Update: I did an interview with Laurie a couple years ago.
"My interest in photography started when I was still at secondary school. Although I was well on the road to becoming a professional classical musician, I discovered photography in an evening class held by one of the chemistry masters. When I saw an image on photographic paper appear as if by magic whilst being developed, I was totally hooked. Plus, I was dating the best looking girl in the school by far, and she wanted to model nude for me, music as great as is, had to take second place."
====
I'd not seen this one before, but the photographer is my very good friend Laurie Jeffery in action.
(Sadly the nudity had to be censored for it to be on Utoob.)
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
2D bar codes
TidBITS article.
"For instance, you could take a photo of the 2D barcode on one of our articles using a special iPhone app as a way of getting the article's URL into your iPhone."
I've seen these used in Net-generated postage "stamps", pretty interesting.
To do it like her
This will appear in the Domai newsletter, but I thought it was so unusual and powerful that I want to present it in another setting also. - Eolake
To Do It Like Her
by Maggie
when i rhyme for you it feels like i have no clothes
your hungry eye sees all it thinks it knows
and when i don't the skin there is still yours
broken beneath the cover of the sleeve
— to do it like that, by nancy
My dearest friend Nancy indulged in all types of poetry, from the strictest sonnets to the wildest free form, from the remote venerable classics to the most intimate one-night-stand impromptu pieces. Yet despite how wide-ranging her tastes in verse, a single common theme seasoned every single poem she experienced, whether her own compositions or those of the most published authors: she saw every poem as the body of woman, and she loved the body of woman as poetry. Whether a poem ventured specific reference such as in the short piece of hers launching this letter or was directed to some completely different topic as distant as war or death or taxes, she could still see the female form without so much a stretch as it might take to wake up one of her own legs from sleep's yawn.
Back then we spent several nights a week up in Jen's loft, drinking and smoking and talking poetry and politics and whatever else came up, riding night past three the next morning, no agenda, no deadline. And no routine, except it became a standard of most gatherings that someone would encourage Nancy to give us a performance of one of her new poems. Which almost always end up with her ditching her clothes, using her own body as part of her poem. Not a striptease act any more than a doctor's examination, both of which she had enough experience with to draw the distinctions; this was exactly what she made of it and what we took from it — a poetry reading merged with an exploration of feminine beauty.
We'd see her ribs and somehow get a whole different perspective of an alliterative phrase in a poem, then just as we caught it she would move slightly in just the right way to make her ribs pronounced in a different way that would shift precisely the way the next alliteration in that poem moved, and we'd catch ourselves watching nothing but those ribs the rest of her performance. Or she'd spread out her leg to show how that stretch of soft skin just at the top of her inner thigh felt just like the volta of a sonnet, and it would be nearly impossible for us to see or think of anything but that even when she would read and reveal the closing lines' resolution of the sonnet's proposition. Or she'd proudly display her back from her shoulders down to her ass, working her way into mysteries of a poem that even the poet could not explore, rather were left to the pleasure of others to adore.
And like the countless images and infinite emotions explored through centuries of poems, no matter how many of Nancy's poems you'd seen, none was ever the same. You'd swear you'd never seen her breasts like that before, noticed that way her hip turned, been so taken by the way her pubic hair dove between her legs, or ever expected her smile and her eyes to carry so simple yet so endless a touch. Like every woman, she was a new beauty every time she undressed, and she used the newness of poetic creation to show that to us at the same time she used each new poem to show us something new of woman through something new of her.
Then came one night when she burst through my lifelong shyness to reach through to my deep trust in her. As natural as it seemed by then for her to reveal her body to our friends during one of her readings, and as well as I knew everyone there and had even had more than a few intimate nights with two besides her, I never would have dreamed of following her example myself. But when asked that night for a poem, she startled me by starting to recite one of mine, one of my early attempts at a villanelle, a strict form built around two lines that repeat throughout the poem. I froze at what she might have meant by choosing my poem, then our eyes met, and I instantly surrendered to her will. I remembered writing this villanelle for her as a response to one of hers, so I knew where she was going with it.
She came over to where I was sitting as she continued reciting and slipped my shirt up off me as I raised my arms up to her. I slipped out of my shoes and stood up to face her, and she bent down slipping my jeans and panties down, moving into the core of the poem, which I recalled as having been one of the most intense moments of writing the muse had ever hit me with. She walked me to the center of the room. I felt a brief hot flush sensing everyone's gaze, that quickly replaced by a warm lasting glow as Nancy's hand tousled my hair playfully to reassure me. Then, as I closed my eyes to soak in her touch, she began the final repetition of the two main villanelle lines while tracing a fingernail lightly to draw a line starting at my forehead down over my nose and parted lips and lifted chin, down my neck to my cross over one of my breasts, across my belly and curving down to disappear between my legs then reappearing far down one of my calves down to the foot; pausing before almost whispering the final line as she traced another line back up the back of my calf then skipping up to my ass and up my back to the back of my neck and disappearing in a soft breeze of her finger through my hair. I stood as still as an artist's model feeling those two lines over and over for what seemed an eternity burning into me until they felt they met inside me, then opening my eyes to find she had quietly rejoined our other friends.
Looking down to where my body still tingled with her touch, I found she had followed the edge of a shadow made by one of the far lights across a post in the loft, and I guessed that either a similar shadow fell on my back or that she had imagined the echo of the shadow in front. I remained motionless as I looked down at what would have been the shadow's straight line follow the curves in my body, then saw it flip as my body fit into on what seemed the flow of the shadow's edge, then ease back to the shadow tracing my body, and again my body answering the shadow, rocking lightly back and forth into the repetition's of the sounds of the villanelle. Then I turned slightly to make the shadow ride up over my breast, then slowly back again, then again and again softly and slowly until the edge lay just to the side of the nipple, then turned my hip slightly the same to move the shadow's haze down into the curves, then held those two places while my body just slid into where the rest of the edge felt it wanted to go. And relaxed there for a moment feeling what that had given to the line traced up my back, the only movement in my body coming from my breathing slightly faster than usual, the only sound in the room being that pause filling in the space after the very last word of a poem.
Only then again did I become conscious that the one usually so shy and quiet now stood in the middle of a group of her friends, completely naked and just as completely absorbed in how her body felt in the light and shadows. I turned back to Nancy to thank her, then remained near the center of the room laughing and talking with our friends who now milled around once again as usual, feeling more natural than I'd ever felt before with our friends there, not getting around to putting my clothes back on for nearly an hour. And since Nancy left, when I make it up to Jen's now I'm the one frequently asked to read a poem the way she used to do so well. Only too pleased to oblige if I can do it like her own poetry, like her own body, like her own vision of beauty.
— Maggie
=================
To Do It Like Her
by Maggie
when i rhyme for you it feels like i have no clothes
your hungry eye sees all it thinks it knows
and when i don't the skin there is still yours
broken beneath the cover of the sleeve
— to do it like that, by nancy
My dearest friend Nancy indulged in all types of poetry, from the strictest sonnets to the wildest free form, from the remote venerable classics to the most intimate one-night-stand impromptu pieces. Yet despite how wide-ranging her tastes in verse, a single common theme seasoned every single poem she experienced, whether her own compositions or those of the most published authors: she saw every poem as the body of woman, and she loved the body of woman as poetry. Whether a poem ventured specific reference such as in the short piece of hers launching this letter or was directed to some completely different topic as distant as war or death or taxes, she could still see the female form without so much a stretch as it might take to wake up one of her own legs from sleep's yawn.
Back then we spent several nights a week up in Jen's loft, drinking and smoking and talking poetry and politics and whatever else came up, riding night past three the next morning, no agenda, no deadline. And no routine, except it became a standard of most gatherings that someone would encourage Nancy to give us a performance of one of her new poems. Which almost always end up with her ditching her clothes, using her own body as part of her poem. Not a striptease act any more than a doctor's examination, both of which she had enough experience with to draw the distinctions; this was exactly what she made of it and what we took from it — a poetry reading merged with an exploration of feminine beauty.
We'd see her ribs and somehow get a whole different perspective of an alliterative phrase in a poem, then just as we caught it she would move slightly in just the right way to make her ribs pronounced in a different way that would shift precisely the way the next alliteration in that poem moved, and we'd catch ourselves watching nothing but those ribs the rest of her performance. Or she'd spread out her leg to show how that stretch of soft skin just at the top of her inner thigh felt just like the volta of a sonnet, and it would be nearly impossible for us to see or think of anything but that even when she would read and reveal the closing lines' resolution of the sonnet's proposition. Or she'd proudly display her back from her shoulders down to her ass, working her way into mysteries of a poem that even the poet could not explore, rather were left to the pleasure of others to adore.
And like the countless images and infinite emotions explored through centuries of poems, no matter how many of Nancy's poems you'd seen, none was ever the same. You'd swear you'd never seen her breasts like that before, noticed that way her hip turned, been so taken by the way her pubic hair dove between her legs, or ever expected her smile and her eyes to carry so simple yet so endless a touch. Like every woman, she was a new beauty every time she undressed, and she used the newness of poetic creation to show that to us at the same time she used each new poem to show us something new of woman through something new of her.
Then came one night when she burst through my lifelong shyness to reach through to my deep trust in her. As natural as it seemed by then for her to reveal her body to our friends during one of her readings, and as well as I knew everyone there and had even had more than a few intimate nights with two besides her, I never would have dreamed of following her example myself. But when asked that night for a poem, she startled me by starting to recite one of mine, one of my early attempts at a villanelle, a strict form built around two lines that repeat throughout the poem. I froze at what she might have meant by choosing my poem, then our eyes met, and I instantly surrendered to her will. I remembered writing this villanelle for her as a response to one of hers, so I knew where she was going with it.
She came over to where I was sitting as she continued reciting and slipped my shirt up off me as I raised my arms up to her. I slipped out of my shoes and stood up to face her, and she bent down slipping my jeans and panties down, moving into the core of the poem, which I recalled as having been one of the most intense moments of writing the muse had ever hit me with. She walked me to the center of the room. I felt a brief hot flush sensing everyone's gaze, that quickly replaced by a warm lasting glow as Nancy's hand tousled my hair playfully to reassure me. Then, as I closed my eyes to soak in her touch, she began the final repetition of the two main villanelle lines while tracing a fingernail lightly to draw a line starting at my forehead down over my nose and parted lips and lifted chin, down my neck to my cross over one of my breasts, across my belly and curving down to disappear between my legs then reappearing far down one of my calves down to the foot; pausing before almost whispering the final line as she traced another line back up the back of my calf then skipping up to my ass and up my back to the back of my neck and disappearing in a soft breeze of her finger through my hair. I stood as still as an artist's model feeling those two lines over and over for what seemed an eternity burning into me until they felt they met inside me, then opening my eyes to find she had quietly rejoined our other friends.
Looking down to where my body still tingled with her touch, I found she had followed the edge of a shadow made by one of the far lights across a post in the loft, and I guessed that either a similar shadow fell on my back or that she had imagined the echo of the shadow in front. I remained motionless as I looked down at what would have been the shadow's straight line follow the curves in my body, then saw it flip as my body fit into on what seemed the flow of the shadow's edge, then ease back to the shadow tracing my body, and again my body answering the shadow, rocking lightly back and forth into the repetition's of the sounds of the villanelle. Then I turned slightly to make the shadow ride up over my breast, then slowly back again, then again and again softly and slowly until the edge lay just to the side of the nipple, then turned my hip slightly the same to move the shadow's haze down into the curves, then held those two places while my body just slid into where the rest of the edge felt it wanted to go. And relaxed there for a moment feeling what that had given to the line traced up my back, the only movement in my body coming from my breathing slightly faster than usual, the only sound in the room being that pause filling in the space after the very last word of a poem.
Only then again did I become conscious that the one usually so shy and quiet now stood in the middle of a group of her friends, completely naked and just as completely absorbed in how her body felt in the light and shadows. I turned back to Nancy to thank her, then remained near the center of the room laughing and talking with our friends who now milled around once again as usual, feeling more natural than I'd ever felt before with our friends there, not getting around to putting my clothes back on for nearly an hour. And since Nancy left, when I make it up to Jen's now I'm the one frequently asked to read a poem the way she used to do so well. Only too pleased to oblige if I can do it like her own poetry, like her own body, like her own vision of beauty.
— Maggie
Doing a "whole-op"
Sometimes late at night I do a "whole-op". It's my loose translation of a Danish term from the car restoration trade, of when a car is renovated from top to bottom and inside-out.
I've twisted the term to mean when you take some time out to look over your life as a whole, to evaluate how it's going. Especially looking at it from the biggest perspective you can muster, that's important since we all tend to get lost in the details, in daily life.
Try to really take nothing for granted, but what is your purpose? What's your most important purpose? Are you making progress? Are you in the right place for furthering that purpose? Is it the right one, or is it one you've been given? Is there a higher one which could be more important?
I think doing this once in a while is essential, and might prevent that one wakes up at 60 and finds that one has used a lifetime doing something that (s)he now considers trivial, or has not grown so much as one might have, for lack of attention to it.
I've twisted the term to mean when you take some time out to look over your life as a whole, to evaluate how it's going. Especially looking at it from the biggest perspective you can muster, that's important since we all tend to get lost in the details, in daily life.
Try to really take nothing for granted, but what is your purpose? What's your most important purpose? Are you making progress? Are you in the right place for furthering that purpose? Is it the right one, or is it one you've been given? Is there a higher one which could be more important?
I think doing this once in a while is essential, and might prevent that one wakes up at 60 and finds that one has used a lifetime doing something that (s)he now considers trivial, or has not grown so much as one might have, for lack of attention to it.
Night time is the right time
I was just struck by the light. As it were.
Taken hand-held at midnight with the Canon 5DII at 6400 ISO and the excellent Canon 70-200mm F:4.0 stabilized lens, at 4.0, 1/30 second.
I exaggerated the graininess a tad in PS, for effect. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Taken hand-held at midnight with the Canon 5DII at 6400 ISO and the excellent Canon 70-200mm F:4.0 stabilized lens, at 4.0, 1/30 second.
I exaggerated the graininess a tad in PS, for effect. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Ricoh GXR camera system
Seems strange at first glance, but I'll try to withhold judgment.
1001NC article.
(BTW, there were hints that this video is in danger of being taken down, so I saved it. I could not get keepvid to load, but savetube.com works.)
1001NC article.
(BTW, there were hints that this video is in danger of being taken down, so I saved it. I could not get keepvid to load, but savetube.com works.)
IP over avian carriers
After it was revealed that a carrier pigeon is often faster than Internet transfer, we got an anonymous tip of this little known Internet protocol:
There exists an entire internet protocol for this purpose. It's called IPoAC (IP over Avian Carriers), and it's proposed by RFC 1149. It was also implemented by Norwegian Linux user group in 2001.
There exists an entire internet protocol for this purpose. It's called IPoAC (IP over Avian Carriers), and it's proposed by RFC 1149. It was also implemented by Norwegian Linux user group in 2001.
New pension law
I have an old pension/insurance scheme back in my native Denmark, from the days when still had a day job. It's pretty small numbers, but I've kept it going, heck you never know.
Today I got a letter from the pension company, there's a new law passed in Denmark, which will apparently tax the kind of pension I get, somehow in the future. To make the people swallow the medicine, they have put on a sugar layer in the form of an upfront compensation right now.
The monies due me is 314 Danish kroner ($63). If I want to get them paid out now instead of added to my pension, that's fine, only it will cost me 340 Danish kroner ($68) in fees! :-)
All I'm thinking is, what will all this bullshit cost the Danish people in administration costs, overall? Geez.
I've heard told that in Denmark over half the population is either living off the state in the form of benefits/pension, or working for the state. I guess in another fifty years nobody will be doing any production at all.
Today I got a letter from the pension company, there's a new law passed in Denmark, which will apparently tax the kind of pension I get, somehow in the future. To make the people swallow the medicine, they have put on a sugar layer in the form of an upfront compensation right now.
The monies due me is 314 Danish kroner ($63). If I want to get them paid out now instead of added to my pension, that's fine, only it will cost me 340 Danish kroner ($68) in fees! :-)
All I'm thinking is, what will all this bullshit cost the Danish people in administration costs, overall? Geez.
I've heard told that in Denmark over half the population is either living off the state in the form of benefits/pension, or working for the state. I guess in another fifty years nobody will be doing any production at all.
Homing pigeons
Under the 60 Gigs post, Pascal posted:
Use a homing pigeon, it's more efficient than the internet.
Really, it is.
A computer company in South Africa tried to send 4GB of data simultaneously through ADSL and in a memory key carried by a homing pigeon, to about 100 km away. The pigeon arrived and the memory stick was plugged and set after 2 hours. Meanwhile, the ADSL had only transmitted 200MB.
Pigeons are hi-tech!!!
They're also used to send blood samples to labs in case of some emergencies.
Not bad for "winged rats", eh?
(And the pigeon could easily carry an SD card, that means at least 32GB at the moment.)
Use a homing pigeon, it's more efficient than the internet.
Really, it is.
A computer company in South Africa tried to send 4GB of data simultaneously through ADSL and in a memory key carried by a homing pigeon, to about 100 km away. The pigeon arrived and the memory stick was plugged and set after 2 hours. Meanwhile, the ADSL had only transmitted 200MB.
Pigeons are hi-tech!!!
They're also used to send blood samples to labs in case of some emergencies.
Not bad for "winged rats", eh?
(And the pigeon could easily carry an SD card, that means at least 32GB at the moment.)
Sunday, November 08, 2009
When kids are the offenders
[Thanks to Neeraj]
This article is long on emotion and short on facts, but it has had big impact and should have. Child abuse hysteria has crossed over into blind, raging insanity.
Martian landscapes
Awesome photos.
I like the Boston Globe's "Big Picture" feature. It sure took many years since anybody in the mainstream did something about the tendency to over-miniaturize pictures on the web. (Actually I'd love to have pics like these even bigger, like two or three megapixels.)
(How the first one is a landscape I'm not sure, it looks like an artistic double-exposure to me, with some plants in silhouette.)
Some of these work great tiled on a big screen. (And could be modified to work seamlessly.)
I like the Boston Globe's "Big Picture" feature. It sure took many years since anybody in the mainstream did something about the tendency to over-miniaturize pictures on the web. (Actually I'd love to have pics like these even bigger, like two or three megapixels.)
(How the first one is a landscape I'm not sure, it looks like an artistic double-exposure to me, with some plants in silhouette.)
Some of these work great tiled on a big screen. (And could be modified to work seamlessly.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)