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Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
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2:12 pm - Shadows on Snow
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009
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2:28 pm - Thought, continued
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I went for a walk last evening as the sun was waning. My feet took me up to the Bauer Lofts, a condo/commercial high-rise development at the edge of Waterloo's city core. Some of the fencing was down, and I noticed a few vehicles in the parking lot. Wandering closer I noticed signs of habitation; patio furniture on the 5x10 balconies. Some of the units have been finished and their residents are moving in.
And while I was there I noticed a few other things: all of the vehicles were SUVs or king-cab pickups. Judging from the engine notes of those who arrived or departed while I was there, these were the high end models; the ones with far more engine displacement than strictly necessary for motive power. And judging from how that engine power was used to get into and out of the parking lot (e.g. far in excess of what is needed; grunting, growling, screeching of tires), the people behind the wheel were not of the sort to be shy about the use of their power. And from my sight of these people either in their vehicles or on their balconies, it would be safe to classify them as young professionals seeking a particular lifestyle.
A lifestyle easily characterized by residence in an overpriced, poorly laid out upscale condominium development overlooking century neighborhoods and proximity to uptown shopping districts along with ownership and frequent use of overpowered, expensive automobiles, operated hastily and carelessly.
From this I pretty quickly formed a negative opinion of the residents.
Perhaps it is unfair of me to do so. I may know some of these people now, or some day. Would I think less of them for living there and acting in that fashion? Does the non-fractal nature of human personality permit me to dismiss an entire group of people as not worth knowing just because of where they live and what vehicles they drive? Is it so easy to brush people off?
This stereotyping, this classification of groups of people into "the other, the lesser" is by my best calculation at the core of human adversity and war. And yet that I slip so readily into a thought pattern of "those people suck" based on just a minute of totally impersonal assesment, even when I have just been thinking about this very problem shows how deep this trait is set in our (at least my) psyche.
You see, originally this post was going to talk about how their lives are probably miserable, only satisfied briefly every time they make a purchase that will surely bring them happiness, as commanded by the deities on their high definition television screens. How horrid of me.
I think I'll eat some plants now.
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(comment on this)
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9:55 am - Thought for the day
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Knowing how people operate: what makes them tick, isn't actually a comfort. I think it makes things worse. Because aside from the very occasional surprise, there's too much inevitability. Perhaps the redemption comes from the fact that human nature isn't fractal; it's not the same as you scale from populations to tribes to individuals. And the closer you get to a person, the more unique the behaviour and thus the more chances there are to find the goodness there that might otherwise be masked by habitual response and pseudothought.
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, June 25th, 2009
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9:05 am - Spider Council
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| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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11:09 am - FxAndy Demo
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Here's a short demo reel of the Final Cut plug-in I'm creating called FxAndy. A conversion and enhancement of my still photography tool Andy.
The point of the plug-in is converting digital video to reasonably accurate simulations of classic film stock looks.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, June 15th, 2009
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3:36 pm - Final Cut
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Anyone know offhand the installed base enjoyed by Final Cut Express, Pro and Studio? (iMovie seems to support plug-ins also; but I haven't done any research to see if they're FxPlug SDK based or more importantly if for-pay add-ons for a free product are viable).
I was chatting with a guy last night and he mentioned they support plug-ins and, well, being as I have some pretty fantastic plug-ins for still imagery and have wanted to see what they'd do in motion, it might be a nice thing to try... if there's a healthy marketplace.
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(comment on this)
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11:25 am - Property Line
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| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
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4:28 pm - Chroma
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| Friday, June 5th, 2009
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8:46 am - The Old Mill
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| Thursday, May 28th, 2009
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9:12 am - Storage Tanks No.2
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| Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
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7:20 pm - KWLT One Act Weekend photos
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| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
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10:16 pm - a day of surprises
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First surprise: soon after arriving at the studio, heard that a busload of private secondary school kids would be coming to the building and would I be interested in talking to them / giving demos / showing them stuff. Why yes, of course! Outreach and all. So from 12:30 to 3pm -- lots of teens. Many bored, some engaged, a few very interested. Did portraits of most of them for the portrait project.
Second surprise: also heard, in the morning, that my attendance was very desired at an arts committee meeting at city hall, from 4:30 to 6. Went there, found it lacking, had a coffee with Juan instead, and got a lift home with my camera bags, because of
Third surprise: request for photography of dress rehearsal of KWLT one-acts, originally scheduled for yesterday but canceled and put on hold due to venue lossage, now back on again and to be put on somewhere else. Sure, why not, my day has been chaotic anyway! So three hours of that, after fifteen minutes at home to smooch and have some food. (Did you know photography is aerobic?)
So now, tomorrow, I need to get my ass to the studio very early and go through probably 1500 photos from the students and the one-acts. Really glad I brought 2nd set of strobe batteries and had an extra 8gig cf card.
Wotta day.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, May 25th, 2009
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6:47 pm - Fenced Yard in Montreal
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| Friday, May 22nd, 2009
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9:48 am - Blue Stucco on Bricks
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| Monday, May 18th, 2009
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2:25 pm - Ginger Fizz ala Me
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So here's my recipe for home-made ginger-ale:
Ingredients
3oz ginger root (an Asian market may be easiest source)
1 cup + 6.5 cups filtered water
6 oz sugar
2 tbs lemon juice
1/8 tsp baker's yeast, or "herman" from last batch.
Gear
2 liter pop bottle
Hand blender (immersion)
2 cup measure
Whisk
Funnel
Wire strainer
Bowl
Saucepan
Preparation
1. Chop up the ginger root into small pieces.
2. Add ginger and first cup of water to 2 cup measure.
3. Blend extensively until ginger is totally macerated.
4. Add ginger mixture plus sugar to saucepan, stir occasionally to simmer at medium heat.
5. While heating, add remaining 6.5c water to pop bottle (so it comes to room temperature).
6. At simmer, remove ginger syrup mixture from heat and allow to cool, covered, 1 hour.
7. After cooling, pass ginger syrup through wire strainer into a bowl. Discard pressed pulp.
8. Add syrup, lemon juice and yeast to pop bottle; cap tightly.
Fermentation (48h)
Set bottle aside in a darkened area at room temperature. Loosen cap every 24 hours to allow overpressure to escape. After 48 hours, place bottle in refrigerator; ginger fizz is now complete -- allow to cool down for best drinking. Remember to relieve the pressure every day. If you forget and the bottle starts showing strain (white lines), carefully wrap it in a towel and take it outside to relieve the pressure. Do not aim at face.
You can drink the sediment; it's high in B vitamins. Keep a few drips of it in the bottle for the next batch -- then you don't need to add more yeast, it's waiting to go.
I like the tart tanginess and subtle sweetness of this variation. Very nice on a warm day, over ice.
And it's very inexpensive to make!
Original from Alton Brown, blender procedure from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) haineux, tuning by me.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, May 16th, 2009
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6:13 pm - Win Win Win
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Rated Awesome-Aleph-Null. Makes me want to buy a Wii like RIGHT NOW. Not for the animated butt, which is also awesome, but just because this is the kind of crazy that makes me smile. And rainbows! Lots of rainbows. And polar bears! Yes! And BIG TAKEDOWN!
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 14th, 2009
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1:15 pm - Interface No.16 - Contained
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| Thursday, May 7th, 2009
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5:22 pm - PaintBook.ca
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So you should all go visit PaintBook.ca now, because it's looking pretty sweet. It is the community / gallery site for my iPhone drawing program PaintBook, previously mentioned in this space.
I'm pretty pleased with how the site has come together. Technical information for those who ask.
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, April 30th, 2009
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8:46 am - fuck you, thank you for paying
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What kind of asshole buys a product, then writes a snippy email about how annoyed they are that they had to pay for it and it should be open source because it would be better for the project and there are other platforms it could run on and new versions coming out and proprietary software is bad and... and... and...
I guess it's the kind of asshole who couldn't find a pirated version on the IntarWubz. And probably hasn't gotten out of college yet (paid for by his parents, no doubt) and encountered the Real Fucking World where bills don't get paid by giving things away but by the exchange of cold hard cash.
Anyway, thanks for the dough, dude.
I'll send that $20 to some starving children in rural Georgia.
No joke.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
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5:49 pm - PaintBook - the "point"
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Here's the point of my iPhone application PaintBook.
Not the greeting card itself, but the means of its creation. I drew it, all of it, on my iPod touch. I created a new page, sized it to 7x10 inches and changed the colour space to CMYK. I turned on the grid to estimate proportions of where things would go, then drew the background and the flower, then the label on the back.
Then I pressed the Export to PDF button, which created a PDF document and uploaded it to the server at PaintBook.ca (which is not yet ready for the public), then emailed me a link to the PDF file. I went to my desktop machine, clicked on the link in my mail message which launched a PDF viewer on my computer. Then I told it to print the PDF at its original size. Then I cut it out and folded it.
Here's the level of detail by way of comparison. The smallest black lines in the flower are 0.1 mm across; the minimum allowed. And there are no freaking pixels, no jaggies, nothing. It's a pure vector drawing and can be printed at any size, on any printer, without loss of sharpness or detail.
Like any work of art, the quality of it is proporitional to the skill of the artist times the effort put into it. And I'm not a very good artist and I just spent ten minutes on it. I freaking can't wait to see what "real" artists do with this app.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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