I think this post on glassdog is funny…

Ito, however, in his quote, uses the word “weblog,” a term I’m not familiar with. I think it’s a derivation of ‘blog,’ which means “to vomit with vehemence and much noise.”

D’ya ever notice that when someone spouts off on a mailing list or forum or whatever and ends with “‘Nuff Said!” that it seldom is?

It used to be more difficult to see pictures of wartime. On June 6, 1944 Robert Capa, along with what must have been dozens of others, managed to expose a few rolls. Seems that essentially only 11 frames survived of Omaha Beach. Here’s more on that…

Also see Magnum’s collection of Capa’s D-Day Photos

According to the Times, retro video games are making a comeback. Oh really?

For those who care, Textpattern 1.19g has been released. There’s a few nice new features, but the big deal is that it’s now fully GPL’ed. This means that no Movable Type bait and switch nonsense can happen. The upgrade on this site went flawlessly and I’ve also imported about 700 entries from my old Movable Type installation. Onward.

Looking at the last few rolls of film I’ve shot, I decided that I don’t really care for the results. Using Ilford XP2 processed by Sam’s Club is quick and easy, but I don’t like the scans. I really like Tri-X. It’s contrasty, has cool-looking grain and is almost foolproof to shoot. The trouble is I have to “get wet” and process/scan it myself. The processing is easy, except for getting things the right temperature. Scanning Tri-X is a bitch. And spending hours removing dust in photoshop has been enough to turn me off the whole process.

Tonight I needed to shoot my Niece’s dance recital. Very low light and of course no flash allowed. XP2 is only 400ISO which wouldn’t be fast enough and I knew that if I exposed it at 1600 or so there would be no way I could explain to the polite but not too bright girl at Sam’s Club that she’d have to “push it a couple stops.” While researching D-76 development times for pushing Tri-X I discovered Diafine. It’s been around for like 40 years. Let me get this straight, I can shoot Tri-X at 1600 and have it end up looking close to normal as if souped in D-76 1:1? I don’t have to worry about temperature or accurate development times? I can reuse the same batch for over a year?

I ordered a couple boxes straight away! Of course it took a while to find somewhere that was still willing to ship a box full of white powder, but Adorama seemed to be willing.

Or I could’ve just used a digital camera and simply dialed the ISO to 1600 and been done with it.

[blink…blink]

Nah!

I’m not smart enough to understand the books I’m interested in reading. I recently finished Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace. Neat, but honestly I only understood about half of it, and I’m unsure which half.

A book I’ve started several times but could never get rolling with is Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. I can tell by the way he practically throws words at me that it’s probably a very good read. But although I hesitate to admit it, I just didn’t get it. So in a desparate attempt to actually finish it, I ordered A “Gravity’s Rainbow” Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon’s Novel with the hope that cheating will help.

Stepped out of the car this morning and nearly broke a hip. I slipped on a banana peel. It really does happen - nyuk, nyuk.

This is a great idea. Matt Webb is publishing an RSS feed of The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, all 1,565 pages, one page per day. In 4 years or so I’ll let you know how it ends.

It’s not so much that I’m disappointed with people. It’s more a matter of wishing that people would pleasantly suprise me more often than they do.