Puppet warp in CS5

Interesting to see how this works with high resolution files. Content Aware Scale introduces way to much artifacting so I have no faith in Content Aware Fill. This might be useful though.

On a side note, how long till we have a icon which denotes a picture as a Illustration versus and real Optical Photograph?

Print is dead, long live Print.

Popular Science+ – Blog – BERG

Working with the Popular Science team and their editorial has been wonderful, and we’ve been working together to re-imagine the form of magazines. Art direction for print is so much about composition. There are a 1,000 tiny tweaks to tune a page to get it to really sing. But what does layout mean when readers can make the text disappear, when the images move across one another, and the page itself changes shape as the iPad rotates?

We discovered safe areas. We found little games to play with the reader, having them assemble infographics in the act of scrolling, and making pages that span multiple panes, only revealing themselves when the reader does a double-finger swipe to zoom across them.

Bad content will not work in this context. I think we may be able to merge what was great about old media, great art, design and well written content with the instant always on internet culture.Very interesting to see how this plays out.

Soon to be.

The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again? - TIME

It is possible that the public will not fall on the iPad, as I did, like lions on an antelope. Perhaps they will find the apps and the iBooks too expensive. Maybe they will wait for more fully featured later models. But for me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist's rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands. One melancholy thought occurs as my fingers glide and flow over the surface of this astonishing object: Douglas Adams is not alive to see the closest thing to his Hitchhiker's Guide that humankind has yet devised.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976935-4,00.html#ixzz0jsoyT6fS

As soon as you stop thinking of it as a computer, you kinda realize that this thing is gonna be awesome.

Modern Music thoughts

Interview With The Austin Chronicle for SXSW on Musicians and Social Media | Dave Allen of Gang of Four's Music and Media Blog

DA: I think it’s completely pointless to simply release a CD. Think of that 8 year old girl I mentioned earlier – does she want a CD? I doubt it. So what’s required is first and foremost the release of music as an “event.” Do not follow the traditional, worn out methods. Reinvent the idea of what a release of an “album” should now be. Cirque De Soleil is a far cry from Barnum & Bailey’s…

Erwin Olaf interview

The F STOP » Professional Photographers Discuss Their Craft » Erwin Olaf

Olaf: I work with several retouchers for every project. It’s like in the film industry, there’s an editor. I see myself more as a director nowadays than as a pure photographer.

F STOP: What do you like about 60s and 70s lighting? The top light?

Olaf: It communicates that we are in artificial world, because it’s not natural. I prefer a little softer, and not really hard light, but soft box light most of the time. But it is a dream world, you know.

F STOP: And everything in your shoot reinforces that?

Olaf: Yes, it comes all together and it builds up to one atmosphere.

Some very interesting points in this interview. Good read.
Thanks Jamie.

I am full of win.

Be Sad and Succeed: Scientific American

Next time you find yourself in a bad mood, don’t try to put on a happy face—instead tackle a project that has been stymieing you. Melancholy might just help you hit peak performance, reports Joseph Forgas, a professor of psychology at the University of New South Wales, in the journal Australasian Science.

I guess this means I am very succesful. Now get off my lawn.

How to get Music Free Legally!

So since the nesting instinct has reared it's head here at the compound we went out and bought a new Receiver system. So far so good, get some speaker wire to replace the cheap crap it comes with but it sounds ton's better then my previous system. The previous system being computer speakers.... so uh yeah. Back story time! I have not had a "stereo" system since 2003. I had a Bose system from the 1980's prior to that so I am not exactly a audiophile. Once I made everything digital I just went for computer speakers and airports around the house. But I have been missing the better sound quality and the wife loves her movies so we went for some surround sound.

Anyways, had a old fashioned MP3 get into the playlist last night I had to run screaming to skip the track. Most of what I have is AIFF ripped from the CD collection years ago. But some Mp3's wormed there way into the library over the years and while they work on computer / low end speakers they sound like screeching monkeys on acid on a decent system (I won't pretend this system is high end).

So this lead us to talking about the best way to get DRM free lossless files. Which it turns out you can not buy. Damn. If we could buy them, we would, we are lazy. If a album comes on random that sounds like ass, BAM, download the better version. But alas, the music industry has it's heads firmly lodged up each other's asses and won't allow this. So being stubborn as well as lazy we started trying to figure out the best to to get AIFF's of music. First point, Buy the CD's, rip the CD's, the sell them to a used CD store. So we get the AIFF's cheaper then the Amazon mp3's and the itunes drm crap. Then we though, just buy used CDs and return those. Even cheaper! But then we can up with the winner.

We are going to the Library this weekend.

Avoid ASCAP

So many, many years ago I signed up with ASCAP in a band that was doing OK. I have been trying to get out of that contract for the past 6 months now. I did not weven know I was still in the contract. Which it seems that they clutch in their demon like hands to pour over and review while they are training for Satan Lawyer School. So after months of trying to get an answer I get this gem:

This means that since you have a first quarter election date for your writer membership, your effective resignation date would be April 1, 2011, and your Resignation Notification Form must be received in the P.O. Box listed on the bottom of the Resignation Notification Form between July 1, 2010 - Oct.. 1, 2010.  If your form is received before or after the relevant date for your writer membership, it will not be considered timely and will be returned to you.

So not only is their outdated business annoying, but trying to get out of the contract is right out of dealing with the devil. I have to wait till July to send the forms in and then I won't be out from under them for another 14 months! Awesome. ASCAP is a horrible place.

Avoid ASCAP for any music business.

And there you have it.

BBC News - Why do people often vote against their own interests?

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.
Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank thinks that voters have become blinded to their real interests

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.

"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy."

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made