Friday thoughts

Voids Found this on the internets today and I like it. It got me thinking about being creative and how I have been bogged down with thought and concepts instead of just creating for the sheer joy of creating.

Thoughts on a young girl's Birthday.

There are those who are needlessly open and forever wonder why bad things happen to good people. There are those who the world has hammered shut and wonder what it is like to not be lonely and afraid.

Be neither when you set out.

Be wise.

MIA

I am currently neck deep in many work projects and hoping to surface for air in a week or two. Lot's of stuff coming in back to back that are all complicated to say the least. I am ambitiously planing to have some sanity left as well.

A guy can hope can't he?

The zips come to an end.

click opera - Mister narrative of the decade

Design Just as hemlines follow the economy, so design follows geopolitics. If the confident 90s could give us a computer that "comes in colours" (the iMac, which echoed the optimism of the 60s and was sold with a 60s soundtrack), the 00s returned us to self-effacing "I'm not really here" products embarrassed by their environmental footprint, getting the job done and playing it safe.

I agree with most of the points in here. There "end of decade' lists and articles are starting already and it's just Aug. What will be happening in the fall?In my opinion the past ten years have been one long political nightmare with a economic cold sweat wake up in the middle of the night as someone rattles the door knob. I wonder how this has effected the kids growing up in this time..... hmm...

Twitter versus Blogging.

Who ever thought that blogging would now be thought of as "long form" writing? Thanks for making us bloggers feel all grown up Twitter, we all owe you a big thanks. Plus, you have siphoned off the diary bloggers who can now Tweet about their breakfast without the need for a web browser. Not that I have anything against Twitter or blogging about breakfast for that matter. I have been the "single link" poster boy here for awhile now as well, so there ya go. But the difference between these two are what is interesting to me. Twitter is a mobile app in that it is made to be written and read on cell phones and the like. Blogging to me is like being in the Library. I want to roam and find new stuff and generally wander. As a young lad I spent many a afternoon in the Public Library wandering the aisles looking for poetry and art books. The nature of the internet constantly reminds me of this and the good blogs being a signpost to more interesting stuff.

Twitter on the other hand is direct personal updates often with no connection to anything else. Often of a very personal twist. A blog can link to other articles to numerate on a point and all sorts of other goodness. The nature of a Tweet is just that, "TWEET!" and gone. Which is great, not my thing mind you, but I think it's great.

Of course the pink elephant about this discussion is Iran and what has happened there. The very mobile nature of Twitter and the tie into phone communications makes it impossible to just shut off. This has proven it as a great documentary medium for current events that would otherwise be lost. It has also been key in organizing protests and the like. This has proven Twitter transformative without a doubt and defines it as something "New That No One Expected".

See this Onion piece for example (and lulz):

"SAN FRANCISCO—Creator Jack Dorsey was shocked and saddened this week after learning that his social networking device, Twitter, was being used to disseminate pertinent and timely information during the recent civil unrest in Iran."

Which is all amazing and insane and people much smarter then me need to parse this information and tell us what it all means. But getting back to the Twitter versus Blogging point here, I think it could possibly be the application that makes using the internet "Old Fashioned".

"And then, oh mah gawd, he like, sat down at a desk and opened a browser?! I mean who does that?!"

Is the computer desk / laptop the nostalgic "Dad at the table with breakfast and a newspaper" for the early internet folk?

Of course, 95 percent of blogs are essentially abandoned and 10 percent of the Twitters users account for more than 90 percent of tweets. So this is all hot air anyways and I am going to make a egg sandwich.

I'll post pics on my Photolog after I get done updating my Facebook profile.

Storm a brewing...

They are saying 18000 people without power. Hail and big thunderstorms. So the danklife client area will be down till this passes. Everything will be unplugged shortly. The client area will be back tomorrow as long as I have power.

Yowzers. [gallery link="file"]

Hmmm...

Is it just me or is fffound, reddit and digg suddenly filled with the same crap over and over again instead of new content? What is afoot? Are the Corps moving in and rehashing themselves with scripts instead of user generated NEW content?

Die you slugish bastards!

Jane's Delicious Garden - Snails and Slugs

Slugs and snails love eating fleshy, green plants – and especially young fleshy, green plants. This is why they make a beeline for our vegetable garden. But did you know there is something slugs and sails like even more than green plants? Beer!

Oh, they shall be made to pay for going after my spinach. The slugs, they shall suffer.

Question

Give 40 laptops and a unmoderated forum to a room full of monkeys and record the time it takes for them to mention Hitler. How long would it take?

Navel Gazing.

My work has been very technical as of late which I am finding odd as I like to think of myself more in the vein of the imaginative  worlds. But the simplicity of an object  has been very relaxing and satisfying to capture. I think my ideal project would take elements from Joel Peter Witkin, Kim Cheever, Lucas Samaras, The early Starn Twins and a touch of Crewdson. But that is a high hill to climb and the fall is quite long.

The table top work has been really nice in that it helps me with learning to work on that scale with lights. It's really simple and commercial, not super challenging, but a obtainable goal for an evening. I am working my way towards breaking the bond between photography and illustration, where the camera supplies the source files for the final composition. And this is a nice break to just focus on the craft of photography and lighting.

Ahh, changing times

I miss the day when you could buy something without feeling the need to google it for two days and read 40 pages of reviews....

Remember that? You would go into a store and walk out with something?

...sigh.

The rise of smart drugs

A Reporter at Large: Brain Gain: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

And yet when enthusiasts share their vision of our neuroenhanced future it can sound dystopian. Zack Lynch, of NeuroInsights, gave me a rationale for smart pills that I found particularly grim. “If you’re a fifty-five-year-old in Boston, you have to compete with a twenty-six-year-old from Mumbai now, and those kinds of pressures are only going to grow,” he began. Countries other than the U.S. might tend to be a little looser with their regulations, and offer approval of new cognitive enhancers first. “And if you’re a company that’s got forty-seven offices worldwide, and all of a sudden your Singapore office is using cognitive enablers, and you’re saying to Congress, ‘I’m moving all my financial operations to Singapore and Taiwan, because it’s legal to use those there,’ you bet that Congress is going to say, ‘Well, O.K.’ It will be a moot question then. It would be like saying, ‘No, you can’t use a cell phone. It might increase productivity!’ ”

From Metafilter.

And I do not know where I stand on this. One side of me wants to throw the towel in and just say the Rat Race is officially past me by and fuck it. Now you have to take drugs to get ahed in the job market? BAH! Then another says, wouldn't it be great to get my brain fired up like it was when I was 16? There is a scary and a fun side to it but knowing human nature I'll go with the scary side prevailing.

Awesome!

The painful truth about trainers: Are expensive running shoes a waste of money? | Mail Online

Come race day, the Tarahumara don't train. They don't stretch or warm up. They just stroll to the starting line, laughing and bantering, and then go for it, ultra-running for two full days, sometimes covering over 300 miles, non-stop. For the fun of it. One of them recently came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing nothing but a toga and sandals. He was 57 years old.

When it comes to preparation, the Tarahumara prefer more of a Mardi Gras approach. In terms of diet, lifestyle and training technique, they're a track coach's nightmare. They drink like New Year's Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn-based beer and homemade tequila brewed from rattlesnake corpses to floor an army.

Rattlesnake beer..... that sounds very, well, insane.

damn good

TG Brewery

ESG ~

Terminal Gravity's Rye beer, "Extra Special Golden," might be described as an American golden ale. This pale, dry and very drinkable beer is perfect for someone who wants something cold and refreshing but with a bit more flavor then the typical American lager. The suprise is that it has a bit of a kick. More bang for your buck as our regulars say!

ABV 5.4%

Starting Gravity 11.5 ºP

Terminal Gravity 1.9 ºP

Perfect end of day / week brew. Just enough flavor to let you know it's there but not chewy / piney. Hmmm.....

New Holiday

This April First I declare a new holiday. The "Stay the Fuck off the Internet Day."

Every year, on April first I shall honor it.

Not to get all heavy on you.

So America is in free fall, we can all agree on that right? Everything is falling apart and all the lies from the last 8 years are coming to light. Banks with no money, overpriced homes not worth anything, new construction of horrendous quality, GM, Chrysler and how many other corporations failing right and left. The gig is up.

This is mirroring the collapse of the Soviet Union after communism failed, the difference being they went bankrupt playing high stakes poker against us. In America corporatism became cannibalistic, as is it's nature, and we destroyed ourselves with greed.