Little Chromium Switch

Happy as a pig in a mud-patch

2008-06-30T02:17:48Z

A year ago—six months ago even—I didnʼt know what the heck a “Business Consultant” was. Now I are one. And I still donʼt know what it is…

Home from party

2008-06-28T08:22:36Z

A lovely little party with music it was. Not a lot of people there, but I think in this case it's what made it extra-special and nice. One person played who I've never hear play before and was quite impressively wonderful … and who probably wouldn't have played had there been more people there. Another played who rarely does and that was wonderful as well. And, of course, I was there and didn't have to be coaxed. Unfortunately I don't have enough … subdued? relaxed? laid-back? … songs in my repertoire so there were occasions when I had to break the mood even though the mood was in no way going to break me. My thanks and appreciation to the host and helper and all my fellow attendees/participants. It was way nice.

Another book meme

2008-06-26T02:47:20Z

[Gaaked this time from tesla_aldrich.]

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) ~~Strike out~~ the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling [I read the first few and then got tired of them. So that would be a demi-bold?]
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. ~~The Bible~~ The Tanach
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
~~9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman~~
~~10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens~~
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
~~18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger~~ [Gavi just finished it and she tells me it's a really annoying and stupid book. I'll take her word for it.]
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
~~23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens~~
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [the whole series]
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
~~32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens~~
~~33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis~~
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
~~36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis~~
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
~~42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown~~
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
~~71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens~~
~~72. Dracula - Bram Stoker~~
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
~~81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens~~
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare [Truth to tell, I've only read the Lambs' version. Does that count?]
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

They're kidding, right? I mean, where are:

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
The U.S.A. Trilogy - John Dos Passos
Howl and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg
The History of Tom Jones—A Foundling - Henry Fielding
You Know Me Al - Ring Lardner
Stranger in a Strange Land [original uncut] - Robert A Heinlein
1001 Ways to Make Love - Tuli Kupferberg
Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner
You Can't Go Home Again - Thomas Wolfe
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne
The Nero Wolfe Series - Rex Stout
Kaddish and Other Poems 1958–1960 - Allen Ginsberg
Making Book - Teresa Nielsen Hayden
The Best Short Stories of Ring Lardner - Ring Lardner
The Book of the New Sun (series) - Gene Wolfe
The Sandman (series) - Neil Gaiman

…among many, many others. I mean, really. Give me a break…

Great a-party! A-O.K. pardner!

2008-06-20T07:35:42Z

Very nice party this evening. Much good music. Many, many good people. My heartfelt thanks to minnehaha K., tesla_aldrich, 7ivy7, and guppiecat who, if I'm not mistaken, made it possible and made it happen and stuff. Thanks also to everybody else who contributed by playing or singing or just being there.

More Curiouser and Curiouser

2008-06-02T02:58:19Z

I was very interested in the discussion many of you had about the manipulated photo in my post Curiouser and Curiouser even though I was unable at the time to join in the discussion. (As my regular readers know, my ability to wrangle written words … it comes and it goes.)

Iʼve now gone back and added my 2¢ to that discussion. In addition, Iʼm posting this image here for the benefit of those who opined that it would have been better if I hadnʼt cleared the effect layer from over the modelʼs face. Now that youʼve seen what it looked like before I removed it, itʼs not impossible that youʼll continue to hold that opinion, but I really didnʼt like it. So I removed it. I suppose instead of completely eliminating it I might have tried to reduce the effect over the face or come up with an alternative or something, but just removing it seemed like the best option to me at the time. Anyway, feel free to check out what Iʼve added to the discussion (or not—Iʼm not fussy). I expect Iʼll have more posts and more photos to offer in the near future.

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Old Photo

2008-06-01T19:51:05Z

I recently rediscovered my “portfolio” (which is actually no more a portfolio than my card is a “business card”—itʼs actually an old Samsonite briefcase with three 100-sheet photo-paper boxes full of 8x10 prints I used to haul around with me and show to friends, acquaintances, potential models, and anybody else I could get to sit still long enough to look at it) in a corner behind some boxes. I decided it was about time I started scanning some of the prints Iʼd been toting with me all these years, so I did. This is one of the first of those scans.

It demonstrates the power and utility of using a film camera. You see, back then I stored my film in individual plasticine sleeves, each designed to hold one 6-frame strip of 35mm film. However, I had developed the habit of storing a whole roll of film in each rather than taking the more prudent option of the one-for-one approach. This was partly because the sleeves werenʼt cheap, and perhaps more because if I wanted a sufficient number of sleeves to individually hold all my negatives Iʼd have to get around to going to Century Camera to buy more and getting-around-to-it has never been one of my strong suits.

In any case, the only reason this image even exists is that one fine day I was sitting at the enlarger making some prints. I selected the sleeve these shots were in and slid the film out and—honest-to-G*d-I wouldnʼt-lie-about-this—the two strips of film containing the two shots from which this print was made came out of the sleeve together. I looked down and saw this image. I took the two strips of film, put them in the enlarger together, and made this print.

Lah dee dah, lah dee dah.

So here it is. Hope you like it.

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Another'n from Harriet Island

2008-05-27T21:24:43Z

I suppose I should say somehthing, eh? But I'm feeling paticularly inept and wordless at the moment, so I shan't. Or can't. Or something. Anyway, here's the photo.

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Something

2008-05-23T10:05:21Z

I donʼt know. Probably nothing very special. I kinda like it at the moment, though, so I figured I'd post it.

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I guess I'd better take myself upstairs...

2008-05-15T02:57:32Z

…and put myself to bed. I'm feeling remarkably unhappy at the moment. Unusually unhappy. And from a guy who's unhappy all too often, that's saying something. Hope y'all are feeling much better than I.

Hmmm. Next time you see me, please give me a hug. I'll think about that now and it'll help me feel better. Thanks!

(I honestly don't know where I'd be without my friends. G*d bless you all.)

Curiouser and Curiouser

2008-05-06T01:13:59Z

I think that ultimately this one is going to turn out to be too strange even for me. But I nevertheless want to ponder it a while. What do you think?

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A random thought...

2008-05-05T13:31:09Z

It occurs to me that once a man has a vasectomy he can never (again) be guilty of onanism…

That's Our Gavi!

2008-05-02T03:11:45Z

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SPA Spring Concert 2008, Entry 2

2008-04-30T16:44:27Z

I expect Iʼll be out of commission, or perhaps simply unable to sit at a computer, for the next couple of days, so I figured Iʼd post this one now. As always, hope yʼall like it.

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SPA Spring Concert 2008

2008-04-30T04:43:53Z

This is all Iʼve got at the moment. There will be more, however.

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Yes, Minnehaha Falls is Beautiful

2008-04-29T09:34:49Z

From back in ʼ02—just now getting around to the post-processing. I guess maybe the recent addition to my meds is really helping…

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An AppleCon a Year Keeps the Somebody Something

2008-04-28T00:57:02Z

So, like, I have these two separate albums on ImageEvent for my photos from AppleCon 2008: one lives in the Experimental & Artistic folder and the other in the Science Fiction Conventions folder. The basic difference between them is whether they were taken under the influence of my new-found freedom from concern about blur and/or focus or whether they were of a more conventional (heh) nature.

Based on that criterion, this image lives the the former folder even though I think itʼs really just a fairly nice representation of … hm … Hospitality in Action at the convention. That is, while blurry, itʼs not out there on the cutting edge of “experimental.” However, in any case, be that as it may, for better or for worse, one way or the other, here it is, for your consideration and for your viewing pleasure.

AppleCon 2008

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P.S. Iʼve been reading and enjoying your comments and I really intend to respond directly to them (otherwise this whole exercise becomes “all serve and no volley,” which I find to be a whole lot less fun), but it appears my wee little brain is at the moment resisting my attempts to throw the switch over to “respond mode.” Oh fudge. Iʼll get there yet, you betcha.

Leisa and The Falls

2008-04-26T19:50:05Z

Okay, yah, I know. Itʼs kind of … you know … touristy. But I rather like it in its own simple way. What can I say?

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Hmmm. I guess I'll post another photo of Sara

2008-04-25T10:59:12Z

Donʼt know that I have all that much else to say right now. So Iʼll just shut up and post.

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Whups! Late for work—gotta go. Later, eh?

Time for another one of Laura

2008-04-24T10:17:41Z

Am feeling better today, so itʼll be off to work in a few minutes. But I thought Iʼd stop and post this before I left. Hope yʼall like it!

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More from AppleCon 2008

2008-04-23T10:34:56Z

AppleCon 2008

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(Still sick and will stay home from work again today. *sigh* At least I know for sure now that I wasnʼt faking it yesterday…)

An Experimental Photo from AppleCon 2008

2008-04-22T18:53:01Z

This was one of the experimental photos I took at Applicon. I guess it sort of turned out to be a … different … approach to a panorama. (I think it works much better in the larger size so donʼt forget to click & look…)

AppleCon 2008

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(Iʼm home sick with tummy trouble today. Finally feel like sitting up for a few minutes before going back to ~~the bathroom~~ bed. TTFN!)

Oh My Gosh!

2008-04-21T01:41:59Z

I didnʼt see this one coming at all. There I was, just minding my own business doing the color-correction thing, when *BLAM* this one hits me right between the eyes. I really like it. Hope you do too!

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A Photo from AppleCon 2008

2008-04-20T16:50:05Z

As I get more of these post-processed, Iʼll put them up. Eventually Iʼll give the conventionʼs webmaster the link to the album. All in good time, all in good time.

AppleCon 2008

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(Crossposted: fredcritter & applecon)

The Experimental Series Marches On

2008-04-19T14:12:18Z

Here’s another recent photo in my Experimental Series. You'll note that the series’ name above (or to the left, as the case may be) is also a convenient link to the folder containing all of them. It’s a bit skimpy right now, but promises to continue growing in the near future. And, as always, clicking on the photo itself will take you to a larger version of it; if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s well worth doing.

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Photography, Nudes, and the Internet

2008-04-16T00:53:15Z

		NOTE: Please do not mention this model’s name if you happen to recognize her … or ask who she is if you don’t. We would prefer not to have to lock this post but we would also prefer that this photo not be trivially Googled. Thank you.

I haven’t worked with nudes lately, but I’ve been thinking it might be good and interesting and worthwhile to … hmmm … again dip my toe into that realm of photography. In the course of thinking about that, it occurred to me that although it may sometimes appear as if I’m perfectly content to take photos that I never get around to displaying, I actually do enjoy showing them off—showing them to my friends and acquaintances (and total strangers from out of the crowd). It has, in fact, been remarkably enjoyable to be able lately to post some of my photographs here on LiveJournal where you, my friends, may see them and even look at larger versions if you so choose. Moreover, it’s been most delightful and gratifying to be able to read your responses—your thoughts, your opinions, and even your “that’s nice”s.

However, it’s not like the olden days when I could rather casually ask people’s permission to include nude photos of them in the little sf convention programming item I'd be asked to do from time to time, which was at that time called “Da Fred Haskell Song and Slide Show.” Nope, it’s not at all like that these days—these days we’re living in a modern, global-village kind of electronically-interconnected world. Once something is posted on the interwebs its electrons just go zipping around and off to Ghu-knows-where and persist for—good golly—who knows how long.

Consequently, this leads to a number of interesting, complex, and interrelated questions for which I have somewhat less than glimmers of answers, so I am hoping that perhaps one or more of you have … answers … opinions … thoughts … insights … knowledge … ideas … recommendations … or, at very least, some notion of where and/or how I might be able to find out such stuff. It is with that hope that I offer the following random mix of statements and questions that floated to the surface of my wee little brain as I started to try to think about this …

• I do not want the photos to be inaccessible or hard to find or get to, but neither do I want to, you know, flaunt them. What might be the most satisfactory method of … hm … posting them—of getting them out there so people (including you-all) can see them?

• I do not mind some number of random strangers seeing the photos (that is, as long as the model doesn’t mind either), but I’d just as soon that, oh gosh you know, not every horny chap in the world would be flocking to look at them. Is this something I have to worry about? Is there a balance point? Etc.?

• I’m not looking to make money out of this, if that makes any difference. (Heh. If I were, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to go about it—figuring out how to make money with my various interests and endeavors has never been my strong suit—a head for business I do not have. I’ve often said that your common, every-day, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety tree stump has more business sense than I.)

• Where do I store them? That is, on what server, with what service, should/could they be stored/located? My ImageEvent account? Flickr? ~~LiveJournal galleries?~~ [I just discovered that LJ galleries (randomly?) resize uploaded photos, so that’s a non-starter.] Somewhere else? Suggestions?

• Will photos with nudity get too many hits per day or somesuch and thereby cause problems with whichever web-hosting service they’re living on? Or require additional service charges?

• If I post them on LJ, do I set the posts to “friends locked”? I’d really rather not do that. Or do I put them in a passworded ImageEvent album and announce on LJ that those interested can apply to me for the password? (Yuck!) Or is there a good option that’s escaping me at the moment?

• If I do link to them so as to show them in an LJ post, would that post itself get too much traffic? Or am I foolishly flattering myself about how wonderful and sight-worthy my photos will be?

• Obviously if they’re on LJ, I will do the “Adult Concepts” (or perhaps the “Explicit Adult Content”) flag thing. That’s a no-brainer.

• If I were to decide to hire a model or two, what would be a reasonable rate to pay them? [I.e., non-commercial but nevertheless posted on the internet where the photos will be accessible and seen by a number of people, many (most?) of them strangers.]

• Hm. Just in case I do manage to get all this sorted out satisfactorily, I suppose here & now might not be such a bad place & time to ask the obvious question: are you somebody (or do you know somebody) who’d be interested working as a nude model with me? (Heh. Even if I can’t get this all sorted out satisfactorily and we do the photos for viewing other than on the internet, are you somebody … etc.?) If you want to discuss the notion privately, you can reach me at fredcritter-at-livejournal-dot-com … that is, if you don’t have my normal eddress. Or even if you do. Or whatever.

• Do I just give up on this idea as being a can too full of worms?

• Finally, what important question(s) am I forgetting to ask?

Help? Help‽ Help! (When I was younger, so much younger than today …)

Ever so much thanks!

Your Most Humble & Obedient Servant,
Da Fredcritter