365/39.
Playing around. Getting bored with doing ‘straight shots.’ Montage gives some opportunities for another creative bone to rattle. “B" shot on the photoblog.
SWAIA Indian Market, 2009.- I'm way late with this. This wasn't procrastinating, per se; I was waging a long battle with the harsh white backgrounds, difficult lighting and low spectator seating that required extra editing time. A *lot* of extra editing time. I decided it's time to stop fiddling and just get the gallery up. Enjoy the photos!
Washington Post: Book review: ‘The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior’ by Paul Strathern.
“Strathern, a novelist and author of other popular histories, does for Machiavelli and da Vinci what he does for Borgia: creates a flesh-and-blood portrait for each that defies historical stereotype. Using his novelist’s eye and a historian’s sweep, Strathern conveys the emotional subtleties that animated their lives. It’s no small feat that he makes you care deeply for these complex figures who lived half a millennium ago.” This goes on my Wish List.
Popular Mechanics: How to Survive a 35,000-Foot Fall.
“You’re six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations—and lived to tell the tale.” Statistically, however, you should probably just learn enough yoga to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.
NY Times: ‘Rubbers - The Life, History and Struggle of the Condom.’
“It is partly because condoms graphically suggest the sex act that they have so often been known through their covers: a collection of boxes and containers here range from antique exoticism (picturing desert camels) to whimsical contemporaneity (portraits of candidates from the last presidential election).” Oh, you know who I want to see on a prophylactic box.
LA Times: A writing career becomes harder to scale.
“I have taught in MFA programs for many years now, and I begin my first class of each semester by looking around the workshop table at my students’ eager faces and then telling them they are pursuing a degree that will entitle them to nothing. I don’t do this to be sadistic or because I want to be an unpopular professor; I tell them this because it’s the truth.” So, weblogging is good then, for writers, given that you’re only as marketable as your very latest post ...
Atlantic, McArdle: Apple Says it Will Lower Prices if iPad Doesn’t Sell.
”Still, they can probably cut the cost deep enough to make it worth waiting for. So why announce it? It seems to me that this practically guarantees a slow start to sales.”
Later: She has further thoughts.
Bloomberg: Stocks Drop on Debt Concern; Dollar Falls, Commodities Gain.
”Stocks fell amid concern that some European governments will struggle to fund budget deficits, while industrial metals rallied from last week’s rout and currencies of commodity producers gained.” Start of the double-dip?
CNN: Google analyst: U.S. Internet needs to get faster.
”Broadband is the dial tone of the 21st century.” Bring us faster speeds - yesterday!
NY Times: Santa Fe, N.M., and How It Came to Be as It is.
Very upbeat. Let’s hope it brings in more tourists!
NY Times: Congressman Murtha Dies.
Congressman Murtha Dies. Semper Fi.
greyscalegorilla/blog: Five second FAIL videos.
Winner of FiveSecondProjects, “FAIL”.
Valet.: Anatomy of a Classic: The Sperry Top-Sider.
Thank Sperry’s cocker. Seriously.
Boston Globe: The Big Picture, India.
Oh, so colorful.
From Reddit: WW I camouflage on ships.
No wonder the U-Boats torpedoed them. An aesthetic assault. The Sea Shepherd crew should do something like this on their next stealth boat.
On the “infamous Flash crash bug.”
Here’s the bug, here’s the response.
CNN: World War II-era navigation system shutting down.
“In a series of small ceremonies, the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday afternoon will shut down Loran-C, a navigation and timing system that has guided mariners and aviators since World War II.” I still have my printed ‘Radio Telephone Operator’s License’, from when I learned to fly.
Today’s snowfall.
This morning’s snow, just about fifteen minutes ago.
Photofocus: Customizing your Camera Raw defaults in Lightroom.
Handy. I need to go in and calm mine down ... too much contrast gets automatically applied, and turn off those vignettes!
flylyf: 5 days in Dubai.
NY Times: Iran’s Nuclear Move Prompts New Calls for Sanctions.
Seems like a game of cat and mouse. “At issue is a proposal for Iran to swap its uranium stockpile for enriched uranium processed into fuel roads outside the country. Iran was initially reported last October to have accepted the proposal, but later backed away.” I don’t know if it’s purely how the media is characterizing this, but it certainly does seem like Iran’s using parlor etiquette to buy time. I tend to make the obvious conclusion about what, exactly, they’re buying time for.
Line 25: Tips for Designing Unique and Attractive Blog Posts.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have the time to do something like this for blog posts? I suppose if it’s your business, one has the time.
CSS-Tricks: Creating a Web App from Scratch.
Haven’t worked through it yet; thought I’d point it out.
TechCrunch: The Future of Web Content - HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps.
A very well-balanced overview. If all the current invective over Adobe, Apple and Google is just confusing the hell out of you, read this.
DevSnippets: Choosing The Best CSS Framework: A Complete Guide.
Handicapping CSS grid frameworks. Short takes on some of the major frameworks. Not really enough info on each one to be truly useful (I mean, how helpful is a bunch of different permutations of “Its main benefit is how much it speeds up the development of typographically and otherwise visually pleasing front-end designs based on grid layout”?), but it can help you narrow down the choices and may introduce you to some new ones you haven’t run across before.
NY Times: In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P.
“Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda. Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s ‘buyer’s remorse’ with the Democrats.”
Ross Berens: Gorgeous planetary posters.
The prev/next is at the top of the posters; missed the nav at first.
Yahoo News: 5 men, 1 woman aboard shuttle Endeavour.
I’m still waiting for NASA to send up the blind, left-handed dentist without tonsils and his Cosmonaut stamp collection.
Early Retirement Blog: Set Aside 10% Of Your Work For Retirement, Not 10% Of Your Income.
“It is often said a person’s earning power, that is, the ability to earn an income, is by far the biggest asset anybody has. This is entirely true, but what this doesn’t tell you is that you can magnify your earning potential several times over working for yourself rather than somebody else. This means finding a low-maintenance side gig and banking the earnings.”
Open at Adobe: Following the open trail.
“The Flash file format (SWF) specifications are open and unrestricted, so any company - even Apple - can build their own Flash Player if they want. Also freely available are related specifications for the Flash ecosystem: RTMP, FLV/F4V, AMF, and MCD.”
Later: Is iPhone the new IE6? Many won’t like it, but if you give ‘open’ more than lip service, there are some important points here.
Job posting on Santa Fe Craig’s list:
Looking for an exorcist. Thanks, Will D!
