Garfield Minus Garfield

Check it out. You won't regret it.

(How like my Corona, the click and the clack)

How like my Corona, the click and the clack
of my chordant heart breaking, in soot and in black,
of my burning mind's ashes, a smithy's dark floor,
and my self that's reforged as I kneel at the door,

as I hope it will open, though never it could,
for its hinges are melted, though carved out of wood,
for the fire that scorched it, impossibly hot,
will melt even trees; in this flame I am caught.

This text © 2002 John David Robinson, all rights reserved. Duplication prohibited without written consent.

Hanneke and the Yamulkes

I just saw Hanneke Cassel (and some of her very talented friends) at Club Passim. It was awesome. She's playing tomorrow night in Westford, and I can't go, but if you can, you should.

I spent most of the time that I was listening also doing some writing, which is just what I used to do when I listened to her play on Tuesdays at McGann's in college. Nothing that I wrote is worthy of posting, though, so in a separate post I'm going to put up another of my poems. I was hoping to find something I'd actually written at McGann's, but all of those are either already up ("(Lucid bent the cover tree)" is one), or not readily available. The one I will put up is from the same few years, at least.

The Fall of a Purist

I think Maggie may have converted me.

Maggie is a friend of mine from Wildwood, which is code for "the most awesome summer of my life, in which I was crammed 10+ people to an apartment with 60 of the greatest people ever." She has a blog (linked above) in which she often posts photos she's taken. Now, I consider myself a pretty good photographer -- I've had my share of accolades since I began shooting two years ago -- but Maggie consistently stuns me with her work. All five of you who read my blog should definitely check hers out. You won't be disappointed.

The thing is, I've always considered myself somewhat hard-core when it came to photography. I collected antique cameras for like 15 years before I actually picked up anything but a point-and-shoot, and I rarely used those when I had them. When I actually got into photography, I went straight for a Digital Rebel and got to work taking shots on full manual. I'm a UNIX hacker, and I take the same approach to my photos: I shoot raw, adjust the exposure if I have to, and that's it. I was going to get a larger CF card so I could do bracketing without losing space. (I suppose that's a kind of digital processing, too, but at least it's in-camera). Though I never look down on anyone who did a lot of processing, I have taken a certain pride in my purist attitude. Ansel Adams didn't have a computer to do post-processing, I would sometimes think, my nose held slightly aloft.

That was until this morning.

Thing is, without at least minimal post-processing, I can't take pictures like these (particularly the ones at the end). They're just pictures Maggie took out on a fall afternoon, but the tone that the added contrast provided is something I realized I just can't ever duplicate in my own work, but I want to. While I can't imagine being one of those photographers who always modifies his photos, I've seen some awesome stuff with minimal processing done in the last few years -- most of which simply couldn't have been achieved with a camera alone -- and Maggie's pictures were the straw that broke the camel's back. My nose is now pointed straight ahead, and when I get my photos collected into one place, there will probably be a "post-processed" section.

Yeah, I probably won't put them in the same category. Might be too much of a leap for me still.

Burst Culture and 365 Tomorrows

This post on Burst Culture is really an amazing commentary on web-based publishing and where it is today. Lots of stuff this casual blogger didn't really know about, and it's pretty amazing.

Another link: 365 Tomorrows, a blog of daily, very short sci-fi. Definitely a regular of mine, starting today.

Second link courtesy of the first, courtesy of Wil Wheaton dot Net: In Exile.

I highly encourage the click.

Copped from B's blog, this is a movement to send a clear message to the RIAA and its ilk about new content delivery methods and their potential. They treat us -- their customers! -- and even their artists as enemies, all for the sake of profit, when they could benefit from the content delivery methods we would prefer, and profit their asses off. This is one way to make those possible benefits concrete in the minds of some execs. It isn't going to fix everything, but every step we can make is good.

Go Go Gadget Beatbox

You must check this out.

50 points if anybody can tell me the name of the song he breaks into in the middle. 100 points and a batch of chocolate chip cookies (seriously) to anybody who can tell me the format that made the song popular in the early days of personal computing, and the name of the program I would've used to play it on with my Mac SE.