En Whatever

2009-09-15T03:58:00.003-04:00

I had one of those moments when I suddenly realized, in one small area, at least, how incredibly parochial I can be. It came while watching this clip of Eric Clapton playing Big Bill Broonzy's Key to the Highway:

Did you notice the Japanese subtitles? I realized that although the words could explain approximately what he was singing, they could never get close to the style. Little slurs, bends in the language itself, regional deliveries, accents - there's no way you can get any of that from letters scrolled at the bottom of the screen. And then I realized how little I get from performances by foreign musicians. Beyond the words, you get into delivery, idiom, and a host of other things that fall into a context when you're from that culture. For example, I'll have different associations for delta blues and Chicago electric. I know how something about how they're related and how they differ. But unless you've learned about this one way or the other, the resonance of experience, like overtones from your own life, simply don't exist.

11 Tips to Painlessly Assemble the Computer Desk

2009-09-14T05:49:00.002-04:00

Some insight from a recent experience:

If at all possible, talk the person insisting on buying the desk out of it. If the person buys it without asking in advance, assuming that you will perform said assembly, consider cutting your losses, burning down the house with the kit, and starting over.
Assuming you are unsuccessful at step one, the proceed. Examine the room in which the desk is to go. It will inevitably require 2 7/8-inches more in length than is available. Resign yourself to rearranging the furniture.
During step 2, when you wonder why the bookshelf won't move, before you disassemble it into its constituent parts, check the top, just beyond where you can see, in case you had cautiously used a bracket to screw it into place. You screwed it so it's screwing you, which means you are the shelf. It's a zen thing.
Examine the room again. You will have to put semi-assembled parts everywhere and you don't have enough floor space. Build an extension before unboxing the kit. Once you're committed to the process, it will be too late. This will also help you put off the assembly project for another few months.
Open the box and read the directions. You will need to write the company for the original in whatever language it was penned because success will require a new translation. Hope for good pictures. Even if they don't help you to build the desk, they might be pretty.
Look at the list of required tools. It is a lie. You will need more than what the instructions suggest, including the following:
- electric drill
- flathead screwdriver
- Phillips screwdriver
- several types of drivers you've never heard of before and that are unavailable at the local hardware, lumber, and auto parts stores
- a winch
- three critical screws you were shorted in the package plus an additional 3 that rolled under the couch only to fall into your little part of the Bermuda Triangle
- a machine shop
- a distillery
- a chapel
The instructions may say that you can build this by yourself although a few steps might benefit from the assistance of another person or two. Actually, only step 13 can be done by yourself. The others require three additional people, including one named Eddie who sports several prison tattoos. Don't make any sudden movements, as you may startle him and that is something you do not wish to do.
You will need to set aside some time. Actually, a fair amount of time. Actually, how many weeks of vacation do you have left? That's all? Hmm. Well, give it a try anyway. If you work on this part-time, you may be done by spring or before your significant other is ready to shoot you, whichever comes later.
Page six of the instructions is a misprint and is intended for a different piece of furniture. Ignore it. Try praying for insight. (See step 6 for what you will need.)
At one point you will try to put the sheet metal screw into the metal tube and find that no matter how hard you push and turn, it won't go in. The trick is to find your electric drill to finish the pilot hole. Unfortunately, you won't be able to find your drill bits, so you'll have to head to the nearest hardware store. When you return, it will become apparent that the pilot hole actually was drilled through. You just need to push harder. Eddie can help, but you probably don't want him standing behind you. Don't judge, as we all have our quirks.
Toward the end of the process, you will have to connect three pieces of the desk. They will almost go together. Consider the imperfection endearing unless you want to start over.

Tweeting the Passion of Christ

2009-04-10T11:06:00.003-04:00

It appears that Trinity Church in Manhattan's financial district has set up a Twitter account -- @twspassionplay -- to perform the Passion Play via 140-character tweets. This offends me like few other things, because it treats religious ideas as so much product to be hawked. This gives an unfortunate new meaning to Christ's followers. (Thanks to a nameless friend for this last line.)

And so, I was inspired to write the following parody ... not of the Passion Play, but of this asinine idea of moving everything to new media, whether appropriate or not, and selling religion. For those who insist on taking this as an attack on Christian idea, don't bother leaving a message here – go talk to Trinity Church. They're the ones trying to make personal gain off this.

@Narrator: Last Supper

@Christ: Dig in. #apostles

@Christ: Bread, anyone? #apostles

@Christ: Pass the wine. #apostles

@Luke: @ Jesus Good wine. What vintage?

@Christ: @Luke Five minute ago.

@Peter: Pass the potatoes. #apostles

@Judas: @Peter Sorry, took the last one.

@Christ: One of you will betray me. #apostles

@Peter: @Christ Is it I?

@Andrew: @Christ Is it I?

@BigJames: @Christ Is it I?

@LittleJames: @Christ Is it I?

@John: @Christ Is it I?

@Philip: @Christ Is it I?

@Bartholomew: @Christ Is it I?

@Matthew: @Christ Is it I?

@Thomas: @Christ Is it I?

@Thaddeus: @Christ Is it I?

@Simon: @Christ Is it I?

@Christ: Nice grammar. #apostles

@Judas: @Christ Is it I?

@Christ: RT @Judas: @Christ Is it I?

@Peter: @Christ I'll go to prison with you.

@Christ: @Peter Oh, yeah. Right.

@Christ: I'm short on cash. Anyone have the tip? #apostles

@Judas: @Christ Not now, but I will soon.

@Christ: I'm going for a walk. Anyone else? #apostles

@Narrator: Garden of Gethsemane:

@Christ: @Father Do I hafta?

@Christ: @Father Hello?

@Christ: Stop snoring! #apostles

@Judas: @Christ [smooch]

@Christ: @Judas Eeewww!

@RomanSoldier1: @Christ Time's up.

@Christ: @RomanSoldier1 Yes, I've already heard.

@Narrator: Christ Judged

@Crowd1: @Christ Guilty!

@Crowd2: @Christ Pfffft.

@Crowd3: @Peter Aren't you a friend of his?

@Peter: @Crowd3 Sorry, don't know him.

@Crowd4: @Peter I've seen you with him.

@Peter: @Crowd4 Nope.

@Crowd5: @Peter Me too.

@Peter: @Crowd5 Said I don't know him!

@Rooster: Cockadoodle doo.

@Peter: Oops.

@Pilate: I don't see a problem. #crowd

@Priest: @Pilate He's a troublemaker.

@Pilate: Send him to @Herod. #crowd

@Herod: @Christ Come on … just a *little* miracle?

@Herod: Take him back to @Pilate. #crowd

@Pilate: @Christ Sorry, dude.

@Narrator: Christ on the Cross

@RomanSoldier2: Nail him down. #soldiers

@Christ: Ow!

@Christ: @Father Forgive them. They know not what they tweet.

Score Another Accomplishment for Da Vinci

2009-03-25T16:16:00.000-04:00

He was one of the driving artistic forces of the Italian Renaissance, an influence on all art that came after, an engineer and scientist, inventor, someone capable of drawing with one hand while writing a treatise backwards with the other, and ... the father of evolution?

Not quite, but apparently Leonardo Da Vinci was so convinced of the close relations between apes, monkeys, and men that he didn't consider it a point that needed argument:

He explicitly says "apes, monkeys and the like" are not merely related to humans but indeed "almost of the same species". In other words, Leonardo, writing simply on the basis of his own observations more than 500 years ago, says pretty much the same thing the modern science writer Jared Diamond, on the basis of DNA evidence, argues in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee. Nor is this a stray observation. Leonardo says it again, in a note on internal anatomy: "Describe the various forms of the intestines of the human species (delle spetie umana), of apes and suchlike. Then, in what way the leonine species differ ... "

Next thing you know, someone will find somewhere in his notebooks descriptions of the calculus, quantum physics, velcro, and the smoothie.

Korean Renaissance Exhibit

2009-03-20T07:20:00.000-04:00

I haven't seen it yet, but hope to travel down to Manhattan to take in the Metropolitan Museum's Art of the Korean Resaissance. (Be sure to click on the multimedia link that has 11 images of objects in the exhibit.) The more usual association of Renaissance is European, but apparently the time from the 15th to 17th centuries was a period of artistic experimentation. Unfortunately, a series of invasions wiped out most examples of the work, as might have happened had such tribes as the Franks and Visigoths invaded Europe after DaVinci, Dürer, and Dante had finished their work. You can find more information on the exhibit here.

Also be sure to look at the special exhibits page of the Met's web site. It looks as though there are some other displays that would provide some interesting contrasts, including drawings from Raphael to Renoir, arts of the Ming Dynasty, and early Buddhist manuscript painting

Some Interesting Colored Pencil Techniques

2009-03-19T20:21:00.000-04:00

I was noodling on the web, trying to find some sites that covered using colored pencils. (I'm expanding beyond graphite/charcoal/ink.) Surprisingly, to me at least, I found some interesting techniques on Crayola's site. I'm particularly taken with the idea of impressing a set of lines into some thick paper and then rubbing over the surface with a colored pencil (obviously doesn't have to be Crayola). I think you'd have to avoid the standard CP advice of keeping the tip really sharp and, instead, using the side of the pencil. I could also see this working with pastels.

Charlie Jade - an Intriguing SF Show

2009-03-10T10:05:00.000-04:00

Occasionally, when I have down time (waiting as I am now for comments back on outlines and articles), I'll see what oddness is on the Sci-Fi channel. And today it's a show called Charlie Jade, a series about a detective trapped in a parallel universe. The concept is interesting enough, but the execution is marvelous and quite unlike what you will see in American television -- perhaps because it is a coproduction of Canadian and South African media companies. Largely filmed in South Africa, it has an unselfconscious multiracial casting that is unlike most of what I see in the U.S. There are no "quirky" or specifically "ethnic" characters that become a calculated faux representationalism. On one hand, society collectively pretends that filling the quotas is the same as being unbiased.

At the same time, there is a sense of the other meaning of representationalism, a philosophical approach in which the mind is said to actually perceive representations of objects and not the objects themselves. (In contrast to the Socratic concept of the ideal and human perception of shadows of representations of reality.) I find it interesting that South Africa can appear to have, at least in terms of entertainment, a far more relaxed attitude.

But forget the social musings for a moment. This is also a gorgeously and intelligently filmed series. The angles and approaches to lighting are far different than you find here. For example, in many dramatic series, harshly blown out highlights from powerful overhead lighting, ala The West Wing or the newest Battlestar Galactica, has become de rigeur.

In Charlie Jade, there is an impressive use of color and filming technique. Using two different palettes, one of muted cools and the other of muted warms (not quite as harsh as, but similar to the color cast you get when using tungsten-balanced film outside and daylight-balanced inside), they set up contrasting worlds. The lighting doesn't call as much attention to itself but still underscores the tone of the story telling.

Apparently there was only one season filmed, though a second is written and ready for production. Hopefully someone will fund it -- and maybe some U.S. production companies will pay attention and start thinking differently about how they approach the medium. It's time to shake up the predictable.

Filibuster and the Right of the Minority

2009-03-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

The New York Times ran an opinion piece calling for the end of the filibuster in the Senate. Certainly filibusters can be vexing when you are part of the majority that wishes to pass a bill. But the United States was not established to be an absolute democracy in which plebiscites determine all policy. In the tenth Federalist Paper, James Madison argued for the need to guard against factions of like-minded people whose interests might run contrary to the rights of others. The consideration was central to the formulation of our government and is no less important today than in the 18th century.

In fact, given the pressures to conform, to adopt either this or that political philosophy, I think today we see the demon of the majority. One group feels that it should be able to compel another to act the way it finds fitting. Given the pressure that political representatives feel to conform to public whim to more certainly enable their reelection, the filibuster is one of the few mechanisms left that can give a concerned minority the ability to say, "Stop. You may not run roughshod over us simply because it seems possible." Certainly restore the process to one that requires active participation, a single person or group to undertake the effort to actually waylay debate. But to call for the end of the filibuster is to call for the reign of popularity. That may seem desirous today, but supremacy of popular vote is a fickle thing, and tomorrow you might long for the ability to stop the wheels of progress.

Doing Time in the Big Dollhouse

2009-02-14T10:37:00.004-05:00

I can't help but think that Joss Whedon was intentionally invoking a connection to Ibsen with the name of his new series - Dollhouse rather than A Doll's House. Both look at cultural attitudes toward women. In both, women are supposed to play roles to please men. And each of the central characters faces coercion. From what I've heard of the television series, the main character will also start to question the circumstances surrounding her and, presumably, ultimately find a way out.

Past that, I find that Whedon's new work compares both positively and negatively with that classic of theatrical realism. In favor of Dollhouse, although most commentaries and interviews I've heard stress the potential for misogyny and the "fantasy" treatment of women, I think there is far more going on. The technician is a young callow man, but the ultimate power behind the theme of people being repeatedly brainwashed and turned into fantasy characters for a rich person's amusement is a woman. And although the series, at least from what appears in this first episode, focuses on women, there are also men involved, both as the subjects who are leased out and also as "handlers," who are responsible for the safety of their charges. As becomes quickly clear, all of the people involved are bound up in this web of activity. There are men who are also subjects, and all the men and women who profit from the Dollhouse are locked into their roles, in some ways becoming subservient even while exploiting. To me, that makes the point that one part of society cannot be enslaved without all of society being so. The relative freedom that some face is only imaginary; they must live their lives to maintain their position, which is hardly freedom.

So, conceptually, I like the show. But the writing and execution of this first episode left me disappointed. Much of the screen time was spent on exposition - dialog in place only to explain what the circumstances. Not only is that poor dramatic practice, but it also creates an ongoing difficulty. Will people need to see each and every episode to understand what is going on? If so, Whedon is writing off allowing anyone who did not immediately become a viewer. If not, then the exposition will have to continue, making the show potentially dull.

The flow of the first episode was also fractured and bordering on the incoherent, which is quite a feet given the number of expository scenes. I think it would be better if he could forget trying to lead everyone through and let the clues arise naturally. The next few episodes will give a better sense of whether this could be a daring approach to an intriguing concept or a case of old habits killing new practice. I did think that Eliza Dushku was not the best choice for the part - it requires an actress who is capable of actually becoming other people, not just acting like other people. To be fair, that is a tall order, because it essentially requires a genius at the craft.

I also found the attempts at literal seductive marketing by the network both before and after the episode to be in poor taste and even repulsive. Yes, the two women are attractive, but the "come hither" approach to getting people to return the next week didn't seem ironic or even self-aware. Instead, it was vulgar and just another example of the entire attitude that Whedon is trying to examine.

Will Toll Bros. Finances Take Toll on Met Opera?

2009-02-12T09:49:00.002-05:00

The Metropolitan Opera has been running radio broadcasts of its performances for years. I can remember when the sponsor used to be Texaco, but lately it's been Toll Brothers real estate developers. But Toll's profits are down, which suggests that the Met had better forge ahead on other money-making ventures, like HD broadcasts of productions in movie theaters.

Blogging with Legos

2009-02-04T14:06:00.002-05:00

The New York Times ran an amusing and clever opinion blog post by Christoph Niemann. Unlike the vast majority of blogviation, this one made its point visually. It's a tour de lego of some of the author's memories of the city.

The Great Online Journalism Lie

2009-01-31T06:13:00.000-05:00

I enjoy online media: reading, watching, listening, and producing. Working on the web has immense potential. But there is a lot of foolishness playing itself out, often in the form of mindless cheerleading that brings little thought and no historical perspective. Apparently Henry Blodget is in that company.

This is the same guy who was a Wall Street analyst touting dot com businesses and one of the voices crying that the old models of business -- you know, the ones about needing revenue and a way to work toward a profit -- were dead. All you needed was a market willing to invest, also known as the greater fool theory. You invest money and wait for a bigger fool to pay you more for the shares.

And now, as an online journalist covering high tech, he's apparently found his latest cause: claiming that the old media are dead. And, in one sense, I'd agree that newspapers, certainly, are facing some major problems and many are not going to survive. And according to the report of a talk he recently gave at a conference, some of his points were good.

But in one area he makes a critical mistake, assuming that setting down words, and even finding facts, is the same as journalism:

Henry also pointed out that journalism isn't dying, it's just old-line newspapers which aren't adapting. In the new model, with 1 billion potential fact-checkers, if Watergate were to occur today, the underlying documents would have been posted to smokinggun.com. [Emphasis from the original.]

His argument is specious. The vast majority of information on Watergate didn't come from documents someone could find online or even in a physical public file. It came from investigative reporting, speaking with hundreds of sources and using relationships developed over years. Getting the story out took a frighteningly large number of hours by teams of reporters, and all the resources they needed, at a number of major dailies. Having fact checkers is nice, but someone has to go get the facts in the first place. If Watergate were to happen today, not only would the world of potential fact-checkers be useless, but most of the writers, including Blodget himself, wouldn't have a clue as to how they would even begin reporting this type of story.

Just look at what the Washington Post had going for it: a couple of tenacious reporters on staff, the resources to allow the reporters to concentrate on all the related stories for months on end, the money to hire any necessary legal help, and the prestige to help attract potential sources. You won't find that at most online sites, and no large collection of enthusiastic crowds that don't have the time and money to pursue such reporting can help.

The real pity is that by the time most people realize this, it will be too late. So much of online work depends on original news reporting that a good deal will fall away.

Genius and Popularity

2009-01-13T07:28:00.000-05:00

The Guardian has an interesting article on whether U.K. art schools have a culture of celebrity -- if institutions and instructors are encouraging the thought among students that they will be launched into success upon graduation. "Yes," says some established artists, and "No," reply the schools.

It's an interesting read, particularly when you consider that the economy is going south and that money going into collections may well drop, and individuals and institutions both feel an unpleasant tightness about the wallet. But I think that the question of celebrity and success is off from the real question: Who gets to wear the mantle of genius?

As a culture, we often assume that there is a meritocracy in all endeavors, and that the ones at the top are, by nature and work, the best. It's an approach that you could likely trace back to the Enlightenment and has appeared in many forms, whether the Social Darwinism of the 19th century or various forms of institutionalized racism that explained the dominant group's ascendancy as a combination of nature and application of self.

But that attitude is actually a form of rationalization. To accept that one is in a privileged position though pure dumb luck is to admit two things simultaneously: that one's advantage is unjust, coming at the expense of others who might be more deserving, and that one's luck could just as easily turn sour. A moneyed person, basking in his or her "superior understanding of life," can easily park a fortune with the likes of Bernard Madoff and become destitute as a result.

Rationalization of position within society extends into the arts, which have their own hierarchies and power structures. Those who matriculate from the various academies then apply for positions and assignments from the guardians of culture: the various people who taught them. The cycle extends itself and true artistic merit becomes that which fits in. I've seen some visual artists and writers argue that true genius always bubbles up, but I think that is wishful thinking.

Genius is often under appreciated. Bach's musical interests were in areas already on the wane in his time, and he was considered a second-tier composer, though a cracking good authority on the construction of pipe organs. It took a hundred years for his music to be resurrected, and it took a Felix Mendelssohn to do so. Herman Melville was written off by the critics during his lifetime to the extent that on his death, there was only a single newspaper obituary. Van Gogh? No one would buy his paintings. And yet each of these geniuses now outshines many contemporaries who were considered the major talents in their lifetimes. And these are a few of the examples of which we know. How many greats died too young, or utterly lacked in the art of self-promotion?

The great lie told in schools and in society is that those who are best will be known. Clearly that isn't the case. We are lucky as a people to have a hint of who might possess greatness in our own times, and the possibility of misjudging is high. The true way to work in the arts is through humility. None of us can ever really know how the future might treat us, or whether success is a matter of luck and having enough in common with those in power. All anyone can do is work hard, trying to understand the nature of what we do and honor it. Everything else is a distraction and a crap shoot. Or, as Ecclesiastes succinctly puts it, all is vanity.

Kirk Douglas, Blogger

2008-12-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

I was intrigued when I read this Reuters story about Kirk Douglas blogging at age 92. The entries are relatively short, but certainly thoughtful and about far more than fluff. If you're interested, you can see his MySpace page here.

The Turner Prize - Bastion of Maleness

2008-12-04T09:24:00.000-05:00

The Turner Prize is given out annually to a British visual artist under the age of 50. It is a Very Big Deal in that country and raises a fair amount of controversy. One of the issues is whether the prize is dominated by men.

I am by no means a "feminist." Nor do I subscribe to the automatic assumption that men do terrible things to women while women are blameless and never injure men. At the same time, I'd prefer to examine a charge before I react. So I went to look at the list of Turner winners over the years.

That list is, to my eye, overwhelmingly male. I'm not suggesting at all that there must be awards ruled by gender parity. But you have to wonder the state of the judges and the decision process. Since the award started in 1984, with no prize given in 1990, there have been three women who won, versus 21 men. I would be suspicious of a perfect 50-50 split, but seven to one? Are male artists really that much better than female? Not from what I've seen in photography, painting, sculpture, video, and other art forms.

There have also been only three years in which the majority of judges were women (though not the same three years as when womeen won). I know that critics, curators, and academics are supposed to be above gender bias, but I think it becomes something that is culturally and even biologically hard-wired. For example, I'm a writer, and I enjoy the work of many writers. But I probably have a closer affinity in general to the work of male writers because they have a tone and approach closer to my own inclinations. I suspect the same might be true in any craft. (Consider your own social circle and how men and women often divide on gender lines over some types of popular entertainment.) If the committee stays generally dominated by male sensibilities, then I wouldn't be surprised if the prize continued to be awarded more often to men. That is wrong and also foolish.

To be fair, I understand that putting together a panel of experts can be difficult. I once moderated a panel on narrative non-fiction at a writing conference and was accused of gender bias because all of the panelists were men. As it happened, I asked a number of leading publications if they could send a representative, and those happened to be the people available. But when that happens 70 percent of the time, you must wonder whether it continues to be accident.

Technique: Using Reflections in Images

2008-12-02T05:54:00.000-05:00

Reflections can take an ordinary image and open a door into a new visual dimension. You can try for the most obvious, like reflections off a lake or pool of water, but look more carefully and you'll see possibilities everywhere. In the photo on the right, I had driven into Boston to do a shoot with a model who was a no-show. So I used the time instead of getting overly irritated. It had been raining, which meant wet streets and another reflective surface. In general, expose for the primary scene and not the reflected copy. Some light gets lost and so it will be a bit dimmer. The one condition you should watch is a light that gets reflected directly from a surface into the camera lens, causing flare and throwing off your exposure calculations. Just reposition yourself or frame the shot a bit differently to get that out of the scene.

If you are using a body of water as the reflector, you might be able to disturb the surface, maybe by tossing a stone, to get a second effect and image after you've shot with the smooth reflection. You can see many more examples of reflection as a compositional element by clicking on the link to a feature in Smashing Magazine. Some of these are outstanding, going beyond reflection as an element of mood (like I did in my photo) and using it to create unworldly scenes, where the original and the reflection meet and turn into abstracted patterns. At the bottom of the feature are additional links to other collections of reflection in images.

Nikon 24.5 Megapixel DSLR

2008-12-01T07:43:00.000-05:00

Whoa! Nikon's come out with a 24.5 megapixel digital SLR that has 51-point autofocus, HDMI output, and 50 MB RAW files that expand out to 140 MB TIFF files - and it can simultaneously record RAW and JPEG images on separate memory cards. Start-up time is 12 milliseconds and shutter lag is 40 milliseconds. It sounds as though it also expands dynamic range but then does some sort of additional image processing to keep shots from looking flat. But the D3x will set you back some $7999 and 2.11 pounds just for the body. That's like hanging a small bag of flour around your neck. Ouch.

Man Gets Scratched for Scratching Sentence

2008-12-01T05:24:00.000-05:00

Ah, the foolish temptation to fix a piece of paper for your own benefit. An Arkansas man had received a $650 fine and four-day jail sentence for hazardous driving with a suspended license. The judge told him to turn in to the clerk his notice of the sentence. So the man allegedly had a clever idea: scratch off the jail sentence. Only, someone saw him. Now he's facing yet another charge -- tampering with a public record. Beware when the eraser seems mightier than the pen, or you could end up in the pen.

Idea for Advent Calendar

2008-11-30T05:32:00.000-05:00

A Kodak blogger had an interesting idea: take a picture of the George Eastman House and use its 24 windows as a traditional advent calendar. That made me reaize that if you had any object with the right number of repeated elements, you could do the same. That could be trees in a forest, cars on a lot, or what have you. If you don't have enough elements in a grid, then you could get a row of several and then set the row out multiple times.

Caravaggio Used Photography?

2008-11-29T08:33:00.000-05:00

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist at the turn of the 17th century who ushered in baroque painting and true realism. According to an Italian art scholar, he may also have been an early practitioner of photography, using firefly powder to produce short-lived fluorescent images that he could then turn into a sketch and, ultimately, a painting. He was known for working directly on canvas and not developing a series of preparatory sketches.

DIY High Speed Photography

2008-11-28T09:27:00.000-05:00

Makezine.com has an intriguing feature on do-it-yourself high speed photography - like capturing a balloon in mid-burst or a water drop as it just hits the surface of a container of water. Curiously, they used a disposable camera because its flash won't last as long as that of a commercial flash unit, which ends up letting the subject blur.

Time Q&A with Annie Leibovitz

2008-11-28T08:40:00.000-05:00

Time Magazine had a Q&A with Annie Leibovitz in which readers sent the questions. I* wouldn't call it incredibly revealing, but it was interesting, and at the end there's a link to a video interview with her.

EnWords News Roundup (11-24-2008)

2008-11-25T08:30:00.000-05:00

A collection of news about words in their various forms.

Free Recipes as Cookbook Sales Mechanism Will Schwalbe, former EIC at Hyperion, has started a food site called Cookstr that gives away recipes from top-name and lesser-known but solid cookbook authors as a way to get people to buy copies. (NYT)

Random House to Digitize Books Random House will make thousands of additional titles available in e-book form.(AP)

Writing the Unwritable in the U.K. Britain has much stricter (or looser, depending on your viewpoint) libel laws than in the US, as well as other impediments to freely publishing information. But journalists have developed all sorts of ways to report on that which could get them in legal hot water. (NYT)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Stops Buying - For Now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has told its editors that it has “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts” in trade and reference. They can't say when the ban will end. Although claiming that the move is about "doing things smarter" than "the end of literature," note that not buying now means not having a selection of new titles in 12 to 18 months. Either the house has a massive backlog, or things are worse than management wants to admit. (Publishers Weekly)

Obama and New Book Directions A Guardian blogger suggests that Obama's election will open the book industry to many new types of titles as well as creating a market for some backlist entries. (Guardian)

US Branch of Manga Publisher to Close The U.S. branch of Broccoli International, a Japan-based manga, anime, game, and merchandise publisher, will close. Although probably few readers of this blog are interested in manga and anime, it's something to note. Graphic novels have become mainstream business and the same approach to story telling has been moving into the non-fiction world. This might be a very early indicator of changing tastes of younger generations. (PW)

EU Book Digitization Project The European Union has launched Europeana, a plan to scan and make available online "millions of books, artworks, manuscripts, maps, objects and films from the most important libraries, museums and archives, and provide them free to download from one website." It will also include video and audio of interest. Having paid attention to the suit against Google, the EU is focusing on works in the public domain. The site is currently down because there was such overwhelming interest that the traffic crashed the servers. (Guardian)

LIFE Photo Archives Online

2008-11-19T05:27:00.000-05:00

LIFE Magazine was famous for its own photography. In addition, it had one heck of a photo archive. Now some of that work is available online, stretching as far back as the 1870s (long before the publication came into existence).

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

I'm finding that the description doesn't quite mesh with what I can see on the site. No matter how I search, whether by decade, year, or topic, the maximum number of photos that come back seems to be 200. For those who need old pictures for projects, remember that in the U.S., anything from before 1923 is in the public domain.

Book of Oldest Jokes Has Dead Parrot Ancestor

2008-11-17T05:55:00.000-05:00

I've written about the world's oldest recorded joke, which, truth be told, wasn't very funny. (Guess you had to be there or be an ancient Egyptian or both.) Now a new translation of a fourth century Greek joke book has a story similar in structure to the "Dead Parrot" sketch of Monty Python fame.