my life, as far as i know.

the place i work at, is going through an interesting iterative process to define its project management style. it feels very awkward, having group meetings in which we talk about inputs and outputs of various project phases. the framework for the whole thing is a project lifecycle.

in my own personal research, this buzzword is flawed. the meaning of the work “lifecycle” as i know it comes from biology, where life is born, lived, deceased, and reborn or reused. projects do not regularly spawn new projects upon completion. wouldn’t lifespan be a much better term?

in any case, i’m really wondering why our project management doesn’t do research, come up with a methodology, get buy-in from senior management and key technical leads, then disseminate it throughout our organization. this way we don’t all have to become pseudo-project managers.

my real interest lies in providing good service, getting work done, and making things better. how the projects are managed is not that important to me, to be honest.

just tell me what the interface is, what the steps are, and make sure the communication is there.

interesting read: an improved project lifecycle model

once in a while i spend time reading twentieth century photography by reuel golden, a great gift from my mother who thought i should know who the greats are. this morning i found two photographers whose work i like. imogen cunningham (organic portraiture) and nick knight (who has done work with bjork, awesome cross-process fashion photography, and the ever chilling Devon (1996) shot for the magazine visionaire).

looking at all the images and reading about the photographers made me think (as always) of my own work. why don’t i combine my career and hobby in a project? i’ve noticed that a lot of the industry rags have few (or poor) photographs. would my attention span be capable of pulling it off? i always have ideas, and never time or motivation.

have i mentioned how good provenance 2001 rutherford cab is?

today i took ryan for a drive. my style of drive. quite randomly we happened upon the petrified forest in calistoga. it is the only forest of its kind in california. the weather was great out, and a walk in the woods was perfect. i shot some 6×7 fuji color while i was there.

we then took a beautiful drive north east along highway 29.

this is a picture of tague. it’s great when he nags me about doing art. i took this during the housewarming party with my beloved burke&james.

ranting on photos

i’ve been pondering a photorantblogpost for a while. i think most of it can be summarized in two ideas.

first, i feel insulted and our medium cheapened by people who put fake raw film edge borders on digital images. to me, it detracts from the legitimacy of the image. if someone writes they captured an image with a “nikon d70″ but i see the typical traces of 4×5 negative format, to me it’s like mocking art. when the effect is less blatant but still noticeable, it still seems like a lie. i’m not sure if it’s a statement that “the new medium replaces the old”, or that there is some sort of equality of the two mediums. i think one reason photograph printers use raw film edges is to add edge to their images and to bring the viewer closer to the medium used. i know i feel some sense of admiration when i see obvious large format images. digiheads, don’t diss me.

secondly, i’m disappointed when highly rated “photos” aren’t things that film or digital image sensors (CCDs, CMOS, or otherwise) could ever capture. i’m in favor of using words like “image” that are process-agnostic. even traditional photographic prints that are manipulated should be prefered to as images.

for me, a photo (photograph) is a truthful recording of light. modifying the light before it hits the recording medium is fine (eg, perspective control, soft focus, etc). i think the real skill in photography is recording just what you want to capture.

it’s interesting how the set of stages of my photographic process (composure, focus, exposure, development, paper/chemistry selection, projection, cropping/dodging/burning/contrast, development) has a fairly independent amount of creative potential. i know the term “art” is subjective, but when i see a very interesting image and find out it was digitally produced, i’m disappointed.

basically, i consider anything done before capture as more skill than art. anything done after capture (or straight development of recording medium), more art than skill.

so many people are hung up on methods and mediums. there is a lot to learn, a lot to improve upon, and lot of interesting light to capture.

i find web stats interesting. running a web server that serves multiple domains, i’m able to collect a lot of data. i recently ran a stats package against 80 days worth of logs. over 2 million log entries were tabulated. here are some of the results:

the top two ip addresses hitting the server are owned by microsoft, totalling 67,830 hits. googlebot.com accounted for 19,756 hits. seventh on the list was msnbot.msn.com, for 14,651 hits. another microsoft ip address was eighth and tenth, 10,469 and 5,297 respectively. two googlebot addresses were 4,720 and 4,663 hits.

there were 30 domains served, the top four totalling in at 1.9 million hits, or 35 gigabytes worth of traffic.

the top user agent was recorded as internet explorer 6. seventeenth was opera. webtv was twenty-first.

the most active half hour of the week was 1-1:30pm on monday (pst).

interesting week at work. met our japanese team member and talked with him for a bit.

had two coworkers (nick and jim) over for wine and music.

tonight i’m going to a big house party full of people i’ve known for years. should be interesting.

and my mom now is a subaru owner like i am!

and.. i think i may have to give up on ilford sheet film. at least in 8×10. i’ve been meaning to place an order with jandc.

my walk to work this morning was interesting. i saw a poster advertising some weight loss program. all but one of the contact info slips was taken. then i was thinking pretty hard about my art (passive versus active — more on this later) when i saw something dark and wet in the grass. it was a dead cat. i thought about how cats hate water and how it made the scene that much more real. i took a picture of it with my cameraphone.

went for a drive today (shen-hao on the seat next to me). i was up near pinole in the middle of nowhere when i saw this couch on the side of the street.

this is a polaroid from my shots. the print is a little soft, but the color came out pretty well. i should rent a quickload holder and try fujistuff!

this weekend has been a blast of hot synth-pop and game sound music.

the concert was at 421 taylor, which looked to be a residence with no indication that it was a music venue. we got there early and it looked pretty scary. we came back after a good walk and was greeted at the door. turns out the doorman was one of the band members! the venue was four flights of stairs up from a scary neighborhood. it was wood, brick, projectors, a stage, and a small bar (by small i mean about three feet long).

first act was david microwave. he worked on game audio at yamaha. not to downplay his performance, but i liked the other two acts better. david’s music is good, it felt personal and real. it was the first one-man-show music i’ve never heard live. and it was good.

second act was the incredible 8bit weapon, who compose music on hacked commodores, gameboys, and a real drum set. they gave an energetic performance. it’s a shame they’re so new and limited in distribution — i need to own all their music.

the reason we went there was for freezepop (shown above). they had a big following there and played most of the songs the audience requested. before then went on stage, ryan and i ran into liz (the lead singer) near the bar. we struck up a conversation with her. it was cool to talk to the musicians. i would have bought a drink for her — i offered — but she had a drink ticket from the venue manager.

they put on a good set, and we bought all four of their discs (liz signed one for us). and i’ve been listening to them all weekend.

man, what an awesome show.

half an hour passed, the silence broke only by the rustle of paper. then forbin leaned back, filled his pipe and lit it, still staring at the papers before him. between puffs of smoke he spoke.

“that is good.” the voice was deep, rich, the accent english, and instantly recognizable. it was not inhuman in the way the old artificial voices had been, but it lacked warmth, emotion. forbin, knowing the voice better than anyone else, had confessed to cleo that it reminded him of a high court judge giving sentence. it was a firm voice, unshaked by whatever it said. the punitive destruction of a city, or the announcement of some new and profound scientfic truth — both rare events — came in the same level tones. also, forbin knew that simultaneously other, similar voices could be talking in a dozen different tongues on as many subjects, advising, instructing, ordering. this was the voice of colossus.

the fall of colossus, by d.f.jones

tonight i stumbled upon a new [to me] 5.1 disc, seal / best | 1991-2001. i love seal. and i love 5.1 digital music. and i’m still in love with my home audio system. it brings music to a whole new level. my heart sings.