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Saturday, October 29, 2005

eolo perfido: propaganda - the series

click to enlarge. photo by eolo perfido.The right wingnut natterers are tsk-tsking about a series of photos considered anti-Amerikan. By Eolo Perfido, a French-born artist currently working in Rome, who says the photos are his way of pointing out that some things just don’t work in the good ol’ US of A.

I particularly like this one, named “Propaganda 4”—but go check out the entire series yourself, form your own conclusions. Or don’t—they’re just very interesting.

While you’re there, take a look at the rest of his work as he is one of the more interesting photogs I’ve seen in a while.

Oh, and as long as we’re looking at disturbing images of our beloved country, take a look at Chris Jordon’s photography. I actually find his photos more shocking than Perfido’s stuff—this is art we “created” ourselves, so there should be no room for people to get snitty about some furrener (Jordon is an American consumer himself, he says on his site). Below is one of his photographs, titled “Crushed Cars, Tacoma 2004.” (Go to his website to see this photo enlarged.)

posted by lee on 10/29/05 at 01:00 PM
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Saturday, October 15, 2005

serenity

Yesterday, we went to see Serenity, the movie based on the short-lived tv series Firefly. We’d spent a good many late nights viewing the DVD of the tv series (which we got from the Norwalk Library—how cool is that?) before we went to see the movie, and I’m glad we did. While the movie could be viewed and enjoyed without having seen Firefly, it is soooo much better if you know the backstories.

Firefly was astonishingly good. We never got a chance to see it while it ran on tv because Fox played so many scheduling games with it. It’s a series that should never have been cancelled until it played out.

Serenity is an excellent movie. I’m still in shock over a couple of things that happened in the movie, but even my distress over one event in particular doesn’t diminish how good this movie is. It most emphatically has a message, as all the best space operas/westerns do. What I liked about the movie was that it surprised me—some things, I didn’t see coming.

The actor who impressed me the most is Gina Torres, who plays Zoe. I’m looking forward to seeing her in other features. I know she was in one of the Matrix movies, but I don’t remember her role.

The thing I don’t like about the movie is that the music from Firefly is missing—the movie score isn’t anything special. Or even interesting. If the score from the series were available to buy, I’d get it in a heartbeat. The score from the movie IS available and I won’t bother. Whedon really dropped the ball here—why he didn’t bring back Greg Edmonton to do the movie music, I don’t know.

I don’t want to say anything about what the movie is really about because it would be too easy to spoil it—suffice to say that if you have any bit of a rebel streak in you at all, you will really like this movie. If you’re a bureaucrat or politician or middle management, you probably won’t.

posted by lee on 10/15/05 at 01:06 PM
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Friday, September 30, 2005

slipped away for a while

We decided to take a break and catch a matinee today. Oh good, it starts at 4:30, we can catch that one easily because it’s at the theater about a mile away. Quick save of the stuff we’re working on, take the dog out for a pee, turn on Animal Planet for her to watch as she mopes, fill the cat’s food bowl, and we’re off. (Things are never completely simple.)

I forget how or why it came up, but Stanley mentioned that he wants to go see Dr. Lomnitz, his cardiologist, soon. Oh god oh god now what? And why is he telling me this now, when it’s too late to call the office and schedule an appointment?

Stanley said this week he’s started having this weird missed heartbeat, one that he can feel, when he’s not exerting himself. Like a thunk, he said. Which is one of the things we were told to watch out for after his surgery. “Call your doctor,” boldface, underlined. Ok, we’ll put in a call to his regular doctor when we get home—even if Dr. Horn isn’t around, there will be someone on call who can tell us if this is urgent or not-so-urgent.

Meanwhile, we made it in time to see A History of Violence. I didn’t know what to expect—some of Cronenberg’s stuff I really like (Spider), some of it doesn’t work at all (eXistenZ). History of Violence, I think, is superb. I’d heard a bit about the plot, saw that it is getting decent reviews. (Cronenberg kept a video blog—for what’s it’s worth.)

More "slipped away for a while"

posted by lee on 09/30/05 at 08:59 PM
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Friday, August 05, 2005

expressionengine, the upgrade

Just when I finally get everybody updated to ExpressionEngine v.1.2.1, they release v.1.3. I happened to be beginning work on takingthekids.com, so I went ahead and installed 1.3.

Before I list what I think about this major upgrade, let me say that I love, love, love EE—it does nearly everything a decent content management system needs to do without wrecking your bank account, tech and community support is superb, plugins are being added constantly, and once you get past the learning curve, it’s really easy to use. No, it’s not perfect, but it’s the one that works best for us—and we looked at many of them.

The Good
They fixed the image upload thingie so that you can actually make a popup from a thumbnail without doing the drag-and-drop boogaloo. They added a spellchecker! The popup maker thing has been driving me nuts, so I was really, really happy to see it fixed. A Quick Save was added so you can save your stuff without also posting it (for those of us who forget to reset the sessions to a more reasonable length of time).

The Bad
They added collapsing menus to the control panel (the admin section, in particular) that go back to the closed state, so it’s impossible to see all of your possible choices (and there are SO MANY of them!) at a glance. This is only rated The Bad because somebody has already posted a workaround so that the choices are placed in columns that stay open. A programmer probably thought this was a good idea, nice and ~~anal~~ um, I mean tidy looking. Usability doesn’t seem to have been part of the equation in the redesign.

Now, before I get to The Ugly, keep in mind that what I think is The Ugly, other people really like. I suspect not very many people like it (compared with the number of people who don’t), but there are some. And maybe I’ll get used to it enough so that I don’t notice how ugly it is. And it’s not going to stop me from using EE—hell no, no sirree, not by a long shot.

But ...

More "expressionengine, the upgrade"

posted by lee on 08/05/05 at 09:18 PM
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Friday, June 03, 2005

ashes and snow

reading to elephant by gregory colbert

ashes and snow is an exhibit running for three more days at Pier 54 in Manhattan (13th Street). It features the work of Gregory Colbert, a photographer and filmmaker. Ashes and snow features his photos of mainly humans interacting with animals (as far as I can tell). There is a sampling of his images and video on his website. I don’t know what I think about this exhibit yet—I wish I had the time to go in to the city to see the actual installation. The images are beautiful, but there’s something about many of them that bothers me. Maybe I just don’t believe them, there was no truth in some of them. Maybe they are lies, or maybe I’m just not in a very receptive mood today. But take a look for yourself.

posted by lee on 06/03/05 at 07:25 AM
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Saturday, April 30, 2005

dawkins doesn’t mince words

A refreshing read amidst the current rush-to-god froth the media insists America is in the midst of: The atheist: Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages. In Salon, by Gordy Slack. A quick snippet:

Still, so many people resist believing in evolution. Where does the resistance come from?

It comes, I’m sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won’t find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States.

My American friends tell me that you are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, it’s slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted Bush in.

But the broad direction of history is toward enlightenment, and so I think that what America is going through at the moment will prove to be a temporary reverse. I think there is great hope for the future. My advice would be, Don’t despair, these things pass.

and later:

How would we be better off without religion? We’d all be freed to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have. We’d be free to exult in the privilege—the remarkable good fortune—that each one of us enjoys through having been being born. An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion’s morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment.

And, one last bit:

Some scientists say that removing religion or God from their life would leave it meaningless, that it’s God that gives meaning to life. “Unweaving the Rainbow” specifically attacks the idea that a materialist, mechanist, naturalistic worldview makes life seem meaningless. Quite the contrary, the scientific worldview is a poetic worldview, it is almost a transcendental worldview. We are amazingly privileged to be born at all and to be granted a few decades—before we die forever—in which we can understand, appreciate and enjoy the universe. And those of us fortunate enough to be living today are even more privileged than those of earlier times. We have the benefit of those earlier centuries of scientific exploration. Through no talent of our own, we have the privilege of knowing far more than past centuries. Aristotle would be blown away by what any schoolchild could tell him today. That’s the kind of privileged century in which we live. That’s what gives my life meaning. And the fact that my life is finite, and that it’s the only life I’ve got, makes me all the more eager to get up each morning and set about the business of understanding more about the world into which I am so privileged to have been born.

His books are actually readable. More later ... heading out the door soon.

posted by lee on 04/30/05 at 06:42 AM
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Friday, April 01, 2005

sin city: he said, she said

Went to see Sin City this afternoon (totally played hooky):
He said, “Sin City is great! I loved it!”
She said, “Sin City is mostly boring. Interesting cinematography (I guess you can call it that—it’s mostly digital). Shitty dialog, rancid storylines. Other than the style of the movie, been there, saw that.”
He said, “It was a graphic novel on film, Miller’s comic book, done as a movie.”
She said, “It’s definitely not a date movie. It is very repulsive. It’s a sexist, boy flick. I saw this movie already, it’s just a more graphically stylized version of Tarantino’s stuff. Nothing new here.”
He said, “I take it you didn’t like it.”
She said, “It was interesting. I liked some of the graphic effects. I liked Powers Boothe’s ‘power’ monlogue. I liked Benicio Del Toro’s scenes, especially the talking head part. That was the only part that made me laugh. What was with the scene at the beginning? What was that all about?”
He said, “I dunno. I like the Senator’s speech about power too, captured exactly what’s going on now.”
She said, “I’m glad you liked it. But I get to pick the next movie.”

If this movie is an example of what guys fantasize about, it’s more than I want to know. Did I already mention that it’s repulsive? I am not squeamish, I love good, and even not so good, horror movies and even Cronenberg’s stuff. But this is beyond noir—it’s just sadistic yuck. It reminds me of this late-night cartoon that we sometimes watch, where cute animals get killed, blood spurting everywhere, that Stanley and my nephews and various brothers, in-law and otherwise, cackle at no matter how many times they see it, but I just don’t get. An awful lot of castration anxiety on display, many prosthetic body parts, including boobs. And the judge sentencing Willis was a very telling choice.

Don’t pay full price to see Sin City. Even Stanley was glad we went to a matinee.

DC, HERE WE COME—JUST A MONTH LATER THAN PLANNED ...
We postponed our trip to Washington until later in May. Mainly to be sure Stanley is completely ok, and is off the daily intravenous dose of rocephron. I wanted to make it early May, but there was no room at the inn, any inn, to be had for a room rate we can afford. Instead of staying at the Holiday Inn near the Capitol, we’re going to be staying at Hotel Harrington, which is closer to the Smithsonian and, allegedly, in a better place for sightseeing. I kind of wanted to stay there anyway, after reading about it in the Washington Post DC guide, even though the rooms don’t have high-speed internet access. S said he didn’t care about that—as long as we can at least use dial-up to check messages once a day. We can dial up via Earthlink or AOL, most likely. I don’t really care other than making sure we can send a trouble ticket if one of our webservers go down.

Hotel Harrington is an old tourist hotel that’s been around forever. I THINK I stayed there when I was in DC on a class trip in the 8th grade (wow, that was like 35 years ago {gulp}). The rooms are about $100 per night but, better yet, parking is just $10 per night! We’re going to make like real tourists and do the Trolley tour or whatever it’s called, and even the Duck tour. Get our bearings that way, and I actually kind of like them because they give you the basics. And I’ve always wanted to see DC from the Potomac.

posted by lee on 04/01/05 at 10:15 PM
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Friday, March 04, 2005

they broke firefox

I faithfully updated my copy of Firefox when the browser notified me that there was a security update. What a mistake! The hyperlinking (clicking on links, bookmarks) is so screwed up it’s unbelievable. So far, the screwed up hyperlinking has cost me $5 when I had to click submit twice to pay for getting Firefox technical support.

The problem is this: when clicking on a link or a bookmark or typing an URL into the address bar, 95% of the time the link or address won’t work on the first try. If you click again, or reload again, it will work. The extra maddening feature is that this is not a problem 100% of the time.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD VERSION 1.0.1 of FIREFOX. Danger Will Robinson ... just wait until they fix the problem or until they publish a fix for the fix that doesn’t require dancing through hoops such as getting a fixed DNS which doesn’t work anyway ... (Yeah, I’m REALLY aggravated about this. Mozilla did a Microsoft.)

posted by lee on 03/04/05 at 11:27 AM
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Thursday, December 16, 2004

an artist’s take: Baghdad Journal

Beneath the hard October sun recalcitrant Baghdad throws up a fistful of dust, so fine the soldiers call it moon dust. It hovers, despite the breeze, mixing with diesel fumes, wreathing this sprawling, dyspeptic city. Gleaming through the bright smog is a giant blimp, used by 1st Cav 1-9 to gather intelligence. It’s tethered to 1-9’s base, swinging gently, high above the city.

I often imagined the view from up there, especially on one afternoon in mid October when I found myself running across Tala’a Square with 3rd Platoon just after a young soldier had been killed by a sniper. We’d look as urgent as ants, rushing to repair a tunnel. Just another day in Baghdad’s Haifa Street neighborhood.

So begins the December installment of Baghdad Journal by Steve Mumford, a New York painter embedded with military units in Iraq hot spots like Baquba, Tikrit, and Baghdad. His journal entries contain paintings and sketches illustrating the people—both soldiers and Iraqi civilians—mentioned in the dispatch. copyright 2004 by Steve Mumford.
click image to enlarge

He work runs in artnet because, according to an article in the New York Times, that is the only organization that would provide Mumford a press pass so he could cover Iraq as an embedded journalist.

Mumford is a good writer as well as a fine illustrator; his narratives and sketches tell stories in a way that feels more real and honest to me than the bits and pieces fed to us in the mainstream media—if there is any coverage there at all.

posted by lee on 12/16/04 at 09:55 AM
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Tuesday, December 14, 2004

creepy, just plain creepy

Take a look at the Aquent | AMA - Compensation Survey of Marketing Professionals 2005. It gives me the creeps. The gimmick isn’t limited to the main page: check out the little boxes as you navigate through the site.

Looks like someone was overly influenced by Harry Potter.

At least the info is interesting!

posted by lee on 12/14/04 at 12:37 PM
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