bigskysquid

Happy St. Patty's Day

Where do pictures go to die?

Where do pictures go to die? 

Before the age of digital cameras it was likely a shoe box filled with dusty negatives on the top shelf of your mother’s closet.  There they sat, just hoping someday someone would sift through them, looking for that picture of Uncle Pat shooting milk out his nose at the family reunion.  Today, forgotten Kodak moments suffer an even worse fate because those behind the lens don’t realize their options.

Unlike their film brothers and sisters, digital negatives don’t sit in shoeboxes.  Most likely they take up space in some random folder on your hard drive, or worse yet stay on the already-full camera memory card, waiting their turn to be deleted and replaced by another doomed snap shot.

Most digital negatives will only be viewed on the inch-high screen on the back of the camera.  They will be squinted at and told how good they look even though postage stamps have more detail.

Another year begins...

Well, it's been awhile since my last post so I thought I would just chime in and see if anyone was still listening.

This blog was started as a class project way back in September and now it, like me, has lost focus and walks the world aimlessly.  Actually, it just kind of sits there... but then again so do I.  It's definitely time to look at a redesign and getting this thing on some sort of track.

Thanks to all for taking a look since this thing got up and running and happy belated new year.

Cats victorius in muddy litterbox

I had a great opportunity over the weekend to head on down to Bozeman (one of my former homes) and take some shots of this year's "Brawl of the Wild."  Saturday, was the 105th meeting of the good ol' match-up between the Montana Grizzlies and Montana State Bobcats, and it was definitely the place to be.  It was my first opportunity to be on the sidelines for something of that scale and it something to see.  The game was low-scoring and pretty uneventful, but I couldn't complain about being down in front.  Unfortunately, the Griz failed to get anything rolling and the Cat's just kept on keepin' on and the Griz lost.  I'm sure if you were interested at all you know all the highlights by now anyways.

However, some not-so-glorious highlights for me were:

• Travis Lulay kicked mud all over my camera while diving into the sidelines.
• Dan Carpenter almost kicked a ball into me when I walked too close to that net thingy he practices on.
• And finally, Governor Schweitzer almost blew my head off with that cannon deal that shoots the t-shirts into the stands.

Dang it was fun.

Flickr the Photo Editor - Update

My apologies for being a little late on the follow-up, but thank you to everyone who viewed and commented on my Flickr experiment.

Your favorite by far was the one of the gentleman with the painted face and skeleton in front of him(2 comments and 51 views).  Unfortunately, I had to turn in the one of the guy with all the stuff hanging all over him in front of the Ox.  I just didn't have the correct caption information for the most popular shot.  I did however get it two hours after deadline, but I did try.

Thanks again for your help and feedback.  It was a great opportunity for me to look at my work side by side and try and discover what it is that stands out in my photos.

Flickr the Photo Editor

Tonight was Missoula's Festival of the Dead and I, along with all my classmates, went out to shoot it.  One of the things that has fascinated about taking pictures is how what I consider a good picture sometimes isn't what someone else would.  So, I'm going to throw my own bias out the window and let everyone and anyone choose which picture I turn in.  My only stipulations are that I make sure the photo meets the assignment and can back them all up with accurate cutlines.

I have posted 12 photos in a Flickr set.  Feel free to add comments if you like.  My assignment is due Tuesday, so on Monday night I will count up comments and views.  Whichever photo is leading the pack will get turned in... hopefully for a decent grade.

So, choose your fav or favs and thanks in advance for the input.

The del.icio.us possibilities

Thanks to Chris for introducing me to this before the weekend started.  I ended up running back to my computer every chance I got just to tool around and see where I could go with this thing.  I had heard of del.icio.us but never really got it until now.  Here's a short description from  del.icio.us' about page...

del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

Once you've registered for the service, you add a simple bookmarklet to your browser (see below). When you find a web page you'd like to add to your list, you simply select the del.icio.us bookmarklet, and you'll be prompted for a information about the page. You can add descriptive terms to group similar links together, modify the title of the page, and add extended notes for yourself or for others.

You can access your list of links from any web browser. By default, your links are shown to you in reverse chronological order, with those you've added most recently at the top. In addition to viewing by date, you can also view all links in a specific category (you define your own categories as you add the links), or search your links for keywords.

What makes del.icio.us a social system is its ability to let you see the links that others have collected, as well as showing you who else has bookmarked a specific site. You can also view the links collected by others, and subscribe to the links of people whose lists you find interesting.

So, imagine that you could have access to thousands of people's favorites list and you could surf around those lists by keywords or tags and extend your own favorites by finding those people who have something in common with you.

I have a couple of sites that I consider golden little nuggets.  They're usually tutorial sites or somewhere I go first when I'm trying to do something different with Photoshop, Flash, etc...  Once I got the link into del.icio.us I saw that there were about 14,000 other people that had those sites on their lists.  So then I started clicking around in there lists and it wasn't long before my favorites had doubled.  Basically, my resources had doubled.

The possibilities are obviously endless and definitely worth checking out.  If you would like to see my del.icio.us links I've added a links TypeList in the right column.

Get set up with your own del.icio.us links at the del.icio.us site.

That's "Mr. Beer" to You

I'm a fan of beer.  Besides the headaches in the morning, there isn't much I don't like about it.  Amber, Pale, Brown, Dark... you name it... it's a beautiful thing.

For my birthday my girlfriend made me the proud owner of a Mr. Beer home brewing kit.  So, I will soon be up and running with my very own supply give or take two weeks.

Anyways, I'm going to start my first batch later this week and I'll be posting reviews of my hopefully delicious home-made masterpieces.

The Mr. Beer site has a ton of recipes and I'll probably even come up with a few of my own.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  I'll probably mess up a few times.

Saturday's Experiment in Moblogging

So, my buddy told me that he was on his way to Portland for the MSU vs. Portland game this morning and I decided to set up a moblog for him.

Bobcat Roadtrip

I've never done this before, but it's looking pretty good.  He's posting the entire way there and then through the game.  Keep checking back... I think it's looking pretty good.

Oh, and if they do something disgusting... I had no control over it.

UM Grad Approaches Life of Hustling with 'Zealous Fortitude'

My buddy Jeff forwarded this to me and told me I could post it.  Jeff graduated from the University of Montana last Spring with degrees in Journalism and History.  This is his response to an e-mail from the j-schools' director of gratuate studies...

Dear recent grad: Somehow, the J-School has lost touch with you. No, this isn't a dunning letter! But we would like to know what you are up to.
What's your current (or very recent) job? Even if it's not in journalism, we'd like to know. Please write back!

Thanks, Clem Work

Jeff's response...

I'm a no-good street hustler. A dealer. To put it bluntly, I work at Crazy Mike's videostore. It's that little shop around the corner that doles out everyone's drugs of choice: action, drama, comedy. You name it, and we'll search the foreign aisles to find it.

Our clientele are mostly regulars. You can tell them by their sweaty palms and glossy eyes. Hooking them's easy. Watch them wander the store, checking out the merchandise. Advise them to try "Good Will Hunting," a purple-sticky-punch flavor with a nice aftertaste. When they come back, hit them with "Pulp Fiction," the Alaskan-thunderfuck of movies. After that, they'll be waiting in winter weather every Tuesday morning just to catch the next cheap trick coming off Hollywood's supply lines. They're not just the low-lifes anymore. I saw a few of my former professors walking out, five movies in hand. Before, they never smoked movies, just drank books. Yeah right. I knew an addict when I saw one.