soon

July 24, 2008

Hi, all.

There should be good stuff coming soon. I am going over my gallery generator to make some improvements as the image quality is, to me, sub-par at the moment. Trouble spots have been isolated, and with any luck there will be a whole new set of lovely images soon - and the old ones should be much improved.

Also, as far as I can tell the Lebanon trip is off the table again. I just can’t afford the ticket with all this oil madness. If I could afford it, I’d go, rest assured.

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What’s Up?

March 10, 2008

The photos have been few and far between lately, but there’s two reasons for that: 1) we’ve had a real winter, which makes for poor shooting weather and 2) I didn’t really go anywhere I haven’t been before since Vancouver. It’s been work, work, work. I mean, sure, there’s always a new shot to be found - even on the most mundane travels - but I think I’ve done the path-between-my-jobs thing to death, and though I keep looking I haven’t found any new images. I suppose I could shoot around Chelsea, but I don’t like really revealing that I have a camera too much around there.But soon the travels will begin once again.

First up is a trip that Rachel and I are taking down to New York. It started with a production of Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story” and “The American Dream”, which we knew immediately we had to go see. Then the trip planning revealed that the best bet (since Rachel doesn’t drive and I don’t own a car) would be to take the train from Springfield to New York. You all know that I love the train, so this detail is certainly a highlight for me.

Then I discovered by chance that there is going to be a production of Philip Glass’ “Satyagraha” that same weekend - easily my favorite work of his (see “10 Albums”) - at the Metropolitan Opera House! I can’t stand it. Melissa and I went to see “Akhnaten” at the Boston Lyric Opera, now I’ll see “Satyagraha”, and the only thing left is for me to see a production of “Einstein on the Beach” - and I’ll have witnessed Glass’ entire portrait trilogy.

The rest of the trip will consists of eating, drinking, and being merry. There should be some good photos from that.

In May I’m heading out to Buffalo. Ethan and I had discussed seeing The Police in Toronto last fall, but the time/money/etc. commitment proved to be too much for me. But Ethan, good friend that he is, bought an extra ticket on spec for another show in Buffalo not knowing if I’d be into it or not - yeah, I’m in! Noting that the show is the weekend before my birthday, I decided that it would be a good time for another week-long vacation there. Is this becoming a tradition?

Then in July Dad, Nancy, and I are going to boat up from Chester (on the Connecticut River in CT) to Boston to witness the 4th of July fireworks! I had been floating this as a near-joke (with an underlying current of seriousness) since my Dad caught the boating bug, and this is the year! I spent a weekend with them on the boat last year and had a lot of fun, though it was hot as hell - shades of the eighties party.

That covers the first half of the year. I went through my image library last week in preparation for the class I taught on Saturday, and dammit 1) the Lebanon stuff is the best work I’ve ever done and 2) is nowhere near finished. I am not crazy enough to leap on a plane and go over now (not while their political situation is iffy at best), but geez, can’t you guys relax for a few months? I’ve got work to do!

So… I’d love to do it. But…

We’ll see.

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Where the hell have you been?

December 10, 2007

There was a host hiccup.  They forget to tell my domain registrar that I still want my domain.

Oops.

Other than that, I have been working mondo hours at the store and all other time goes to rest or Christmas shopping.  Hooray.

There should be a more coherent post soon.

But don’t hold your breath.

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restless

October 19, 2007

UPDATE 10/22/07!

It seems like I’ve looked at hundreds of different gallery generators, services, and whatnot. I have finally settled on Zenphoto. They installation process was a little painful, but the results are immediately worth it. The galleries are slowly being replaced with new Zen versions, and then I have a little bit of tweaking to do to get the layout the way I want it (mostly the readability of some text colors).

—–

After very careful review I have concluded that I don’t like the galleries. Well, I like the automated part of zinging a folder directly from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums, but the resulting galleries? Not so much. They look just a little too… web-portal-ish. Must change.

I messed around a little with the Photoshop gallery-makers, but don’t really like any of them. Guess I have to get out there and see what I can find that I might like - mercifully the generators are a dime a dozen.

Somewhere in my history I swore I’d never be the kind of person who blogged about working on their blog. Oh well, another resolution gone bust.

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kitty kitty kitty

October 18, 2007

 

I was looking through my Polaroids for one in particular that somebody asked me for a print of. Still haven’t found the damn thing (and I remember seeing it once and thinking “how did that get there?”; did nothing about it), but I did come across this picture of Girlfriend - Rachel’s spectacular kitty.

 

Unfortunately, Girlfriend is no longer with us. But when she was, she was quite easily the most accommodating model on the planet. She would just sit and stare with her great big eyes, pleased that you were paying any kind of attention to her. I always felt incredibly guilty, as the flash made her squint and give me an exasperated look, but it never made her run away - as every other cat I’ve ever taken a picture of has done. Girlfriend was pretty hip.

 

Anyway, I hoped the Girlfriend image would help ease the pain and suffering that my lack of interesting posts must have caused. I have been so damn busy lately, and consequently no new images, no new announcements. I have been tweaking, refining, and making final prints of the images that people have asked me for, so if I haven’t been in touch about that, know that all your prints are about to emerge and be distributed.

 

In the meantime, no Chain Camera Store tonight, so a few prints and then I’m climbing into bed early.

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Boating Roundup Delay

August 29, 2007

Just in case anyone thought I forgot, I do have a couple of pictures from this past weekend’s boating excursion with the folks. I’ve just been way too busy with the beginning of the semester looming, but stay tuned - I’ll have pictures and wrap-up soon. Rest assured it was great fun, and made me long for the nautical life I shall probably never have. Alas.

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Vancouver Bound!

July 30, 2007

Next stop on what is turning out to be a rather busy travel year is Vancouver!

I have know my friend Brian for about 22 years - since way back in junior high. He’ll be getting married in September, and I have just booked my flight.

I don’t know much about the Pacific Northwest, so it should be rather interesting. I gave myself lots of time in the city, and even booked one of my fool-proof “get out and see stuff” locations: the local branch of Hostelling International. I love hotels, but know that I would have a tendency to hang around watching bad TV and eating too much if I felt too comfortable. At a hostel I feel the urge to get up and go before anyone gets the impression that I’m looking to make new friends.

Oh, and hats off to Haddad Travel, who has now found me great deals on not just the Lebanon trip of last spring but now this one as well. Nice people - I recommend them!

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A Tale of Two Coasters

July 19, 2007

It won’t be long before Melissa, Baha, and I head out west in search of roller coaster thrills and chills.

The basic plan is to drive out to Buffalo to visit Phin, Jen, and Ethan for an evening and then depart Saturday morning for Indiana. The weather predictions call for high 70s and sunny, so I think we’re good to go!

Indiana Fun Spot and Zoo looks pretty small, so I think an afternoon there will suffice. Once I ride the Afterburner - their vintage Arrow Dynamics launched loop coaster - to my satisfaction and we have taken in all that this park has to offer, we’re heading south to Cincinnati. It’s only about four hours away, so we plan to also do that leg on Saturday to give us a full day at King’s Island on Sunday.

Besides the nostalgia-driven goal of riding Afterburner, I am dying to climb aboard The Beast at King’s Island. I have been fascinated by it since seeing a roller coaster tape that my cousin Jim and his partner Glenn had. They would frequently watch it and reminisce about the Steel Phantom out at Kennywood Park which we had just visited. I, however, grew more attached to the footage of The Beast. Clocking in at 4 minutes, with a 140 foot drop and a top speed of 65mph, The Beast sounded like my kind of coaster (which hadn’t - and still hasn’t - really been defined, but it’s a start).

Funny, I’m not much of a coaster aficionado and am typically a bit timid about them. On the Kennywood I never did ride the Steel Phantom, but I was more than happy to hang around while Jim and Glenn stood in line, as there was a great bench pretty close to the track after the first Phantom hill. The train would come barrel-assing through and make the most pleasing deep, rumbly whiiiirrrrrrr sound as it flew past my head.

I did eagerly climb aboard Kennywood’s wooden coasters, though, and enjoyed every single one of them. They have some classic coasters out there, and they were a lot of fun. There are a number of other coasters at King’s Island, and I anticipate trying out as many as we have time for. If nothing else, I want to squeeze every dime out of the park ticket price that I can!

Beyond that, we have Monday to get back and haven’t planned that one bit. We have a lot of miles between Cincinnati and Boston, and the bulk of it will have to be driving, but I’m sure we can find a few other ways to get up to no good.

Stay tuned for pictures, video, anecdotes, and lord knows what all when we return!

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Search-O-Matic

July 9, 2007

Rachel got me thinking about search terms, so I recently installed SiteMeter to track all my visitor info.

It seems that at the moment the heaviest traffic is people looking for:

1) Early eighties stuff
2) Mt Tom (and its variants)
3) Riverside Park

Seems fair. Fascinatingly, someone did find me by searching for “web wank” (I don’t want to know) due to an old post about putting up my photo archives, and “sony laserdisc repair” came up as well.

Hmm.

Maybe I should put some filthy phrases in here to try to up my traffic.

No, no… that just wouldn’t be right at all.

But if some showed up in my comments it wouldn’t really be my fault, now would it?

Posted in: bloggy business, filler 2 Comments »

Birth

June 1, 2007

Note: I meant to post this on my birthday, but Buffalo was awfully distracting, and as I haven’t got much else to say at the moment (tired, dizzy, crazy), here it is. I’ll be “back in touch” more soon, with pictures and everything, but at the moment I’m having unyielding visions of my bed.

It always made a certain kind of odd sense to me that the three biggest people who shared my birth date were Irving Berlin, Salvador Dalí, and Martha Graham.

It has been brought to my attention that a very significant fourth is none other than JJ Jeczalik, one of the founders, architects, and master Fairlight-twiddler of The Art of Noise.

Pretty much completes the picture.

Although I’m in heavy savings mode, I couldn’t resist picking up a used copy of And What Have You Done With My Body, God? their 4-disc box set of early output.

Take the first two AON records - Into Battle with the Art of Noise and Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise?, and imagine having access to all the tests, experiments, and odd little blueprints that were sorted and compiled to make those two legendary albums.

For some? Totally tedious and not worth it in the slightest.

For me? Four and a half hours of fascinating peeks into the assembly of a Modern Musical Masterpiece.

Music snobs may scoff, but “Beat Box” and “Close (to the Edit)” had an unbelievable effect on me when I was a kid. The secret back story of the 1980-1985 time limit on the Early Eighties Project is that my interest in top 40 pretty much ended once I discovered the Art of Noise (along with Depeche Mode’s Some Great Reward LP) and realized that there was a lot more going on out there.

“Close (to the Edit)” sounded like absolutely nothing else that was coming out at the time, and despite the reabsorption of many of the techniques and ideas - and, indeed, individual sounds (check the snare on Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” for one) - nothing has sounded like it since.

Give it a spin if you haven’t done so lately - it is one hell of a lot of fun.

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