June 2009 Archives

Source: http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com/outside

Source: Apple's support page

Odd, actually. I just happened to be at UCLA today when Michael Jackson died. The receptionist in the building where I was, reading her cell phone, gasped as she exclaimed his death. She had just been texted by a friend of hers working in the medical complex where Jackson had just been pronounced dead.

I've always liked most of Jackson's music, but I've also always thought him to be a tortured soul, never having known happiness in his life. All of the money he sunk into recreating his physical appearance. I just don't think he was ever happy with the fact that he was a black man. I think that's really sad.

I've always thought he was most likely a pedophile and got off because of his money and influence. I also think that the parents of the child he was alleged to have abused were just as complicit as he may well have been as they knew full well of the previous allegations made against Jackson and allowed their son to be placed in a situation from which no good could have ever come, only lots of money. I find their conduct despicable.

All in all, a tragic life that had amazing talent. Maybe he will now have the peace he lacked in life.

I posted about this technology which was a competition entry that is now actually in development by Light Lane. Here are some pictures followed by a YouTube video of a product beta test.

I'm sick to death of hearing who is having sex with whom. Whether it was Bill Clinton or the Republican Governor of South Carolina cheating on his wife. Get over it puritanical, hypocritical America! It's none of anyone's business but the people involved!

The only thing I find disgusting amusing about all of it is the extent to which we know what liars and hypocrites the good, god-fearing, promise keeper, family values Republicans really are.

• You pre-order an iPhone on the Apple website but then have to wait in line with the hundreds of others who just walk up to buy a phone. Why bother pre-order the phone then?!
• You download and install the new OS 3 on your 3G only to learn that any number of the new features in the OS don't work on the 3G, only the 3GS. Why didn't Apple indicate the features that only work on the 3GS before a user downloads and installs it?
• Have you figured out how to turn on "Find My iPhone?" Good luck. It's like going on a safari into the bowels of the phone. And then, just where is it on your MobileMe account? Just exactly where you thought you would find it... Yeah, right!
• The Apple faithful are letting the company get away with acting as if the new 3 megapixel camera is excellent? The first digital camera I bought in 2002 was 4 megapixels! Give us a really good camera, guys! (The focus features do rock.)
• You're an existing iPhone customer? You just thought you were going to upgrade for $99 or $199 or $299 or $399 or even $499. Get ready to hand over your first born. AT&T is going to rob you blind.

In a post earlier this month I mentioned how I hate AT&T. Today, in the airport on the way home, I heard a woman talking about how badly she wanted an iPhone, but she absolutely refused to have AT&T service. Good for her! The man sitting next to her said, "Yeah, AT&T are absolutely criminals. And I know. I work for them." He went on to elaborate.

After listening to him, I really hate AT&T even more!

I've had these photos sitting in my "Blog About" folder for months... maybe even over a year for some of them. So it's time I share them. For some reason, in some way, they interested me at the time.

I know a creative director in Atlanta who tells students they need to show people the world in which they lived in a way they have never seen it before. Maybe that's what some of these photos do.

See what you think.

This screen shot is from what was represented as a NASA movie shot in space of one of the rapidly disappearing polar ice caps while the Aurora Borealis was presenting itself. Who knows. But it would make sense that, if this display is caused by polar magnetic fields, it would be circular. (Is that Australia? Do they have this phenomenon at the south pole??)

While I'm feeling circular, how about a chandelier that is a barcode. I wonder what the barcode says.

Still going round and round. I've got to shoot something like this one day.

More circular goodness: Raining Giant drops of... Is that paint or chalk? Peter Gibson's Road Art

More of Peter's creativity crawling a bit off of the road

Doggie Halloween?

Re-gifting Your Heat to the Homeless. It's literally called, The Parasite and isn't a bad idea really.

Cut along the ... How many times have we seen this line and never seen it this way?

I'm thinking it time to return to the groovy 70s. Wouldn't this make an interesting Blog background? Hmmm...

Yes, another circle made by Mother Nature

I had no idea they were in love

One final drop of creatively round

For just $14.95, who could resist?

Real Men don't use wimpy pizza wheels! The Pizza Boss 3000 is a super rugged circular saw, er ... pizza slicer made from tough engineering-grade plastics and laser-etched stainless steel blade that will blast through pepperoni, extra cheese, and even those pesky anchovies.

Give your favorite man this Pizza Boss 3000 as a "guy gift" and perhaps he'll make you dinner. Pizza, of course.

Via Neatorama

I have a new favorite: The Veggie Grill. I discovered them on Yelp, an application for the iPhone couple with their online presence, which I also love. Yelp allows patrons to photograph, rate, and review places of business. Not only did a significant number of people rate The Veggie Grill, many places are not rated at all, but the patrons who had eaten on The Veggie Grill all gave it very high reviews.

Truth be told, I am in no way a vegetarian, though I love my veggies. I just couldn't restrict myself to a meat-free diet. So I was a bit wary of eating at a vegetarian restaurant. Their menu includes chicken, but, to be bold and daring, I ordered Papa's Portobello. It was delicious! Their beverages are as unique as their menu items. I had Hawaiian Tea, a glorious mixture of grape juice and black tea that seemed only to be sweetened with the grape juice. I must also confess to sampling the strawberry lemonade--yes, made fresh and a divine elixir!

Other things I really liked about the experience:

• A varied but simple menu. I didn't have to sort through a complex list of unfamiliar menu items.
• Fast and friendly service
• A modern, fresh, airy dining room that, of course this wouldn't be lost on me and actually matters to me, is completely color co-ordinated with their web site!
• The prices go beyond reasonable. For California, they are inexpensive.
• A varied clientele. I have always found vegetarians to be an interesting lot, and I'm being serious. They seem to have a very different aura about them of which the world needs more.

Things I really didn't like:

• nothing

This little restaurant goes on my list. In fact, it goes to the top 5! Tim likes!

This begs an even broader question: not just the changing definition of the worship service, but a completely redefined definition of "the service of worship." With the growing affluence and political influence of the evangelical movement during the "It's all about me" mindset of the Reagan to George W. Bush presidencies came more emphasis on what this movement wanted to get, have, and own with less and less emphasis on what could be given and shared. When I was growing up in this movement, the emphasis was on Christian service--a concept long lost to simpler, more humane times.

Does anyone- I mean, really, seriously- have any idea what is actually happening within the worship culture of evangelicals? We have, within a matter of 50 years, completely changed the entire concept of what is a worship service. We’ve adopted an approach that demands ridiculous levels of musical, technical and financial commitment and resources. We have tied ourselves to the Christian music industry and its endless appetite for change and profit.

Source: internetmonk.com

It's as much "the look" as the wry perspective. I suspect he was more than just a personality, he was a force of good. Here are a few quotations you might enjoy:

• Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
  
• Whenever you find out you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
• All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, then success is sure.
• Go to heaven for the climate. Hell for the company.
• I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
• Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
• Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
• Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
• I have never taken any exercise expect sleeping and resting.
• Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was released sixty years ago this week. It’s doubleplusgood. To say otherwise is crimethink and result in being sent to a joycamp.

You can read the full text here.

[From 60th Anniversary of Nineteen Eighty-Four - Neatorama]

The man was brilliant, and, tragically, visionary of what has come to be.

For those who don't know, and therefore don't get it, the code on the left of the tower turns italics on in a browser, and the code on the right turns it off.

Source

I just took LiveStream, formerly Mogulus, off of my blog. I like LiveStream: create your own TV channel. Free!

But I will not have them force audio/video advertisements, with audio turned on, onto my blog even when my channel was set to mute so as not to be intrusive to my visitors who could turn the audio on if they wanted to watch.

Disgusting! In my opinion LiveStream should have shown more respect for their web host's wishes! I understand they must make money, but, I will not have them throwing their ads in my visitor's faces when my channel is set to mute!

Rude. See ya.

I tried the beta of Safari 4, and, well, quite frankly, I didn't like it.

I'm a creature of habit as much as the next guy, and some habits are just too hard to break! I hated, and I mean really, really hated the tab appearing at the top of the browser window. This made a complete mess of UI consistency between applications, and every time I went to select a tab (I use them about as much as I breathe.) I went to the wrong place. Other issues with the location were also problematic.

I understood why Apple chose the move, but this just didn't work for me. I'm delighted they went with a different solution that keeps tabs where they were and also addresses the issue of window resizing when a tab was created. Yeah for Apple!

On another usability note, I remain dissatisfied. I like progress bars. I hate spinning things. Spinning might never end. Progress bars have a start, a middle, and an end. Apple abandoned the blue progress bar in the URL area as the web page loaded and replaced it with a spinning thing. Bad choice. I hate spinning things!

I usually set Safari to open in an empty window, but with Safari 4, I like the fact that I can have my history window open as the default window. I can even select the sites that appear in that window--the ones I use the most. And the visualization of the windows is a nice touch as well. Then, add to this, the search functionality in my history, and this part of the interface is out of control!

I have always liked odd watch designs. The Twilight Watch is interesting to me. The watch face doesn't stay black but gradually changes to reveal dots at the hour markers. If the maker said how thin it is, I might buy one. (I hate thick watches.)

This post contains a series of beautiful caterpillars that don't even look real. The article refers to them as alien looking, and, indeed, they look very strange.

to "cute as a bug"

I rarely swear on my blog, but I've just got to get this off my chest. A majority of Windows users hitting my site use Internet Explorer. Let me say unequivocally that the Internet Explorer browser is pure shit!!! I hate it with a passion. It doesn't play by the rules of the world wide web's standards! And I'm just not going to bother spending the time to figure out what rules they do play by! As a result, my blog looks like a train wreck in IE.

Almost 40% of my web traffic uses Internet Explorer. Of that group, 71% use IE7, 19% use IE6 (I can't even imagine that!), and 10% are using IE8. I haven't checked out IE8 to see if it plays better by the rules or not. [Update: IE8 renders my blog correctly!]

The good news is that almost 54% of my web traffic uses a better browser!

Use a better browser option if you want to see what my site is designed to look like. You can use Safari or Firefox. (There are also others.) They comply with web standards and are free.

UPDATE: The file is now back up and online.

So I blew up the css file that controls the look of the photo gallery. I have no idea how I accidentally deleted it, but I am now working to restore it. This will take some time. Patience. When I'm done, I WILL have a backup of it!

Drum roll please!

Well, with lots of tweaks and a few fixes here and there still to be done, the project is far enough along to warrant the big announcement.

After hundreds and hundreds of hours of work, the entirely reworked photo gallery at timtyson.us is ready to go live and is officially being called: Photography by Tim Tyson.

The new photo section has been significantly updated. Well, actually, it has been completely redone from the ground up. So what's the big deal? Below are just some of the changes.

• now features over 10,000 of my images in nearly 200 albums contained in 20 galleries.
• completely new navigation system that introduces videos, including an awesomely slick video tutorial on using the navigation system.
• includes pan and zoom (Ken Burns) in numerous albums
• images cross dissolve from one to the other
• new online photo management system (slideshowpro--totally rocks my world) now effectively links into my desktop photo management software, Lightroom 2, making uploading new content vastly, vastly. vastly easier
• huge images are now stored on the server
• full screen mode is now available
• when you select full screen mode, the software on my server actually checks the size of your monitor and then produces images for you to see (from the full size images on the server) that are the exact size of your monitor
• as a result of the above process, you get tailor-made images without any upscaling, and they are simply gorgeous
• many other features too numerous and complicated to go into

One word of caution. Since the server waits until someone looks at an album to create the images for that album in real time, if you click on an album no one has seen yet, you may experience a slow response getting the images (especially if you go into full screen mode and have a huge monitor) as the server will be very busy creating, for the first time, all of the pictures for that album. This is the one down side of setting up my photo management system this way. However, once the images are built by the server for your monitor size, everyone else who visits with the same size monitor will not have the delay. (You get the same benefit when visiting an album someone else has already visited.) In time, once all of the thumbnails and images have been sized for all the different monitor sizes, this issue will no longer exist.

Dial up just simply isn't an option here. Your connection speed really matters now. If you have a large monitor and go into full screen mode, forget using dial up. You will wait forever to get a single image. General network traffic can also have an impact on how quickly the images appear on your screen.

To visit the new photo collection, click the picture of it below or click on the Photos link in the top navigation system.

I'm about to die to make the huge announcement. Hopefully today? The announcement will be worth the wait. Back to work! ...

ferociously busy. Every free moment that I've had has been poured into this strange silence. But the silence is about to be broken!

Soon, very, very soon (we're talking just a matter of hours) the big announcement everyone has been waiting for, for years and years, waiting on pins and needles, will be made with fanfare and flourish!

But not yet. Not just yet...