Not too long ago, June 9 to be precise, the daily photograph journal at tumbledry passed 2 years of daily photos. For the approximately 730 pictures posted, about 7,000 pictures have been taken. So, a little under 10% of the past two year’s photographs are represented here. I believe an evolution in style, subject matter, and especially post-processing is evident. One can also see the devolution of my lens—it is a very cheap “kit” lens, and after two years of service, it is beginning to show its age through not-so-sharp imagery. My idea, however, is that I should be able to still get good pictures with a bad lens.
Specifically, I would like to delve into people centered photography. Landscapes are great for practicing technique—they don’t move, and are patient with countless exposures. My idea was, once my technique (specifically speed and proficiency in accurately setting ISO, aperture, flash, and shutter settings) had been honed on landscapes and nature, I could move onto people photographs. There is, however, an unanticipated obstacle in photographing people that is entirely unrelated to technical skills or equipment: I am shy. This personality trait has been the number one obstacle in my attempt to jump from plain old trees to plain old folks. For example, I went to the State Fair last year thinking that was the time to break into photographing people—but it didn’t work out. I was quite self-conscious and retreated into my shell, partly because I was there with my family. I knew that, even if I had the courage to do it, they wouldn’t appreciate me running off talking to strangers and photographing them during our outing together. So, even though I didn’t shoot one frame of people I didn’t know, I did learn something: photographing people is best done alone, or in pairs. Any more, and you lose the freedom to flit about from person to person.
Finally, with regard to the recent drought of daily photos: I forgot my camera in Steve’s car and only recently got it back (I kept forgetting to pick it up). I picked it up before Steve left on his post MCAT celebratory trip to Mexico (congratulations, Steve!). So, we’ll get the daily photographs started up again in the coming days.
Fulfilling a promise in an extremely late manner (it’s been almost a year, sorry!), I have made Mykala’s own website, complete with archives of her previous two websites officially available online at http://www.unicorndog.com
The site will be changing a bit over the months in terms of design and features (still considering comments at this point in time), but it’s all there for you to read. Right now. Go! Read it! Mykala will be blogging there as she sees fit, so she is the sole proprietor in terms of content. I am simply the maintenance guy. I make sure the water isn’t leaking too much, the toilet flushes, and that sIFR, which dynamically replaces the header tags, does so in such a way that the kerning and leading of the rich typography in the flash document matches that of the text rendered (yet hidden) by CSS.
Bonus: Mykala doesn’t write about computer code! Enjoy, world! Remember: “unicorndog, because it’s funny.”
This celebrity (Kyra Sedgwick) was talking on Conan a couple of nights ago about how she doesn’t understand text messaging in general, specifically the acronyms in use by today’s youth. (As a side note, I do note understand text messaging for two reasons: (1) cost of it stateside and (2) the absolutely atrociously horridly awful method for entering in words using a keypad designed for dialing numbers. Both problems have been solved over in Japan (who is generally about 14 months ahead of us in cell phone technology), so I would expect text messaging to seem like a more viable option for real communication in the next couple of years). Anyhow, this actress said that she always thought that the abbreviation “lol” stood for “lots of love.” So, she’d send a text message to her kids using the abbreviation her way. For example: “great job at the soccer game tonight! lol.”
While we’re on the topic of text messaging, I should point out a recent “Tip of the Day” in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, titled “Netlingo.” Naturally, having a fair bit of experience with the internet (intertubes) since ‘round about 1998, I scanned the short article. The idea of it was to alert clueless parents to these apparently ridiculously arcane acronyms. First, the reasonable ones: “If you are lingering, your child may end up being forced to use these acronyms instead: POS (parent over shoulder), PIR (parent in room), P911 (parent alert)… ” Now, POS is more commonly known as “piece of shit” — as in, “my car is a POS.” And P911 could simply be a bathroom emergency. Then again, those were the good ones. The article goes on to outline risque abbreviations, with the undertone that online predators will be using them to lure children: IWSN (I want sex now), NIFOC (nude in front of computer), and this gem, NALOPKT (not a lot of people know that).
Now, I am 150% in favor of parents combating online predators in absolutely any way they can. But if they’re at the point where they are trying to decipher dialog between some random online person and their child, they missed a few steps along the way. Furthermore, these acronyms are ridiculous. Who in their right mind will find they need to abbreviate “not a lot of people know that”? Who would even understand that? What the heck? It’s not an acronym worth knowing if nobody knows about it. Matt and I, when we were quite young, used to make up these acronyms all the time, and not to alienate parents… it was poking fun at the proliferation of abbreviations at the time. For example:
amicek 6/8/2000 9:48 PM what if we used abbreviations for everything? - so my last statement would be like this: wh w usd abbrev f ev? - s m la sta w b li dis
d r o g e 6/8/2000 9:49 PM i wo ge cnfs ng
amicek 6/8/2000 9:50 PM i dn ink dat u wou gt cfsed - its ju hd t wte ds wy
d r o g e 6/8/2000 9:50 PM ok can’t read it, let’s type nrml
Enough of the acronym wars, kids are always going to be differentiating themselves from their parents using their own words, phrases, abbreviations, tools, dress, and etc. Whatever is going on with the acronyms, it doesn’t merit a sidebar in the paper.
Rarely do we come across a word that can be applied, with lust aforethought, to either sex. A physically attractive male can be called a stud, and if cuddly to boot, a stud muffin. I can retrieve, from the far reaches of my brain’s hippocampus, a memory of once being called a dreamboat. An especially masculine type is called a Barney, and if tall, “a long drink of water.”
Female endearments range from baby doll to arm candy, peach to fox, quail to chick - I could go on but don’t need more infuriated e-mail from people who consider any lip-smacking characterization to be an insult to the intellect.
Few terms, however, are applicable to a sexually attractive person of either sex. Hottie is not spelled with a y because -ie, the lexicographer Grant Barrett informs me, “is a classic diminutive or hypocoristic ending used for terms of endearment.”
