October 31
Happy Halloween. I got to spend the day in airports and on planes. No carved pumpkins. No candy. I feel cheated. But I had my party yesterday in Ann Arbor.
Seeing friends yesterday in Ann Arbor was, as always, very nice. Plus, Chuck hosts a good party. Unfortunately (from our point of view) Saturday was not only a home game for the Michigan Wolverines, it was also the game against one of their bigger “rivals” – MSU. John and I got into town about the same time as the football crowd started to congregate. After getting a (overpriced, due to game day) hotel room we wandered off downtown to kill some time before the party.
First thing (well, third thing, after wandering by the post office and the library) was to go to the city clerk's office so that I could fill out an absentee ballot for the presidential election. My registration in Ohio had not, for whatever reason gone through. When I sent away to the board of elections in Dayton for an absentee ballot, I got back a polite letter that informed me that they had no record of my registration. I blame the idiots at the Ohio DMV for that one, since I told them when I got my Ohio driver's license that I wanted to register to vote as well. Bastards! Fortunately, I was still registered in Michigan , so I still got to vote in a swing state. For all the good that may or may do do in the current presidential competition.
John and I wanted to bring something to Chuck's party with us. I suggested, offhandedly, that we ought to get a crate of clementines and draw jack-o'lantern faces on them with permanent markers. So off we went, hunting for clementines. Which were either not in season, or just not available anywhere. We ended up settling for tangerines, which we took back to our hotel room and spend an hour decorating while we flipped between “Carrie” and “Undercover Brother” on TV.
Then off to the party. Chuck hosts a good party.
October 26
Two words on MoveableType... "pain" and "ass". That being said, yes, I am still working on the install. I have gotten as far as downloading the zip files of MT 3.12 and printing out the installation instructions/configuration manual. I am starting out with the free (free=no tech support) version. If I am not geek anough to figure it out and set it up myself, I will cough up the money for the supported (supported=we will answer your questions and help you out when you are at youe wits end at 2am) version of MoveableType. Even though I fully realize the advantages of MoveableType, I admit some reluctance to inplement it on my part. After all, this has been a 100% handcrafted journal for the nearly two years it has been in existance. Installing pre-existing software to help me manage content feels a little like cheating...like giving up... even though I know that won't be the case. Given the amount of traveling I am about to embark on for work, I am not sure how much time I will have to devote to the installation/upgrade in the near future. Anyone out there hooked MoveableType into a pre-existing site? How did it go? Tell me your horror stories.
Meanwhile... pictures. Not from the Digital Rebel (My Preciousss) though, these are from the Kodak DX3600. Both pictures were taken at Cox Arboretum in Dayton.
October 22
The disappointing thing is that now that I have the Digital Rebel (My Preciousss) the weather here has turned sullen and gray, with the constant background threat of rain. There isn't even any mist or fog to make things look interesting. However. There is every chance that the weekend will be warm and sunny enough to allow me to run around with my new toy.
So.
Even though I may have been TAKING a lot of pictures in the last couple of days, there has still been an excessive amount of digital images and Photoshop happening around my apartment. National Geographic is having a photo contest, and I am all excited to enter and get a chance at all of the goodies they are offering winners… as well as a chance to have my work published on their website. (One of my lifetime goals is to have my photography published by National Geographic) Since they are allowing an (apparently) unlimited number of entries per person, I plan on entering between seven and ten of my best. It is choosing what is "the best" that is the problem…
The photo below is not one of the ones that made the cut, but I really like it. John doesn't much like it, and the reason he dislikes it (and the reason why I like it so much) is that you can clearly see the shadow of my picture taking self on the rocks at the bottom of the photo, and I refuse to crop out that shadow. I like the simplicity of the composition, and the way that the light house, and the reflection of the lighthouse on the water, and my shadow all line up down the center of the photo, with only the causeway out to the lighthouse disturbing the otherwise perfect symmetry. There is a very peaceful and laid-back feel to the entire picture.
I took this picture a couple of years ago during late summer in Duluth, MN, on the far edge of Lake Superior. I was fresh out of library school, and had gone up there to interview for a job in the library at the University of Minnesota - Duluth. Turned out that the salary they were offering wasn't even equal to a year's tuition at the UM School of Information. Obviously, I did not take that job, but I did get to visit a very lovely small town that I wouldn't mind visiting again someday.
October 20
Last night I went out, slapped down a big ol' wad of filthy lucre (in the form of a slightly scratched visa card) and walked out of CompUSA the proud and doting owner of a Canon Digital Rebel, complete with 1G flash memory and a formidable camera case.
The camera, or, as I have come to think of it, "My Preciousss", is a thing of awesome and terrible beauty.
Up till now, I have been a happy member of the Nikon family of cameras. My parents are Nikon owners, and passed that brand loyalty on to me. The first camera I loved, a manual 35-mm which was my Dad's college camera, was a Nikon. My first digital camera, the one I got when the light meter on the old manual gave out, was a Nikon. The other camera that I was considering was the Nikon D70 SLR. So why did I jump brands and go with the Canon? Well, first, I have friends who own both the digital and the film versions of the Rebel, all of whom are very happy with their cameras and all of whom are on the "very serious amateur" end of the photographer spectrum. And, secondly, the power of being able to purchase at cost. (Thank you, John! You enabler, you!) Of course, delirious with the savings, I then proceeded to blow a large chunk of those savings on the aforementioned 1G flash card and camera case.
Now, it turns out that a modern automatic-to-manual digital SLR camera is almost completely different from a 30 year old manual 35mm camera. Who would have thought! So, while I will still be able to set the shutter speed, f-stop, and aperture as much as I like, I will have to learn to do all of these things in wholly different ways then I am used to. It is like reading English upside down and backwards… you can do it because you know the language, but it takes a lot longer then normal to puzzle out the sentences. All of this will take time and practice and will require me to spend a lot of time with my camera taking lots and lots of experimental photos as I get used to the system. Spend time playing with my shiny new toy? Oh yes, I think I can handle that.
I have assured John that I will not love the camera more then him, I will just love it differently.
If you want to learn more about my new toy, the Canon website has a lovely web page devoted to the Merits of the Canon Digital Rebel (which can be found here) Contained therein is a snappy explanation of what I like to think of as "Digital Imaging for the Confused".
Holy bejeebus, I loves me those complex algorithms.
October 15
This weekend is the semi-annual Depression Glass show in Cleveland that I have been going to for the past couple of years with my Mom and Grandmother. So I am heading on up to Cleveland after work. If I am really lucky, then John will get back from his business trip in time for me to say goodbye to him as I head out the door.
I am bringing my camera, but not my laptop. I ought to survive 48 hours without it, right?
October 14
I tried to watch the debates last night... I really tried. I wanted to "do my patriotic duty" and be as informed as I could be prior to the elections. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't watch Bush's smirky face and listen to his nasel voice. So in order to avoid doing damage to my TV in my anger at the blatent twisting of the truth that was going on, I simply turned the debate off and went to NYTimes.com this morning to print out a transcript. I can throw around the pages and stomp and fume as much as I want this way.
For a funny "real time" blog of the debate, check out DJ Blurb and his lovely site...
Mr. Kerry discussed his religious beliefs. "I am a Catholic and I grew up learning how to respect those views, but I disagree with them, as do many," Mr. Kerry said. "I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith." (from NYTimes.com)
My god, I wish that more politicians had Kerry's attitude toward the separation of church and state. I may hate a lot of George Bush's policies and think that they are destructively self-serving and short-sighted - such as massive tax cuts for the upper tier of Americans, the people who incidentally contribute large sums to Republican coffers, while at the same time allocating billions to the war in Iraq with no clear indication of where that money will come from - but what scares me the most about Bush and his policies is his apparent belief that religion and politics are one and the same.
I am not an evangelical Christian like Bush, and I do not share most of his moral and religions views. I have come so far from my Roman Catholic upbringing (Today, the most I can say about myself religiously is that I am agnostic. Organized religion simply has no place in my life, and I have never felt any sort of spiritual "lack" from not being part of a church.) that I cannot even begin to understand how they think and why they reach the decisions that they do. Take stem cell research… How can it be more "respectful of life" to throw away extra embryos at a fertility clinic then to use those unwanted embryos to try to improve the life of someone with a chronic disease or degenerative medical condition? I just don't get it. As John pointed out the other day when we were discussing this, because I am not religious, I will probably never get it.
I am not religious. I was brought up in a religion, and the most lasting thing that I brought away from that schooling is a deeply seated distrust of organized religion. The fact that someone, anyone, might seek to impose their religious beliefs on me is infuriating. I want a politician who will respect the fact that I want a clear and decisive separation of church and state. One person's morality should not become the law for a nation.
I am tired of the way with Iraq being the focal point of the campaigns and being cast and recast as a "moral war". I am not interested in the war or in homeland security... I want to hear about the economy, and job loss, and the enviornment, and health care, and social security, and women's rights. These are the issues I care about and that I will vote on.
My personal favorite bit of the debate was the part where Bush denied ever saying that he had said Osama Bin Laden was not a threat and that he did not worry about him... and all of the networks playing the news clip where he said THAT EXACT THING over and over as soon as the debate was over.
Eat your words Bush, and I hope that they make you CHOKE!
Kerry & Edwards in 2004. VOTE!
October 12
Autumn in Michigan is usually a glorious riot of color. So far, autumn in Ohio is a bit disappointing... there is very little in the way of riots of color. Most of the leaves are just dying and falling off of the trees in favor of bothering to turn color first.
So instead of dwelling on that rather glum fact, here are some of the photos that I have been working on lately...
A beautiful fall scene, but not one in Ohio. I actually took this picture last fall in the Matthei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, MI. I took hundreds of photographs in the Gardens last fall, and I am still going back to them and pulling some out to work with. I love digital photography... no development costs!
Another photograph of the California coast (somewhere between Monterey and Big Sur off of Highway 1) during a rather heavy coastal fog. Yes, I retouched it in Photoshop. That's what Photoshop is for, you know. Is this a horrible adultery of the purity of the photographic arts? I really don't know. But doesn't this photo look dramatic?
This black and white was taken from the beach down near the Monterey wharf. This is my personal favorite of the three. I started out doing black and white development back in high school, and I still prefer a well composed and well developed black-and-white to an equivalent in full, saturated color.
October 10
I have had infogirl up and running for just about a year and a half now. Of course, I have had websites for a lot longer then that...infogirl was just the first one that I bothered registering my own domain for. Up to that point, I was quite happy to use the webspace that my universities provided for free. Then I graduated, and with free webspace no longer available, I was off on my own. The overall experience was reminiscent of moving out of my parents' house for college - you knew that there were certain things that needed to be done, but the options available for achieving your goals seemed daunting, and you weren't sure which choices were the right ones and which would come back later to bite you on the ass.
Initially infogirl was there primarily to showcase my l337 webdesign skills and house my design portfolio, with the aim of helping me land the trademarked Dream Job. The journal was just added on almost as an afterthought, because web journals seemed to be "the" thing to do, and because I was well aware that my writing skills could use some honing. Don't get me wrong, I can turn out a mean research paper or requirements spec. Short essays and humor, not so much so. Also, I wanted a way of keeping track of what I was doing and thinking on a day-to-day basis... otherwise I had a tendency to forget stuff, such as what exactly I had done last weekend.
If you have been paying attention at all, you will have noticed that not only does my site sport a spiffy new look, but that the IA is also significantly different. The whole site has been rearranged to accommodate the two sections of the site that are likely to continue to expand... my journal and the photography section. Heck, these were the only sections getting frequent updates, so why not make them front and center? With that in mind, I scrapped the old home page (which was never updated almost at all ever, so what was the point?) and made the most recent journal entry (like the one you are reading right now in fact) the homepage content. This should make my 2.5 readers happy. Or at least give them a little bit of variety in their lives. Plus, since I have recently (about two months ago) moved depressingly far (okay, about three hours) away from most of my friends, it is a good way of trying to keep them a part of my life, by letting them know what is going on in my life. I suppose that the logical next step would be to add blogging software, perhaps MoveableType, so that the tiny little section of the internet community who are aware of my existence can comment freely upon it. Everyone needs a hobby, after all. I wish I could give you a date for the addition of blogging software, but it is really hard to fix a date onto "whenever the hell I feel like it".
October 9
Have patience... things are probably going to look a little bit odd around here for a little while. If you see anything REALLY wierd, let me know. Or refresh your browser and maybe it will fix itself.
Obviously, I have redesigned. Again. The last design was starting to look a little bit too minty fresh for my tastes, if you know what I mean, so I went in the opposite direction, design wise. Minimalist and rather monochrome, with only a few splashes of color. This design will probably be here for quite a while, with only very small modifications. I realize that at one point I rather rashly stated that I was going to do a new design for each season. Well, sorry. I just don't have the kind of free time that it would take to do that kind of overhauling four times a year. I mean, I could... but it would mean that I would have to cut back on a lot of the other stuff that I like to do for fun, so nuts to that promise.
If you bother to look at the source code for this redesign, you will see that I have completely banished all tables and other structural elements of html. They are GONE FROM MY SIGHT! Ah... bask in the complete separation of content and structure. For a while I was actually afraid that I couldn't do it... I kept coding and coding and it wouldn't display right and threw off all sorts of errors and I would look at the code of other sites and wonder what they were doing that I was not and I would bang away at it late into the night until I would give up and go to bed in utter frustration... and then I finally sat back and took a deep breath and realized that the problem was that I was trying to over-design everything. So I thoughtfully scrapped all of the code and css and re-wrote everything, and made it all a lot simpler, and amazingly enough, it worked. The big lesson I took away from this is not to over engineer. Keep it simple, stupid. K.I.S.S. Not just a handy rule of thumb for interface design anymore. This nugget of wisdom can be applied EVERYWHERE.
October 8
Today, according to NPR, is national Lee Denim Day for breast cancer awareness. The idea is that Lee wants corporations to let employees wear denim today in exchange for a small donation toward the breast cancer research fund. Now, I wear jeans to work every day, but I favor Levi over Lee jeans. What kind of a statement am I making about my support for breast cancer research? I feel a bout of consumer conflict and angst coming on...
Something inportant I learned yesterday... do your paperwork right away. I spend almost the whole afternoon yesterday filling out travel and expense reports for all of the business trips I took in the last month and a half.
I would like to present the best out of office email announcement that I have ever seen: I will be out of the country without email access through Oct. 30. Well, out of this country (unless you're from London, in which case you might think I'm out of *that* country). Or maybe I should say that I'm out of *a* country, since I will be in another country. Well, except for when I'm flying over the Pacific, in which case I won't be in any country at that time. Of course, then I'll be out of the country regardless of whatever country you're in. As for when I'm in the other country, I'll be in the city. Well, except for when I'm in the country. Well, in the country's country. Anyway, I'll be back in this country (or that country) in November. Much better then the usual, bland, "I will be out of the office until blah blah blah" sort of message. I applaud this person's extreme creativity. I feel inspired. And I would even act on that inspiration, if only I could figure out how to set an out of office email message for whan I am traveling... stupid Outlook.
October 4
John finished moving himself and the rest of his stuff into my apartment Saturday evening. Just in time to drive me to the airport on Sunday. "Hi honey, welcome home! See you in a few days!" I feel a little bit guilty about bailing town so soon after he moved in, but at least he won't have to put up with me hovering anxiously while he is unpacking and arranging his stuff.
So I am in Chicago and he is in Dayton. He will pick me up at the airport Tuesday evening, and then he leaves Wednesday morning for a business trip of his own. It is a good thing we moved in together, otherwise we might never get to see each other at all.
Something interesting I learned this evening, out to dinner with colleagues following a day of meetings - apparently a lot of librarians (at least the ones I was out to dinner with) ride motorcycles. Cool. Makes me want to get a motorcycle.
And now a note about dinner. We were at a tapas restaurant, which I love since you get a lot of different dishes and then sample a couple of mouthfuls here and there off of whatever looks good to you. You can fill up really quickly on a couple of mouthfuls here and there... Anway, one of the dishes was simply amazing - bananas and dates wrapped in bacon and served in a tangy sweet (barbecue?) sauce. Heaven in little crunchy bacon wrapped morsels. I ate a lot of those. I must figure out how to make them.
October 1
I spent the first half of last week out of town for business. I will spend the first half of this coming week out of town. Again, for business. I sure hope that I have the opportunity to make use of all of the frequent flier miles that I am accumulating before the airlines that I am accumulating them in (United and USAir) go flat broke for good and decide that they won't honor frequent flier miles. Sorry and too bad, so sad. Frequent flier perks are essentially something for nothing, since I am not paying anything to be enrolled in the program. Still, the thought of some sort of compensation for the susbstantial amount of time I have been spending (and will continue to spend) in various airports and on airplanes was a nice one.
This evening... very very soon, in fact ...I am motoring my way back up to Ann Arbor.
Tomorrow is a shower for Katy and Eric's soon to be arriving firstborn. So many of my friends have not only paired off and gotten married, but are having kids too. I am not ready! I was just starting to get used to knowing a lot of married people!
Tonight John and I have a date with some very fine martinis at Cafe Felix. Since I promised Sarah that I would drink one for her (she does miss them so), and since Cafe Felix mixes a powerful martini, John is going to be driving afterwards.