Red Line Anxiety

Ever get extremely anxious before you watch a video online? Whether it be on YouTube or any other site you still have to wait for that god forsaken bar to load. And unless you hit play and then pause at the speed of light quickly so you can wait while it loads...you might as well stick to books because you aren't going to see an online video any time soon. 

It seems like someone put that little circle on crack. It puts the 

Little Engine That Could" to shame. And you can't just let it load half way, because sure enough that little circle will run at a perfect pace slightly behind the loading bar just until you relax and convince yourself that your video will not freeze up and make everyone talk like they are on tracks being mixed on a turn table-Wh wh wh wh whicky what? Then it speeds up as soon as you exhale. 

Room B 600 called...it wants it's technology curse back. 

Tracy Chapman

Mother of us all

Place of our birth

We all are witness

To the rape of the world

If you look you'll see it with your own eyes

If you listed you will hear her cries

If you care you will stand and testify

And stop the rape of the world

These are the words of one of the most insightful women to have ever lived. Tracy Chapman is a brilliant lyricist and a human rights activist. She has been my mom's favorite artist since I can remeber. Therefore I grew up listening to her music. I can literally listen to her songs over and over and over again. I find such truth in everything she says. I think if more of our minds worked like hers does, the world would be a lot better off. There is not much more I can say about her, you just have to find out for yourself. Listen...

Crossroads

Talkin 'Bout a Revolution



Change

New Beginning 

Left-Hand-Man

Yes I click on Internet Advertisements because they have cool colors. This time I stumbled oh so gracefully onto a very interesting site! This particularly sensory fulfilling ad is for a company called Left-Hand-Man. 

Left-Hand-Man is a creative production company out of San Jose. Created by Brent Haley, who has spent 20 years in the marketing industry working for companies like Aldus, Adobe, Pantone and Apple. "Brent created Left-Hand-Man productions in 2006 with the conviction that online streamed video is the next critical medium to communicate technology and products to the graphics market. He designed the studio to fill the void for small companies and large corporations who want to create leading edge video content to meet their marketing needs," says the companies website. 

The company offers Color for Creative seminars to explore the capabilites of Mac OS X Leopard, workflows in Adobe Photoshop, LightRoom, Apple Aperture and loads more. Left-Hand-Man even offers a seminar on Fonts for graphic designers! Check out the site to see these cool features!!!!

http://www.left-hand-man.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LeftHandMan.woa

Entertainment Through the Ages

I recently visited the DeGoyler Library in Fondren. Unbeknownst to me, and most likely the majority of the SMU campus, DeGoyler has an extensive collection of rare photographs. Their massive collection contains over 500,000 railroad photographs.

Along with their collection, DeGoyler has included one of the first stereo viewers. For those who are unaware, stereo viewers are stands with lenses and a bar attached at the front where you place a card with two images on it. The way stereo viewers work is "each picture is taken from a slightly different viewpoint that corresponds closely to the spacing of the eyes. The left picture represents what the left eye would see, and likewise for the right picture. When observing the pictures through a special viewer, the pair of two-dimensional pictures merge together into a single three-dimensional photograph." They were an extremely poular source of entertainment before television, and radio were available. 

We consider our society to be one that thrives off of shock value. Many say that we are no longer entertained by normal everyday scenarios, we must see something inappropriate, we are desensitized. We think that times were so much simpler, so much more appropriate, so pure two generations ago. I thought so too until I saw the images in the stereo viewer at the library.

I was shocked when I l watched the story take place on the cards. I considered the story incredibly inappropriate for the time period (1881-1939). It showed a woman leaving her house to go shopping and kissing her husband on the way out. The next set of cards showed the couple's maid kneading dough with a devious look in her eye. Next, the husband and the maid are showed embracing in a passionate kiss. Then the Mrs. walking in the door with her shopping bags while the husband reads the paper at the table. As the woman puts her bags down she is in shock. The last card shows her husband with white flour hand prints on the back of his jacket. 

I think this means that our society has always felt the need for such entertainment. Even before visual means, stories were told with equally inappropriate content. Now that does not mean that I don't think our generation insists on being more inappropriate, because it certainly does. Today the maid would be dressed in a scantily clad uniform, and they certainly would not be kissing. However I don't think we should be blamed for being the source.

Holiday Inn Express

     I did not for one second expect this commercial to be for Holiday Inn Express and therefore I loved it. I think the casting was just brilliant and I found it much more entertaining than any other commercial of theirs I have seen before. 

     This spot seems to reach a wider audience, where as the others in this same campaign were targeted more towards the working class only. With this commercial our generation may be more likely to think of Holiday Inn when deciding on where to stay, than previously. 

I also hint a bit of intertextuality. The first thing I think of when I see a white guy rapping is Eminem. This commercial seems to be a pretty direct take off of 8 Mile, Eminem's epic story of underground rap battles that shot him to the top. Except I'm pretty sure Eminem didn't acquire his talent from sleeping at a Holiday Inn. 

Memorable. Funny. Lyrical.

Touche Holiday Inn...Touche.

Abair Aisling

Hmmm it seems I have forgotten to explain the meaning of my URL. The only thing I love more than the english language would be, all other languages. I thoroughly enjoy learning other languages, even if it is just simple words or phrases. For some reason I have always felt that everything has so much more meaning in another language. Therefore I decided that the link to my thoughts would be just that, an expression in another language. 

I chose Gaelic not only because it is beautiful, but because it is from my heritage. My great, great grandmother immigrated from Ireland (bringing along her 22 children- I'm not sure they ever found out what was causing it). Therefore I chose two Gaelic words, Abair and Aisling. 

Abair meaning to say, utter or express. Aisling meaning a dream or vision. 

Smart Phones

     I subscribe to PDN Photo District News, It's a fantastic site for professional and amateur photographers. Today there was a really interesting article about the newest technology with smart phones. I've been looking for a new phone since I have an upgrade coming up soon, the Blackberry Pearl just isn't doin it for me. 

     The article listed 3 phones that it considers "smart", The iPhone (Duh), The Blackberry Bold, and The Palm Treo. David Schloss considers a "Smart" Phone is "a device that offers some sort of synchronization with desktop calendars and address books and provides some add-on features that normally would be found on a laptop- chatting, picture messages and Web browsing." 

The basic features of the iPhone as we all very well know are internet access, iTunes, high-tech camera, calendar, YouTube Access, GPS, Weather, Access to the apple store oh yea and you can call people on it too! But why is there an entire article about it on a photography site? Photographers love the iPhone because it is like having your laptop on location with you. Not only can you get GPS to easily move from location to location but you can also check the weather, and best of all over 30 applications are available on the iTunes Application Store. Among the 30 plus applications available is one called iKspozher that "provides a calculator that stimulates the values found on an exposure meter: users simply dial in the ISO of their shot and the scene characteristics (full sun, cloudy, hazy, etc.) and the software provides the correct shutter speed and aperture combinations." 

But the BEST part of the iPhone is that photographers are able to set up their portfolios to be accessed with a "swipe of a finger." Then they can ultimately create "QuickTime movies complete with photos, video, titles and transitions, overlaid with music and soundtracks using Apple's Keynote or iMovie and save these movies to the iPhone. Apple makes two video cables for the iPhone that connect it to NTSC (standard) TV devices or HDTV sets, and can even connect to projectors, allowing the iPhone to drive a custom-made photographic presentation." 

I would discuss the other two phones listed in the article...but it just seems like a lost cause when compared to the capabilities of the iPhone.

I just can't wait until it starts cooking me meals. 

In short...Looks like Lauren is getting an iPhone.