I always did like Andy Warhol's pop images. I used to play around in the darkroom and put color sides in the enlarger, then expose them on black & white photo paper. That produced some interesting results, so then I tried exposing the slides on 4 x 5-inch sheets of high contrast lithographic film. That process reduced the color photo into a pure black & white negative with no gray scale. Printing that negative on black & white photo paper made some fascinating pictures that looked more like precise ink drawings than photographs. I will say that it is a whole lot easier playing around with these digital images and you can do it all with the lights on and your fingers out of smelly photographic chemicals. I used The Warholizer from FD Toys for this multiple posterization project.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Fun with Images: The Warholizer
I always did like Andy Warhol's pop images. I used to play around in the darkroom and put color sides in the enlarger, then expose them on black & white photo paper. That produced some interesting results, so then I tried exposing the slides on 4 x 5-inch sheets of high contrast lithographic film. That process reduced the color photo into a pure black & white negative with no gray scale. Printing that negative on black & white photo paper made some fascinating pictures that looked more like precise ink drawings than photographs. I will say that it is a whole lot easier playing around with these digital images and you can do it all with the lights on and your fingers out of smelly photographic chemicals. I used The Warholizer from FD Toys for this multiple posterization project.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Searching for Feeds
I played around with the blog search tools and found that the Google Blog Search worked the best for me. It was interesting just entering random topics to see what came up. I'm interested in green building techniques and found two blogs on the topic - MetaEfficient - The Optimal Green Guide (http://www.metaefficient.com/) and Jetson Green - Blogging the green building revolution (http://jetsongreen.typepad.com/). I also found this great blog that contains Minnesota-themed videos (http://www.mnstories.com/). It's like a YouTube for the 10,000 Lakes crowd of which I am an alumnus.
The feeds I had found before using the search tools came from stumbing on them while reading another blog or web site. In this way, for example, I found Electronista - gadgets for geeks (http://www.electronista.com/) and Criticize This! - a great review site (http://www.criticizethis.net/). This is not an efficient method for finding blog feeds, but I like the serendipity of it.
The feeds I had found before using the search tools came from stumbing on them while reading another blog or web site. In this way, for example, I found Electronista - gadgets for geeks (http://www.electronista.com/) and Criticize This! - a great review site (http://www.criticizethis.net/). This is not an efficient method for finding blog feeds, but I like the serendipity of it.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Thing Eight: RSS
Playing with bloglines reminded me of a period in the Web's history when someone first came up with this great idea called "Push," which meant that content would be sent to you instead of the user always "pulling" it in, or downloading. Corporate systems people hated the idea, because so many employees were subscribing to these streams that it choked the bandwidth for everyone. Now, it's commonplace and expected that everyone will have web feeds automatically sent to their computer.
Bloglines is easy to use, but I realized that I've been using RSS for quite some time without even thinking about it, as have many other Internet users. I use iGoogle as my home page and have customized it to subscribe to feeds from BBC News, Wired Magazine, NPR, the New York Times, and many others. You can do the same thing with PageFlakes, NetVibes, My Yahoo, and other sites. Here's a link that describes 14 of these personalized home page sites: http://mashable.com/2007/06/29/personalized-homepages/. The great thing about using these services is that not only is it easy to set up, it is just as easy to add and delete your choice of feeds and to design your page according to which information you want to see first. Every time I log on to the Web, I can quickly catch up with news that matters to me.
Bloglines is easy to use, but I realized that I've been using RSS for quite some time without even thinking about it, as have many other Internet users. I use iGoogle as my home page and have customized it to subscribe to feeds from BBC News, Wired Magazine, NPR, the New York Times, and many others. You can do the same thing with PageFlakes, NetVibes, My Yahoo, and other sites. Here's a link that describes 14 of these personalized home page sites: http://mashable.com/2007/06/29/personalized-homepages/. The great thing about using these services is that not only is it easy to set up, it is just as easy to add and delete your choice of feeds and to design your page according to which information you want to see first. Every time I log on to the Web, I can quickly catch up with news that matters to me.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Tech the Hard Way
Thing 7: Blog about Technology
Since I have been involved with computer technology since the 1970s, I have seen a number of changes. The first computer I ever accessed was an IBM 370 that was located on a campus about 100 miles away. My project partner and I could only get time on the computer at 2:00 AM and then had to use a converted IBM Selectric typewriter as our input terminal. One little mistake in spelling or syntax in our computer program and we would be pulling another early morning shift in the basement trying to get it right. I have fond memories of this experience only because my project partner was an attractive coed named Ruth.
Now, however, I understand that getting my feet wet in the bad old days of “tired iron” mainframes and “mini” computers like the Honeywell DPS6 was not such a bad experience after all. For there is nothing like mounting 10-inch reels of computer tape onto a refrigerator-sized tape drive to make you appreciate a 4mm tape cartridge. Turning on your computer and seeing nothing on the green-on-black CRT but a blinking cursor waiting for your command is pretty intimidating compared to the friendly, colorful start-up screen of a Windows or Apple GUI. It all seems so much easier now, that it is hard to get discouraged when I have to learn a new program or an upgraded operating system. Now, it’s just fun.
StumptownTradingCard
For Thing Six, I had great fun playing with the FD Toys applications, "Trading Card Maker" and "Badge Maker." Here's an example of a librarian trading card of my son, who is a library worker by day and a working artist whenever he isn't at his day job. He is a really innovative artist and loves to create, but I think he likes his library gig as well. When he sees this (really, I did ask him if it was ok to post this), he will probably want to make it more artistic. Actually, I hope he does want to add to it.
Generic Brand Librarian
Tired of being "The Adult Services Librarian" or "The Computer Guy," I have become the ultimate Generalist, as illustrated by my office name plate. Have MLS, will try anything.
Just don't call me Number 204 - Remember the British TV Show, "The Prisoner" with Patrick McGoohan? They always referred to him as Number 6. And, of course, this program was a spin off of "Secret Agent," also starring McGoohan. In the theme song, there was a line that went like this, "...They're giving you a number and takin' away your name." See, here's that analog hyperlink deal again - one fact leads to another, to another, and so on.
Just don't call me Number 204 - Remember the British TV Show, "The Prisoner" with Patrick McGoohan? They always referred to him as Number 6. And, of course, this program was a spin off of "Secret Agent," also starring McGoohan. In the theme song, there was a line that went like this, "...They're giving you a number and takin' away your name." See, here's that analog hyperlink deal again - one fact leads to another, to another, and so on.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Seattle Central Library
I haven't visited this bold new library yet, but hope to someday, because I admire Deborah Jacobs's courage and the community's support for constructing such a stunning public building. I don't know how it actually works as a library, but whether you love it or hate it, it is certainly hard to miss.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)