external monologue

Some online goodies

It's been a weekend of reunions with old friends. Old, old friends. Like from 2nd grade. But more on that later.

A few cool things I found online today worth sharing. The first is an mp3 from this guy Joe Purdy who had a closing song in an episode of LOST that I watched today. (Yes, I did watch 6 episodes straight this afternoon and got absolutely nothing done around the house.) Occasionally they do this cool thing on the show when everything comes together at the end of an episode. Hurley puts on his headphones and the song he listens to becomes the only sound as they do a montage of all the characters getting along nicely. It's usually very effective and this one song in particular I really enjoyed and dug up on Purdy's site: Wash Away. (Btw, I checked out the rest of his stuff and I can't really recommend it, but this one's worth a listen.)

The other thing I found today is this short stop-action film shot entirely with a digital SLR called I Use Magic. I don't know anything about the guy who made it, but the music is good (Sufjan) and the limitations of shooting stop action open up some pretty cool techniques for filmmaking. Definitely worth a download. (Thanks to Barlow for the link. Do I know you?)

Pixar + Disney = ?

Bob Cringley is an information technology analyst and self-proclaimed tech know-it-all: "When it comes to information technology, I know what I am talking about... The best and brightest in Silicon Valley talk to me all the time." He does a weekly column called I, Cringley in which he comments on current happenings in the IT world and usually makes predictions about the future. Most of the time he's right. This from his latest piece on the Pixar/Disney merger:

So the sale to Disney gives Jobs a smaller piece of a bigger pie and therefore much easier liquidity. But it also gives him the chance to nag Disney into the 21st century, as I am sure he will. Strong minority shareholders tend to clash with management (look at Ross Perot with General Motors and Ted Turner with Time-Warner), and Jobs will do the same with Disney. He'll push to end Disney's partnership with Microsoft, to bring Disney into the Apple-Intel alliance, and potentially try for some partnership with Sony, too. It's the start of a grand amalgamation based around a combination of content, technology, and networking, and I wouldn't at all be surprised to see it end as a single huge company five years from now with Jobs at the helm.

I, for one, am a little disappointed to hear about the merger. I was somewhat looking forward to new Pixar films freed from the contentious relationship with Disney. I'm afraid now we'll just end up with really slick versions of Pocahantas and the Lion King. Then again, if Disney gets on the Apple bandwagon, that could be good for everyone. We'll see. Let's just hope Jobs can stay healthy...

Kirby Bloggin'

Just a little shout out to Cannon Kirby over at Florida Duck Days. He's started blogging finally and you can read all about his recent duck hunting.

He was also the inspiration for the great frame designs on my Finster photos, which are now hung on the walls at Mojo Burrito.

Comment Spam Update

I just realized that my comment spam blocking was keeping anyone using Internet Explorer on Windows from posting comments. I think I've got it fixed now, but if you're having trouble posting, please drop me an email: andy AT loapher DOT com.

Finster Revisted

Anyone who's followed this blog through the years will remember the Howard Finster tribute that I was a part of a few years ago. Some of the 20 or so framed photographs that were leftover from that exhibit have been given away or sold to friends. The large majority, however, have sat neglected in a box or on the floor for most of the last couple years.

Well, I finally have good news! Tomorrow they're going to be hung at Mojo Burrito. They'll be on display there for the rest of this month and all of February. Most of them will be for sale. It's not the MoMA, but hey, it's better than sitting on the floor at my house.

Mojo is reopening for evenings this week, so go buy a burrito and check out the artwork if you're in the neighborhood.

My roommates are LOST to me

Okay, you know how I said I was just starting to watch LOST and that I felt like I was getting hooked? Well, I didn't mention that Brent and Morris watched the first episode with me. And then they watched the second episode -- without me. And then they watched the next 14 episodes -- without me. And I thought I was hooked... I think they spent a total of about 12 hours in front of the TV this afternoon. I kept leaving the house and coming back and hearing the LOST theme music every time. Grr... now I'm gonna have to get all caught up by myself!

Brokeback and Evolution

Saw two movies this weekend: Brokeback Mountain and Underworld Evolution. One was fantastic, the other a great, though somewhat expected, disappointment - in that order.

I'm still processing Brokeback. I honestly don't know what to say about it yet. My gut reaction to it has been pretty positive on the whole. Beautifully shot and incredibly well acted. Heath Ledger's acting has developed tremendously since the days of "Ten Things I Hate About You." Though I have to wonder if it just took getting the right role to bring him out. The subtlety with which he plays his part; it's so restrained and powerful. The story is compelling regardless of your opinion on the morality of the relationship it's built around. With the recent trend in film towards political agenda (Syriana, The Constant Gardner, Lord of War, etc.) I expected this film to be more heavy-handed, to be full of social commentary. But as a story it felt very self-sufficient. The tension created by the forbidden love between Jack and Ennis was closer to the tension in a Romeo and Juliet (or any other good story of love denied) than what you find in an "Angels in America" or "Philadelphia" (or other films focusing on the trials of gays in our culture). I don't know that I could recommend it to everyone, but it's certainly challenging and beautiful to watch.

Underworld Evolution on the other hand was totally disappointing. I'll admit right off that I'm a sucker for a vampire flick. I'll see just about anything that comes out. And the first Underworld was really good. It had style and took advantage of the system that dealing with vampires creates (immortality, stakes through the hearth, that whole bit). But the sequel falls prey to what I call the Matrix Fallacy. You take a perfectly good idea and make a great film about it (The Matrix). Then in the sequel, you toss out what everyone loved in the first film (superpowers that are only possible inside the matrix) and instead make an unnecessarily long movie about a bunch of badasses having fights between themselves. Almost nothing in Evolution has anything to do with vampires or werewolves. It's all just a bunch of super strong characters fighting in dark rooms. Oh, a couple of comletely gratuitous sex scenes. Josiah said it best as we walked out: "Well that was a complete waste of two hours of my life."

Ian and the pop afficianados

I spent Saturday afternoon and evening photographing Ian Cardillo's wedding. They got married at St. Elmo Pres and held the reception at the Mountain City Club. It was a small wedding and pretty informal -- my favorite kind, especially when I'm photographing. But the music at the reception was a lot of fun. Ian's brother in law, Stephen Nichols, performed with his band. They mostly covered Beatles and other highly danceable pop songs to very good effect. The group definitely has good taste and some musical chops. I'd be interested in hearing something if they put an album together. The most I can find online at this point is a website for "A Good Measure" which seems pretty esoteric. The most I can gather is that it's some sort of performance art project. If anyone has leads on his tunes, do tell.

In the kitchen

Saturday night a few friends hung out in the kitchen at my place. Funny how everyone always congregates to the smallest, most uncomfortable room in the house.

LOST

Oh, and I just started watching LOST. And I think I might be hooked. And I don't even like TV. Thanks to Josh Kring for letting me borrow season one on DVD. This show is actually on TV? It's so well done... Each episode looks like a short film. Oh wait... I just finished the pilots. Well, here's hoping it keeps up.

Beating the comment spam bots

I've been out of the blogging world for long enough that I'm not even sure whether comment spam is much of problem anymore. Granted, it's only been about 4 months, but a lot can happen in that time. For me, like I said, that was one of the big issues in keeping me from blogging. I just got so tired of cleaning out the comment spam every morning, not to mention how disgusting it is to see penis enlargers, among other things, for sale on a site that I know my Mom (and probably your mom) reads on a daily basis.

All that to say that I think I've found a few tricks for limiting the spam. At this point, unless someone builds a spam bot specifically for my blog, then I don't expect they'll be getting through. And if they do, then I'll find another workaround. If you're interested in getting more details about what changes I've made, just drop me an email and I can fill you in.

File under geek

One of things that will be different now that I'm blogging again is that I'll probably be writing about web technology quite a bit more than I used to. This is probably quite a disappointment to many (most?) of you who are still reading. I'm guessing many of you came here orginally for the photos, and you're not seeing much in the way of images lately.

Well, all I can say is that work at Coptix has begun to leak into what I typically consider recreation or hobby. I've been discovering quite a bit in terms of programming and web development lately that has really gotten my attention. Most of it, at this point, revolves around JavaScript and the various new applications that people have been creating with it, generally referred to as Web 2.0 or Ajax. All of that made sound pretty geeky and uninteresting, but the kinds of apps that are coming out are anything but. Some good examples are Google Maps and Protopage that allow you do interact a great deal with a web page without waiting for the server to refresh the page.

Much of the reason that I'll be covering these topics has more to do with my learning than with sharing the news with anyone else. At this point, the ability to think through and communicate about this new technology will help have a deeper understanding of it. If you find it helpful, that's great. If you have suggestions or comments, please chime in.

I won't bore you with more detail now, but don't be surprised if you see more entries like this one in the future.

Comment Spam Security

I've bumped the comment spam security down a notch. I'll see if the spammers can get through and if so, it'll go back up. For now, comment posting will appear normal.

A return to blogging...

Hey.

I think I may just start blogging again.

A number of things have kept me from it for quite some time now. One of those things is the perfectionist in me who doesn't want to blog unless I think my blog setup is perfect. I've just decided to let that one go for the time being. I'm working on a few side projects that may help resolve that issue, but for now, good old (imperfect) "external monologue" will just have to do.

Second is the problem of comment spam. It's such a pain to deal with since you can't leave your blog for five minutes without some schmo-bot trying to hawk cheap pharmaceuticals on it. So, I've made an attempt at fixing that. You'll see it as soon as you try to leave a comment. Hopefully it won't keep you from posting, though you'll have to jump through one more hoop to get your $0.02 online. Deal with it, I say, and let's stick it to the spam-bots. (Yes, I thought about moving over to another service that manages comment-spam for you, but then I'd lose all my good Google rankings and what have you.)

Third is that I haven't been making photographs much lately. But, I've missed blogging enough that I'm going to push on forward with it even though I may not be posting pictures very often. That might hurt readership a bit, but that's never really been that important to me anyway.

That said, I'm back. And here's some good news for your photophiles:

I've discovered flickr... and man is it awesome. If you want to see what few pictures I have taken in the last few months, you can see them there. I purchased a pro account (which I highly recommend) and I'm using it as my new digital archiving system. Here's the links to my stuff:

My photostream, if you just want to jump in and start digging around.

Or, my sets, if you want to see things in a bit more organized fashion.

If you're interested in being able to download larger versions or get prints of anything there, just join flickr and then make me a contact (or friend) and you'll get access.

Alright. Let's not overdo it on the first post. I'm off to bed.