PhotoDude.com

Mon. Aug 29, 2005

Monday Miscellany

It’s yet another collection of random thoughts and links, pasted together while watching Monday Morning Mediots on TV.

Speaking of which, I’ll start with a question. When one of the hurricane covering Mediots becomes a pixelated moving blob on a rain speckled satellite phone camera lens and we get to watch them be blurrily blown away to their death … will we be expected to mourn them? Personally, I’ll be more inclined to suggest they get a Darwin Award, and that their employer be charged with contributory manslaughter.

And, by the way, where is Geraldo?!?

TextDrive’s servers made a virtual move of 1,350 miles in one weekend: “It astounds the mind that a handful of well organized people can move 3,958 sites in 5 hours.” And that was just the second set of servers. Mine moved Saturday. As Ryan says “Thank you for flying TextDrive.” Well, thank you guys for being pilots nonpareil, and keeping your sense of humor.

In July of last year, I talked about Photography for Designers, and an article I was interviewed for in the quarterly PDF publication, Design in Flight. Well, now that article is “in the wild”: DIY Photography on the cheap. Lots of good low-tech low-price tips.

It appears Apple is facing a showdown at the Download Corral: “Mr. Jobs is now girding for a showdown with at least two of the four major record companies over the price of songs on the iTunes service.” I hope he has the cojones to tell them “we sell songs for 99 cents, but if you want to sell yours somewhere else for $1.49, best of luck to you!” And then let them wallow in their own corporate stupidity, just as they did for years before iTunes came along.

If you’ve ever lived in Atlanta, you know Monica Kaufman, WSB-TV’s long running news anchor. And you know she’s had more than a few hairstyles over the years. Oh, my.

Why can’t people allow someone else to have a different opinion than them without entirely denigrating their previous existence on this planet? Are we that insecure in our beliefs? Maybe I should ask Glenn: “Brian Jones was the real talent in that band anyway; they’ve just been coasting since he died.”

I guess that means the Rolling Stones have done nothing but coast since Glenn was in elementary school. Coasted to $1.5 billion in gross income in the past 15 years. Coasted all the way to the bank, filled with money people gave them just because … they coast so well. Sure, that’s what it is. Now that you know they don’t agree 100% with Bush, it’s certain that their music sucks, and their continued success over the 36 years since Jones’ death is a complete fluke. Indeed?

Meanwhile, the Bush administration appears to be opening up our National Parks: “National Park Service employees warn that the changes, which were proposed by the Department of the Interior and are undergoing a Park Service review, would fundamentally alter the agency’s primary mission [...] The potential changes would allow cellphone towers and low-flying tour planes and would liberalize rules that prohibited mining, according to Bill Wade, former superintendent at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.” Sounds like 13 year old Deja Vu to me.

It’s not just excellent and fascinating Photoshop retouching, I believe every woman should view this page. Know that the “beauty standard” to which society often holds you (at least, in our advertising) is entirely false, a creation of enhancement layers and the Transform Tool. Your mirror will never have those, and on 364 days out of the year, the women pictured here have the same mirror.

Simplebits and kottke.org are deliberating the format of posts … um, sorta like this one. “Often, I have a quick thought or something I want to point out that eventually gets tossed to the backburner, and then never posted. There’s pressure to craft a title and turn this quick bit into a proper ‘article’. This takes time [...] Separate mini link lists help with offering two simultaneous streams — but they have their own limiting characteristics as well..” Sorry, I didn’t get this memo until it was too late.

Catherine writes an ode to The Nap: “...the nap is one of life’s pleasures. And the shared nap … that’s one of life’s privileges.”

Rusty is not only starting up his 2005 NCAA football picks contest, he’s got the finest lawn of any blog I’ve ever seen.

And Jim is, well, crazy.

And photos! Satellite glitch art. Elvis was here. Battleship Brooklyn. Upward. Waiting for Katrina. Sunset on the lake. Baby feet. Window and chair. Macro Sunflower. One scary clown. Smile. And streetsy.com has “daily street art.”

In closing, I’m about to purge the blogroll, mostly on a date-based basis: if you haven’t updated your site in a quarter of a year, you’re toast. And, out of curiosity, would anyone be interested in starting atlanta.photobloggers.org?