Survey for photographers (and non-photographers)

Photo by Iain Bradbury.

A survey for everyone, because I'm curious: What do YOU see when you look at the photo above?

Since buying a Rebel XTi earlier this year, I've been enjoying photography even more. Not just my own photography, but that of others. I used to be solely interested in the main subject of each particular photo but now I find myself fascinated by all sorts of other aspects.

The photo above, for example, was taken by my photographer friend Iain Bradbury. Perhaps it's because of the writerly part of my soul but when I looked at this photo, I saw a story. In his Flickr comments for the post, Iain thanked me for the comment: "During the entire life of this photo (capture, process, post) I only looked at it from a technical/visual point of view. Your comment has made me look at it in an entirely different way. Thanks!"

The photo below is one that Iain took of the revamped Royal Ontario Museum. I saw a zillion photos online of the structure when Michael Lee-Chin's Crystal design was officially launched, but this picture is one of my favourites:


Photo by Iain Bradbury

And a second question for photographers (amateur or professional): What are your favourite photo subjects? My favourites, for example, are people and close-ups of food and other items with implied stories behind them. The food, for example, has been prepared a certain way and is just about to be enjoyed. A battered child's toy was obviously much-loved (or much-abused, depending on your viewpoint). For the same reason, I love photos that tell stories, even if the photographer didn't intend them that way. :-)


Photo by Iain Bradbury

And here's a rare self-portrait of my friend:



Photo by Iain Bradbury

I love Iain's title for this pic: "I am closer than I appear."

Do check out Iain's Flickr page for more great photos.

All photos on this page were taken by Iain and reposted here with permission.



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Shuriken Diaries

At the beginning of this year, Ryan Couldrey interviewed me for blogTO. Mostly because of that interaction, I ended up writing for blogTO. I'm sure I'm at least 10 years older than anyone involved with this Toronto arts & culture site, but I've been having fun and they don't seem to mind. Or maybe they just don't know yet.

Anyway, Ryan recently launched his own comic and I thought I'd give it a plug here. Shuriken Diaries is written by Ryan and illustrated by Sam B. It's updated every Monday and Thursday, and you can read the first strip here.

Ryan also has a great photo blog.



Speaking of blogTO, I created the graphic above for my blogTO post about 24-hour grocery stores in Toronto. Click through to see the comic I drew specifically for the post. If you know of other 24-hour grocery stories in the city, please post on blogTO, thanks.

I know, I know...it's ironic that I'm writing about 24-hour Toronto when I'm not a night person. But hey, I tend to get up around 6 or 6:30 a.m., sometimes earlier (insomnia). In the past I've found myself sending early morning e-mails to my friend Walter while he's sending his late-night e-mails. Sometime I think that guy never sleeps, I swear.

And for those on Facebook, blogTO has launched a new and improved Toronto Faves application. One of the new features: users can add their own reviews and recommendations!



I also have a new post up on Inkygirl: an interview with Lisa Yee, the author of the Millicent Minn series.

Link O' The Day

12 Fantastic Fall Photo Tips - Our Extra-Crunchy Guide to Leaf Peeping: My friend Ray told me about Photojojo. I've actually subscribed to their free newsletter; I very VERY rarely subscribe to non-writing e-mail newsletters but so far I've found every issue useful.

Video O' The Day

I've been in a Jonathan Coulton mood lately. This is one of my favourite songs, ever....



You can download your own copy of Jonathan Coulton's "Skullcrusher Mountain" from his downloads page. Here are the lyrics/chords, if you're curious.




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Yay, I Finally Have A Properly Formatted Head!

Yay, my earrings from Nicholas and Felice arrived today! Now I can finally walk around with a properly formatted head.

I bought them on Etsy a while back. I don't tend to buy jewelry for myself very often, but was unable to resist the HTML geeky humour of this handmade piece.

While corresponding with one of creators, I also discovered The Mechanical Philosopher, a personal blog with the intriguing tagline: "The musings of a dilettante on parenting, mechanics, philosophy and the background noise that is daily life, from beautiful Ruralburbian Philomath, Oregon." Nicholas and I exchanged several e-mails since. And this is one of the things I love about the Internet: how a chance interaction like buying a pair of nerdy earrings can put you in touch with such interesting and cool people.



I've been reading a great deal recently. The photo above includes some recent reads. I liked The Thief Queen's Daughter the best; it's the sequel to The Floating Island by Elizabeth Haydon.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I find I have to purposely MAKE time to read, else I get caught up in something else. One advantage of not having cable tv (for over two years now) is that I'm not tempted to turn on the television "just to see what's on."

Willpower still plays a factor, however, because it's still very easy to watch DVDs and recorded television shows. Last night I was torn between renting a movie and reading a book; I opted for the book instead. I ended up reading the entire volume in one sitting: The Last Apprentice: Night of the Soul Stealer by Joseph Delaney (third in the Last Apprentice series). I started the book in my office, then read it in the kitchen as I heated up my Sicilian Seafood Stew (leftovers from the previous night, see picture below), read it over dinner, finished it on the living room couch, curled up beneath a cozy quilt made by Beckett Gladney's family.

A satisfying read, and there's nothing like reading an entire book in one sitting. SURVEY: When's the last time you read in a book in one go? As soon as I finished Night Of The Soul Stealer, of course, I had to start another. My current read: The Astonishing Life Of Octavian Nothing: Traitor To The Nation by M.T. Anderson.



The bits of parsley in the stew above, by the way, were GROWN FROM SEED. I found parsley challenging to grow because of its glacial progress; most of my parsley plants died when we went to the cottage for two weeks (or were dug up by the Evil Neighbourhood Squirrels), but one brave seedling survived. It's finally thriving, just in time to be killed off by the frost soon, so I wanted to cook with it before then.



Speaking of food, I've posted a review of Queen Mother Cafe in blogTO. As I've mentioned in other Blatherings, it's a traditional lunch spot for Parki and me.

I've been very much enjoying listening to my recent CD purchases. Forgot to mention, by the way, that we (Walter, Jodi, Allison and me) listened to some filk CDs most of the way to and from Rochester. These CDs included Mich Sampson's Just Beyond, Courting My Muse, Seanan McGuire's Stars Fall Home (I will do a proper review when I get my actual CD), and Steve Savitsky's CD:



Coffee, Computers and Song!: Steve Savitzky's first album. Technonerdtypes will especially appreciate Steve's clever lyrics and sense of humour. Heck, even his tracks are numbered in hex! (Steve: "What did you expect? 12 hex is a hacker's dozen.") My favourite is The World Inside The Crystal, which won a Pegasus for Best Science Song in 1997.

"You can only see the shadows
Of electrons on a screen
From the world inside the crystal
That no human eye has seen."

The fabulous photos and layout in the CD packaging were done by my friend Beckett Gladney. You can find out more about Steve Savitzky at his homepage.

LINKS O' THE DAY

Pix Plz: I -lovedLOVED- this recent XKCD comic. (Thanks to Ray for the link)

Scenes from Lord of the Rings that might have been used as setups for bad commercials had the filmmakers not respected the material by Cody James, via McSweeney's. (Thanks to BSAG for the link)




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Facebook: graffiti comparison and a survey

Above: some samples of "graffiti" that I've been posting on various friends' Facebook Graffiti walls.

There are now (at least) two add-on Facebook applications called Graffiti. The first Graffiti I tried was written by Mark Kantor, Tim Suzman and Ted Suzman. I had some trouble using it but when I posted a question in the forum, I got no reply at first. It seems that the app still has drawing problems for some Mac users with OS X.

Meanwhile, a newer Graffiti became available, this one written by Alex Onsager and Joachim De Lombaert. I liked it a bit better because you could draw directly on a Facebook profile instead of having to open a different window, plus Alex was extremely responsive when I posted a support question. The Graffiti team even has a blog.

I also prefer the latter because the developers are constantly adding improving and releasing updates, in response to user feedback. I like the new interface, which gives you an option for a bigger canvas, allows you to save an unfinished drawing, and also gives the option of posting the same drawing more than once. Plus if you click on "replay", you can see the whole picture being re-drawn!



It's been fun, doodling on various friends' Facebook walls. If you're on my Facebook friends' list and want me to add some graffiti: if you post on my graffiti wall, I promise to post some on yours (but I can't promise exactly when). Even if you think can't draw or have to make do with a mouse instead of an Artpad. Any attempt will be appreciated.

But PLEASE don't whine if I don't draw on your wall. I do this for fun, eh? :-)

If you're using the older Graffiti (URL will read http://apps.facebook.com/graffitiwall/ rather than http://apps.facebook.com/graffiti/), I can't guarantee a pic because my Wacom Artpad/Mac still has issues with that app sometimes. Here's what the newer app looks like:



You can find its main page here.

Facebook is targeting 60 million users by the end of 2007. Holy cow.

One thing I've found interesting about Facebook so far: of all the social networking platforms I've checked out, this is the first one that seems to be appealing to pretty much every one of my social circles (work, filk, family, old school buddies, etc.)

I think it helps that Facebook permits users to have a wide range of privacy options, rather than the limited binary "private/public" option of most other social networking communities. It also allows you to control how much interaction you have with other people.

Jeff, for example, is not really into social networking but joined Facebook because he's able to limit his public presence as well as interaction; he can be more of an observer than an active participant. He doesn't have any interactive components on his profile page (e.g. message board, polls, etc.), but can post on other people's pages if and when he likes. I've also had more work-related interactions (paid assignments, even) through Facebook than any other social community -- including LinkedIn, which I quit ages ago).

Facebook isn't for everyone, I know, but so far I'm quite enjoying it. People seem to be using it differently; for some, it's purely for fun, and for a small circle of personal friends.

Others use it more for work networking or promotion, and opt for the "add as many 'friends' as possible even if I have no idea who they are" strategy. I'm sort of in the middle, leaning a tad more toward 'fun' and limiting the amount of time I spend on Facebook. I can see how it could be a real time vampire, so have purposely declined numerous invitations to fun apps like Scrabble and other games.

SURVEY: Are you on Facebook? If you are, how are you finding the experience so far?

LINK O' THE DAY

Speaking of time vampires...

Bloxorz: The aim of this game is to get a block to fall into a square hole. There's much more than that, of course. The realistic sound of the block moving around greatly enhances the experience, at least for me.




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Will Write For Chocolate

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. The page on the Offpanel site is still full of errors and I'm not sure why; the OffPanel people haven't responded. As nice as they are, they seem to be pretty distracted -- I haven't had replies to any of my e-mails for the past 6 months or so, so am making plans to move my comic to my own server.



Above: my dinner last night. I've been eating out a lot this past week and had a craving for a home-cooked meal but wanted one with minimum prep time. So I dropped by the local grocery store and found a small package of pre-sliced salmon for $2 (I wasn't looking for pre-sliced, but it gave me the idea for a stir-fry), and bought some asparagus to go with it. It made a quick stir-fry and I served it with white rice. I purposely opted for no seasoning.



I also picked up a healthy-ish dessert while at the grocery store: fresh lychees (above) and figs (below):



And because I always try to pick up something new that I've never tried before, I also bought a single pluot:



I had never heard of this fruit before, but apparently it was developed in the late 20th century and is a cross hybrid of plum and apricot. It was good; the taste and texture reminded me more of a plum than an apricot. I have to wonder about the name, though. Did the creators hope a word like "pluot" would catch on?

I went to see Hairspray again yesterday. I liked it even more this second time around and y'know, I didn't mind John Travolta quite as much, and even got teary-eyed during the rooftop and march scenes (to Ryan C.: stop making faces!), a scene which only made me cringe the first time I saw it. I think I might have to see this movie at least one more time before it leaves the theaters. There were only four people in the theatre last night, so I suspect it won't be around for much longer.

I also saw the trailer for Elizabeth: The Golden Age again...I am so SO looking forward to seeing this after enjoying the first movie so much.

For those of you who haven't yet seen it, here's the trailer for Elizabeth: The Golden Age...





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