"I want to post my photographs to Instagram, but my ethics are getting in the way."

Interesting Reddit thread here where people are discussing the ethics of using Instagram with all the information that has come to light about Facebook’s data harvesting/manipulation. A good read with a lot of interesting opinions. As I have mentioned here before, I am very anti-social media.

“As I'm sure many of us have been, I have been using my pandemic induced free time to do some intensive organizing and editing of my photography archives.

I now find myself with an ethical dilemma: I want to post my pictures to Instagram, a Facebook CompanyTM

I quit Facebook some 7-8 years ago and Insta some 3-4 years ago due to the many scandals Facebook has been implicated in over the years - from massive data breaches, to major privacy concerns, to anti-trust issues, to willfully illicit use of user data to manipulate elections and public sentiments around the world:

CNET, NBC News, CNBC, NPR / WBUR, Wikipedia Mega List, etc, etc, etc

Sometimes it seems like a silly stand to take / hill to die on-- I am, after all, an infinitesimally small cog in the machine-- but that hasn't stopped my conscience from shouting at me every time I think about giving the 'gram another shot.

What are your thoughts on this? Am I being ridiculous? How ridiculous? How do you navigate the ethical/moral challenges involved with social media platforms?

​I'm curious to see what this community's take is :)”

Is it possible to play music together over the internet?

Here is something my friend Steve sent my way that I have yet to test out, but it looks like it might work? The Windows client is in Beta though which could be troublesome. If I get the time to run some tests, I’ll post the results here. Musicians Together Apart.

The hardest number to hit for most people will be the ping which from the Network Testing page needs to be under 50ms, best if under 30ms. All the other stats seem very doable with most broadband.



Apple M1 new info.

I have been on Windows for a few years here now, but I recently started following the Apple M1 chip info that is coming out and it’s pretty interesting. New update today from Bloomberg talks about a MAc Pro possibly next year.

" Apple’s M1 chip was unveiled in a new entry-level MacBook Pro laptop, a refreshed Mac mini desktop and across the MacBook Air range. The company’s next series of chips, planned for release as early as the spring and later in the fall, are destined to be placed across upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops, and later a new Mac Pro workstation, the people said."

PureRef. The program you didn't know you needed.

Just a little shout out to this super cool little program called PureRef. It’s just a simple image viewer that lets you get all your reference images in one clean window. You can scale move and shuffle them around however you like. Just a great little thing to have open when working. Here is one that I used for Fall Colors and Simple Sets.

Photo Bashing Ideas

Found a pretty awesome breakdown on doing some photobashing that is really well thought out. Not just the technique, but the ideas behind why to use the technique. Interesting little vid that has me thinking about the full class to be honest.

Houdini hair / fur with Redshift Render Engine

So I spent an insane amount of time last week trying to get hair / fur in Houdini to show up when using Redshift render engine. I was looking at all sorts of tutorials and not one of them mentioned this freaking setting to make it work. You have to toggle the Hair Generation from “Generate Geo in Mantra” to “Use SOP Geo”. BAM, everything works. Took me forever to find it. Hopefully, this saves you the same headache.

A Love Letter to Reel M Inn, Portland’s Most Iconic Dive Bar

We used to live down the street from this place and spent a few nights there. Good times.

“I moved to Portland with a girlfriend of mine, and we got a place on Division. We woke up that first morning and started walking down the street, looking for jobs. We stumbled across the Reel — it was the very last stop, at 10:30 in the morning — ordered a bloody mary, and asked, ‘Do you know anyone hiring?’ The bartender said, ‘We are, I’m leaving, can you start tomorrow? It was insanity, I was just given a key and an alarm code with no instructions — don’t screw up, don’t burn the chicken. To no fault of anyone — that’s just how it works at the Reel. If you can hack it, you can hack it. If you can’t, you leave crying. It’s baptism by fire.” — Carey Bolton”

Houdini Doodles

Just playing around with simple clean sets here a bit. Want to work on bashing out a few sets a day to see what I can come up with.

2020 Fall Portland Color Palette

Just walking around with the phone collecting some images that I will use for some Fall color palettes this season. Some interesting tones to pick from.

Well, hello there...

Been a hot minute with no updates here, sorry about that, but between all the election crap and a boat load of work landing I have not had much brain power at the end of the day. Anyhoo, here is a bulk dump of some more mirror balls and other studies I was working on. Just tinkering with some ideas here.

Jar Studies

Here are the three jar images all finished up and in one post to check out.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

-cough.

I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There.

Woo boy, pretty heavy read here.

“Today I assume you went to work. Bad news was everywhere, clogging up your social media, your conversations. Maybe it struck close to you. I’m sorry. Somewhere in your country, a thousand people died. I’m sorry for each of them. A thousand families are grieving tonight. A thousand more join them every day. The pain doesn’t go away, it just becomes a furniture of bones, in a thousand homes.

But that’s exactly how collapse feels. This is how I felt. This is how millions of people have felt, including many immigrants in your midst. We’re trying to tell you as loud as we can. You can get out of it, but you have to understand where you are to even turn around. This, I fear, is one of many things Americans do not understand. You tell yourself American collapse is impossible. Meanwhile, look around.”

“Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is.”

via- Kottke.org

This Machine Kills Fascists

Inspired by the Great Woody Guthrie, I made a new piece of artwork  this weekend in response to the Alt-Riot / Proudboys coming into our town from out of state to cause havoc. Get out and Vote people. It’s pretty bleak out there, so do what you can.

FlowerPower Blue- Robert Peek

Amazingly cool technique on this series by Robert Peek. I was pretty sure they were paintings when I first saw them. Check out the full series on Behance, FlowerPower Blue.

Working on a little something something.....

Just mashing some stuff together for a new piece I am working on and this little graphic I wanted to drop as a preview. These two were kinda fun. The “eyes image” were scrapped form the internet but the game graphics style of “VOTE” was done in C4d.

As Their Numbers Grow, COVID-19 “Long Haulers” Stump Experts

More info is coming out about the long term effects of COVID and it’s not looking good.

“Anecdotally, there’s no question that there are a considerable number of individuals who have a postviral syndrome that really, in many respects, can incapacitate them for weeks and weeks following so-called recovery and clearing of the virus,” Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in July during a COVID-19 webinar organized by the International AIDS Society.

…

In the study of Italian patients, the most common symptoms reported at follow-up were fatigue, shortness of breath, joint pain, and chest pain, in that order. None of the patients had a fever or other sign or symptom of acute illness, but about 44% of them had a worsened quality of life.