January « 2006 « meandering wildly

January, 2006

The Megapixel Myth

Now I’m not saying I know a damned thing about photography. I know what aperture does to your depth of field, I know why high speed film is grainy (even when it’s high speed digital “film”) and I know why a fast 1200mm lens makes an excellent christmas gift, but that’s mostly about technology, not photography. The kids in Born Into Brothels didn’t know any of that stuff and they shot more powerful photos with dollar store 35mm point and clicks than I will likely ever manage with cameras far more spiffy than I will ever buy. Photography is about taking the things that you see in the world and capturing them so that other people (including future instances of yourself) can see them the same way you did. In a sense this is, of course, impossible for a host of reasons but basically you take a photo so that later you can look at the photo and go, oh yeah, remember that?

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Please No Shopping Carts Inside The Restaurant

For those who, according to the BS pop-psych uncalibrated self-tests they had everyone do in 1987, are “visual learners,” or “greens,” or “type IIIs,” or “QNTZs,” or “hippies,” I have finally put something in my flickr account, and provided suitable linkage herefrom. May I present then, without further pomp or ado,

Photos That Please Me – a photoset on Flickr

I believe I was the photographer on every one in which I am not a subject, so hefty derivative cheques come hither. It should be noted that this reexamination of old pictures was greatly facilitated by Picasa2, which you should all go download.

Commentary / Life / Linkage — 2 Comments
16
Jan 06

Political Hermitage

I am an avid political junkie, and I don’t think it will surprise any friends of mine who read this blog to know it. On the other hand, to look at this blog, or indeed it’s former incarnations, a Martian would have little cause to suspect as much, since I don’t frequently comment on it. If this seems a puzzling contradiction to you, let me offer a third point which I think serves to unify the others quite nicely: I don’t want to be a shrill, hyperbolic, apologist sack of regurgitated talking points.

That last “value” (which has become, most unfortunately, in the current Canadian political discourse of all parties, a sort of empty pronoun for “policy” or “soundbite” or “sentence.” A tax cut is not a value. “Stephen Harper is the devil” is not a value either. Values inform policy, and direct it, but they are not the same thing.) makes political discussions difficult because the truth is that most people who talk about politics, even though they agree with me that that is a horrible thing to become and certainly they would never descend to that, become shrill, hyperbolic, apologist sacks of regurgitated talking points.
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Linkage — No Comments
13
Jan 06

Techno-Bumpkin Convergence

Because I seem to know an awful lot of cross-stichers, and because I frequently taunt them with accusations of being extremely slow versions of a CRT^[?], I offer this linkage to express my undying love for the work they do, and appreciation for the patience they demonstrate in the face of my withering criticism:

Cross Stitch Pattern Generator That (Mostly) Doesn’t Suck

One thing it probably can’t do well, with any random image you decide to throw at it, is decide on how to blend the thing into the background colour of your fabric, so I’m guessing the best results can be had by doing that yourself ahead of time in photoshop or some-such.

I made a gollum, because it was one of the only small gifs I had lying around. But then I looked around a little more and made a duck as well. I predict stitchers won’t like the duck though. There’s rather a lot of “light beige.”

Commentary / Life — 39 Comments
3
Jan 06

What Causes Chilblains?

I’m a sucker for old maps, old books, old reference material of basically any kind. So you can imagine my delight when, while wandering garage sales last summer, I discovered a complete 20 volume set of children’s encyclopedias from the 1920s, the humbly titled Book of Knowledge.

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