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STREET BONERS and TV CARNAGE » PHOTOGRAPHY IS FOR JERKOFFS

“…shot by Terry Richardson.”

Ohhhh, these four little words just get my clit into a kykewrench.

I’ve never been able to tolerate this sentiment - it’s like a pretension and shit sandwich on a chalkboard: The idea that it matters one iota who TAKES a photograph of a supermodel’s tits (as long as they meet a certain standard of technical competence that is roughly equivalent to what it takes to operate a gmail account) is just beyond offensive. This abortion of artistic justice cannot stand- it is therefore my duty to explain why… PHOTOGRAPHY IS FOR JERKOFFS.

Now: The modern practice of Photography belongs to a genre of psuedo-art that I refer to as “Auto-Pilot Jizzcock.”

Hands down, best post about photography on all the internet.

I agree. Fully.

Bad Technology: A Call for Revolution Against Beta Culture

I'm tired of this. This sense of permanent discomfort with the technology around me. The bugs. The compromises. The firmware upgrades. The "This will work in the next version." The "It's in our roadmap." The "Buy now and upgrade later." The patches. The new low development standards that make technology fail because it wasn't tested enough before reaching our hands. The feeling now extends to hardware: Everything is built to end up in the trash a year later, still half-baked, to make room for the next hardware revision. I'm tired of this beta culture that has spread like metastatic cancer in the last few years, starting with software from Google and others and ending up in almost every gadget and computer system around. We need a change.

On a similar note, I have CS 4 here which I simply can't run. It crashes at least 10 times a day. So I spent 600 bucks on a upgrade I don't use. Fuck you Adobe.

Bruce Sterling's "The Last Viridian Note"

In earlier, less technically advanced eras, this approach would have been far-fetched. Material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship. They were rare and precious. They were closely associated with social prestige. Without important material signifiers such as wedding china, family silver, portraits, a coach-house, a trousseau and so forth, you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors. If you failed to surround yourself with a thick material barrier, you were inviting social abuse and possible police suspicion. So it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms, renew all major purchases promptly, and visibly keep up with the Joneses. That era is dying. It's not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous. These objects can no longer protect you from want, from humiliation -- in fact they are *causes* of humiliation, as anyone with a McMansion crammed with Chinese-made goods and an unsellable SUV has now learned at great cost.

Furthermore, many of these objects can damage you personally. The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking, washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.

It's not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

Do not "economize." Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It's melting the North Pole. So "economization" is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.

The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don't seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It's in your time most, it's in your space most. It is "where it is at," and it is "what is going on."

It takes a while to get this through your head, because it's the opposite of the legendry of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed -- (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You're spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.

Best directions for a composite shot ever

The Photographic world of Drew Gardner: The anatomy of a location composite shoot

5 GOLDEN RULES FOR MAKING A COMPOSITE SHOT WORK

1. Plan, plan and plan again!

Great composites happen BEFORE the shoot, not after.

If you apply just a little thought beforehand and come up with a basic plan of how you want the final image to look all of a sudden it is not so difficult to place the models with great precision.

Seriously, read this, bookmark it and follow it like it is word from god. Or buy me a new car with the cost of your retouching bill... hold up here....DELETE THIS POST!

The Frontal Cortex : The Cognitive Benefits of Nature

Thoreau would have liked this study: interacting with nature (at least when compared to a hectic urban landscape) dramatically improves improve cognitive function. In particular, being in natural settings restores our ability to exercise directed attention and working memory, which are crucial mental talents. The basic idea is that nature, unlike a city, is filled with inherently interesting stimuli (like a sunset, or an unusual bird) that trigger our involuntary attention, but in a modest fashion. Because you can't help but stop and notice the reddish orange twilight sky - paying attention to the sunset doesn't take any extra work or cognitive control - our attentional circuits are able to refresh themselves. A walk in the woods is like a vacation for the prefrontal cortex.

Damn....

Memoirs of a Space Engineer - Leadpencils

And that video was interspersed amongst all that telemetry data. So in fact the video data rate was very slow. 40,000 pixels per 8 hours, 5,000 pixels per hour, 83 pixels per minute, 1.4 pixels per second.

Being nosey buggers as we were, we just had to do something about this. So we got a large sheet of graph paper and marked it out into 200 x 200 squares. Each square was divided up into 4 smaller squares. And we armed a team of 8 people each with a lead pencil. As the data came back, according to the video data value we would shade in a number of the squares. When viewed from a distance it gave quite a representable picture.

Pic is Here.

Well, we live in a trailerat the edge of town You never see us 'cause we don't come around. We got twenty five rifles just to keep the population down. But we need you now, and that's why I'm hangin' 'round. So you be good to me and I'll be good to you, And in this land of conditions I'm not above suspicion I won't attack you, but I won't back you.

Well, it's so good to be here, asleep on your lawn. Remember your guard dog? Well, I'm afraid that he's gone. It was such a drag to hear him whining all night long. Yes, that was me with the doves, setting them free near the factory Where you built your computer, love. I hope you get the connection, 'cause I can't take the rejection I won't deceive you, I just don't believe you.

Well, I'm a barrel of laughs, with my carbine on I keep 'em hoppin', till my ammunition's gone. But I'm still not happy, I feel like there's something wrong. I got the revolution blues, I see bloody fountains, And ten million dune buggies comin' down the mountains. Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars, But I hate them worse than lepers and I'll kill them in their cars.

Revolution blues, Neil Young.

Damn, I like the rain. I really do. Something about it just puts me in a good mood. Hell if I know why. Random thought last night while I stare at the ceiling trying to sleep:

"Why" and "What does it mean" are chains for the creative process. Anyone who says differently is a critic or a PHD. Don't fall for that bullshit.

Now, back to my coffee...

Photoshop CS4 crashes.

Photoshop CS4 sucks some serious ass. I am getting like 10 crashes a day since upgrading. This is awesome. I love paying hundreds of dollars for "new" software only to have it eat shit on every image I work on. Not frustrating at all.... Damn it.

As a firm believer in the separation of Science and State I just simply had to cast my vote for Palin today. Now, where is that sarcasm html tag...

Thoughts on Change

You live your life like chapters in a book. They come and linger for awhile and then pass. You can't cling to these moments as they come, for to do so brings you nothing but unhappiness and sorrow.

To cling to these brief moments of your life is like chasing after light. It is always on the horizon and deftly out of reach. To let them pass gracefully, even to revel in them is preferred. For clinging to a moment and attempting to shun change brings only sorrow and fear most certain.

With the future, sorrow and fear are only possibilities if you close yourself off to it.

People's unnatural fear of the future comes from their own root fear of change. To open one's self up to change is to remove that fear completely and forever.


--Another bout of insomnia last night got me to thinking. The rain is nice though in helping me relax.

William P. O’Connor: Reflections of an Average Joe

Joe the plumber, stripped of the protection of effective representation, is convinced by the corporate media that wages like Wal-Mart’s are sufficient. Salaries stagnant since the seventies have forced the general populace to borrow on the equity in their homes, and maximize their credit card debt. The bankers and corporations are delighted to lend people money at compounded interest rather than see them compensated with fair wages. Meanwhile credit card companies fled to states without usury laws, like Delaware, to screw Joe even more. Corporations rewrote bankruptcy laws while financiers wiped out his pension and 401 K’s with credit default swaps, derivatives and other sophisticated financial instruments. When the pyramid scheme collapsed, the same banks and investment firms which screwed him for years used a complicit Congress to tell Joe it’s his shoulder they must cry on. Ninety-five percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. is now controlled by 2 % of the population; yet, Wall Street reached into the 5% already spread out among 294 million people to bail out Corporate America. Ironically complicit in this massive transfer of wealth has been Joe himself. Convinced by corporate media that any sentence containing working man and higher wages is socialism, he has venerated the ruling elite like Reagan and Bush, forgetting true champions of his cause like Walter Reuter and Eugene Debbs. These false idols have done as much to retard the common man’s progress as Robert Taft and Fred Hartley.

Curious Expeditions

Ravens are smart. Common ravens have among the largest brains of any bird species and they have been shown to fashion tools of leaves to use them to extract grubs as well as solve complex puzzles. Young ravens are exceedingly playful and have been observed sliding down snowbanks, feet akimbo, squawking in delight. They even play games and seemingly tease other species, such as boldly playing catch-me-if-you-can with wolves and dogs…and then there’s the talking.

So smart, in fact, is the Covus Corax, that a single bird, a raven named Grip, is responsible for two, count them two, contributions to the cannon of classic literature. Not even Lassie can compete with that.

I found myself with a does of insomnia last night and for whatever reason I was thinking about winding film onto reels for developing. Something that I think I have not done since 96?

Just remembering the whole process of laying out the film canister, the reels, the tank, lid and trusty bottle opener. Laying them all out and taking one last look at them before turning out the lights and having to work in total darkness. Standing there and memorizing where everything is with your hands one last time before popping open the film canister with opener.

Sometimes it would take forever to get the film canister open as well. The sharp end of it just itching to scratch your film. Then once freed how when you peeled the tape from the plastic spool you would get a ever so slight blue static spark from the adhesive giving away. Standing there in the dark with about 5 feet of film in one hand and trying to find the reel with the other.

The tank was like a fat can of soup and the reels were two stainless steel spirals with a clip on the center. What you would have to do is clip the film into the center clip (or hook one of the film sprockets to the last loop of steel if your clips have long since fell off) and then holding the edges of the film to avoid fingerprints, start to roll the reel counter clockwise to roll the film onto it with about a cm separating the film from itself on this reel. That allowed enough chemicals to slosh between the film so it would get developed properly.

If you were to rush it and pull to tightly the film may skip it's track and wind directly onto itself, which caused any areas of film that touched to be ruined because it would not get the proper does of chemicals. Sometimes it would get none at all and you would have these non developed grey blobs. No way to check your work till you were finished with the whole developing process. There was kinda of a knack to it.

So in a way it was a zen exercise in complete darkness. Which probably came up cause I was staring up at total darkness and unable to sleep last night.