Lessons of the Newborn, Pt. I

Newborns teach me how wonderful it is to have two upper extremities. Life becomes a deceptively challenging exercise when one of your limbs is occupied more-or-less constantly with cradling a beautiful, sleepy infant child.

Have you ever tried to wash your hand? Have you ever tried to type a blog entry one-handed?

Fun With Digital Photography

 

As someone who has been a pretty serious photographer since the mid-eighties*, I am often astonished to the point of laughter by how digital cameras have made the craft so ridiculously simple.

Which doesn't mean easy. In some ways, the plethora of choices can make digital photography tricky.

On Christmas day, Aaron encouraged me to use the black and white option on the camera. I never had before because I always figured I could convert any picture to B&W later if the mood struck me. But, as AWK rightly pointed out, you never do. So I snapped some virtual Pan-X and messed around with the color select feature and was pleased with the results.

*I remember reading in Popular Photography about the first commercial use of digital photography. It was a newspaper photographer snapping a 1.2 megapixel (I'm guessing here; but it looked like a PixelVision still) pic of a Mike Tyson fight and then submitting it over a payphone line while feeding dimes to the phone for 20 minutes. All so the paper would have art for their early edition a few hours ahead of the competition. But more, I guess, to be in the van of this inevitably transformative technology.

Video Solution

Last weekend I finally (with Barb's help) figured out how to shrink the widescreen videos my phone takes to fit in the rather narrow Blogger panel.

After uploading to YouTube, you change the dimensions of the video in the embed HTML code. I learned of this dead-simple solution through a Google search, naturally. Barb was enlisted to do the math necessary to maintain the correct aspect ratio.

The big winner here is Elizabethtown, where I post the majority of my phone videos.

Plus, it's always nice to solve one of life's many niggling little problems -- and this relieves one of the disappointments of the Droid X.

So, cool.

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Children's Book WTF

Although I don't read as much as I did before Elizabeth was born, I now read a lot of children's books. This heretofore unexplored realm of literature is full of awesomeness: there are many beautiful, clever, fun, wonderful things going on in children's books.

There is also the occasional (and delightful) discovery that makes me think, "What the hell?"

Example the first: we've got this nice, older book called I Like the Country. It tells the story of a year on a farm in prose and song.


The simple farmer milks the cows. His playful, hardy children feed the chickens and pick apples and roam the fields with their faithful dog. His handsome wife tends a vegetable garden. In the spring they plant, in the fall they harvest, in the winter they cut wood.


It's a really good book.

And it gets even better at the end of the book when the simple farmer gets into his airplane and takes off for the city to buy groceries.


Either the author was hopelessly out of touch with the fortunes of mid-century farm families, or I am. If the latter is true, and it was indeed common for family farmers to hop into their closed-cockpit plane for a milk run to the nearest metropolis, I can only ask what the hell went wrong. If Farmer Bob in 1962 can have a plane like that, I should be flying around with a jet-pack right now.

Death Star, Seattle

 

I guess I'll continue with the Star Wars-theme that got rolling last post. This is the underwater dome at the Seatle Aquarium. Barb, bless her heart, pointed it out as being "Very Star Trek." I hadn't noticed when passing through it, but it definitely does seem to be the early work of the architect who went on to design the Death Star.

Beating a Dead Horse

As everyone who cares enough about Star Wars to read a blog entry about it knows, Star Wars is over. Done. George Lucas killed it by making the three prequels, which were so poorly done that they damned and destroyed all that came before (well, maybe not really). There were many things that bothered me, and a lot of other people about the prequels's treatment of the Star Wars universe: Jar-Jar Binks, the fact that Darth Vader built C3PO (?!), the fact that the tech looked more modern even though it was set in the past, the goddamn midichlorians (if you don't know, don't ask!), etc.

The thing that bothered me most I've never heard anyone else complain about: the way the Jedis dressed.

In the first Star Wars movie (A New Hope), Obi-Wan Kenobi dressed in robes and cowl of brown and beige homespun. Why did he dress this way? Because he was in hiding as Old Ben, the desert loon, the crazy hermit of Tatooine.


The next Jedi we meet in the original trilogy is Yoda, also in hiding, also as a hermit, but this time in a swamp on a different planet. He, too, dresses like a peasant in simple, crude garments. Remember, he's hiding out from the Empire, trying to look like anything but what he is: a Jedi Knight.

When Luke in the third movie becomes a full-on Jedi, he adopts a uniform that mixes elements of military and clergy, but it ain't robes or a serape. The man is wearing a shirt and trousers.


Then we come full circle to the first prequel, featuring Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, and future desert hermit, Obi-Wan Kenobi.


Hello! They're both dressed like hermits of Tatooine! So apparently when "Old Ben" Kenobi was hiding out in the desert backwater of Tatooine from Darth Vader (who, according to the prequels, was born and raised on Tatooine -- good place to hide, idiot), he decided to say, Fuck it, and just dress the way he always had, which is to say: like a Jedi.

It's so dumb it literally causes me pain.

Retro Camera

For three months I resisted Retro Camera, despite the fact that it was named on almost every list of must-have applications for my Android phone. It's free, so there was no compelling reason not to get it. It just sounded dumb: an app that would make the pictures from your phone's camera look like an old Polaroid picture, or the product of some other, well, retro camera.

Then, in a moment of boredom I downloaded it, tried it, and understood it. It's pretty much awesome. It essentially offers five filters for your phone cam that can, under the right circumstances, transform a lame, limping image into one that runs, sprints, flies!

It adds a few more tools to allow the mediocre-at-best phone camera to meet the expectations of your imagination (if you are the kind of person that attempts art photography no matter what kind of camera is in hand, as I am.)

The one that I like best and use most is called the Fudge Cam, a Kodak Box Brownie clone, presumably. It helped me take the picture of Elizabeth's trike. The other retro cameras (a pinhole camera, the aforementioned Polaroid, etc.) are more gimmicky, less useful -- at least to me. I'm sure some other photographer has figured out awesome things to do with them. Maybe in time I will, too.

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I Didn't Take His Advice

 

Galen Rowell, as you may have read, below, advised against taking pictures of the sunset. He said turn around and take pictures of the people/buildings/landscape/detritus that are illuminated by the sunset. I forsook his advice on Friday night at the beach, and took this picture. It's a cliche, but it's my cliche, darn it.

I like it.

Mountain Light

Galen Rowell was a hero of my youth. He died in 2002. I learned about this tonight, when blogging on Elizabethtown. Kind of a shocker.

Rowell was awesome. He was primarily a photographer, but also a writer, and an "outdoorsman" -- a sort of generic term to encompass his various outdoor activities, but mainly he was a rock-climber. He said more than once that although he was known for his photographs, he spent 75% of his professional life writing, and 25% taking pictures.

He was a good writer. However, his pictures were incredible.

I got turned on to Rowell through his 1984 best-seller Mountain Light. I was very much into photography at the time and was duly amazed at what this guy could achieve with a Nikon FM2, a 28mm lens, and Kodachrome 25. This very evening I was showing Aaron HDR photos on Flickr. (He didn't know what HDR was, so I was trying to edify.) After learning of Galen Rowell's death, I reviewed some of his photos and realized that what he achieved with his brain, very basic camera, excellent film (and a neutral density filter) was comparable to what HDR is attempting to get now.

He and his wife Barbara died in a small plane crash. Guy was 62, so not a spring chicken, but he was a healthy bastard, one of those California types that made the type famous the world 'round. Point being, if the pilot hadn't crashed, he probably would have lived to 92, vigorously.

Rowell's best piece of advice to me, as a photographer, was: turn away from the sunset and photograph what it is illuminating.

My best advice to you, in two parts: 1) learn more about Galen Rowell; 2) avoid small aircraft.

Spiders II

Perhaps you thought I was exaggerating about the spider situation? It's friggin' out of control! They're everywhere!!

Illness or Prediliction?

 

I wonder, when you see this picture, is your first thought, "Bloody toddler... vampire toddler, psychopath toddler... satanic toddler."

Maybe I was warped by movies in my developmental stage, but those are my thoughts. If you see this picture and think, "Awwww... toddler really loves cherries." I can only say, More power to you, good citizen.

I'd Like To Do This To My House

I wonder how much it costs... .

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Spider Season

There's a William Shatner movie from the seventies in which a town is overrun with spiders. In typically bleak seventies style, the heroes lose: the haunting last shot of the movie is an overhead of the small town completely blanketed by the snow-white webs of the freakish arachnids.

Portland at this time of year is like the first reel of that movie. Spiders and their horrible webs are everywhere.

Yep, we're experiencing Spider Weather.

Set a glass of water down on the picnic table, and next time you pick it up for a sip there's a strand of webbing across the mouth of the glass. Set your bike against the fence and two minutes later it's a vital structural support for a bug-catching web.

Every single day I blunder through at least two webs, often ending up with a recently evicted and none too happy eight legged freak in my hair, or rampaging across the lenses of my glasses. Yesterday, my flailing reaction to this ocular horror sent spectacles and spider sailing from my head. Luckily, both found a soft landing on the welcome mat and the glasses didn't break.

As summer transitions to fall, nature will resolve the issue as it always does, sending the spiders back to wherever they go when it's too rainy to spin a nine foot web across my back yard.

I hope.

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Bossman in the Dunk Tank

 

I've been in management for eighteen months, give or take, but nothing has driven home (to me) my status as the boss as much as sitting in the dunk tank at the company picnic, watching wild-eyed employees heave softballs at the target that would put me in the drink.

It's just something I would never have done if I didn't feel like it was the right thing to do. It wasn't fun. There's the unpleasant expecation of the dunk with each thrown ball, then the always physically jarring dunk itself, and the shockingly cold water. The dunk tank machinery was broken, too, so the damn thing dumped me even when a thrower missed the target. Sometimes it dunked me even though no ball had been thrown. Irritating.

Although not an experience I enjoyed, I'm glad I did it.

A Good Day

Today was a good day. Nothing spectacular. Just a good day.

Barb made pancakes for breakfast. I had a brief but good phone conversation with Mark. We spent a couple of hours at the Adult Soapbox Derby at Mt. Tabor, seeing some friends we haven't seen in a while.

Elizabeth wouldn't nap, so I spent the afternoon doing some little 'nesting' chores, like putting up the spice-rack, setting up the microwave, and hanging a produce basket from the kitchen ceiling. In the evening the whole family did yard work until storytime. I got the second camellia pruned, which was extremely satisfying.

Nothing special, just a good day.

(Hot as a mo-fo, though.)

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Flagger Fail

I was amused by this flagger encountered at SE 11th and Hawthorne on my ride home from work today. She kept her STOP/SLOW sign upside down the whole time I was at the intersection, which was like ten minutes. Quite a lot of cyclists built up. I think the guy talking to her may have been her boss trying to figure out what the heck she was doing, because shortly after he showed up we were allowed to roll.

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Portland Signposts

Portland has got a very planned cityscape, which entails the creation and use of some pretty funky signs. I'll present more in the coming days (or weeks), but this one will do for starters.

Plus, this entire post, including the photo, are the product of my (disappointing; but that's a tale for a different post) Motorola Droid X.

Why couldn't there be a Motorola Droog?

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Updated: Typos edited out on the laptop.

The Smartphone Shortage Problem

You can't buy any of the latest generation of smartphones. Why is no one writing about this?

The HTC Incredible was introduced April 29, 2010. You still can't go into a store and buy one. Back ordered. Then comes the HTC Evo in early June. Can't buy one. Back ordered. Apple's iPhone 4 comes out June 24. Can I go into a store and buy one? No. Then in late June pre-orders for the Motorola Droid X are opened and within days Best Buy stops taking pre-orders because the first production run is sold out. Now after the handful that are shipped to Verizon stores on July 15 are sold, it, too, will be back ordered.

So the only "superphone" that one can currently buy is the Nexus One, which came out in January and is on the worst network in the country: T-Mobile. Wonderful.

But for certain reasons I'm feeling pretty desperate to get a family plan and get Mom and Barb and myself cell phones. And of course, because I am a technogeek and can afford it, I want a superphone. So I decide, "Fuck it, I'll get a last-generation smartphone -- the still-pretty-cool Motorola Droid." Got to Verizon's website, add the Droid to my cart, add a free phone to the cart for Barb, then go to find the bare-bones and perfect-for-honored-citizens Samsung Knack for Mom and guess what? The goddamn Knack, the most basic phone in existence, is currently sold out.

What is the deal? Is this a business strategy to keep people in a froth about the latest and greatest? Is it a sign that industry is pushing the boundaries of the technosphere so hard that the infrastructure of manufacturing is breaking down? Or are these companies so dumb that they time after time underestimate the demand for these very expensive products in this depressed economy?

God, I Hate Technology.

Let's start with the Zune HD I'm listening to right now (Carry the Zero by Built to Spill; my goodness, it's a beautiful song). I bought it for Barb last Christmas because she wanted a radio. Poor thing. She just wanted a radio, an FM radio to listen to KNRK and KOPB, etc. Given just this little bit of license ("I'd like a radio, please") I dug into the internet with the fury of a Viking attacking a hamlet of innocent Celtic fisherfolk.

I learned everything there was to know about latest-generation mp3 players, focusing specifically on the disadvantages of the monarchical iPod touch. I chose the mighty challenger, the Zune HD, which is a nice piece of kit, but frankly can't hold a candle to the iPod. Except, the iPod touch doesn't have an FM receiver. You've got to buy a docking station from Bose or someone else to get that. And if you want a decent one (e.g., a Bose) it adds three hundred bucks to the bottom line.

So that sucks. Apple offers the best product, but gimps it. Which seems weird, as their cheapy iPod nano has an FM receiver. Why not the bigger Touch? Oh yeah, because that's exactly Apple's business plan and it has made them the biggest tech company in the USA. That's why. They introduce very appealing products that have a short feature list. Then every year or two they add features, causing a frenzy of buying among their cultish fanbase.

Three or four years ago when I was looking for an mp3 player for myself I chose the Korean iRiver Clix over the American iPod Nano because the Clix had an FM receiver. And it was cheaper. And it had a voice recorder. And it didn't require proprietary software. Three or four years later Apple introduces a new Nano with, what do you know!, an FM tuner. Their business model is to inspire loyalty through fantastic design (they win in that category every time -- their products are beautiful), and then inspire their loyal fan base to trade in their products every year or two as they introduce new models with features that the originals should have had all along.

This business model irritates me enough so I don't want to ever buy an Apple product, even though they are indisputably awesome. I get a Clix, or a Zune, or a Gateway.

Now I want a smartphone. Bad. But screw Apple and it's effed-up iPhone!

Hollywood?

 

This looks like a still from a Hollywood disaster movie, but it's real. This isn't a news post, so I'm not reporting with any accuracy where it happened: Guatemala, if memory serves. Regardless, the image is striking, frightening, and apparently the very real result of subterranean waters creating a sinkhole.

Appearances

This guy J Allard (yeah, he goes by the affected name J without even a period) has been in the news a bit lately because he just quit or was fired from Microsoft, where he was a bigwig in the department that created the Xbox and the Zune (our family owns both of those products). He first came to my attention a few years back during the launch of the Xbox 360 because at some MTV event he infamously wore a sport coat over a hooded sweatshirt. Which seemed to most observers to be an absurd, maybe even pathetic, attempt to merge his middle-aged corporate self with a youthful-hipster image that MS desired in the person who would be pitching the Xbox 360.

The picture below is of J Allard as I've always known him: too-hip clothes and the shaved pate of a bald guy who doesn't want to appear to be a bald guy.


Kinda looks like a jerk. But whatever, he's a bigwig in the cutthroat world of consumer electronics. What do you expect?

Then I saw this picture, of J Allard before he got famous.


Besides leaving me with a vague feeling of depression, this contrast between the two pictures made me wonder whether this was a conscious decision on his part -- a midlife crisis, perhaps -- or direction from his people.

I imagine myself as the earlier J, a smiling goof in a plaid shirt (essentially what I am now), and then one of my bosses saying, "Andy, you need to spruce up the image a little bit. You're the face of the Xbox. Go to the mall. See what the kids are into, what they're wearing, what their hair is like. Try to skew a little younger."

And me thinking to myself, "I got it! A sportcoat over a hoodie!"

RIP, Beautiful Sue

My favorite in-law passed away. Suzanne Bracco was a sweet, gentle person whom I always enjoyed being with. I'll miss her.

RIP, Part Two

The falling maple obliterated our blueberry bushes. They were just coming into their own, a couple of years after having been moved from the (much too hot & sunny) front of the house.

Now they're kindling.

Damn.

RIP, Beautiful Maple

 

Our maple is dead. Oh, it still clings to life by a thread, but it's only a matter of time. Last night Barb and I were awakened by a mysterious crash. Turned out to be the maple, which had lost one trunk this summer, losing another. It narrowly missed the house, and now I'm paranoid as all get out (well, as paranoid as I get: mildly concerned) that the remaining 1.5 trunks with their attendant limbs will fall on the house. Specifically, on our bedroom, while we are asleep, running us through in multiple places with greenwood spearpoints, leaving Elizabeth Rose an orphan, bereft.

So I guess we're sleeping in the living room tonight!

The maple was our one big tree. I fear that the backyard is going to feel like a parking lot, baking in the sun all summer. But a part of me, small though it be, is excited by the change -- any change. Something good almost always pokes its head up through the piles of bad.

Bloody Disgusting!

 

Sunday March 14, 2010: Pat and Andrew Gaughan and I all ran the 15K Shamrock Run. Around mile three (of 9.2, for those non-Canadian readers of mine) my nipples were feeling a bit raw from all the bouncing up and down and rubbing against the shirt I wore under my fleece. They hurt the whole while, but not terribly so. Not more than my knees, for instance. But after the race when I stripped off the fleece, the bloody shirt, pictured, was revealed, causing shock, dismay, disgust, and laughter from those assembled (the aforementioned Gaughans, and Barb -- Elizabeth, thank goodness, was oblivious). Apparently the chafing went farther than I had realized. Guess I'm lucky to have any nipples left at all. If it had been a half-marathon they might have been sanded down to nothing.

Dad Was Right

When I was applying to colleges, my first choice was Syracuse University's Newhouse School. It's a communication school, specializing in writing, television, and the like. Bob Costas went there.

My father always said to me, "You want to be a writer, make sure you learn how to be on TV." This was 1988. I was like, "Dad, you're crazy. I don't want to be on TV. I want to be a writer." I'm thinking: I sit in a room in a Victorian mansion click-clacking on a manual typewriter. As with Johh LeCarre, no one sees my face.

Boy, was I wrong. Boy was Dad, Hovey Larrison (born in 1933), right.

He thought, he expected, he believed that everyone who produced media would be a video personality. He, who was barely aware of the internet when he died in 2001, was spot-on-the-nose right.

Take, for example, Penny Arcade. I love Penny Arcade. It's an online three-panel comic strip created by two guys, Jerry and Mike, one writer, one illustrator. They started off asking for donations to keep the strip going. Over the years they became wildly successful (as they should have, seeing as how awesome they are). Now they've got a fucking TV show.

Dad, if you can hear me, let me say the words you've probably heard a hundred thousand times: sorry, you were right after all.

Facebook Freaks Me Out

One time many years ago I took it upon myself to organize a bunch of old pictures that Mark had in shoeboxes (probably not literally shoeboxes, but you get the idea). Most of them were from Dad's childhood, or Mom's, but eventually I unearthed a strata of late-'70s-early-'80s photos of our family. I showed one to Mark: it was us and our cousins sitting around the dining table at Camp. Mark was sporting a Peter Frampton afro and grinning like the world was his oyster.

"I hate pictures," he said.

Now I get it. Or at least, sort of.

Fucking Facebook.

I want to use Facebook to stay in touch with those people whom I love but who I never talk to. My cousins, as a for instance. But then I log in and get hit with a friend invite from Eamon Lee, someone whose name is only very vaguely familiar. Was he that weird little kid from up the street, whose sister I kind of liked? When I was eight? Who the hell knows! It's the only Eamon I've ever had any contact with, so it seems pretty likely. So I click on his profile and get this photo of some world-weary chef -- goatee, crowsfeet, paunch. What the fuck?

Or follow the link for the Christian Brothers Academy Class of 1988 and find all these names attached to faces. The name -- Kirk Coyle? -- rings some faint bell and the face is like the image from a dream: the fatter, redder, hairier version of some kid I apparently spent four years with a long time ago. Nothing against Kirk Coyle or any of the others. I'm not exactly 16, either. It's not that we're middle-aged. Middle-aged is fine. It's that from my point of view, they aged from 16 to 40 in an instant, like a vampire dragged out of its coffin into the sun, withering and turning to blowing ash in the time it takes for the second hand to make its circuit around the watchface.

Perhaps this whole social networking thing is better left to the kids, who can grow up with it. If I had seen Kirk Coyle's profile picture change gradually over the years, as he sailed serenely into decrepitude, it would have softened the blow.

The World Ends With You... Finally!

A couple of weeks ago I finished The World Ends With You, the nonpareil DS role-playing game that I started playing in (wait for it) July 2008.

Yep, it took me 19 months to finish a 20 or 30 hour videogame. But, man, was it fun.

I'm not going to go plunging into the depths of videogame criticism here. I don't have the toolset. But in brief, this game is unprecedented (IMHO, as they say), because it tells a good story with interesting, sympathetic characters while being a very fun, deep, interesting, challenging game. Most games sacrifice story for gameplay; a handful do the opposite. TWEWY is the only game I've played where the story and the gameplay were a beautifully integrated whole. A shining, backlit oneness. And, yes, I've played Bioshock. Awesome game. No comparison.

The game aspect is very challenging indeed. For the first two or three months, I had really no idea how to play the game. But the fact that I could make progress, of a sort, while really not knowing what I was doing, is a testament to the monumental achievement of this game as an object of design. Someone (or, really, some number of people numbering maybe in the dozens or higher) went through an elaborate process to design a game with a ruleset that could do this: be very complex, very challenging, yet fun and forgiving.

It's really hard to communicate to non-gamers why and how games can be sublime. Frankly, most of the time they're not. But this game is so good that it makes me wish that everyone could experience it. Unfortunately, unlike movies, video games are a very active experience that require a certain level of skill and ability. Mom is never going to be able to play TWEWY. That's not really her loss -- books and movies and music already offer more than one human can intake in even a very long life -- it's the medium's loss.

What the F?

 
The illustration to the left is from one of my daughter's books. A book called Alligator Alphabet. Above is "F."

And, yes, that four-legged purple monkey is supposed to be a ferret. A ferret! How this painting ever got past the editors at Barefoot Books is beyond me. Elizabeth's ability to learn her ABC's is now permanently crippled. When reading the book she says, "F is for fox, fish and... and... monkey?"