Whit's Blog / 1000 Recordings

Twice Two

I was clicking back through some old shots from Wachusett Meadow today, and was fascinated to note something I think Flickr is particularly good at -- different perspectives on the same image, or the same event, or the same subject. Look at this, below, that I took in October of last year. (The trees are often my subjects.)

And look at this, by one plastereddragon just two weeks later. He was interested in what I was, sitting in the same place. Never met him; don't know him. We have, though, similar interests, at least this one time. And we can see it here.

Old times

• YaWho?
  (tags: ink)

Dailies, funny and otherwise

• Catburglar's Daughter
  Oh, Lord yes. Let us step away from the blockbuster mentality. Let us even step away from stepping away. Let us just say: Some comics are very good. Aren't we lucky they are?
• diesel sweeties: the medium still messaging
  (tags: dieselsweeties comics tvhumor)
• Matt McAlster :: My Dotcom Prediction Generator
  I am so not showing you mine, whether or not you show me yours.
  (tags: Web20)

Aspiration

  DSCN0883 
  Originally uploaded by ynatis.

I have been trying to hack my way into a post on digital cameras and photo software and what they do. A number of my friends have been photographers over the years, and all of the professional ones are astonishing in their depth and creativity. So my point is not going to be the one that these folks are going away.

Still, a major factor had always been ownership of the means of production. Matthew Brady was a photographer, presumably, in part, because he was the guy with the camera. In newspapers, photographers typically got an allowance for equipment, but the machines were (and are, typically), their own. Painters did the same thing, basically -- they owned the blue paint, or could contract to buy it, and the easel and the studio.

But then there was craft, too. Taking good pictures is not easy. (Somewhere in a landfill are roomfuls of glass plates Brady shattered in misery and frustration.) And software and hardware are swallowing increasingly large pieces of the craft. I can take competent pictures now I never could have taken before. Crisply focused flowers, mushrooms, birds and even snowflakes and raindrops. Fortuitous blurs. The light in the dust motes. Even people.

So, we are all photographers now. I am getting some decent pics. My friend, Yefim, is writhing about a bit trying to find his voice, which is a little abstract and a lot ambiguous. This is the best picture I have seen of his yet, atmospheric and bleak without being obvious, allegorical, or pedantic. No darkroom time means that he is finding this voice very inexpensively and very fast. No money spent on chemicals, no nights spent under red light. (No flirting between rivals and fellows with the simultaneous aromas of skin and of dissection, either.)

There is a whole world of imagery, now, separate from the professionals, separate from the artists, separate from the snapshots. It's a return of diarism and letter-writing with the image instead of ink.

This is great fun, after all.

Andnowthespacebardoesn'tworkaswellasitdid

Because my son is not capable of getting out of bed and walking to the door to ask for something he leapt out of bed in the room upstairs and ran to the door. The thumping caused my walls to shake which in turn shook the shelf with the mahogany nighthawk my father carved which pitched off the shelf onto my beer which spilled all over my keyboard. (I am not making this up.)

My Funny Valentine: Scott Adams

I corresponded with a friend today about the particularly sharp Dilbert today. He noted that it has been apocryphally said of Adams:

I remember someone saying the scary thing about Scott Adams was that he clearly must work in the same office but he had never met him. How true! How is it he seems to be inside every office?

How does he seem to get it right so often, my friend mused.

I responded:

People email him what they experience ever day by the hundreds. I have sent him at least five stories over the years, and in the early days -- 1995 -- he actually responded thoughtfully and wisely to an interview list of questions I sent him for a listserv where I was a frequent contributor.

I emailed him when I got a job at Internet World and then again the job at Gartner to tell him that his openness and willingness to respond had really moved me and given me the confidence to enter the industry on my own merits instead of fearing it. Each time, he responded with good wishes. I think he's a truly sympathetic person, and just seems to grasp universality in work environments. Pattern recognition in the cube farm.

Radio Free Whit

It's like being famous, except without the messy fame or riches part. Still getting used to how long it takes to interview somebody for a sound bite.

Missing the Point

Joe and I are talking, and he says, "The class got a new mouse."

"Yeah?" I said, wondering how the school handles the passage of a beloved rodent. "What happened to the old one?"

"It couldn't work the computer any more."

And for a second, I want you to know, I envisioned a little white creature with whiskers and cute little ears, too rickety in its joints to type. The kid's three. How'm I supposed to know he meant the Xerox PARC kind of mouse?

Stay Down

If I stand quite still, maybe Doom 3 won't know I'm here and it won't come to my house.

Edward Tufte Pilled My Cat

One thing we always have trouble with is:

Did you pill the cat?
Does the cat get a half pill or a whole pill this time?
Did I pill the cat?

The tragedy of my friendship with usability people is that I actually spend brainpower on the issue of how best to generate an approriate collaborative interface for medication dispensation. FOR THE CAT.