Morning Poem

Sometimes when the mind is burning brightand all is lost but for the moment one see's how that moment is what binds a life together not this bric-a-brac day to day. The iron only lives when it is hot.

Hammock thoughts

now I know I may sound like a old fart talking like this, but looking through the iPhone camera just now got me to thinking. how many of you have ever shot film and delt with that crazy world where what you saw through the eye piece was not what you would get. something tells me there is a whole generation of shooters who are used to seeing the shot right then and there. back in the film days you never knew 100%, I mean beyond a doubt, till you saw the film 2 days later. I did freaking zone system shooting and there were still surprises. on another funky note, I'm writing this in the hammock on my phone... go figure.

Scott Davis

Upon returning to California after his studies in New Mexico, Davis took the unique moods of the desert and applied them with deftness to urban settings. By nature, Davis is a loner and seeks settings that can be as much one place as any other anonymous spot on a street or lost highway. His saturated nightscapes are composed with a single existing source whose light hugs and frames elements in the subject matter. This effect yields work that is luminescent in a manner that evokes night as much as day. You can feel the heat and lingering effects of drenching sunshine imbuing the streets, pavements, parking lots, buildings, valleys and billboards. Moreover, in his latest work he explores by taking pictures of buildings specifically on San Fernando Road. This focused survey has brought his work to a new plane that culminates his vision and training. In 713 N. Victory Boulevard, Davis captures a desolate corner that makes a viewer look twice because its richness and depth evoke a tangible painterly sensibility that makes one look back for confirmation that it is a photograph, rather than a hyper-real painting. There is no trace of Hollywood glamour; solitude is palpable and LA takes on a majesty unlike its actual, sprawling self. One can imagine if Edward Hopper were a photographer these are the pictures he would have taken.

Scott Davis, another fine photographer at Hous Projects.

Marian Drew

Drew sets her deceased on kitchen tables amidst fruit and fauna in a manner that evokes Renaissance still-life painting. In particular, reference and parallels are found in the vanitas genre, which were constructions by painters to warn of the bouquet of hubris man weaves. The senselessness of death for Drew’s subjects is poignant even more so with the realization that these animals will not be consumed as the fish and fowl shown in classic still life. Sport is cruel; careless discard is unforgivable. Rather than bucolic examples of a landowner’s fortunes or flexed exertions of man’s control over the natural world, Drew’s tables are dressed to implicate the disregard humanity has for the wild animal. The warmth of home, sweet home’s family gathering to share a meal is tainted when barriers are removed between the beasts and us.

Marian Drew, photos. Nice stuff. I am a fan of this look.

CS 5 system hangs

So another odd CS5 behavior going on. When I go from full screen to windowed I sometimes get this full system hang. Photoshop does not crash but it makes the whole computer drag for about a minute. Slow motion typing, can't switch apps, full slow down. Trying to get lucky and have my Activity Monitor running and visible next time it happens. But right now I see two instances of a crash daemon sitting there. I have to quit Photoshop to clear them and quitting Photoshop take a very long time when these are present.

No idea what is going on though.

On a side note, I have not successfully used content aware replace on a image yet. worked on 30 images yesterday for a client. Tried on about 8.

Very close to doing this

How to Permanently Delete a Facebook Account - wikiHow

Facebook normally allows users only to "deactivate" their accounts, leaving their information intact. This can simply be done by going to Facebook Home, Account, Account Settings and then Deactivate. But what if you want to permanently delete your account? Facebook does not publicise the method, we wonder why? Here's how:

Facebook has been getting very sketchy as of late. I am pretty close to killing off my account.

Photoshop CS 5 bad point number one.

"Droplets are not supported in 64-bit Photoshop on Mac OS X 10.5. Choose Go > Applications in the Finder, and open the Adobe Photoshop CS5 folder. Right-click the Adobe Photoshop CS5 application icon, choose Get Info, and select “Open in 32-bit mode”"

Because you know you paid to upgrade so you could have just worked with the old version...

One day into working with CS 5 here. So far it's seems a lot slower opening RAW files. I can actually turn on Open GL which I could not use for all of CS4 so I have that going for me. I'll keep you posted if anything comes across as amazing or any other weirdness.

New Word Illustrations Project

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So here are some new Illustrations I did for a personal project. I made the image of Charles Bukowski using the text from one of his best poems, "The Genius if the Crowd".

The other is the one and only Bob Dylan made out of lyrics form "Like Rolling Stone" and if you don't know the lyrics well, you have bigger problems.

Shaping all the text and sizing it to fit crashed Photoshop and Illustrator about 10 millions times. Printed out at 24x17 these look amazing I must add.

Hope you like.

The Genius Of The Crowd Charles Bukowski

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

Dave Eggers on Print

On The Media: Transcript of "Panoramic View" (April 16, 2010)

DAVE EGGERS: For me, I don't know what I would do if I didn't have two, three daily papers a day to read. I don't want to read online. I don't want to wake up and look at a screen. I feel like, you know, as a society, we try to put everything on that same goddamn screen. And pretty soon we're going to be eating on the screen or like -

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

- making love through the screen. It’s just sort of like why does everything have to be on a screen?

You know, there’s been some study that was quoted in one of our panels that said that even how we read our blood pressure is different when we read on print than when we read online. I think that it’s too exciting and distracting online. There’s always some button that wants you to click to cat porn, you know, online.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

It’s just like you’re trying to read some article and it’s flashing and it’s telling you to go somewhere else.

[LAUGHS] I like the curatorial, the calmness, the authority of a daily paper. But I do think that it’s a time to make the paper form more robust and more surprising and beautiful and expansive. People still want to read long form literary journals and nonfiction, etc., and so why can't the print medium do that and be that home and leave the Internet to do the more quick thinking and quick reacting things?

I tend to agree. The internet is not for deep content. It's a shallow quick fix in comparison.

Music to drive you mad.

The centuries-old struggle to play in tune. - By Jan Swafford - Slate Magazine

The gods are laughing at their little joke on musicians. When it comes to the tuning of instruments, especially keyboards and fretted instruments, nature drops a giant hairball in our path. Here's a short course on the arcana of tuning. It will take us to the meaning of a celebrated collection of keyboard pieces: J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, humankind's greatest musical riposte to the laughter of the gods.

In dealing with tuning, there are two main terms to know. One is interval. It means the distance between notes. The basic science of intervals was laid out in ancient Greece, perhaps first by the mathematician Pythagoras. The first notes of the C major scale are C, D, E, F, and G. The note E is the third note up from C, so the interval C-E is a third. The note G is five notes up, so C-G is a fifth. So musical intervals run second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on. (Some intervals can be major, like F to A, or minor, like F to A flat.)