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Monday, November 29, 2004
I took this photo:


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... And I wrote this song.
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Don't even think about watching this movie trailer if you've ever voted for a Republican.
[thanks to Richard Gayle for pointing to this]

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The new version of iPhoto claims "25,000 Photos. Zero Waiting." So I bought the iLife package, which includes iPhoto 4.0.1. There is waiting, but much less than previous versions, which had become so slow with 6500 images that it was unusable. Sadly, iPhoto does not recognize RAW files, so I will not be able to use it to catalog my photos straight from the camera.

It works fine with Jpeg files, and slowly with Photoshop edited PSD files (albeit slowly), so I might be able to use it to catalog processed files. But Photoshop's Browser does a fine job of this, so I don't really see a use for iPhoto. It seems to be a good tool for use with digicams which produce native Jpeg files only, which I rarely do anymore.

Oh well, at least I got Garage Band.


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Sunday, November 28, 2004
Tired of your plain old, everyday name? Well, according to J. Wig, you've got eleven more.

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Friday, November 26, 2004
Desert Fox


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Wednesday, November 24, 2004

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Friday, November 19, 2004
What a week. I need a (high energy) drink.

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Thursday, November 18, 2004
Today's San Diego Union Tribune reviews Eminem's Encore which was released late last week. And not kindly. Did critic, George Varga, even listen to the record? He missed all of the 'vulgar, hate spewing', and even claims that it's 'half hearted' and 'lyrically limp'.

First George, you failed to read the lable of the CD: "... and to my fans ... s o r r y ....", then you need to listen to the whole performance from beginning to end. Don't just try to paraphrase Kelefa Sanneh's (much cleverer) New York Times Review, published last Monday.

It was, in fact, a recommendation I took from the Times article ("this is an intensely word-centric album" - it is) that convinced me to buy it now, rather than download it from iTunes later. I've since listened to it 3 times front to back (although the last time, I skipped "Mosh" - it's too depressing.) In the words of Beetlejuice: "And it keeps getting better every time"!


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Comments on this blog can now be moderated, thanks to changes in Radio's comment server. Read my comment moderation policy at the bottom of my 'About' page.

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Dock cleanout:

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Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Gammatron (phase ii) points to an article about automobile photography. Really it's for photographing anything out doors. Kinda condescending, but in a grade school teacher way, not a Donald Rumsfeld way.


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Monday, November 15, 2004
Nebula in Orion


D100 with 180mm f/2.8 lens @ f/2.8, 4 second exposure, iso 3200



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Sunday, November 14, 2004
Plone

Commentor Evo Terra suggested Plone as a content management system for an evolving (as opposed to static or blog) website. It looks cool. Complete, and especially of interest, very standards aware. Oh, and it's free!

But I'm not going to use Plone, because I don't have the time to learn a new system (nor the IQ to do so quickly.)* I am familiar with the Frontier/Radio style, standards and scripting, so I think I will be able to produce a better product with that tool. I've got the templates made, and next week I should have the database structure completed, so now I'm waiting on the client's copy.

Speaking of, wasn't Radio comment moderation due out last month? Doncha just hate predictive Roadmaps?

Hey, what's gonna happen in Palestine now that Yassir Arafat (one of only a few politicians that lasted through my entire political life to the present) is dead? Remember when he survived that helecopter crash in northern Africa? I thought he was a goner then, but he came back - to start the infantada intifada movement. I feel for the Palastinians 'occupational outrage'. Is it time to become practical compromisers?

Does anybody have any idea what's really happening in Iraq for the last week? I feel a vaccuum in the 'hard news' department.

Oops, I need a picture, huh. Ok.


* Also, the Plone site uses the term "extranet". It's 'internet', ok. Don't try to be so 'Corporate Chic', K?.


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Saturday, November 13, 2004

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Thursday, November 11, 2004
Since it turned out that we are, after all, a Christian nation, I'd better learn all this stuff.

Here's the perfect learning tool.
[thanks to a small life blog]


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Oh heck, here's a picture for the Captive Animal series:


D100 with 24-120vr lens at 75mm, f/5.6 using on board flash at ISO 1600. The photo was then channel mixed, curved and sharpened.

And here's another.



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Cobb quotes the anonymous "T" in yet another put down of the assumed lack of Democratic values:
"To most Americans, Eminem is a vulgar nihilist who poisons young Americans' minds. To John Kerry he was a man whose anti-Bush hate video was worthy of endorsement.

To most Americans, Hollywood stars are regarded as terrific to watch in films but also as narcissistic ingrates when, between private jet trips to Cuba and Cannes, they express their contempt for traditional America. That the Democrats have a veritable monopoly on support from folks like Sean Penn and Robert "Castro-is-a-great-leader" Redford may give Democrats a heady feeling, but for tens of millions of Americans it merely reinforces their belief that the Democratic Party shares Hollywood's values. Even The New York Times, in a post-election analysis, wrote of "the possibility that activist entertainers' fervent endorsements might have cost Mr. Kerry the election."

To most Americans, the American military is not only heroic; it is regarded as more important to safeguarding freedom than any other human institution, including the ACLU, the United Nations or the university, to cite three major Democratic Party affiliates. To virtually the entire Left, which includes the Democratic Party, the military is, at best, a necessary evil. Otherwise, the overriding doctrine is "Make love, not war." That is why Harvard still refuses to allow ROTC training -- and it is unlikely that either of the Massachusetts senators even finds that wrong, let alone as reprehensible as most Americans do."

Bush's claim of support for the American military is Orwellian to say the least. Let's see: 'Mission Accomplished', less military manpower with cuts in benefits, 'Stop-Loss' measures and privatization with an unrealistic pay differential. The administration has increased reliance and extended service for the National Guard's Iraq contribution (used to be, you could just quit the National Guard whenever you wanted, right?), then when something horriffic like Abu Ghriab happens, lay the blame on the people at the bottom, for enforcing a policy that originated in the White House.

(President Bush could have used the resignation of John Ashcroft to build an administration that would be more compasionate, and protective of the American people. I would have suggested former Associate Attorney General and a true hero of the real Terror War, Rudolph Giuliani, instead of the 'torture memo' author, Alberto Gonzales.)

I agree that Hollywood actors shouldn't become involved in politics. Like Arnold "Girlie man" Schwarzenegger, Carlelton Heston and didn't that guy from the 20 Mule Team show got into politics? Same goes for some musicans - like U2 shouldn't get into American politics, but Eminem seems to articulate the conservative agenda quite well.

This is what I imagine it would sound like if Tom Waits covered Marshall Mathers.
(Four megabyte Quicktime audio stream with explicit lyrics, sampled for political commentary only. Sorry Em, it's Fair Use.)



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Speaking of Slim Shady ...

The Detroit elementary school where my mother taught art in the 60's, Higginbothem School, was sentenced to an entropy death last year. In the 1961-1962 academic year, for the first time in a Detroit school, my mother introduced African and Modern art as well as Classic art into the elementary school's cirriculum.

I don't know, however, if that has anything to do with the naming of the new district just south of 8 Mile in east Detroit:

(My surname was spelled with 2 n's prior to my getting it.)



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Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Whenever I want to smile, I head to The Netherlands to read Niek Hockx' Shutterclog. Niek has just taken his blog on hiatus, with the intent of revitalizing his site, but facing health problems in the process. To hell with the site Niek, I wish you well with your physical realm - come back when you feel better - which had better be soon, y'hear?

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I am once again gainfully employed in web development. I've been out of the biz since 2001, so my skilz are woeful. I'm building a promotional and activity site for a small educational institute. Nothing big, a few dozen pages to start.

But I expect it'll grow. The director wants to be able to edit and add pages, and some instructors will surely want their own pages. I'm gonna use Radio to build it. The thousand bucks for a full copy of Frontier is just too much for my client, and I don't think it's right to use the free Frontier (plus it's too much work), so Radio is positioned right. Not to mention that, to this hammer, every issue looks like a nail.

I'll modifying the UI so it won't look like a blog at all: no dates, no links, no entries, save for one. Then it will look like an editable web site, with each section represented as a category, The home page template will define the look of the site, and the content of that page will be the top entry. Subsequent entries will be sub-pages, each in their own category. By editing each entry, that page can be updated.

Using a modified desktop template, they won't be able to create new entries, only edit the existing ones. It's on Windows XP, so the WYSIWYG editor should be fine (if Radio ever goes open source, I'd love to do an OSX interface for that.)

They will be able to add Stories (but what should I call 'em?) and use Shortcuts, but there will be no Folders, Events, Themes, Tools or Prefs, and I'll put in my own Help in the editors menu. I'd like to include News, along with an appropriate subscription list, but I'd need to suppress posting (anybody know how?) offering up easy linking instead.

A couple more question, and I might have to get ahold of Userland support for the first one: What is the fate of the 40 megs on Userland's server? My client won't be using it, they'll ftp to their own server instead. I'd like to have access to that online real estate.

Finally, what role is there for their rss feed? I can't figure out who would take it, unless there would be some way of delivering what they call 'distance learning' via rss ...

PS: This is my new part time job. I'm still Mr. Science:


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Monday, November 8, 2004
Tas's Loaded Mouth blog points to election return maps, actually cartograms by Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi and Mark Newman where population determines the size of each county.

Their final, purple map gives a sense of a marbled America where red and blue coexist throughout the nation. I separated the red and blue channels, and arranged the resulting mirror images into this piscatorial Yin - Yang:


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Sunday, November 7, 2004
Interested in photosynthesis?

Me neither, but this morning I was. I came across this wonderful website from our own ASU, which happens to be one of the world's leading research institutions in the field of photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis, as you know, uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, so that the hydrogen may combine with carbon dioxide to make carbohydrate and other food chemicals. Plants, algae and some bacteria then exhale the oxygen and we get to breath it in. The image is a schematic the whole thing from Professor Wim Vermaas' Introduction to Photosynthesis.


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Saturday, November 6, 2004
Dave Winer's MCN wonders about what the new Bush administration is going to do:
"2. He's going to reform the tax system, which means that most of the people who voted for Bush are going to pay more taxes, and the top one percent that Kerry kept talking about will get another tax cut. (BTW, this is no longer speculation, they're already talking about it.)

3. He's also going to reform Social Security. Were you planning on having some of that money for your retirement? I wouldn't be so sure.

Now, I'm not saying #2 and #3 are bad things, maybe they're good."

Ok then, I'll say it. #2 and #3 are bad things. Last year after the 'tax "cut"' my taxes increased 0.8% based on a 1.5% income increase. Since a large portion of my income is allotted to energy costs (which have skyrocketed) my real take home pay has been severly diminished.

I simply can't afford to give network newscasters, ball players, land barrons, 38% of all attorneys, and most movie stars and chief executives a raise next year. Sorry guys, "love your work" but you're gonna just have to make do on the quarter million and up y'all are takin' home, K?

As for #3, then I want my $#!&*%@ money back.

Here's a picture that sums it up, called Get in Line, Hasenfeffer.


D100 with 24-120vr lens @ 45mm, f/5.6, ISO 1600, 1/80 sec.
Channel mixed curved, sharpened and tritoned.

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Friday, November 5, 2004
Then here, I'm just gonna test out a regular photograph to see how it works with the black background:



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I'm not sure how to get my white look back again. Radio, it seems, will use the current template and update the last blog entry. I dunno why, maybe it looks for a 'Next' link or something. But the upshot is, if I revert to the template with the white background, not only will the current page be rendered with a white background, but so will yesterday's entry, even though I want it to stay black.

So I've got some questions. Here on my eMac, the links and text look fine however, at work, I've got a Dell running XP pro with an LCD, and the links look a bit dark. How about you, are my link colors ok, or not?


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D100 with 180mm f/2.8 @ f/2.8, 4 seconds, ISO 1600

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Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Pending the results from Ohio, President Bush has won the election.
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Monday, November 1, 2004

[Kerry/Edwards graphic stolen from Dave Winer's site]
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On tonight's Frontline, Martin Smith and Nicholas Lemann have put together a critical and two sided examination of the lives of John Kerry and George Bush. As old as it has gotten, they talk about their conduct during and after the Vietnam war. While President Bush's issues are well known, much doubt and misinformation has surrounded Kerry's service.

The record clearly shows that the Senator was a hero in battle, while questioning the fundamental rightness of the war. He was an honorable soldier though, and waited until after his discharge to join and rise to a leadership role in the Vietnam Vetrans Against the War. But it was Kerry's cross-party alliance with John McCain to finish the nations ongoing pain of the Vietnam war that settled, once and for all, the question of the POWs and MIAs. By coming to terms with the realities at the time, these two courageous soldiers - now senators, repaired our national soul for our role in that optional war. What his opponents now call 'flip-flop' I consider the ability to change one's actions with changing reality.

It is those abilities, able to work with members of the opposite party, able to move in a changing world for a greater good, and able to see the difference between right and wrong, that I believe that John Kerry will make a great president of the United States. I believe he may be able to get our tail out of the Middle East wringer.

Good luck tomorrow, America!


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