The whole idea of contrarianism is that you’re “attacking the conventional wisdom”, you’re “telling people that their most cherished beliefs are wrong”, you’re “turning the world upside down”. In other words, you’re setting out to annoy people.

via crookedtimber.org

A contented person with a whole heart, who has never doubted for a moment that she is loved by God and the universe, should not bother trying to succeed as a creative entrepreneur. She should get a job working for someone else, turn it off at 6:00 PM, and come home to the people who love her.

Only a restless, broken heart can drive you to do what is necessary.

via zeldman.com

You’ve got to have something to say. It could be conceptual, or you can try to save the world as a photojournalist. But you can’t just be a technician. Everybody’s a technician. You’ve got to have an idea.

via pdnonline.com

Well dammit, now what do I do?

But you and I aren’t going to pick up a Mark IV or D3s and suddenly become proficient at screenwriting.

via blog.photoshelter.com

On 10.5, copying an address using the “Copy Address” contextual menu copied only the email address. On 10.6, it very unhelpfully includes the name portion, with < > around the email part, like “Joe Smith <joe.smith@apple.com>”.

via macdaddyworld.com

This has been bugging me as well. The setting change works.

Posted via web from Jack Baty’s posterous

“If you’re good…you learn to work with that you’ve got. It’s just easier to work with stuff you’re happy with.” – Roger Hicks

I agree. And remember, Your camera does matter

Like so many others, I’m on a minimalist kick. I’m trying to reduce clutter, distractions and other noise. Today I ran across start.io. Here’s my new Safari home page.

That’s nice and minimal

This seems like as good a reason as any to grab a new GF1. Any Micro 4/3rds camera would do, but the GF1 is the one I want. Mike Johnston keeps making it worse.

Photo from The Online Photographer.

There is a terrific scene from Adaptation in which John Laroche describes his obsession with tropical fish - and how that obsession simply and abruptly ended.

Then one day I say, “fuck fish.” I renounce fish. I vow never to set foot in that ocean again. That’s how much fuck fish.

The closest thing I have to an obsession these days is shooting with film. I love film cameras. I enjoy experimenting with new films and development processes and all the extra hoo ha that goes with it. Film for me is, for lack of a better word, neato. It’s not an obsession like with Laroche, but it’s fun and quirky and has all of the against-the-grain (no pun intended) qualities that I like.

But… Fuck film!

I spent last week in Maine hiking, kayaking, sailing, exploring and generally being presented with one great photo opportunity after another. I botched nearly every one of them. How? I’ll tell you…

I ran out of film while on a deserted island. I set the ISO incorrectly on my OM-1, overexposing the roll by 2 stops. I opened the bottom of the Leica M7 before rewinding the roll. I had only a 28mm prime lens with me when what I needed was a telephoto. I was in fading light with nothing but Fuji PRO 160. Walgreens scratched one of the negatives during processing. The lens hood I used caused terrible vignetting. And so on. Oh, and I left a roll of exposed film in the pocket of a pair of shorts. it didn’t survive a trip through the laundry.

Normally I would write these things off as part of the “charm” of using film. This time, however, it was annoying and disheartening. I was pissed. Still am. I don’t get to Maine every day, and now I’ve got maybe 2 dozen usable shots from the entire trip. Some may say that’s plenty, but they’d be wrong, since that wasn’t my intention. Some will say all of these problems could have been avoided had I paid more attention and been more careful. They’ll be right, but that’s not the point. The point is that for the first time in a long time, I didn’t enjoy shooting film. The entire trip I longed for digital for the usual reason: it’s easier.

I’m not quite ready to renounce film completely, and once I calm down I’ll probably forget much of why I’m still so upset. But for now, I’m culling my film gear and putting the money toward a nice D700 with a fast, versitile, autofocus, zoom lens that will just let me take some photos and be sure right now that I did it right.

(Of course, I’ve said all this before)

Maciej Ceglowski wrote a much linked to piece on How to not get your blog hacked, suggesting that the best way to avoid having your Wordpress (or whatever) site hacked is to run it statically…

You can use a program like wget or curl to generate a flat HTML version of your website from this local version, and then upload these files to your public server to share them with the world

He’s right, running only static HTML files is pretty secure. What I think he’s wrong about is that his “answer is much simpler.” The statement that keeping Wordpress up to date “…is the same as saying, devote half your life to learning and understanding WordPress administration” is not really valid these days. One click while logged into the Wordpress control panel, and Poof! you’re up to date.

On the other hand, his “simpler” solution required a follow up post containing at least 7 steps requiring much geekery and with the hope that…

some intrepid WP user may try following these steps and use them as a starting point for a proper HOWTO.

No normal person with a Wordpress blog is going to go anywhere near that. Granted, if my livelihood depended upon my weblog, I would make the effort, and maybe that’s the intended audience for his post. Most of us should probably just upgrade to 2.8.4 the hard way once, then pop in regularly and click the upgrade link if it’s there. Hmmm, maybe I could create a cron job using my SSH key and… oh nevermind.