think looks pretty damned good).

So, here I am - wrapping up my first post, getting ready to film my video intro in Philadelphia and Manhattan tomorrow (it's going to be a busy day), and all in all feeling slightly underwhelmed by the way this blog is coming out (I'd expected to have a following of 10,000 before I published my first post).

So, stay tuned for hilarious (videographic) forays into the worlds of art, technology, extreme sports, etc... And watch an incredibly average Joe Everyman try his hand at... well, everything.

And for your viewing enjoyment - one of my favorite youtube videos.

My name is Ivan, and I want to try everything. I've always been a believer in the power of people - I think people are awesome, and, as such, I'm convinced that seemingly ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things. This blog is a collection of stories of an Everyman trying new things, new experiences, and new ideas. I expect to fail hard (and hilariously), have random successes, and all in all provide entertainment (and maybe inspiration?).

First of all - this is me
And I make a lot of interesting faces. You'll be seeing a lot of those faces in videos to come.

Speaking of videos...

My videos will be... interesting (hopefully). Each video will represent a new challenge, or "try". I will take a baseline reading of whatever skills in the particular area I might have (this could be a baseline physical assessment, a baseline artistic assessment, etc...) that might be relevant to the challenge... really to illustrate that I kind of suck at a lot of things.

I'll then probably make some cool time-lapsed training montage and overlay some mind blowing dubstep drops (or, you know, 80's rock) to show how I prepared myself for the try. I'll finish every video up with the end result of that weeks try, and will definitely make sure to emphasize the bloopers.

This blog will be a good way to keep my audience (...you...) up to date with the latest and greatest developments (probably mostly along the lines of "check out this awesome bruise I just gave myself!") and a place to show off my final videos, blooper reels, accomplishments, failures... all that fun jazz.

In terms of what I'm hoping to accomplish...

I'm 27 years old. And while that might not seem very old to a lot of people, to me, it's pretty old. If I'd asked 17-year-old Ivan what 27-year-old Ivan would be doing, I would have said "He'll obviously own an island called Ivanotopia that is also a spaceship". I do not own an island, nor do I own a spaceship. I'm a pretty average guy, actually. However, as a 27 year old, I am very curious. There are a lot of things in my life that I've wanted to try and I never mustered up the stamina or the motivation to do so... and I'm not alone! So, I decided that, this year, I'm going to actually go out and try all of these cool things that I've always wanted to try. And I'm going to suck at them, but that's okay - I might actually find out that I'm pretty good at some of this stuff. I was to prove that an average person can go out and do the things that they want to do, the things they think are cool, and not need to be afraid of failure. I want to prove that, with just a little motivation, an everyman can have all the adventure that they want.

And, I really want to learn how to make awesome videos.

So, join me on my adventures. I can promise that you will most likely laugh a lot at my antics, and I hope I can inspire that moment of "well if this guy can try this, so can I!".

And now, for your viewing pleasure - baby sloths (not my video).

Hello, and welcome to my blog