friday reflections

well things were running hot around here this week once I picked up the new laptop. to start with the bb e-mail list big brother live in australia on yahoo has just gone beserk. tons of noise to signal ratio though, hmmm need a rethink i think. all sorts of work is piling up here though, a whole heap of monochrome materials assignments from my photography students, have been handed in. currently sitting near my desk gathering dust so to speak guess i'll look at them soon! still need to do heaps to the school website add any necessary notices and maybe put some images up online from the recent camp in the otways, well not that recent but it is the only one we have each year. been thinking a bit about digital photography these days. one of our recent interviewees mentioned the idea that as good quality gold cds are no longer available people's images that are stored on the non gold cds will not last, as long as film anyway. so what does this mean? people stop using digital, invest in cms, content management systems, different hardware, i guess there must be some options out there. to be honest my little 2 meg camera images whilst there are plenty of them are not the kind of images i would consider precious enough to worry about their longevity. certainly as far as screen based work is concerned i can't even be sure all will see them the way i want them to be seen. some one recently expressed disappointment that i was considering abandoning analog all together, given that i have an online photography gallery 24/7. that can display images in all sorts of ways, randomly, in a linear manner, as post-modern nonlinear narrative, the possibilities are pretty exciting. plenty of food for thought there. i actually over the recent holidays put a series of images in a book that i am hoping to self publish very soon... along with a million other things i want to do!

it's here it's here

with much fanfare here it is the new 14 inch iBook stay tuned for more!

and now something you've all been waiting for

yes I took the phone call earlier today, in the middle of my uni class, (naughty, naughty, phone was still on for other reasons), the laptop is ready to be picked up!! any way this is the last post NOT done from my laptop

eating out

had brekky out this morning at our favourite local restaurant. huge it was. so huge i doubt i'll eat much again today,

• 2 small hash browns,
• 1 chicken and herb sausage,
• 2 poached eggs,
• 3 rashers of bacon
• 2 halves of atomatoe and
• 2 cups of coffee

mmmm! went for a long walk afterwards to counter the effects, so hopefully it'll all be a net gain of zero. the weather is shocking out there, and me thinks that melbourne is throwing one of it's tanties before the real bad weather kicks in so i'm expecting a couple more small bouts of good weather before we fly off to the northern summer. almost...almost got out in the darkroom and printed today! downloaded a couple of nifty apps last night, 'you control' and 'launchbar', both from versiontracker dot com. you control adds all this stuff to your finder window and allows quick and easy access to all sorts of info, time (in several places around the world if you want), files and folders on your hard drive, amounts of unread e-mail, news items that you may be interesteded in reading on and on. the other allows you to work with your computer without using the dock, just some shortcut keys to go anywhere on your hard drive, its freeware so i reckon i'll keep it, the other isn't and it's giong to cost me $75-120.00 australlian so i will need to think long and hard about it! coz it's a little ripper and could almost be worth it, just for the news aggregator alone.

tgif

reading my last entry it would be easy to get confused as to where i was writing from. well i wrote it from work, and here i am at home making the last entry for this week, glad i set this all up as having to download and upload all sorts of different versions of my site would just confuse the hell out of me. which is the only way i can figure that i could work without my laptop, which by the way should be in my hot little hands by this time next week, and not a moment too soon. the shit hit the fan today as far as the weather is concerned here in melbourne town. sitting here at home heater on and still thinking about slipping into something a little more comfortable/warm, no cheeky my wife isn't home yet. 'bout time we had some rain though, god knows the garden needs it. the crazy weather even impacted on the classes at work this morning. i was late, along with 2 other staff members and a further 2 called in sick, great start for a our newest staff member, almost a trial by fire. given that hp took him under her wing the poor guy may have second thoughts about even working with us. hope not he seems pretty cool, unlike hp! got a stack of assignments sitting on my desk at work. all from the recently completed monochrome materials unit that i teach as part of the diploma of arts applied photography at pic. sure as hell NOT looking forward to marking all that! still it will be interesting to see how the students fare, they often come out with some surprising results. last year was a bit of a classic several students were convinced that there 11 zones in the zone system. as far as i'm concerned 0 is not a number and has no detail, so it don't count. it also kinda nice to see lots of different images printed up on a variety of papers. my favourite of which is forte. a wonderful warm and rich silver gelatin paper that despite it's lack of speed is a true gem in this day and age of dull old variable contrast papers.

the more things change the more they stay the same

i was right, it was pretty chaotic here today. as a kind of side bonus because i had no laptop i couldn't access my notes for the afternoon class, industrial photography so it was brief one and i don't think too many of the students were complaining either about the short class. no surprises there either. placed the school order for the 14 inch iBook today, sadly this looks like the one that was going to get past the wicket keepers the easiest so to speak. which means, while there will be a noticeable improvement in performance for me i am going to have to download my camera images a different way, probably with iPhoto, at least it'll have a built in burner and i'll be able to back up much easier. director will run better as well. sadly i predict a week wait still as it is already late in the week. stay tuned for an update on that one! one of the interesting things about teaching photography at this level, ie post high school, is that the students can be a little more demanding than in a high school enviroment. which can be a double edged sword sometimes, but generally i would argue that it is more positive than negative. as an example, after a class on different format cameras, then a session of setting up the darkrooms, i barely got a chance for a morning teabreak and my lunch break was shortened considerably also, still as i said at the beginning i was able to dismiss the class after lunch after only a short discussion and get on with the iBook purchase order and a software order. one might argue, who really needs a teabreak anyway, well if there's one thing i've learnt in my short teaching career, it's that 'pacing one's self' is the only way to make it through 40 weeks of teaching. all breaks included.

musings

first couple of day back and things haven't changed all that much, (as if they would in two short weeks). still wondering how to keep the students as a whole occupied with the *ideas* behind an interactive art cd rom. it's interesting some students really grasp the ideas by the horns and others... well they just want to push buttons. personally i reckon i'm a bit of a hybrid in that area and am happy to push buttons but need to have a reason. i'm talking computer software here by the way folks. we have reached the midway point in the project and am starting to see some ideas develop, which is always encouraging. next week sees them bring in their ideas so far and me working one to one with them on their ideas. i will have my regular photography students tomorrow and or the rest of the week kind of looking forward to that. issues coming up this term, lenses, specialised film types, polaroid processes, a hankering back down with digital aka photoshop, etc etc. if i get my laptop in time for the classes on lenses, i am going to use some examples from my nokia mobile phone camera to demonstrate how 'distorted' a lens can be, and what these distortions look like. the big trip is around 8 weeks away now, am kind of starting to get a bit excited about it all, still haven't sighted the tickets yet, once we do well... no more thinking this is just a dream kinda' stuff. still researching exhibitions and galleries we can visit. funnily enough i think that the idea of seeing all that art that i have been reading about for so many years is what really excites me the most, plus the flying i just love getting in planes and moving around at high speed. the whole idea that you can be in a completely different culture within an hour of flying is something that many aussies, myself included, just can't quite get their heads around.

not so bright light and aching joints two

again am suffering from last night's over-indulgence, great party though, great pad, need to get back and see it in the day light coz i suspect that the backyard is pretty awesome, it was great standing in front of an open fire too, me being a fire bug and all you know ; ) thanks trav and michelle for putting on a great one, trav i owe you shitloads of beer know - AGAIN! originally we had planned to crash, but nik (the designated driver, my lovely wife and gorgeous all round great 'gal) felt ok to drive home so we did. a couple of other things, back to work next week (still sans laptop!) the big brother site goes online early next month, found yet another CSS source of information and the big trip is only 8 weeks away!

it was 60 years ago today...

that the inventor of LSD took his first trip! here's a link to some other events in drug taking history here's an LSD laced blog. finally found one of those 'bad sites' that corrupt us all on all sorts of drug taking no less, including a link to some info on absinthe?

weird...

yesterday spent the day interviewing prospective candidates for the technician position at my most regular place of employment, got home and was just totally wigged, can't put a finger on exactly why though? there was a couple of heart wrenching stories and really only two outstanding candidates so i guess the next staff, meeting will be interesting to say the least? which will be when i will be arguing my case for a new laptop, i know which one i want but i suspect that i will have to argue strongly for my desired model, something that hasn't been easy for me to do generally but practice makes perfect i guess.

e-mail

recently found out that spam bots often take intelligent guesses at e-mail addresses through dns lookup etc, and of course my e-mail addy consisted of part of my domain name, so now i have change my e-mail address but of course i am subscribed up to the hilt in all manner of e-mail lists so i still reckon it'll take a few days for me to suss out where else i need to update and modify subscription details. and i haven't even begun to think about where it's sprinkled though out my website???

speechless?

the weather here in melbourne is somewhat uncharacteristically warm, and windy. no point in shooting really. even if i wanted to i couldn't, i promised the students i would open the facilities for a few hours today and here i sit, still sans laptop and now waiting for the college office to open so i can generate an order and procure a new one. the shots i processed yesterday are ok. however made a poor judgment on the state of the developer i used it seems healthier that i thought it could be, so i have really gutsy negs as a consequence. the formula i used, 1+1 T-Max RS 24 degrees 10 minutes, based on the published info at straight 5 minutes. next time i'll try 1+2 at about the same time and temperature. because i give plenty of exposure to the shadows i don't have too much to worry about just the highlights.

no contest

here's a neat little article at design by fire dot com about bloggers and gurus love the guys writing style! may even add his site to my side bar. having spent some time poking around this guys site i have come to the conclusion that shooting for the screen and shooting for print are two completely different ideas and require worlds apart different approaches, must investigate further? this actually adds to my ideas about using the web as some kind of experimental exhibition space, one with limitless boundaries and endless possibilities?

on-line research

searching for upcoming photograph shows around London and europe on our up coming trip and discovered this little site, londonphotos.org which is a blog run on movable type dot org and for a mere $80.00 Aus I can have one to? will hopefully see the bill brandt show while we are in london, and maybe get extensive access to the v and a collection of photography? spent all morning on-line doing this research for new york and london and wow are we in for some cultural overload on this trip!

c.c.p arizona

spent a little while last night, downloading all the info i am going to need to view some top class prints from the history of photography at the ccp in arizona, haven't actually read them yet but when my wife and i went for a walk to the shops last night we had already thought of over a dozen photographers, here's a short list so far:-

• Robert Adams
• Minor White
• Edward Weston
• Brett Weston
• Sally Mann
• Harry Callaghan
• Lee Freidlander
• Ralph Gibson
• Paul Strand
• William Mortensen
• Gary Winnogrand
• Aaron Siskind
• Wyn Bullock

meanwhile am trying also to dredge up information on other galleries worldwide that may have ineresting images that i might want to look at. not such an easy task. but ultimatley worth it in the end i suspect.

gmail?

just learned of gmail, google's new e-mail service that allows a 1 gig of storage! and tons of other stuff the others don't give, this from the MX community e-mail where i first learned of it, and apprently this news is over a week old!

Last week we reported the announcement of Google's new Gmail. As usual, Google has stirred things up. With one Gigabyte of storage and the ability to index and search your own mail, it's been very appealing to some. This week, reports include everything from Sean Palmer's luck at getting one of the first 1,000 accounts for testing (along with sereenshots), a trademark problem (in the Register), to the complaints of privacy groups (in CNET News), to Danny Sullivan's ideas about where this could all go. And the possible weakening of Microsoft's presumed desktop power. Read Danny's comments at ClickZ.com. Finally, in the Topix.net Weblog, read about the rumored 100,000 servers Google is running.

up and at 'em

well am recovering from the anxiety of being separated from my computer quite nicely, have set up an eMac at home and am all set up, e-mail, multiple browsers the works, i must admit it seems to be getting easier to set all this kind of stuff up too, whether it's apple's new os of my knowledge i dunno. anyway i spent all day yesterday tinkering with some digi prints, scanning etc, and made a couple of prints which despite them being printed on an epson 2100 i was not that impressed, still was it the scanning of my negs, the use of that fucked up program photoshop or a combination of errors? just hope i can keep the flow happening generally with all the stuff that just easin' right on at me really nicely at the moment. i can't remember the last time i had such a creative burst, it's awesome! it was good to get in there and get my hands dirty so to speak. the reasons why i'm not hapy with the results, well the shadow values in the prints spiked to quickly, and were too dense even after i 'dodged' them in the fucked up program photoshop, maybe this requires some work in that ever faithful app, Live Picture, now there's an application for the imaging professional!

snap crackle pop

disaster strikes, my old trusty Ti g4 powerbook broke a hinge this morning, the bad news it's warranty has run out, the good news maybe i can convince my employer it'll be cheaper to buy a new one rather than fix the old? what this ultimately means is that as i have no access to purchase orders for either a repair or a replace i will have to wait over a week and a half to know where i stand, this in turn means these entries will drop off and then of course there is the return to wok around the same time, plus the impending overseas holiday oh boy! so with over 10 days to go on my mid term break i guess it's off to the analog darkroom i go? or maybe i'll got to work and use the machinery there to print (analog OR digital) during all this i am struggling STILL to get my phone to connect to my laptop i have the cable i have the driver, i now apparently need some more software to read it as iSync is not able to do this?

two days in...

but who's counting? second day of the 1st term break and am enjoying myself immensely, processed and scanned yesterday but the scans are going to need to be tweaked substantially, new software, old lens, exposure perhaps a bit on the dense side? anyway got a couple of good ones and will consider making digital prints as well. of course my initial excitement was a little over abundant but out of 4 rolls i hope to get 2 or 3 prints and i think i'm doing well? recently re-discovered this site housing some of my images so made yet another update and added more info and details. linked in my sidebar of course, somewhere on this site, which by the way is a navigation nightmare, i thought i saw a link to a blog section. of course i can't seem to find it now, but this maybe part of the answer for what i've been looking for in terms of pictures and a blog, free. found it, now not sure what to do?

monday not so blue

spent yesterday not in the darkroom as i had hoped, but outdoors with my trusty old mamiya c2. shot 4 rolls! now i've got to run to work and process the film. the whole experience was quite interesting i listened to one of my fave cds whilst i was shooting and it most definitely flavoured the whole experience. the rise and fall or is its crescendo of the music seemed to amplify the visual experience immensely, will this translate into some kind of meaningful image, time will tell (i hope to scan and upload later today), actually the whole day was one of those days where all seemed to be flowing nicely, creativity, organisation, the works. more later i'm off to process and hopefully scan. i also surprisingly managed to fill my nokia 7250 mobile phone camera, sat down and did some deleting, anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new usb cable.

weird?

just realised that for the time being i can use a relative path and link to images on my own server, not much chop later on this year but still it's a start, however if your reading this on firefox for the mac you won't see the picture, try safari it works there, dunno about the pc will have to ask a friend weird though?

sunday morn reflections

last night, saturday night, went out for a friends birthday party at a funny bar/restaurant in st.kilda. had a good time and enjoyed the company immensely. this place is situated on the beach in st.kilda and i would imagine in summer it would rock. however we are in the early stages of autumn and it was one of those crisp fresh evenings not really suited to outdoor entertainment [the place had a huge plaza type area] so the place was really quite empty and one could have speculated about its financial viability. we did. we'll see. mean while today is surprisingly warm and sunny, this is indeed my favorite time to live in melbourne, pleasant warm days, crisp cool evenings, ah indeed how great it all is. update the front page of my site website as this page takes the place of the original frontpage in terms of regular entries and updates. took a while even though the css was all that i was jigging, i added two graphics and then used css to position the elements the way i wanted them, i even did a small sketch in to help with the css. the problem that took the longest to solve was the positioning of the main eye graphic, i wanted to overlap the large orange block of colour in the header, in the end i used negative margins to achieve this.

overkill?

back again, no luck on the other site that claims to allow uploading of pics ah well have fired off an enquiry via thier contact page not hoping for much still in search of a picture AND text blog!

fiddle about...?

here i am 40 odd minutes later and i have done nothing more than fiddle with my template and read a little on the aforementioned site, hmmm? comments?

evil browser?

doing some research for my tuesday class, at VUT, and happened across this link, http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html it breaks all the rules of web design and my most hated - backround music, but it's always good to see other follks who are passionate enough about their computers and os' to put a web page like this up! I have added a little button and a link to it on my own web site, on the most accessd page [sigh] the humour page[edit 06.03.17 now removed] while we are on it i notice a lot of folks link to the pictures on this part of my site which contributes to my download stats and could end up costing me, so if you like what you see over on that page please save it to your hard drive and use it some othe rway way than by linking to it, ta heaps : )

scams

found this site that allows images as well as text and you can supposedly upload from your phone etc etc, dutifully filled in the account information and tried to setup/customise my page waited for the e-mail to arrive to finalise things.now i can't log in, have been trying to log in for several minutes now and it keeps telling me no such user? the site http://www.mblog.com/ clicked across from the advertsinig on this very site, hmm looks like i've been stooged?

uses for this..

medium? work perhaps we could all communicate easily, family friends the list is endless or is it, i even like the idea of having groups of people add to the page?

well...

worked out it's the template that allows me to edit the links on the right so this is then I guess i'm off and running, still you'll need to pop on over to my gallery to see any changes in the image galleries as this free account doesn't allow image uploads as far as i can tell? of course my regularly updated nokia mobile phone gallery is undergoing some extensive updates. these will accelerate as i have purchased a usb cable that allows direct downloading from the camera to my computer

slowly but surely

am working things out here

oi!