2005 was a good year for me. Juliana started Kindergarten, Ava started talking in FULL FORCE and Tracey and I moved back to a city. I am posting this from the first floor stairwell of our new house in the Bayview neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI. Go WI!!!!!!
I am taking a break from ripping out the carpet from our first floor (in preparation for the refinishing that will start on monday). Ripping out carpet starts off nice and easy. Then you have to get the tacks up. Then you have to get all the staples up. Then you have to keep reaching for the tissue box to blow your nose since the dust is getting to you. Fun!
I will be posting up before, middle and after pictures of the floor process when i get some time tomorrow. At least I will be able to get the before and middle pictures. :) We have uncovered a pretty nice floor, but one that definitely needs to be sanded and refinished. Wish us luck with the rest of the floors!!!
Anyway, back to the work. To everyone I spent time with in 2005, here's to another year. To everyone i lost contact with or neglected to get back to, i hope to do better next year!
Saturday, December 31, 2005
last post of 2005!!!
Monday, December 26, 2005
excellent set of polaroids for every day in 2001
Marcel Molina Jr is a core developer for Ruby on Rails and contributes to the entertaining (if perl and python dissing) Project.ioni.st Tumblelog (what the hell is a "tumblelog?" It seems like a blog, but with a different name and one of those clever URLs. Oh, and it seems very stream of consciousness and has many contributors.). I was checking out the profiles of the other contributors to Project.ioni.st and wandered over to his site. One section on the site has a polaroid for (nearly?) every day of 2001. I am a big fan of self-indulgent photography, so i spent a while this evening browsing through this set. There is some good stuff here. Do yourself a favor and go check them out.
Also, to prove that i love self-indulgent polaroids, here is one of my own:
Totally mope-tastic.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
well done software sales
I recently ditched my palm tungsten e2 for a new treo 650. I was using the palm, but tiring of hooking up the usb cable to my little samsung phone to get net access that i could only really use on my laptop. Anyway, i bought a treo. It is a happy-making device.
Since palm support on the mac is a bit sketchy, i did some research and read some really positive review of the new Mark/Space Missing Sync for OS X. I used their software a couple of years ago with my first palm phone. It was pretty nice then, and the only option for syncing that phone with my mac.
I was happy to see that they offered me upgrade pricing even though i haven't purchased anything from them in over 2 years. They have a nice little form on their site that asks for your email address. If they have it, they send you a link for the discounted purchase price on their newest software. Super simple and super nice. If only more companies would make things that simple.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Rails View Error Handling
I am writing a few apps right now in rails. Actually, i am converting some apps from Mason to Rails to see how it goes.
One thing that i want to change right away is the big red summarized set of error message when a form has trouble.
Searching through the rails wiki turns up an example of customizing the display of an individual field that has an error (with the caveat that it doesn't work on fields hooked up to foreign keys in the model). This requires redefining a helper method stored in a class variable. The redefinition looks like this:
ActionView::Base.field_error_proc = Proc.new do |html_tag, instance|
msg = instance.error_message
title = msg.kind_of?(Array) ? '* ' + msg.join("n*") : msg
"<div class="fieldWithErrors" title="#{title}">Please fill in this field: #{html_tag}
end
To be able to display my own error message summary, i need to do the following:
class ActionView::Base
def error_messages_for(object_name, options = {})
options = options.symbolize_keys
object = instance_variable_get("@#{object_name}")
unless object.errors.empty?
content_tag("p", "Bah! There were errors!")
end
end
end
While this is simple, it is a weird option. At the snakes and rubies, David spoke about what was "above the cut" for rails. To David, an rss generator is above the cut. Apparently, requiring users to redefine internals to change the display of error messages is not above the cut.
What seems simpler is to provide a place for your controller or application view to define templates for error messages and an optional method to transform object.errors on its way into this template. At least leaving display logic in the views/ tree would give people most of what they need in the place that they would look for it first. Now, i know that ActionPack is a pretty tightly coupled controller + view combination, but this still seems clunky.
I didn't find a lot of good info online for this need, so if anyone knows of any examples that i can look at, i would appreciate the links. Also, if anyone knows a simpler way that i can get these things done, please let me know.
Selenium Hackfest
I went to the Selenium Hackfest that was sponsored by the Chicago Ruby Users Group and hosted at ThoughtWorks with Chris, Eric and Garret from work.
The purpose of the event was to investigate a few patches and improved the ruby driver support for Selenium. Chris and I tried to integrate and test the Frame Support patch from James Wang, but ran into a lot of trouble. The patch is fairly large and we were both completely unfamiliar with Selenium's internals. I need to post our results to the Selenium Dev List and try to contact James as well, to get a better feel for what was done and what i need to do to understand it.
Update: James contacted me and gave me some more info on the patch. Hopefully this will help me integrate and test it better!
I have a vested interest in having frame support, since the main application i want to test sadly uses iframes to poorly mimic Excel's "Freeze Panes" feature.
The event itself was a lot of fun, even though i didn't technically accomplish anything. Also, this was probably my final user group event of the year.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Chicago User Group Goodness
Chicago seems to be buzzing lately, with all sorts of fun stuff.
I have always been active in the user groups in the area, but lately things have really been picking up. Attendance at the perl, python and ruby meetings has been growing at a healthy clip and we are even starting to do more cross-language events (even if this one was being pitched as a fight. ;) ).
Thursday saw the first Perl and Python social event in chicago. A bunch of snakes and camels piled into a crowded Monk's pub on lake, talked code, made introductions, had beer spilled on us by drunk lawyers and stumbled home through chicago's first big snowstorm of the season.
For a couple of upcoming examples, there will be a cross language hack fest for Selenium on Tuesday, December 13th, hosted by ThoughtWorks. Also, the Yet Another Perl Conference North America, which will be held here in Chicago, has extended room out to the local language groups.
Despite the recent fun, one thing that i have found myself doing (and regretting) is spending more time on the language bickering itself over the spirit of an open, dynamic language. People bitching about perl can suck it, since perl pays my bills. :) In all seriousness, though, while everyone has the desire to defend their choices, i really see everyone learning something from the idea pollination that has been happening.
2005 has been, and 2006 looks like it will shape up to be, a great time for Beautiful Dynamic Languages.
Saturday, December 3, 2005
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Monday, November 14, 2005
Saturday, November 5, 2005
Monday, October 31, 2005
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Juliana's 4th Birthday Intro Video
Every year for Juliana and Ava's birthdays we put together a little video to show at the birthday party. I want to put up the intros that we have made for each one here. For now, I have one ready.
View the introduction to Juliana's 4th Birthday video (1.7 megabyte MP4 file).
Friday, October 14, 2005
Comcast, stop being such a scaredy-cat
Tracey and I love the shows on HBO. I don't really watch much on tv past what is on basic cable, so we tried to get the ala carte HBO from comcast. Sounds good, right? Not so fast.
Apparently, Comcast has moved HBO only to digital cable. Let's examine this equation. Traditional cable is the scary wild west, where paying customers can copy content by simply connecting cables between devices. Digital cable is a brave new world, where normal cable controls don't apply. By switching hardware, the provider can control what you can and can't see even more than they could before.
So. We ordered the service, and the comcast rep was not very clear with us. When i came home today after the comcast installer was out, i found that he had completely bypassed my tivo. I realize now that this is because the box they gave us was a digital cable box where the RF will simply not work with my tivo. He didn't even say, "I am not connecting this to your tivo because it won't work with this." He just skipped it and left cables draping across the front of our tv shelf. I do NOT want to use the IR blaster crap with the tivo just for HBO.
So. I asked for a single channel and what i get is: a half hour wasted connecting my tivo and troubleshooting, followed by a 20 minute phone conversation where i needed to spend 15 of those minutes justifying to the rep why i felt my installation fee (only $16) should be refunded.
I have used comcast for my internet for 4 and a half years and love it. I have had virtually no problems. We ditched our directv so we could use a real series 2 tivo with basic cable and we suddenly have to fight with them to get straight answers and simple things like, "A channel."
Comcast: Stop being afraid of your customers. I pay your bills. The least you can do is sell what i want, not what you want me to want.
Now, if you will pardon me, i am off to find a torrent of last week's curb your enthusiasm. Thanks comcast!
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Catalyst Vs. Ruby On Rails
I have constantly been on the hunt for a great framework for building web applications. My motivation is that writing web applications is 90% boring bullshit.
I have read a lot about Ruby On Rails, Django and Catalyst and have been experimenting with them all with varying degrees of interest and success.
Django is nice and has the advantage of being written in Python. I feel like it is too wrapped up in the style of the applications that birthed it as a framework, though. This fact has pushed Django off to the back for the time being. I am still keeping an eye on it, but my lazy eye is on that job.
Rails has the advantage of being awesome, but the disadvantage of being THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER, DHH 4 EVA. The hype bothers me, even if it is (partially) justified. I finished my first application with Rails this week and i like it a lot. I like ActiveRecord the most, but the whole framework is pretty nice.
Catalyst seems really scrappy to me, but is nice, if a bit rough around the edges. I am working on converting a couple of small mason applications over to it to see what works and what doesn't. The catalyst project could definitely use more tutorials and documentation. To that end, I am presenting an introduction to Catalyst at this month's Chicago.pm meeting. John W. Long of the Chicago Ruby user's group will be presenting on Rails.
Having a task and a deadline has really helped me to learn more about both frameworks and actually solve problems with them, rather than just dicking around with tutorials.
Once the presentations happen, I will post slides up and sample applications.
Anyone interested in attending the presentation can get more information on times and places for the meeting.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Monday, September 19, 2005
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Sunday, September 11, 2005
links for 2005-09-12
- a nice reminder about unit tests. My own tests break these rules and have been slow to infect the company for exactly the reasons michael cites.
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Polaroid Colorpack II
I have been carrying around an old Polaroid Colorpack II land camera for a few years now. It has followed me from apartment to apartment, but i never bothered to see if i could still get film for it until this weekend.
To my surprise, i could get film for it. This camera takes Polaroid 100 series film, which is fairly readily available. This kind of film comes in packs of 10 and peels apart. The one i have still even has a dozen unused flashbulbs in the case!
Before i read the loading instructions here: [HowTo: Using a Polaroid Pack Camera] i ruined one of the packs of film. Goodbye 12 dollars! I didn't need you anyway.
After reading the instructions, I loaded the film with no trouble and managed to get a few shots off. I posted the first four as a set on flickr.
Fun!!!
Saturday, September 3, 2005
Friday, August 26, 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
links for 2005-08-24
- my css needs have kept me on the hunt for good resources. I hate searching for hacks and crap for different browsers.
Young Man walking past blackboard
This photo that I found in the apartment above my grandpa's place makes me think of bill callahan from smog. Something about the boy's posture and the way his jaw is set just sends smog songs through my brain.
Monday, August 22, 2005
this must be the place
I love to read about artists. The experience is very inspiring. After the rush of inspiration, of identification and of attempting to transport myself into the space of that artist, i inevitably reach a single conclusion.
I don't give a shit who fucked whom, what drugs someone did, who fought over credits with whom, or even who is nice to grandmas and kittens. I don't know these people, and won't. I have this [music|photograph|film] and in my experience with it, my history with it, i add it to my life. Nothing else matters, except in an academic sense, so not at all.
I am currently reading "this must be the place: the adventures of talking heads in the 20th century" by David Bowman. The writing is pretty terrible. Like a lot of music bios i have ready, there is a big mixture of "this happened, followed by this, while the country was experience x y and z." In this book, all of that is combined with dreck such as:
> Then there was Adrian Belew. He belew everyone away with his rhino guitar.
Oh man. That is a terrible, terrible pun. Not that it will stop me from devouring the rest of this bio tomorrow, but still. ick.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Friday, August 19, 2005
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Jason's Haircut 2005-08-18
The beard and moustache are gone. That is sad.
Actually, my beard and moustache were sad.
The fuzz attached to my face changed the shape of my head in a very nice way, i thought. Moving back to the clean-shaven look makes my head look tiny. teehee
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Photo Experimentation Ideas
I picked up a new Manfrotto head for my first tripod. Why did i need a new head you might ask? Well, freshman year of college i knocked it over, twice, snapping off the handles. This did not mean that I stopped using the tripod. Heavens no! I just suffered as the jagged shards of plastic that used to be my handles tore up my hands while adjusting shot setup.
At the moment I am also drooling over the lensbaby. Only minutes after browsing through the lensbaby site i found this thread in the Canon DSLR user group from flickr on Body Cap Pinhole photographs. I do have a teeeeeny-tiiiiny drill bit and a body cap, so woohoo! Let's give it a shot! I will post my results when I have them.
housework
Tracey quipped today that it is funny how the thought of selling our place has motivated us to do a bunch of improvements lately:
* Patching up nail holes in the trim
* Touching up the paint where the new berber carpet is lower than our old plush stuff.
* Installing a new light fixture in the kitchen (let there be light!)
* Taking out the old table in the basement.
* Organizing the basement and throwing out a tooooon of junk.
* Patch up lots of little drywall dings and touch up a bunch of paint.
Note: Most of that list was done by the lovely tracey. :)
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Monday, August 8, 2005
Sunday, August 7, 2005
links for 2005-08-08
- This site is a really great resource for digital photography work. This tip is on exposing, "developing" and "printing" b&w images from DSLRs.
Friday, August 5, 2005
Thursday, August 4, 2005
Tuesday, August 2, 2005
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
links for 2005-07-27
- hopefully we will be able to catch this without going to wellington (not that that would be so terrible)
Sunday, July 24, 2005
links for 2005-07-25
- nice looking resource site for eclipse. I am checking out eclipse integration with perl and python, so this may be helpful...
- slick dashboard widgets to use with a networked tivo
In praise of stupidity
I have been listening to IT Conversations for a while now (before iTunes "invented" podcasting in the public eye). Doug Kaye corrals a great group of producers and volunteers to capture and present some of the best tech thinkers at conferences and in interviews.
A recent program really stirred me up.
Adam Bosworth - Database Requirements in the Age of Scalable Services, presented at the recent MySQL Users Conference, discusses the problems of scale and complexity, particular in the context of finding and presenting data. He compares the complicated WS-* standards to RSS/ATOM. His ultimate conclusion is that RSS/ATOM may be a fundamental building block in helping applications scale on the internet, since it operates at an item level, letting applications decide how to relate those. Excellent stuff and very inspiring.
If you like IT Conversations, please consider donating to their effort. You can use Amazon or PayPal to give your gift. The effort is 100% listener supported.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Talking Heads on Vinyl
I am currently listening to "Talking Heads 77" on my new turntable. I am just getting back into playing records (mainly because we have a couple crates of good records, but also because I want juliana to be able to impress the kids at school with her knowledge of "old tech"). Since i didn't want to spend a ton, i picked up a Denon DP-29F
When Tracey and I brought out the records we found that we had a bunch of Talking Heads ("Talking Heads 77", "Remain In Light", "Fear of Music", "Naked" and "True Stories"), some Leadbelly, a bunch of Opera and Classical stuff, some old Disney and kid storybook stuff and even Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush", which is one of my favorites.
The turntable, receiver and speakers are currently on the futon in the basement, which is less than ideal, but it is a start until we find a good place for this gear.
As if I needed more music to listen to!
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
links for 2005-07-21
- a python library to do MARC processing
- nice suggestion for syndicating sensitive information via web based aggregators
Monday, July 18, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Sunday, June 19, 2005
simple mason app added to Catalyst examples...
The recent perl.com article on Catalyst has me pretty excited.
I have been looking for a better way to use the power of Mason without the mess that most apps start falling towards. The features that catalyst provides look like the perfect fit for what i want to do, and it introduced me to HTML::Prototype, which has allowed me to do a quick ajax mockup for a work application in 19 minutes the other day. Nice.
After reading the article, i immediately started to change the app to use the Mason View instead of the default Template Toolkit view. Sebastien Riedel saw my post about it on the Mason discussion list and added it to the examples for Catalyst. I am flattered, especially since i only did about 15 minutes of monkey work to get this to work. :)
Download MiniMojo-mason from the Catalyst SVN repository.
color correction before and after
This is the before and after look for the image i was using to test out the curves correction tools in photoshop......
Before:
After:
Saturday, June 18, 2005
doughty on letterman
Bill pinged me over IM on tuesday to let me know that Mike Doughty was going to be on David Letterman that night. I was busy, but i told the tivo to snag it for me so i could watch it later. Tonight i watched it and converted it to a quicktime file so all could see!
Download the video via BitTorrent and while you are at it buy "Haughty Melodic" at Amazon.com
I still remember the first time I heard Soul Coughing. We knew that they were opening for They Might Be Giants at the Barrymore in Madison, so we went out and bought Ruby Vroom (i think tracey was the first to get it, or possibly the only one to get it at that time). They were one of the best opening bands i have seen and quickly became a favorite.
I just picked up "Haughty Melodic" this afternoon and it is nice. I have heard some of that material live or on the previous EPs and i feel like his recorded band is not quite the right fit for his material. Not bad by any means, but kinda plain. I will be giving it a couple more listens this weekend and we'll see how it turns out.
Random Doughty/Soul Coughing stuff:
* I was apparently very excited that they used the phrase "the 5% nation of nipple clamps" in a song. So excited that i bugged my friends about it during the show, as if that phrase was the best thing about the show.
* Doughty wrote his song for the McSweeny's book AFTER getting the comic from Chris Ware. I know because i asked him at Martyr's. He seemed to think it was a stupid thing to ask.
* I think doughty's songs for other albums are kinda lame and extreeeeeeeeeeemely literal. See the McSweeny's song and his contribution to the "Future Soundtrack of America." When i heard that song live, i told Tracey that i thought it should be used for a MoveOn.org commercial. Well, it kinda was!
* I drunkenly told Doughty's one time keyboard player, "The Doveman" Thomas Bartlett (read his blog here)that there was an awesome place called Tommy Bartlett's robot world in Wisconsin. Which i thought was cool because that is his name.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
chipy meeting was great
Thursday's chipy meeting was excellent. I was able to meet some great people and listen to some excellent presentations.
Chris's coverage and Ed's coverage already covered the bases pretty well.
We had to stop talking at one point to let people get through all of the presentations that we had, which is an excellent problem to have. :)
The best part of the night, for me, was the fact that no one made fun of my simplistic and perl-ish python in my myghty sample application. :)
iView is rocking my (photographic organization) world
My tests from a while ago stopped being scientific. I really didn't find much to compare except iPhoto, iView MediaPro and Portfolio and when i started directly comparing iView and Portfolio, well, Portfolio just looked sad.
The basic reasoning behind my choice of iView hinges around these features:
* Importing is fast.
* The 1500x1000 JPEG previews in my 20D's RAW files let me shoot RAW but manage with iView.
* There are some excellent scripts out there for it to handle keeping multiple catalog files in sync and to import new images from a memory card.
Already, I have added our 14 2000-2004 digital photo archive DVDs (~5000 images for 49.6GB of media) to catalogs, as well as all of the images that i have shot since March with my 20D.
This program is very capable and I am still in the process of locking down my workflow. It is very close to complete, however, which is a huge leap from where I started.
lots of programming reading
I have been reading quite a few computer programming books lately and will be posting reviews here (and possible on a couple of the local user group pages as well) and thought i would drop a preview for you
* Joel On Software
* Working Effectively With Legacy Code
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Saturday, May 7, 2005
wilco @ the vic
chad and i saw wilco at the VIC last night. The show was pretty great and the crowd was good. The biggest surprise for me was how great Nels Cline was. One of my favorite albums is the Nels Cline/Thurston Moore collaboration, "Pillow Wand" - an ambient, noisy composition. Last night, Cline played perfectly as part of the band. It never sounded like anything but Wilco. From the fiery solos on "A Ghost is Born", to the country slide guitar of some of the older Wilco tracks, Cline always had that wilco sound. I am totally blown away by his versatility.
Chad just sent me the set list that he found somewhere last night. This list is missing the 3rd encore, but that was only one song, i believe. If i find it, I will post it here...
Vic Theatre
Chicago, IL
5/6/05
## Main Set
1. Late Greats
2. Handshake Drugs
3. Hell Is Chrome
4. Company in my Back
5. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
6. ALTWYS
7. Muzzle of Bees
8. A Shot in the Arm
9. How to Fight Loneliness
10. Hummingbird
11. Jesus, etc.
12. I'm The Man Who Loves You (with horns)
13. Misunderstood (with horns)
14. Theologians
15. Poor Places
16. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
## Encore 1
1. Ashes of American Flags
2. Heavy Metal Drummer
3. Monday (with horns)
4. Outtasite (Outta Mind)
5. I'm A Wheel
6. Kicking Television
## Encore 2
1. Just A Kid (with The Blisters)
2. Airline to Heaven
3. Say You Miss Me
4. Hesitating Beauty
5. Kingpin
Thursday, April 28, 2005
chatting with juliana....
(15:36:51) plural81: :)
(15:37:23) tmgess78: tgfuhfhfuhffiifufjfjfjfvjfjfjfjffjjfjfjfjfijfjfdjfhjfjjvjjujgh :-)
(15:37:32) plural81: ava?
(15:39:34) tmgess78: AVA IS IN BAD
(15:39:50) tmgess78: :-)
(15:39:59) plural81: HI JULIANA!
(15:40:02) plural81: she is in BED?
(15:40:09) plural81: taking a NAP?
(15:44:10) tmgess78: NO MOMMY IS NOTINBAD :-)
(15:44:52) plural81: hahaha
(15:45:37) tmgess78: :-) ;-)
(15:47:31) tmgess78: juli is chatting with you! that's so cool!
(15:47:50) plural81: i know
(15:47:51) plural81: :)
(15:47:56) plural81: NOTINBAD:)
(15:49:58) tmgess78: :-) :-( :-P :-) :-)
(15:53:28) tmgess78 logged out.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Rocking At Cannova's
This picture has Jason P. (The Other White Jason) in it as the only person in focus. Other notables include: Brian D. in the upper right corner, Jessica, Mya and Phil with his "Stayin Alive" shirt and ginormous VHS video camera.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
initial import timings.
i ran a few import timing tests to have some data to start working with.
The test consisted of a 1 GB compact flash card with 126 RAW photos and 3 jpegs.
* iPhoto: 19 minutes
* iView Media Pro: 4.5 minutes
* PhaseOne Capture Pro: 4.25 minutes
* Portfolio (with 1000x1000 offline preview files being created): 23 minutes
* Portfolio (straight import): 4.75 minutes.
This tells me a couple of things. The first is that iView and Capture Pro definitely not doing anything but copying the files and stashing the builtin thumbnails. The second is that i definitely want offline preview files so i can see what i want once i archive my files. However, i probably don't need to create those files upon import for every file (since i may be ditching a ton of the files anyway).
## Winners:
* iView: Very quick import, plus excellent speed when switching views between thumbnail and edit mode.
## Losers:
* iPhoto: I have no option but to import and create jpegs at import time. I know that iPhoto is a consumer app, but still. That kinda pisses me off. It is otherwise very simple. I wouldn't mind using the "digital shoebox" model if it didn't take so long.
## Neutral:
* Capture Pro: Not exactly sure what i would do with this at the moment. A separate app for RAW processing doesn't seem necessary at the moment, but we shall see.
* Portfolio: Unless i turn off the offline preview stuff, this suffers the same fate as iPhoto. If i can generate the offline preview files after i throw out any shots i don't want this will get a boost.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Ah no. I know you didn't just say that.
Tracey and I went to see Sin City last night, since michelle watched the girls for us.
The film was great. It was also one of the most twisted and violent things i have ever seen. I heartily recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach.
When the credits started rolling and we started to make for the bathroom, i saw a young boy walking down the stairs in front of me. He must have been 8 or 10 years old. His mother was right in front of me when i started walking down the stairs. "Excellent film to take your kid to see." Admittedly, this is a pretty jerky thing to say to a total stranger, but you have got to be kidding me. Taking your little kid to see that film is hardly responsible parenting. As Tracey said in the car ride after the movie, "There are R rated movies. And then there was that." Language is one thing. For instance, the language that this lovely mother used in front of her kid and to her husband while responding to me.
Ah no. I know you didn't just say that.
What the fuck did you just say to me? You have no fucking right. It is none of your fucking business.
She then tried to get her husband to do something about me. "Yeah. That motherfucker right there. Do you know what he had the nerve to say to me?" Now, I am a wimpy guy, so i really didn't want this guy to come over and try to fight me. It would have ended badly. For me. The guy took a look at me. Then looked sheepishly back at his wife, who immediately started bitching him out for not going over to kick my ass.
Monday, April 11, 2005
quest for a photographic workflow........
Now that i have my 20D and tracey has my Canon S50 we have a problem. Let me back up a bit. We have had a problem for a loooooooooong time.
I went to school for photography. I shoot all the time. I also collect photoraphs that i find, or from my family or a book or a pile of garbage i pass by. Also, i used to run a digital imaging lab at a downtown service bureau and I had access to a drum scanner. This whole equation leaves me and tracey with lots of photographs. In case you are wondering what a lot is, let me break it down for you:
* organized and archived digital image CDs (~650MB each) (jason only): 60 (38 GB)
* organized and archived digital image DVDs (~4.7GB each) (family): 14 (63GB)
* Random stuff on my hard drive that i haven't archived yet: 25 GB
* Black Binders (the besseler ones, my favorites) filled with negatives or transparencies: 10. Each of these has somewhere around a hundred sheets of film.
* Boxes of photos that i have found: 12. Each has 500-2000 photos in it.
Grand Total: An unweildy mess.
So. Over the next couple of weeks I will be examining several solutions for dealing with this problem.
My requirements are:
* Mac OS X compatible
* Automatically import pictures from my EOS 20D and Tracey's S50.
* Allow me to search for pictures on offline media.
* Allow me to tag photos with custom metadata.
* Integrate well with photoshop for editing.
* Help organize for burning or exporting.
In fact, i have created a spreadsheet that i will be using to evaluate the different options. View my requirements (and their relative weightings) as a PDF file.
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
something old, something new
even though i splurged and picked up an amazing canon eos 20d, i have been shooting more and more with one of the more odd cameras in my collection, my franka 6x9. I picked up this camera several years ago for $5 at a garage sale in rockford. I was delighted to find that it took proper 120 film instead of 127 or 620.
I have posted a couple pictures with it on my flickr page, plus expanded the global franka tag.
It has done me some good to switch between old and new tech. clears the palate.
Friday, April 1, 2005
wikipedia
Scene: Juliana and i are looking for pictures of jellyfish on the wikipedia.
Me: Can you say wikipedia?
Juliana: Wiki. Wikipie.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Friday, March 18, 2005
new camera pics!!!
I have been crazy busy with coding, but i wanted to start posting some of the shots with my new camera.
I have a set up at flickr with the first batch:
New Canon Eos 20D - a photoset on Flickr
Friday, March 11, 2005
Sunday, March 6, 2005
Saturday, March 5, 2005
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
benefit rock/art show press
Yay!
Juliana has received her first press mention for the upcoming show at Mad Planet. :)
Read the blurb at OnMilwaukee
Sunday, February 6, 2005
Saturday, February 5, 2005
Neil Gaiman Interview about MirrorMask on Twitch
I don't need to say that I am excited about MirrorMask, but I will anyway.
You can read more about it in an interview with Neil Gaiman from twithcfilm.net
[twitchfilm.net]
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
never give up
On the ride home from the train station tonight, Juliana said to me, "Daddy, I am never going to give up on being an artist." I think she means it. We have a 6 inch high stack of recent (last month or so) drawings and paintings to back those words up. :)
Also, we received the comps for the new Chariots Race album, featuring one of Juliana's photographs on the cover. It looks great. I will post it up shortly if everyone in the band is cool with it going out now. I can't wait to see the album go to press.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
mirror mask trailer
I have been looking forward to seeing MirrorMask for months (ever since i learned it was in production). Now there is finally a decent trailer for the film.
Watch the trailer (windows media, unfortunately).
Monday, January 24, 2005
Rock for the Hungry, Milwaukee WI
Juliana and I are participating in a benefit show that Greg Stefke of Chariots Race has put together for the Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee.
Rock for the Hungry
To benefit the Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee
Saturday, Feb.12 @ Mad Planet, 533 E Center St, Milwaukee, WI
If anyone has links for the other artists, let me know and I will update this.
Featured Artists:
* Carmen Benske
* Too Much Metal For One Hand
* Andre St. Louis
* John-Luke Fredricks
* Bruce Pattison
* Jason Gessner
* Juliana Gessner
* Madilyn Larsh
All-ages Show: Door 3:30 / Show 4:00
* 4:00 Mandates
* 4:45 Modern Machines
* 5:30 The Mustnts
* 6:15 Chariots Race
* 7:00 Haymarket Riot
* 7:45 Call Me Lightning
Drinking Show: Door 9:00 / Show 9:30
* 9:30 Supervillains
* 10:15 The Black Hats
* 11:00 The Mustnts
* 11:45 Davey Von Bohlen (from the Promise Ring)
* 12:30 Chariots Race
* 1:15 Haymarket Riot
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Monday, January 17, 2005
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Saturday, January 8, 2005
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
early warnings
i don't always get a chance to read the Chicago Reader, as the boxes with them on my way to/from work are often empty before i can snag a new issue. This bums me out because they are a great newspaper, but also because I don't know what is happening in the music world. Thanks to inkdroid, i can add an RSS feed for the Reader's Early Warnings section. Excellent. Thanks, inkdroid!