RSS FeedProject 365, do I dare?
I have been toying with the idea of following along with the hundreds thousands of people who take part in photo-a-day projects online. If you search groups on flickr.com you’ll find over 3600 groups with “365″ in the description. This is not new territory, but it is certainly an undertaking not to be taken lightly. If I start this project, I want to complete it.
Like I said, there are thousands of these groups available. Some want you to take a shot of yourself doing something different every day. New place, new pose, new angle, etc… Some want you to take a photo of a new object. I guess the first thing I need to do is decide what I want to get out of it. I do know one thing, if I take a photo a day for the next year, by the time I’m done I should definitely improve as a photographer. Honestly, that is my greatest inspiration for starting this project.
I’ve decided I definitely want to take on the project. I don’t think it’s going to be easy. I’m sure there will be days where I either just don’t feel like shooting, or perhaps I’ve taken a few dozen photos and none capture what I’m trying to convey. Regardless, I believe the project will be worth it in the end. The only thing to do now is pick the project and group I want to take part in.
My first thought was to do a self portrait every day. But, I’m just not that narcissistic. If I were to do something like that, I would want to do something silly like Running From Camera. Since that’s already been done, I’ll have to do something different. I could take a shot every day at the same time like Todd over at 606diaries.com. But, I’m just not the social butterfly that Todd is. I believe even I would get tired of checking out 365 shots of my computer screen. So, what to do?
So, my theme? 365 shots. Yep, that vague. So be it. I’m going to focus (no pun intended) on taking one quality photograph every day for the next year. I already take part in several photo-a-week projects that all center around a specific topic. My daily shots may come from those photo shoots. They may be of a doorknob. I don’t know what each day will bring. But, I’m excited to get started. All the shots will be posted here on the 365 shots page.
Wish me luck.
Best Buy-100: Me-0
Well, once again Best Buy has defeated me. Last night after I left there I thought it was me who won this round… But alas, I was mistaken. Here’s what happened.
A few weeks ago one of my video cards decided it was time to die. On the way home from work I decided I had lived long enough with only 2 monitors and headed on over to Best Buy to pick up a new video card. In my mind I was 100% certain that the card that died was an AGP card. When I arrived at the video card isle I found that they had only 1 AGP card. I don’t mean 1 “type” of card, I mean they had one lonesome AGP card TOTAL. It was more than I wanted to spend ($139.99), but I caved to the pressure of not wanting to drive around town to find a cheaper one. I bit the bullet, picked up the box and headed out.
When I went through the check-out line I was very pleasantly surprised when the card rang up at $45.99. No, I didn’t bother to tell the girl with multi-colored nail polish that it was supposed to be nearly 3 times that amount. Instead I gleefully sprinted from the store before they could realize their mistake. Bwhahahaha! I won!
Or so I thought.
When I got home I took apart the machine and before I could do remove the old card I needed to use an air blower to remove the half inch of dust that was caked on every flat service in the case. I then removed the dead card and set it aside. I unwrapped the new card and that’s when it hit me. The slot is not AGP. It’s PCI Express. I’m fairly certain I heard Best Buy laughing at my right then. I checked my back to see if they had stuck a “Gotcha” sign to me on my way out the door.
This afternoon I went to return the wrong card and purchase the right one. When I entered the store nobody pointed or stared, but I know they wanted to! I went to the return counter and the nice girl behind the counter asked if anything was wrong. I thought about explaining how Best Buy always wins and this was just another case of me being the victim, but instead I just told her I was a bonehead and got the wrong card. I went back to the video card isle and found that the least expensive PCI Express card they carry is $79.99. My only hope is that it rings up incorrectly, too. I returned to the counter and sure enough I was hit with the news that I owed an additional $36 bucks. I paid the balance and slunk away in defeat.
As I exited the store, the guy who removed the security chip from the box said, “Nice try sir, maybe next time.”
At least that’s what I heard.
So Much Chuck Palahniuk
It’s a good time to be a Chuck Palahniuk fan! This week his new book Snuff, a story about a girl on a quest to complete a 600 person gang bang, is set to come out. Here’s a fantastic trailer (mildly NSFW) for the book. Hilarious!
This summer we’ll be treated to Sam Rockwell staring in Choke, which just happens to be one of my favorite Palahniuk books. Looks like the current release date is August 28th. We’ll see.
While looking around on IMDB.com today I saw that Chuck also has another movie in the works. His book Invisible Monsters, a story about A disfigured fashion model and a pre-op transsexual go on a road trip of revenge and recovery, is listed as being in development. It says it’s going to be released in 2008, but there aren’t even any actors attached to the project on IMDB, so I’m not buying that.
Now, if we can just get Chuck back to Vegas for another speaking engagement, I would love to ask him if he has used the Easter morning story I told him the last time he was here at any dinner parties. If you don’t know the story I’m speaking of, it’s probably better you don’t ask.
Love/Hate: American Gladiator Style
As a kid I totally loved watching the American Gladiators. I was excited to see that it was coming back on after 14 years off the air. Excited for a couple reasons. I knew it was going to be fun to watch with my son. He’s fairly close to the age I was when the show was on originally and I knew the show would be right up his alley. I wasn’t wrong. We watched every episode of the first season together. We cheered, rooted and booed the contestants and gladiators every Tuesday afternoon (Tivo’d from the night before).
Last night was the first episode of the second season. For some reason, instead of waiting until this evening to watch the show with my son, my wife and I watched it. They have a few new events, a revamped “Eliminator” course that’s tougher than last season and a few new gladiators, including last year’s American Gladiator winners.
As we started watching the show, a few things started annoying me. First off, as they introduce the new contestants, at least one of the female competitors cries during their intro interview. Do all women immediately start to cry when they say the words, “I was a single mother?” Then, before each event Hulk Hogan and/or Laila Ali ask the contestants how they are going to take on the next challenge. Their answers are always an uncomfortable mix of forced-excitement and bad clichés. To be fair, the voice-over guy does have a few amusing lines from time to time, but they are the exception.
My wife put it best when she said, “I’d enjoy watching this so much more if we put it on mute.” So, we tried it. She was right. It was far more enjoyable to watch the show with no sound.
I’m going to go back to waiting for Tuesday’s to watch the show with my son. Hopefully his enjoyment of the show will spill over and cover for the parts of the show that irk me.
The Painful Side of Social Webbing
There are so many social network sites these days that it’s almost impossible to keep active on all of them. I have, or have had accounts on just about all of them. But, the list of sites I stay active with is very very short.
Today I logged in to Facebook to find that I had a new friend request. By photo alone, I had no idea who the person was. I followed the link to their profile and it was clear that they only requested to by my friend for the sole purpose of padding their friend count and to eventually send me ads at some point down the line. I spend more time on social network sites doing this than I do actually staying in touch with long distance friends & family members. It’s for this exact reason that I deleted my account on MySpace just last week.
With Facebook, the thing that has the biggest ability to waste your time is the massive amounts of third party applications that are available. Rate movies, rate your friends, movie quotes and surveys, before you know it you’ve spent two hours telling people how much you loved the movie Weekend at Bernie’s. A while back I made a choice to remove any of the apps that are time-sucks and I will ignore all requests from friends to add new ones. If you’re a contact of mine on Facebook and I ignore your request, please don’t be upset. I’m just trying to save my sanity.
I’ve found that I no longer have much interest in keeping up with any of my social network accounts. I’ll keep my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but it’s VERY unlikely that I’ll join any new ones. I’m much happier using my blog here, my photo blog at slackerphotos.com, my twitter account to let everybody know what I’m up to. I then use netvibes.com to read close to 70 RSS feeds. I also use Twirl to follow a few dozen other people’s tweets (a post on twitter is referred to as a ‘tweet’).
If you haven’t already checked out twitter, I strongly suggest it. I realized something about twitter the other day that has really increased it’s usefulness for me. As you may know, I’ve taken up photography as a hobby recently. While checking out some photos on flickr.com, I found a link to a photographer’s blog. When I checked it out, I saw that he also was active on twitter. I started following his tweets. Then, I checked out the list of people he followed. I went through his list and found 5 or 6 other photographers to start following. Also, when checking out their twitter profiles I found links to their photo blogs. Some of them are absolutely amazing. So I add those to my RSS feed list on Netvibes. Now when these people post a tweet or a blog post with a juicy tip, I’m being spoon-fed information on how to improve as a photographer. I have to say that’s better than any class I could possibly think to enroll in. Not to mention being 100% totally free.
Be careful that your social webbing isn’t eating up all your time and not providing you with any benefits. Don’t forget that your time is valuable.
Cross Canadian Ragweed in Utah & Mustache May
This past Friday I left work a little early with the intention of heading to St. George Utah to see Cross Canadian Ragweed in concert. The plan was to leave the house around 3PM. But, thanks to another lengthy visit from the air conditioning company from hell, we didn’t get on the road until nearly 5PM.
We arrived at the venue at about 8:15 local time. Yes, I forgot to calculate in the time change. We were able to find a spot to park about 50 feet away from the front door. I found this odd, but it would wind up to be just one of the many oddities of concerts in Utah.
We headed to the front door to pick up our tickets at Will Call. We gave the guy our name and he looked us up on a printed sheet and hands us our tickets. We walk past the security guards (a guy in his 50s and his two teen-aged kids) and head inside. This is so different than going to a show in Vegas where they basically give you a body cavity search before entering the arena.
Now that we are inside it’s time to grab a drink. We walk up to the bar and see that there are a couple teenagers working this section, too. Oh, looky there… no alcohol on the menu. Bottled waters were only $1.00 which is unheard of at any concert I have ever been to. We could have ordered a Frazzle, which is like an Icee, but we decided against it.
Now we head toward the stage. That’s a short trip. This entire place can hold no more than about 350 people. But, the opening band is already on stage and there are no more than 100 people in the place. We find a spot up front and settle in. Then, we start to notice it. Almost everybody has snuck in their own alcohol. Some had flasks, but most had something mixed in a water bottle that looked faintly like piss. With no access to alcohol, I was a bit jealous of the piss drinkers.
During the show the lead singer mentions that the management has made it VERY clear that he is not supposed to curse on stage. Uh, OK… He kept to that rule basically all night. Though, he did let slip an F-bomb at one point. Another thing that he spoke about was the fact that it’s “Mustache May.” If you don’t have any facial hair, for the month of May you are supposed to let your mustache grow. If you have a goatee you are supposed to shave the bottom and keep the top. So, in the spirit of being a team player, I’ve shaved half my facial hair and now look like a cross between a 70’s porn star and a used car salesmen. Enjoy!
