Hey all, the server that walljm.com lives on is going to have maintenance done soon and there will be a few hours of downtime. see the note below:
There will be up to one hour downtime on May 11th between 8p-1a PST
in order for us to ensure that the host machine will reboot cleanly.
There will be up to two hours downtime on May 12th between 8p-1a PST.
it turned 11 today.
Her: Everything is still this morning. The cloudy, after-rain sky holds in the moisture & silence like a giant greenhouse :)
Me: mmm… that almost sounds like a haiku. :)
Me: the cloudy, after rain sky // holds moisture and silence // in the still morning
Her: Lol :) didn’t really think abt that :) I love the spicy smell of wooded areas after rain, esp. as the sun comes out & turns the heat on :)
Me: yeah. :) its been raining a lot here the last few days. the combination of the smell of rain and the smell of the grill last night brought up a bunch of vague memories of camping when i was young.
Her: :) nice :) or this: cloudy, after-rain sky // stillness, moisture, silence // city-wide greenhouse
Her: Funny how a smell takes you back faster sometimes than sight or sound :) prob bcs we do more seeing & listening than smelling :)
Me: or … like a greenhouse // the cloudy, after-rain sky // holds stillness, moisture, silence
Her: :) that’s good, too :)
Her: Hm. I almost prefer my haiku simile-less. Maybe for the same reason I enjoy semi-colons: implied connections :)
Me: interesting…
Her: So, i’d prob move your first line to the end & make it just one word.
Me: like: the cloudy, after-rain sky // holds stillness, moisture, silence // a giant greenhouse
Her: Yeah, more like that :) RE: like: the cloudy, after-rain sky // holds stillness, moisture, silence // a giant greenhouse
It replicates a part of the Google Now functionality, the part i used most. But since my phone reacted badly to Jelly Bean, i had to go back to ICS and I missed it. You can download the on{x} script from here. The bitbucket repository with all my on{x} scripts is here. Just paste the script into your own on the onx.ms website. You can download the on{x} app here.
The Mysterious Benedict Society,
The Mysterious Benedict Society: and the Perilous Journey,
The Mysterious Benedict Society: and the Prisoners Dilemma
- by Trenton Lee Stewart
An excellent series, appropriate for adults as well as children.
The Legacy: The Legend of Drizzt, Book VII
Starless Night: The Legend of Drizzt, Book VIII
Neverwinter: Neverwinter Saga, Book II
Gauntlgrym: Neverwinter, Book I (Neverwinter Saga)
Road of the Patriarch: The Sellswords, Book III (Forgotten Realms: The Sellswords, Book 3)
- by R. A. Salvatore
I’m a huge fan of Salvatore. Always excellent. I’ve now read nearly all the books in the Drizzt collection.
So here’s what I’ve read so far:
By Terry Pratchet: Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad
What can you say about Pratchet? He’s amazing, hysterical, wise, funny and insightful. I haven’t read anything by him that I didn’t like, a lot. I recommend him highly.
By Terry Brooks: The Measure of the Magic, Bearers of the Black Staff
I was a little disappointed with Brooks’ latest. Not as good as his usual, and certainly not as good as his earlier work.
By Jim Butcher: Storm Front
This is the first novel in a long series. It was good. Tight plot and writing. But I wasn’t in the right mood for noir, and the novel left me feeling dark, which says more about me and my mood than it does about the novel.
By Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay
I don’t even know what to say really. These books were so good I rank them in my top 10 greatest of all time. Best series I’ve read in a decade. The honesty and insight into her characters, particularly how she describes the pain and anguish of anxiety/fear/depression/greif had me unable to put the books down and towards the end, having a difficult time keeping my composure.
By Frank Beddor: The Looking Glass Wars, Seeing Redd, ArchEnemy
This series was excellent. A different take on the wonderland mythos, it had me captivated. Highly reccomended.
I have photo galleries that back to Jan 2001, as walljm.com was a personal site before it was a weblog, but the first post as a blog was Feb 15th, 2002. I started writing just after graduating college. Heady days back then, when the blogging community was so small it numbered in the hundreds, and you could track the new posts written on a daily basis on a single page.
I’ve grown a lot on this blog, as a writer, a photographer and an individual, slowly loosing juvenile tendencies, slowly getting better as an artist, slowly growing more discerning. This website has my very first poem, and some of the first photographs I took with my first SLR (a Pentax ZXM film camera). I’ve been less prolific than some, wondering at times why I had a blog and what I was going to use it for. I’ve been on hiatus three times, I think, the last time for 3 years in which I moved from Saint Louis to DC. But I’m glad I’ve kept with it.
Along the way I became friends with Jenn, Daniel, Paulo, Sarah, Ash, Amber, Irene, Wyclif, and many more…
At some point, maybe I’ll do a retrospective of the best posts of walljm.com. But I’ve got work to do now, so thanks to everyone who ever stopped by, and happy birthday to me. :)
Joe McNally Photography- On location with the Nikon D4 from Joe McNally Photography on Vimeo.
A BTS look at several shoots by Joe McNally, for the Nikon D4 campaign.
All footage shot on Nikon D4 and D7000 cameras.
Ok, so I’ve implemented redirects for most of the old urls, which should continue to work. I’ve added a number of customizations and tweaks. If anyone runs into anything odd or frustrating, please feel free to contact me via a comment on this post or email via jason at walljm.com. let try this again
for reasons unknown, the server that runs walljm.com and the rest of my web properties ran out of memory and was unresponsive for the last couple days. its back up now.
I’ve been offline here at walljm.com for nearly three years. In that time I’ve moved away from Saint Louis, settled in near Washington, DC, changed jobs (but not companies), and gone back to school (lets give it up for cdia!).
So a few things have changed around here. For the first time, walljm.com is no longer being run by the custom cms I built in college, and is instead running on the nifty wordpress platform. Truth is, I just got tired of doing my own support. Things are still a little rough, and hopefully as time goes by, I will tweak things and it will start to feel more like home.
In the mean time there will be fresh content. I have about 180+ pieces of poetry to put up, and I want to post the occasional photo story and/or single image as well as the odd long/short form piece when the mood strikes. Look for a new poem every week, probably on mondays, unless I decide I like a different day of the week better.
It occurs to me that the word Evolution is often used in contexts that it does not strictly describe. This is because the word Evolution carries with it so many broad connotations.
For instance, in a recent excerpt by Jason Kottke on Altruism in Economics the author of an article in Ode Magazine writes this
The theory is based on the premise that humans evolved in small groups with strong social contracts and plenty of contact with strangers. Cooperation within the tribe was advantageous so long as free riders were punished. It was also the best gambit on encountering strangers. Cooperation, particularly in times of famine, was the only means of survival, so altruism became a favored evolutionary trait.
(emphasis mine)
What strikes me about the use of the word evolutionary in the last statement is how its not exactly untrue, even in a creationist viewpoint. This happens all the time when scientist appeal to evolutionary theory to explain observed behaviors in people. It is entirely possible that a created humanity learned the use of altruism as a necessity in certain situations. That humanity is adaptable isn’t in question. The use of the word evolution here can be seen as descriptive of the situation, but because of the broad connotations, it implies cause that hasn’t been demonstrated.
I have become increasingly more and more frustrated with the act of trying to stretch or make something mean more than it really does, and i recognize that i am probably as guilty as anyone of such offenses. But it would be nice if we were more careful about making assumptions, or trying to make an observation mean more than it does…
oops… that just became a screed. err… sorry.
Lately I’ve had a lot to say. Quite paradoxically, this means I’ve spoken less. Words, like many things in life, need context to have meaning. That context doesn’t end with its typographic neighbors, but extends to the time of day, the place, the number and particulars of the persons to whom they are given. Words are a gift. For some, a precious and finite resource, saved up to be given at times most appropriate.
I was thinking about introversion today, among other things, and as is my want, my thoughts turned inward. It seems, for good or ill, my self is the dominant subject of my mind. My thoughts on introversion, sparked by an article on said subject, raised a thought I’d thought before, mainly that, though I identify very much with the introvert, I’m not fully one. On a scale, I seem to be to the side of center. Such thinking devolved. It usually does.
I find myself fascinated with neuroscience and psychology. This fascination is new, or at least, relatively new. It occurs to me that it grows out of a long standing and persistent need to be in action who I see myself in thought, the constant tension between idealism and practice, and the … frustrations of not having control over my own self.
Neuroscience, it seems, reveals a persistent bias, long suspected. We are paradoxical. Perceptions, the product of our senses, are filtered, adjusted, stitched together and modified for our own consumption. We take shortcuts. And often, we lie to our own selves. We feel certain about things that are false. Often. Yes, it does happen. And I can’t help but wonder how, with all the false information, and all the flawed perception, it is possible to know anything with any certainty at all. Pascal summed it up best I think, for he said, “It is not certain that all is uncertain”.
I used to hate to end a poem on a low note. They always felt incomplete, unfinished. Somehow there had to be a way to resolve the tension. For all the lack of understanding there is in this world, there seems to be a very real need for harmony, a way to take the disparate parts of our soul and impart meaning.
I still hate to end a piece on a low note. Somehow it feels like giving up. There is vital part of myself that refuses to give up hope for the resolve, that fantastic and satisfying moment in a symphony which has been building, back and forth, never quite reaching the tonic, and finally coming to a close, takes all the disparate themes, the discordant notes, the unsatisfying moments along the way and ties them up, settling once and for all the whole of the matter.
Well… that’s all for now I think.
Mexico City Policy – Voluntary Population Planning
What it does: "The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2151b(f)(1)), prohibits nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive Federal funds from using those funds "to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning, or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." The August 1984 announcement by President Reagan of what has become known as the "Mexico City Policy" directed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to expand this limitation and withhold USAID funds from NGOs that use non-USAID funds to engage in a wide range of activities, including providing advice, counseling, or information regarding abortion, or lobbying a foreign government to legalize or make abortion available."
What Obama Said:"These excessively broad conditions on grants and assistance awards are unwarranted. Moreover, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning programs in foreign nations. Accordingly, I hereby revoke…"
So now my tax dollars are being used to pay for and promote the practice of abortion in foreign countries. *awesome*.
Along the Tracks by Chromasia.
You use this HDR technique a lot, and it adds a surreal quality to the images. In this case, I like the subtly. I prefer it in fact, to the the image you posted a few days ago, of the church interior.
I’ve always been fond of the desaturated color palate. It conveys a feelings of bleakness, and if you aren’t a bright person by nature, that studied lack of pretension (is use pretense lightly, i’m not sure its exactly the word i’m looking for) is soothing.
Compositionally i like the use of leading lines. Looking out into eternity adds to the restful nature of the photo. It also adds a bit of mystery. Where do the tracks lead? The subject itself taps into the cache of trains and brings to mind a bit of nostalgia, emphasized, I think, by the desaturated color palate.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of contrast in composition lately, and this photos use of it is interesting. In some ways, because of the use of HDR, there is less contrast over all in the dynamic range. HDR compresses the extreme ends, and this photo in particular has flat elements to its color.
on the other hand, you brought out contrast in color, in order to emphasize the texture of the tracks and railroad ties.
I noticed the HDR gradient effect, where in the texture of the tracks, it almost looks like a mask of clouds was added. That gives the photo as a whole a slightly dirty look, like it has been abused, which lends itself to the photo along side the overgrown nature of the scene.
Overall I see abandonment, nostalgia, and a touch of wanderlust all cast in a sense of heightened drama.
Very nice. :)
Everything communicates something
Start with what you want to say, start with the story.
Know where you are going. (what’s your destination)
You are answering the question WHY. Why is the photo important. How am I going to use it. What am I trying to say.
Knowing how you’ll use it is important, partially because the end product may introduce constraints such as aspect ratio, resolution, etc…
When thinking about the why, ask yourself, what compositional elements do I need to tell that story.
Consider not just your own perspective, but consider the perspective of your intended audience. Consider the cultural context you will be communicating in.
Powerful images eliminate distractions.
Re: portraiture, know your subjects personality. Find ways to draw that personality out to say what you want to say.
Emphasize what is.
Art is about drawing attention to specific elements in life and the world around us. We use all sorts of techniques to warp what is seen to add emphasis to the parts we think are important. Boring photos emphasize nothing.
All images are relational, by which we mean, we relate the subject matter of the image. You, as the artist, define that relationship and manipulate it, in order to create in the audience an emotion.
Elements of composition
Dimension
– Texture
– DOF
– Foreground/Background
– Shadow (directionality of light)
– Rim lighting
– Size of subject
Perspective
– Shooting down,
– Shooting up, Shooting at subjects level,
– Profile,
– Mug shot, etc…
Balance (deliberate use or disuse)
– rule of thirds
– symmetry
Time/Timing
– Progression (DOF, repetition with slight changes)
– Freeze frames
– Repetition
– Blur
Leading Lines
Contrast
– light/dark (more contrast adds impact. The faster you go from light to dark in a gradient the more rich a photo will appear.) (see the concept of compression as it relates to dynamic range, similar to the way an audio engineer will use compression)
– anachronism (using two objects that don’t fit together – wrong time periods, opposing ideas [short/tall, thin/fat]- to emphasize the differences between the two.)
Know when to edit. Not all photos should be kept.
– Is the photo deceptive, unflattering?
– Quantity doesn’t mean quality.
Be familiar with moods/emotions. Be able to recognize them quickly, know how to work with each emotion.
Basic compositions for portraits:
– face
– head/shoulders
– waist up
– full profile
almost anything else is awkward.
With a post title like above, you probably expect a long article. But i’m not a voluminous writer. Over the past several years one of the things I’ve seen over and over again, both in the news, and in my personal life, is that our perception of the world is rarely complete. We just don’t see the whole picture, and that happens not just occasionally, but most of the time.
Too see a situation for what it really is, wholly, is rare. very rare.
I cite this article about impressions of Bush as an example.
Lose-Lose on Abortion: Obama’s threat to Catholic hospitals and their very serious counterthreat.
If the Freedom of Choice Act passes Congress, and that’s a big if, Obama has promised to sign it the second it hits his desk. (Here he is at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event in 2007, vowing, “The first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.”) Though it’s often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn’t stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn’t be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute “material cooperation with an intrinsic evil.”
1) Perception is flawed. To believe otherwise is to open yourself up to deception.
2) We rarely have all the facts.
3) Until the law came, there was no sin.
4) Hope in anything except Christ is false hope.
5) I’ve become a very very jaded man.
6) I predicted Barack Obama would become the next President of the United States 2 years ago, before he declared he was running. Because people underestimate the power of words, and a silver tongue is more valuable than gold in politics.
7) I hope, very much, that Barack Obama’s decisions in the White House do not result in more freedom for women to murder their unborn children.
8) Its never good when the legislative and executive branch are controlled by the same party.
9) Its never good when the Senate and House have clear majorities on the same side.
10) Republicans and Democrats can’t be trusted.
11) We rarely have all the facts.
12) People lie, exaggerate, gloss over, and leave out information. Its not really done on purpose.
I thinks that’s everything. For now.
Public Discourse – Obama’s Abortion Extremism, by Robert George is a great article, articulating much better than I ever could, why voting for Obama for President is a patently unwise action to take if you wish to preserve the sanctity of human life. Below is a quote from the last paragraph, but please take the time to read the full article, which documents where Obama, by his actions, stands.
What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be? Barack Obama’s America is one in which being human just isn’t enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama’s America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: "that question is above my pay grade." It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator’s pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy – and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then.