Category: Misc

When a friend recently mentioned Kite Aeriel Photography, I assumed she was talking about hang gliders with cameras, but turns out there’s a whole subculture of people who hang cameras from standard or specialized kites and shoot the earth from unusual heights and angles. I think what makes these images so stunning is that they offer a view you almost never get to see – higher than people and most buildings, but lower than than helicopters and airplanes, able to squeak into spaces aircraft can’t go, able to hover.

The equipment is cool too. Some very creative solutions – cheap cameras with rubber band mounting systems and Silly Putty timers…. other rigs cost thousands and are used for pro applications.

These 1944 bomb craters are surreal. Check one guy’s self portrait. KAP photogs even have their own magazine (talk about niche publishing).

Day before yesterday woke up with a tearing, stabbing sensation in my lower left abdomen. Decided to ride it out and see if it went away. Very low energy yesterday and then this morning it was still there but accompanied by dry heaves (urrrggghhh) and other nasties. We read online that appendicitis usually shows the cramp first, nausea later. Even though the appendix is on the right, Amy insisted that I go to the ER this morning. Spent half the day in a hospital bed on an IV drip. No clear diagnosis. Possibly a torn muscle from an intensive sit-up workout two days ago (but why would that only be on one side?), possibly diverticulitis (distention or displacement of a hunk of intestine, possibly infection). My labs came back clean though, which pretty much rules out infection. Sent home with Vics and slept the day away. Now the nausea is mostly gone, but the pain mostly remains. Weird to have the day blow up like this, so out of the blue.

Last time we were in Arcata it was to meet Peter Palmquist, the patron who offered to publish Amy’s book just because he felt her work deserved to be seen. This time it was to attend the memorial service following his passing. An amazing afternoon – around 300 people gathered in a 1930’s theater in Northern California to discuss and herald and joke about and commemorate an obsessive life spent collecting and cataloguing early California photographers and women in photography. An incredible cat. We can all hope to leave such an impression on the world.

Rained almost the whole trip, but it felt appropriate and it felt great. Hiked in the glorious giant redwoods with Amy and Miles, ate sushi from Tomo, walked along the beach in the dense mist, splashed everywhere we went. After the insanity of the past six weeks (both in our personal lives and in the world) this was exactly the washing we needed.

Clearing out the cobwebs… Dobby and Vladimir Putin, separated at birth? … No company has ever worked harder to make kilts look so manly … Study demonstrates that hands-free cell phones are just as dangerous as regular ones due to “attention blindness” … I hear they’re going to cease production of the infamous Hello Kitty vibrators, but Hello Kitty sausages will continue … Texas war policy explainified … I need one of these for MP3 storage … The Flash mind reader is quite a trip, until you realize that, oh, nevermind … Is there more to shoot-em-ups than meets the outsider’s eye? … The AK-47 assault rifle is blamed for more more deaths than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Now its inventor is planning to turn swords into ploughshares, so to speak … Great thread on ads in theaters at Plastic … Known a “digital arts community” type of person who needs a press release written for his/her upcoming big web show? Point them at the Market-o-Matic … It’s new age, but it’s sincere and it matters — Breathe in Peace … In 2003, it should be a source of shame for a commercial operating system to ship with a dialog like this … I guarantee this is the strangest animation you’ll see all day … You are behaving badly ….

Don’t you just want to pop it in your mouth? Such a perfect little lozenge. A Dr. Doolittle car, which end is the front? I seldom experience auto lust, but have a woody for this mobile. Thanks baald.

What kind of beautiful messed up whack did you believe when you were small? I submitted this:

Because my grandfather spoke very quietly and very gravelly, I came to believe that we were born with a limited supply of speech and that if we used it all up we’d become mute at the ends of our lives. I began trying to conserve words as though they were a limited resource.

Met with a guy from IST who wanted to know about ways I’ve been deploying RSS feeds out of various J-School project sites. He’s been writing an RSS parser/aggregator in JSP. We agreed to do a collaborative presentation for webnet (the unfortunately named collective of UC Berkeley webmasters, who meet to compare notes on working with limited resources, compare redesign projects, share technology, etc.) Should happen sometime in the next few months.

An old friend brought me flowers today, as a way of saying it’s okay for us to disagree, even on the most important matters. An old medicine bottle, wildflowers, long stems, a hand-written card. It meant so much.

The problem with answering your mail is that people are just going to turn around and write you back again, thus preventing the inbox queue from ever approaching zero. “Finishing one’s email” is thus a conceptual – not just a practical – impossibility.