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S&W talk about movement as a metaphor for the web, and in the process, introduce a means of syndicating form-type actions via a modified RSS protocol they’re calling Snap. Potentially a huge change in the way people will interact with websites, here.
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A number of big name photographers answer the question. I’ve only skimmed this right now, because I’m barely awake, but it looks interesing enough to come back to when I can get more then 2 neurons to fire at once.(tags: photography essay)
Diaries
Someone asked me a while back why my journal has basically stopped being any sort of reflection my personal life, and basically been replaced with linklogs and content crossposted from my other blog(s) and a the odd mention of some specific aspect, like work being mad, or briefly arranging some social thing.
The answer is simple. Because I don’t really feel the need to keep a precise diary, and a lot of the time, I think that that sort of thing is quite boring. You don’t need to know what I had for breakfast, or how my experiments in eating fish are going, or what my co-workers did last week. There are more interesting things out there.
But I stand in awe of one sterling chap of my acquaintance, who has come up with a way to make narrating a diaristic sort of livejournal about forty times more interesting, with his State Of The Republic Address. I’m sure a lot of you have seen it already, by even if you don’t know the chap, it’s worth a read, if only so you can see a really good example of how to make a diary-type journal something that other people might actually enjoy reading.
Project: Electric Internet Writing
I need help. On any number of levels.
I haven’t written anything longer than a few sentences, 2 or three paragraphs at most, for fun in ages. The occasional bit of workbloggery, but that’s about it. This is, well, not right.
And my beloved black-ink.org domain languishes dusty and unloved. I mean, dead-air.org has see more posting in the last 12 months, and it’s barely a thing at all.
So, new project. Between now and February 1st next year, I aim to produce 52 pieces of writing of a minimum of 800 words length each. I may keep going after that, but let’s start small, eh? Yeah, I know some of you do more than that in a month. I am lazy, and easily distracted by shiny things.
Where you lot come in to this is simple: tell me what to write. Left to my own devices, I don’t seem to do anything, so I’m opening this to you lot. You can suggest titles for short fiction, or request essays and opinion pieces on a given subject. Ask for diary entries for a certain day. Ask me to review something (you can be specific, as long as I can reasonably get hold of thing you’re asking for, and it isn’t going to eat entire days of my life) or leave me to pick freely, or within some set of parameters. Get me to do a bit of research, and provide a synopsis of what I find. Anything, as long as I can reasonably produce a minimum of 800 words worth of writing on it, and it isn’t going to cost me the earth.
Obviously, I need at least 52 suggestions for this to work, so I’ll probably repost this a few times over the next year or so. I do reserve the right to say “sorry, come up with something else” but only if the very idea of whatever you suggest makes my eyeballs bleed.
In the meantime, though, your suggestions, please…
Electric Site
Nicked from, y’know, whoever was passing…
“Because we never really know each other as well as we think, in response to this post I’d like you to ask a question. Anything about which you are curious, anything you feel you ought to know about me. Silly, serious, personal, fannish. Ask away. Then copy this to your own journal, and see what people don’t know about you.”
Nicked from, y’know, whoever was passing…
“Because we never really know each other as well as we think, in response to this post I’d like you to ask a question. Anything about which you are curious, anything you feel you ought to know about me. Silly, serious, personal, fannish. Ask away. Then copy this to your own journal, and see what people don’t know about you.”
In Place Of Original Thought
That random song title meme that’s doing the rounds. You know the one – hit randomise, then paste the titles in as answers to the questions, without changing the order. Just like everyone else, some of these are tripe, some erm, accurate, and some just funny.
Play along at home, and see if you can guess which is which. I’ll award marks for the most correct answers. And a small prize. Or something.
IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
The Torch
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
Closedown
WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GIRL?
Sealclubbing
HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
BulletProof!
Mother and the Misogynist
Louise Bourgeois’s Sculpture “Maman 1999”, outside the Tate Modern, with the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral below. (St Paul being the titular misogynist, of course.) This is another one of those shots that’s going to niggle at me, as however much I like parts of it, it’s still full of little imperfections, particularly in the bottom left and right corners.
As is almost always the case with by B&W work, I’ve left the merest hint of a colour wash in – a very slight red tint, this time around. I experimented with versions of this where the red was a much stronger element, but in the end, settled on this.
Another(wise) Dull Day
A retake, several years later. If you look back in my flickr archives (in fact, if you look in my “Most Interesting” photos), you’ll find a shot titled “An Otherwise Dull Day“, taken years ago when I was first getting interested in photography. I like the shot, but there were things about it that niggled at me, especially as the standard of my photography has improved. So when I was passing the spot where I took the original the other day, I thought I’d have a go more or less the same shot again, with the benefit of several years practice. I like this shot rather better – it’s better composed, and much better post-processed. Let me know what you think?
Finale
Possibly the nerdiest photo I will ever post – at my players urging, I took a photo of the final do-or-die dice roll of our long running Mage RPG. The roll was a success, the world was saved, and here it is, captured for posterity.
I actually quite like this as a photo – post-processing it for colour was a bit of a bastard, as the yellow backdrop was made even yellower by the tone of the light in my living room, and anything that toned that down often did weird things to the colour of the dice, but I like the backdrop and the effect I eventually decided on.