Here’s a quick list of my favorite movies from the past year.

The Hangover

Saw the poster for The Hangover while seeing another movie. Made a mental note to avoid it. I was wrong. Funny from start to finish.

The Class

Should have been cliche, but wasn’t. It was quiet, real and moving.

The Hurt Locker

Devastating, tense, thrilling. A character study rather than a “war movie.”

Up!

The first 15 minutes of Up! prove once again that animation can be deeply emotional and SQUIRREL!

Zombieland

Who know the zombie genre had so much life left in it. Also includes the best cameo ever.

Inglourious Basterds

Brad Pitt’s over the top character was fine, but Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) walked away with every scene he was in. I don’t automatically love everything Tarantino does, but I loved Inglourious Basterds.

Goodbye Solo

Quiet, understated, touching. I was completely engrossed from start to finish.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

You don’t have to be a Metal fan to enjoy watching Anvil! The Story of Anvil. It’s touching, sad and hopeful and funny.

In The Loop

Fast, hilarious, vicious political satire. This is how wars are made.

World’s Greatest Dad

This dark, perverted, and very funny movie by Bob Goldthwait took me completely by surprise. I’ve grown to expect less from Robin Williams, but he’s terrific here. I guess a little autoerotic asphyxiation brings out the best in people.

Jessica came home excited to show me that one of her photos was published in a nearby local newspaper. She’d shown me the photo earlier and explained how she’d fought her way right up front near door of the Armory to make sure she had a good chance at capturing her boyfriend’s brother’s face when he walked in the room after returning from Afghanistan.

Atta girl.

The above screen capture is what my Mail.app inbox looks like this morning. Letterbox is used for the wide view, 2-line subject/from combination, and hairline divider between panes. Mail Act-On lets me use keystrokes for everything message-related. I then hide the toolbar and mailboxes.

Makes for a nice, pretty, and minimal email experience.

My new MacBook Pro arrived yesterday. This will replace my aging, 2-year old version. It’s a thing of beauty. Whenever I get a new machine, I’m tempted to just run the simple data migration to move everything over, but never do. Instead, I start from scratch. This is a complete pain in the ass, but very much worth the trouble. It just feels so good!

Below is a list of things I installed this time. I’m listing only software, not the geeky bits like Ruby On Rails, MacPorts etc. It took me most of the day yesterday, but I think I’ve got things pretty much how I like them.

• Launchbar - Without a good launcher, using a Mac feels like working with one hand behind my back.
• Dropbox - Sync made so easy it’s ridiculous.
• Tinderbox - “The tool for notes” (and nearly everything else.) This is where I live.
• 1Password - Passwords, forms, card numbers, etc. Beautifully done.
• Yojimbo - An anything bucket. Simple enough that it actually gets used.
• BBEdit - Text editing done very well. Yes, better than TextMate.
• OmniFocus - Task management with enough oomph.
• AppZapper - I change my mind a lot.
• Backblaze - Online backup without thinking. Just in case.
• BusyCal - Because iCal isn’t good enough, and I don’t like web based calendars.
• Daylite - Gotta put all those contacts and opportunities somewhere.
• DEVONthink Pro - Anything project related goes here, and I’m guaranteed to find it.
• Fluid - For running web stuff as their own “apps”.
• Interarchy - SFTP client. I’ve been using this for years. No reason to change.
• MarsEdit - Still the best way to consistently post to a number of sites.
• MindManager - Mindmapping. Expensive, but still the best there is.
• NetNewsWire - Because even the good web-based readers suck.
• OmmWriter- Weird, new-agey writing app for distraction-free writing. Surprised by how much I like it.
• Photo Mechanic - Not used as much now that I don’t shoot digital, but it’s great for pulling photos of cards when I do.
• QuickCursor - Like the “Edit In…” plugins, without the hacks.
• Sequel Pro - Best MySQL management GUI available.
• SizeUp - Move and size windows with the keyboard.
• Skitch - Almost perfect screen capture.
• Spirited Away - Automatically hides inactive apps. Fits my minimalist tendencies nicely.
• SuperDuper - Simple, bootable backups. Saved my ass a number of times.
• Ulysses - Complete semantic writing environment.
• WriteRoom - Distraction free writing.
• Lightroom - Image management and editing. Does everything.
• Nik Plugins for Lightroom - The Complete Collection. Awesome set of tools for Lightroom.
• SilverFast Ai Studio - The best scanning results, with the worst UI of any software, anywhere.
• TextExpander - Wonderful typing utility/accelerator. I’m lost without this.
• iStat Menus - Very nice system monitors. I use the menu bar calendar instead of the built in version.
• Mail Act-On - Keyboard email management for Mail.app.
• Chronosync - Synchronizes all my external drives nicely, automatically, on a schedule.
• Acorn - It really is “The image editor for humans.” I despise Photoshop, and now I don’t need it.
• ClickToFlash - Great Safari plug-in which gets Flash under control.

Blogs and Twitter have been passing around a couple links recently that I find discouraging – both the links and the passing around of them.

The first is Clients from Hell. This is a collection of anecdotes about difficult clients and each takes great pleasure in ridiculing some (thankfully anonymous) person. Now I know, every industry enjoys sharing war stories, and it can be a nice relief valve for frustration. Perhaps that’s what Clients from Hell is meant to be, but it strikes me as snarky, angry and unproductive. Where are the followup stories about how someone dealt with one of these client situations successfully by explaining things in a way that was better understood? Maybe if we weren’t so busy rolling our eyes and snickering we could be educating people. Of course it might not work, but it beats just muttering “what a dumb-ass” and writing a nasty reply. Some people actually are dumb-asses, but most aren’t. We should stop assuming the former.

Speaking of nasty replies, another post, ‘It’s Like Twitter. Except We Charge People to Use It.’, has found itself linked to quite a lot. It’s like a detailed look at one of the Clients from Hell entries. Everyone describing it just laughs and laughs. Gruber calls it brilliant. It may be, but to me it reads more like an endless, fruitless conversation between 2 assholes. Being more “clever” than the other guy doesn’t make you any less an asshole.

I guess it’s possible I’ve simply misplaced my sense of humor, but I don’t think so. I just wish we could ease up a little on the snark and do something productive instead.

I have a darkroom. This has happened before.

My first darkroom was in what my grandma called the “fruit cellar” of my old house. It was a small, musty place full of pipes lined with asbestos. I hated it, and printed maybe a total of 20 8x10 photos there. Eventually just gave everything away. But that was a long time ago, and I’ve mostly forgotten how awful it was. So, I built another.

My new darkroom is still in a basement, but for some reason this time it’s a lot more fun. I have no problem spending hours at a time in the dark, making not-very-good prints with cheap, 30 year old equipment. It’s like magic. Maybe it helps just knowing I can opt out, grab an inkjet and make prints the easy way like everyone else.

If it was easy, anyone could do it. I’m going to keep doing it the hard way for a while.

Rory Marinich:

Why I’ll Never Be A Photographer
I’m not here to stand on the edge and watch you be beautiful, asshole.”

Rory Marinich: Career Plans

That sort of ruined my whole morning.

Washington City Paper on Recycling and Trash: Together Forever:

After the truck releases the Dumpster, the garbagemen get their hands on something that doesn’t mix well with all that rotting garbage: the recycling. They roll up with bins holding newspaper, cardboard, bottles, and cans – all dutifully separated by employees at the bookstore and other businesses on this upper Connecticut Avenue strip. One by one, the men tip the contents of the recycling containers on top of the refuse – the bottles make a tinkling sound as the glass shatters against the truck bed.

Then: They go back to collecting trash. The driver hits a switch and it’s all smashed together before disappearing into the belly of the truck.”

Washington City Paper

I know I’m supposed to recycle, but I usually don’t. Neither do you, eventually.

Life in the Time of Virtual Photography:

There’s a satisfaction in being able to refer to a piece of processed film that no virtual image will ever replace.”

Shutterfinger

Bill Wadman on Robert Frank’s The Americans at The Met

That’s 1000 selects, which had probably gone through quite a distillation process to even get there. Let’s figure that he chose maybe one image per roll on average, so that’s like 20,000 images over the course of two years driving around the country. Anybody is going to take some great pictures (though I’d like to say that as a rule, the images were not very good from a technical point of view. Often soft in focus, obviously heavily cropped from a larger frame, look like they had to be saved in the darkroom with lots of dodging and burning, etc. but I digress) So give a camera to your average joe and have him shoot 20,000 pictures over the course of 2 years, at a time when people didn’t have the same phobia of getting their pictures taken as they do now, then distill out the best 83. I’m pretty sure you’re going to get a decent sampling just by chance.

Robert Frank (b. 1924) Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955

“Anybody is going to take some great pictures,” he says. I’m not sure about that, but to find out, you’d first have to make the effort to travel around a new country for a couple of years and actually take 20,000 photographs. That is the hard part, and should not be taken lightly.

When looking at most photographs, I don’t notice, or care much about, the “technical quality.” Technical quality is irrelevant to something like The Americans. I think too many photographers spend too much time worrying about the technical aspects and not enough on making good images. Wadman is a good photographer, and his images bulge with technical quality, but they don’t move me like Frank’s. I suppose, like most things, it’s a matter of taste.

Robert Frank’s photographs make me want to go out and take photos. Wadman’s just make me want to go out and buy a nicer camera. I prefer the former. To each, his own.

The table by my reading chair, as of this morning. I love The Americans.