Everybody hurts....
....sometimes.
I do love getting depth of field back with the digital SLR.
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May 24, 2005
May 18, 2005
Digital Negative
Finally some promised pics from our trip to Yosemite a few weeks ago.
Keith LongHair is going to hate me for saying this, but I've been toying around with using my shots as true digital negatives. To save some measure of self respect, though, I'm limiting myself to what I would normally do in an analog darkroom - coarse exposure and color correction and spot retouching. Painting out a scratch or hot CMOS pixel, ok. Cloning out something I was too lazy to compose around, not ok. This image, for instance, is only carefully burned and dodged.
May 16, 2005
Stick stuck!
Oof! Danimal has gone and whupped me upside my head with a stick. This ought to be interesting as I've really been trying to do a lot of reading in the last year. Let's see if I remember any of it.
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I'm ashamed to admit that I've never read Fahrenheit 451 (but I have read the script that Mel Gibson was trying to get made six or seven years ago) so I had to go do a little research to make sure I got the gist of the question right before answering. This is a tough one that I've been struggling with for a few days (hence the stick delay) - I'd want to memorize something that was going to really be useful to an uneducated populace trying to rebuild. I keep coming back to To Kill a Mockingbird because it deals with justice and quiet competence (one of my favorite moments in literature [and heck, film for that matter] is when Atticus Finch quietly picks up the gun, shoots the rabid dog, and puts the gun away). It is one of my favorite treatise on defending someone or an idea simply because it must be defended. If I were charged with protecting literature, and by extension, humanity, I would probably find that most poignant.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I've never really thought about it before. I've been reading a lot more non-fiction recently so I'll need to go into the wayback machine. I probably had a crush on Dominique Francon when I was reading The Fountainhead in college, but that seems pretty lame and, well, collegiate now. Does Devi count?
The last book you bought is:
Poisons : From Hemlock to Botox to the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter MacInnis. What can I say?
The last book you read:
Just finished Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. Despite its myriad problems, I like America and I find inquiries into its past, especially those that reveal why this country is the way it is now, very interesting. There are some good bits in there on how the Republican party that ended slavery and kept a nation together became the Republican party of big business and shameless exploitation of racial fears for political ends (oops, did I say that out loud?). Plus, Sarah Vowell's rambling, somewhat whimsical writing style reminds me of a friend that I went to college with.
What are you currently reading?
Poisons, but I just started it so I haven't had much chance to really digest it. So far I'm finding it interesting to learn that there really is such a thing as wormswood and that poisoning was pretty common in Victorian England when "proper" sensibilities made it very difficult to get a divorce. Hmm...a correlation between tighter legislated morality and an increase in violent crime...interesting.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Tough one. All right, here's a stab in no particular order, although I should point out that I really hate re-reading books on all but the rarest of occasions so this list will be weighted towards ameliorating that fear in one way or another. You may assume that when the security guards come to take me to that island that I will have changed my mind on at least a few.
- Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Why? Because it's so incredibly dense with really obscure yet interesting information I would need to read it several times before I started to realize I knew all of that. The Da Vinci Code has nothing on this sucker when it comes to conspiracy theories and historical detail about the Knights Templar. As an added bonus, when the insanity comes, I can spend it pondering whether or not imagining a conspiracy and seeing coincidences makes it exist.
- Ulysses by James Joyce. I have tried to read this book five times. If I'm stuck on an island, I might finally be able to work up the fortitude to work my way through it (although it'll probably make me want a whiskey and some yummy Irish vittles).
- I've got to agree with Danimal on some kind of a star atlas, although I fear that eventually I would become too aware of how slowly time is passing if I were charting the movement of the heavens. That would only hasten the inevitable insanity and volleyball as conversation mate.
- I would also try to find a really good book on meteorology. If I'm to have a go at living on a deserted island, I'm probably going to need to get pretty good at forecasting the weather and, if nothing else, I can stare at the clouds and debate whether or not they're cirrostratus or mammatus (yeah, I know the difference between those two already).
- A nice, thick book of erotica, preferably with pictures of leather and tattoos. 'Nuff said.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
There's a decent chance that this branch of the stick will die here. Why? I actually don't have that many friends who blog anymore (at least none that I'm aware of) and this is just close enough to those chain emails that I don't see much value in passing the stick along via email. Of course, if any of you lurkers have a blog and want to get stuck, drop a comment. It might be interesting to have a random spread of this branch.
Current stick path as it got to me: Barrie unleashed the stick on 3/7/05 - Amanda - scooterdeb - Brian - Karma Police - Evelio - Ivy - Suzanne - Jeff - Patricia Lockwood - Frank - Amy - Steve - Ginger - Scopylaw - AI - jose - grey - Danimal - me
Friends in town
Our friends KP, Sarah and Todd came in from New York along with our friends Maria and Leon, who came in from Chicago. We had a wonderfully relaxing weekend; I was telling AX that this was the first time in a while I actually felt refreshed and ready to face the week of work.
On Friday night, we went up to Point Reyes National Seashore and had a fire on the beach, where we were joined by our friends Dan and Andre. This picture was taken about fourty five minutes after sunset. There was just still enough light in the sky to put some color into the background.
May 9, 2005
Like a Polaroid
Official California moment #2: We had our first, albeit absurdly minor, shaker very early Sunday morning. I was dreaming about a thunderstorm, but in that restless, not quite asleep way, and then I heard the hanging pots in the kitchen start to rattle. As I'm emerging from the fog, Mrs. B starts waking me up with a simple:
"I think we're having an earthquake."
"Huh. Yeah, I think you're right. Wierd."
10 seconds later, if that long, the rumbling stops and the pots stop clanking. Now, believe it or not, this is not [links to usgs.gov, I'll leave mapping the coordinates up to you] the first earthquake I've been through so I knew that it was extremely minor. Nothing fell off shelves, not even the stuff that falls down if a door slams. We even thought that maybe a truck had driven by and we had imagined the whole thing.
So there you go. Hey, yah....