Thursday, September 30, 2004
Ok then. To my surprise Senator Kerry was articulate and to the point. I agree that the presence of nuclear weapons presents the greatest danger to our world, and I also believe it is only a matter of time until they are used in an act of terrorism. Telaviv, Israel is probably the prime target because of the ease of transport, but New York or Washington would be tempting as well. The concept seemed new to the President, who presented himself as a better listener than I would have guessed. Even if he wins the election, he may have learned something from this exchange.
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Tonight John Kerry has his chance to convince me to vote this year. I'm what's being called a 'soft democrat', that is a Democrat who does not feel any special affinity for our candidate. I will not vote for President Bush no matter what he says, as he hasn't told us the truth for the last four years, and there's nothing he can say tonight to change my mind on that. Kerry, on the other hand, simply hasn't inspired me (and millions more Democrats) because he still has not given us an idea what he would do differently than the current administration. So I'm wanting to hear what his plans to protect us in the age of terrorism, what he will do to repair our blunders in the Middle East and how he will return our nation to a position of respect, and not just fear.
We should not be the policemen to the world, but should work with other nations to bring the world to a safe and prosperous place, for all of us. Not just the big shots, as the President's people seem to want.
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Monday, September 27, 2004
Adobe color scientist Bruce Fraser describes the differences between film and digital exposure better than I was able to for Dilberta (who came for a visit last weekend!) While film, and our own photodetectors - retnas, apply a compensating curve to evenly distribute many levels of brightness over a linear perception field, silicon based photodetectors compress the shadows and expand highlights. Linearization must be done, after the exposure, with software. Fraser explains it all, and what to do to get better digital exposure, in this Adobe Whitepaper.
[Thanks to Rich H for the pointer.]
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Sunday, September 26, 2004
The redesign of 101-365 is (mostly) done. Every entry is listed on the Archive page, and the list that used to go down the right side is now on the Links page. The blog neighborhood is below the single entry on this page. 101-365 now has a much wider bandwidth requirement. I aim to keep graphics on this page below 150K bytes, but sometimes I may use twice that footprint. Sorry to those who have slow connections, but I'm working with much larger pictures now, and the previous incarnation was too small.
If anybody can tell me how to make the RSS file point to, rather than include, pictures, I would be grateful.
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Saturday, September 25, 2004
Silver City He's the guy who did Clan of the Cave Bear, Return of the Secaucus 7 and both the 1978 and 1995 versions of Piranha.
Indie filmmaker John Sayles (pictured at right) has has put together a complex murder mystery reminscent of Chinatown for today's sound bitten audience, and it's one of the best movies I've seen all year. It's even easier than Chinatown, because you already know most of the characters.
Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfuss and Kris Kristofferson portray the ... uh, protagonists - right? Daryl Hannah delivers her hottest role ever, and Danny Huston (son of John) is our hapless anti-hero.
Here's the trailer.
Don't confuse this movie with Silver City, New Mexico, where they have a scale model of the solar system more than a mile long.
Photo by Photo Friends
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He's so quotable.
"I'm from the wesst. West Texas. West Texas is close to California. Closer to California in ways that people don't understand like Washington DC is not close to California."
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Whoops, wrong president. Our president, I'm pretty sure, did not have sexual relations with that woman. Let's see. Foreign war or a blow job, foreign war, blow job... That's what? A no brainer?
Exactly.
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Friday, September 24, 2004
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
I'm experimenting with the things I can do with this new format.These pictures, by the way, were shot with a D100 camera and a 180mm f/2.8 lens, wide open, with the excepion of the erzatz Mapplethorpe which was shot with a $29 Vivitar 400mm f/5.6, hand held at that.
I think it was all at ISO 200.
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There. The conversion of the blog is complete, well, at least the front page. It is now optomized for showing photographs as there is now no limit on the width of an entry. The blogroll has been moved to it's own page and only one day is shown at one time. And every entry I've ever made is accessable from this page, through the large calendar at the bottom. Feel free to click an explore.
Here's a photo to show just how wide I can go now:
[I would be remiss if I didn't give a tip o' the hat to Andy Curtis for the idea of a one entry blog. Thanks Andy! ]
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Thursday, September 16, 2004
Nikon has released a new camera, the D2x, a high-resolution competetor to Kodak's SLR/n and Canon's 1Ds. I'm sure it will be a fine camera, but will also be priced out of my reach. That, and I'm convinced the D100 retains the most light sensitivity of any digital camera with it's standard ISOs 3200 and 6400 that are very pushable.
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Stefan Rohner's photography is, in his words, about "Faces telling stories ... with honor and respect, from my point of view." A photographic ethic to which we can all aspire. His work (photographed on film) is the most inspired, and inspiring I've seen since, ... I dunno - Maplethorpe's humanity, Bravo's reality and Weston's precision, with an impact all his own.
Yesterday, Mr. Rohner said of my photograph that the grain may look too artificial. That, I guess, is the point. The grain of that image, is not 'painted on' by some algorithm attempting to impart a film grain quality to the image. Instead, the photo employs Digitalism, where, the attributes of the digital image are used in the image. Digital grain has a blockier, more regular look than does film grain, and so imparts its own look to a photograph.
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Tuesday, September 14, 2004
In an article about President Bush's new lead in the poles apparent, Joshua Micah Marshall suggests that Kerry's campaign is correct to keep us in the dark about his plans to deal with the Iraq War. Marshall believes that there are no good solutions to the war. Well, any that Kerry can talk about anyway. But I can. Some solutions would be better than others:
- We could continue to keep the war out of the news, pretend it's somebody elses problem until such time as we start to notice all the dead people. There was a self immoltion last week, on the part of a berieved father upon learning of his Marine son's death. But that sort of thing just doesn't carry the impact it once did. I blame ... either rap music or Hollywood.
- Or we could put a puppet in place, but limit his power and let the political unrest in Iraq unseat him quickly (and hopefully bloodlessly) and replace him with their government of choice. Ok, it'll be bloody. But hopefully quick.
- We hand over power to a popular religous leader. You know, Sistani. The guy thay haulled back from heart surgery in London to get Sadr to move out of the temple (so we wouldn't have to bomb it to oblivion.) Then we bug out and it's his problem.
- Proceed with early '05 elections and cajole - no, beg, the UN to take over peace-keeping duties. Too bad this would mean that a few infra-petro-structure contracts won't be self-awarded. Yeah, like that could happen.
- Free land for Palistinian settlers. We'd have to give them Kuwait as well, but I'm sure that could be arranged. (It is, after all, an Iraqi state according to many of the Iraqi officials we now support.)
- And finally, a solution I really, really hope does not come to pass, we could support the nuclear development programs of both the Iranian and Israeli governments. Pakistan too, they deserve some, for being such staunch allies in the (seperate, and not quite equal) War on Terror. What the hay, India, Turkey... anybody else want in?
Then we retreat to the opposite hemisphere.
Thanks for the link, Dave. Yeah: change it back to Pacific time, ... uh, dude.
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Monday, September 13, 2004
Hey! I think I heard Kerry's new campaign advisors come through something he said today: "That's W for Wrong - Wrong choice, wrong leadership."I like it! It completely co-opts the Republican's own "wrong choice" phrase that Veep Cheney had started bantering with.W = wrong
Simple, clear and the main reason people have to vote for Kerry (yet. ?)
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Sunday, September 12, 2004
Protection
Yesterday I opened my back door, to find my back porch (and laundry room) had become home to this bug and about 10,000 of her (his? - how do you tell?) children. Their fine webs were everywhere, and each arachnid had staked out about a cubic decimeter as a personnal space. The big one was easy to find, as she was holding class on the art of insect catching and devouring. And as you can see, that moth is history!
I'm not gonna get rid of them, for a little while anyway, because West Nile Virus is still a big problem in Phoenix. And these daddy long legs spiders will eat any mosquitos that try to get in through the back door. And yes, I have been mosquito bitten this summer, but I'm saving the virus for sometime I'll need to take a week or so off work.
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Saturday, September 11, 2004
New York Times columnist David Brooks has written a piece that I can relate to. Using humor (atta boy David!) he points out that accountants and those who love them, are more likely to support President Bush. Whereas people who can read and write are more likely to be Democrats. Librarians, for example, favor Kerry over Bush by more than 200:1.Brooks also says that academia lacks intellectual diversity. As a grunt in the educational behemoth, I can tell you that we cherish diversity. It says so right in our mission statement! And I have the academic freedom to say "kudos" to the administration's ideas or give them "props". It's my choice. So there.
commentsThe father of modern school portraiture died in Eloy at the age of 92, according to this Onion story. I kinda liked the old style, where you had to pick out someone in the class. Much more fun, but not nearly so profitable for the photographer. Now school photography is quite the biz: You take a bunch of unskilled assistants, crank out portraits assembly line style, then pressure the parents into buying memories of their little darlings.
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Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
Dave Winer, who is currently motoring his way about the continent, points to the New York Times story that says James Carville will join John Kerry's election team. Well, it's about #@!*%#* time.Ol' Kerry's campaign was supposed to get going midnight after the Republican canvention ended. Maybe now he'll have someone to tell him how to get it in gear. I'm ready to become a procaryote once he lets me know what his plan are, and to do that, he needs to drop the BS. I know I'm gonna vote against Bush, and maybe now I'll find a reason to vote pro-Kerry. Yot.
I did that just to balance my eucaryote joke of a coupla weeks ago - and Dave's hideous Canadian joke made me do it.
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Thursday, September 2, 2004
