Saturday, May 30, 2009

Canon Employees Are Forbidden to Sit Down

Canon Employees Are Forbidden to Sit Down, Walk at Normal Pace, article.
(Notice how the comma used instead of the word "or" saves precious pixels which then can be used gainfully elsewhere on the Internet. Brilliant.)
In the hallway, if an employee walks slower than 5 meters every 3.6 seconds, an alarm and flashing lights are set off, [...] there's a sign on the floor in said hallways that reads, "Let's rush: If we don't, the company and world will perish."

That's the most braindead leadership thinking I've heard of. If it were a Dilbert strip, it'd be one of the less realistic ones.

Fashion 360, Powered by Nikon

Fashion 360, Powered by Nikon, article.
"The Fashion 360, Powered by Nikon is an intricate technical rig of fifty D700 cameras timed at different intervals to capture celebrities on the red carpet from an innovative visual “surround sound” perspective. In collaboration with production company Big Freeze, the Fashion 360, Powered by Nikon will allow viewers at home to experience a 360-degree view of their favourite celebrities."

I don't know about you, but I'm so excited I probably can't sleep tonight. How often, in the many thousands of hours I've sat breathlessly captured by the thrills and imagination of the catwalk, have I not thought: "if only I could see this from all 360 degrees!"
Well, now it's possible. Mankind will never suffer from paucity of a high culture diet again.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Vincent movie


"What is the use of a beautiful body, animals have it too... perhaps even more than men... but... the soul, as it lives in the people, that's what animals never have. Is not life given us to become richer in spirit?" - Vincent van Gogh


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I'm watching "Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh", a film with some of Gogh's letters read by John Hurt. It's excellent.

Vincent is seen as the archetypical "tortured artist", with some justification. But I think it is much more important that his art came from Love of Life, and like he said himself, from Serenity. He never felt sorry for himself, he took the hardships of life as simply the price one paid to reach Higher. And he saw the Light, Love, and Joy behind it all, and that is what he painted.

Art or comics

More Buttercup Festival.

I've had a few "is it thises or thates?" recently, here's another: is this comics or is it fine art? I'm leaning towards the latter. Comic strips should ideally have more immediate communication and accessibility, but as fine art it's wonderful.

I sympathize, I've tended towards the same whenever I've attempted any kind of comic in the past. For a person who loves pictures and abstraction it's hard to compromise with that just so people can "understand". :-)





shoes

Sometimes I wonder how the frig I end up on some of the spam mailing lists out there... ? I mean, ladies' shoes? There are not many things I'm less likely to be interested in.


Reminds me: are all women masochists? Why do they walk around in those torture instruments?

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Fall of the Old Camera industry

The Rise of Digital imaging and the Fall of the Old Camera industry, article.
As cameras become more digital gadgets than optical instruments, it is going all to hell for many traditional camera manufacturers.

In Munich, Germany, the former Agfa building was demolished in February 2008.

A Pen for the 21st?

It seems the upcoming compact Olympus system camera will resemble the classic Pen. I'm excited. I've been wishing for years for a compact, fast, high-quality digital camera. A street photographer's camera. I so hope they get it right.
But if they don't, maybe Panasonic will, or somebody else. It's bound to happen, or so I choose to believe.

Batteries

OK, so sometimes I'm an idiot. I hope it never happens to you, it's very embarrassing.

I've bitched about trying to make a bluetooth remote control work, and blaming the technology.
But now there's new evidence that none of all the batteries I tried in it were entirely fresh, and when it got totally fresh batteries, voila, it works fine.
My bad.
Maybe the moral is, don't save half-used batteries.

More steampunk

This one can be won. It seems to me that this one, like the Wall-E I showed recently, have gone so far that the fact that they are PC cases is incidental to the fact that they are sculptures. An afterthought, like the burger in a Happy Meal.
And the artist in me sort of thinks: why not just make sculptures?
Well, I guess it's sorta kool that they also work, even though most bits on them perform no function.


Wednesday, May 27, 2009

New ad

I've renewed the only ad I use for Domai, on The Online Photographer. So today I took the opportunity to update the graphic too. I suck as a designer, so by pure luck I hit on something which not only looks good, I think, but also matched the color scheme on the site.
It's the one saying "joyful nudes" here, a little down the left side of the page.

Presuming

I keep learning again and again, apparently to little effect, that one should not assume what others know about. I was just asked "what does LOL mean?", because I had used it as only answer to a point in an email.
The point being that I was asked by a man who has used the Internet daily for fifteen years.
And he is intelligent and very successful, and speaks English well. Apparently he just never before has seen it used in a context where he felt compelled to query about the meaning.

Married to...

From the comic Buttercup Festival.

This might explain a few things about mystics like me.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Art prints sales

Does anybody know of a good "fulfillment" service for digital art prints? Meaning somebody who will take my digital files (photos or digital art), take payment from a customer, print it in good quality, and ship it?
I could easily print them myself, but I really don't fancy a trip to the post office for every little sale.

The local mail box can only handle postcard-sized prints, and I might actually do those also, it would have the advantage that I can sign them (and can use fancy paper). But I'd like to be able to offer bigger prints too.

TTL said:
I took a look at the services mentioned in the comments above and they seem to be primarily photo printing services, not art printing services.
Deviantart has a "giclée on premium matte" print option, but it doesn't mention anything about the paper stock or inks. No mention of light-fastness either. It's probably ok for hobbiest prints, but not gallery quality.

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Cocteau Twins - Watchlar

Drawing on the iPhone

Article.
"Jorge Colombo drew this week’s cover using Brushes, an application for the iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square."

I'll never bitch about any clumsiness of my Wacom Cintiq drawing screen again. (Oh, who am I kidding.)


And like I've always said:
"Colombo leans heavily on the Undo feature: “It looks like I draw everything with supernatural assurance and very fast—it gets rid of all the hesitations.”"

Undo is a fantastic feature of anything digital.

Brushes looks like an outstanding app. Video. Flick group.
What surprises me, of course, is the level of control you can seemingly get with just finger painting.

Hubble space mission photos

Hubble space mission photos.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Choose your poison


Here's an interesting site about opioids and related issues and problems.
I don't think that there's any such thing as a "harmless drug", no matter what some cannabis promoters claim. Just like there's no such thing as a "harmless knife".
But it's also clear to me that there is mostly money and politics behind drug laws. Just look at the fact that two of the most damaging and lethal of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, are also the two which are legal everywhere. How does that make sense?

"Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is an anathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus."
William S. Burroughs
(1914 - 1997)

"All penalties for drug users should be dropped...Making drug abuse a crime is useless and even dangerous...Every year we seize more and more drugs but the quantity available still increases...Police are losing the drug battle worldwide"
Raymond Kendall
Secretary General of Interpol 1994
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Natalie Portman

Doesn't Natalie look gorgeous here.
She is also one of the celebrities who have not only talent and looks, but a mind too. Highly educated, speaks several languages, and so on.