Pre Christmas Photoblog Woes
Sorry to make my first post here in so long about a technical difficulty, but periphery's down at the moment. Somehow everything went all crappy this morning; since I'm working and packing and trying to get out of the city, I'm pretty sure it won't be fixed by this weekend. Sorry about that. Happy Holidays!
bugs-ish , meta-ish , photoblog-ish , rails-ish by tangentialist at 09:48 AM on 23 Dec 05 | Perm-a-link
Photoblogging 2: Periphery, The New Photoblog (I Still Love You, Flickr)
Before I continue, let me point out periphery.tangentialism.com, which I finished this weekend. It's a Photoblog-with-a-capital-P that I'll be directing my daily photos at for a while, supplemented by Flickr for random shots and sharables.
I wrote Periphery because I've spent too long telling other photobloggers that "I really want to have my own photoblog". I love Flickr, and I've been posting regularly there for over a year, but while I use it to photoblog, it didn't feel like "my own photoblog". It's been very good for me, both as a photographer and as a photoblogger, and the community of sharing there is so rich that I don't see any reason to leave, but as even Eric Costello points out, in this interview with Adaptive Path, Flickr wasn't originally put together for Photobloggers-with-a-capital-P:
Flickr was really envisioned initially as an organizational tool for an individual who has this huge collection of photos. The social network was built in just so that you could restrict access to your photos. But what has really taken off with Flickr is that it’s turned out to be a great platform for sharing with the masses, and not just with your small collection of friends...
But we found that it took off when we got some excellent photographers who were interested in using Flickr as a new kind of photo blog, so that the world could see their pictures. And that, I think, is really the primary usage of Flickr now.
In fact, I've changed with Flickr. When I signed up, I only imagined I'd post photos to share for kicks--and you can see that in my early posts, of signs and vacations and cameraphone shots. In the last year, mostly because of the vibrant local community of photobloggers, I've fallen back in love with photography, and with looking at nice, big images, which isn't Flickr's strong point.
In fact, the biggest problem with using Flickr to photoblog is that everyone's first glimpse of your photo is a wallet-sized snapshot, and I'd like people to be have a larger image to gaze upon when they load the page. On Periphery, that's about 900 pixels wide versus 240 pixels wide, which amounts to a lot when I'm posting a photo I'm proud of (ideally, every shot I post). Conversely, 900 pixels make it difficult to hide shoddy work, which raises the bar--a good thing.
Though I briefly considered using Eliot's Admiral package to get around the image size issue, while still keeping my roots in Flickr, I decided against it. Frankly, I think Flickr and I need some space. I've been asking too much of Flickr lately, expecting Flickr to be all things to me at all times. I'll still call Flickr up for daily shots of friends and odd visual couplings (just like old times), but I think the new space at Periphery will make for an interesting change in how I work and edit, and I need that change.
Working on Periphery was incredibly fun, and it came together very quickly (about three weeks in my free time). It's written in Ruby on Rails (geek out!) with a couple judicious visual effect-y, AJAX-y things. I'm holding a couple features back until I have enough photos to make them interesting, but I'm already happy with the way it works. Hopefully you will be, too.
Thanks are in order to a few people: Eliot and Raul's sites both served as inspirations for the layout and features of the site. In particular, the navigation effects are the sincerest form of flattery of Eliot's (and Kottke's) work. Actually, if they're listed in the "Links" section of the photoblog, they're probably an inspiration in one form or another. Thanks to Raul, Keith, and Nick for looking it over and offering advice. And thank you, so much, to Flickr. I'm here because of you, Flickr.
flickr-ish , meta-ish , photo-ish , photoblog-ish by tangentialist at 08:08 PM on 17 Oct 05 | Perm-a-link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me My Ass Was This Big?
It's not that I didn't care about users of Internet Explorer before today (I do, though I always urge them to try Firefox instead). I don't own a PC, and Virtual PC is a pain in the ass, so I have been living in denial about the look and feel of tangentialism for my Intel-based colleagues, and I am now deeply contrite. Thanks to BrowserCam, this site is now marginally legible for users of IE 5 and above, I hope. Additional thanks are due to my friend Genevieve, who is clearly the only Explorer user who didn't look at the site and simply go "pfft... loser."
If you're an IE loyalist just arriving here, let this post serve as a reminder of just how much I care about people who aren't like me--a liberal, elitist Mac user with nothing better to do than write paragraphs about ice cream shop trademarks and unemployed television journalists. By the way, you should try Firefox instead.
browsers-ish , css-ish , meta-ish by tangentialist at 03:41 PM on 19 Sep 05 | Perm-a-link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Chaos Of Summer
...is no excuse to stop writing, but it helps to explain why things are slow. In lieu of the post I should be editing right now, here are a few of the myriad reasons I bust out regularly to defeat the process of writing (or doing anything creative, for that matter):
- I am feeling stuck in a rut, and should stop doing everything that I am currently doing, because that only leaves "new" things.
- Editing is hard.
- That post was too short / too long / too derivative.
- I'd rather be taking photos.
- I'd rather be eating.
- Subject would prefer I not post that to the general public
- Work
- "Work"
- I don't like posting about posting, and besides, [any of the above].
I have a project that I'm finishing up for myself that will involve posting something very small every single day. I'm obsessed with the idea that I can instill good habits in my life, and my top three are: staying vigilant, keeping promises, and always having projects. Somewhere in there is a commitment to write more often--assuming, of course, that I'd not rather be eating.
meta-ish by tangentialist at 08:52 PM on 06 Jul 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
/usr/bin/vacation tangentialism
Today, I walked into a diving equipment shop on 6th Avenue and asked about a waterproof housing for my camera. The owner didn't have any housings in stock, but he held me there for half an hour trying to sell me fins, masks, cheap underwater cameras, and diving lessons. I eventually managed to escape (with a brochure for future diving lessons, if I am so inclined), reminded of how intense New York is, and how, even when I'm trying to equip myself for some downtime, I find myself caught up in someone else's panicked retail neurosis. This is why I am so excited about tomorrow.
Friday afternoon, I will be in a plane headed to Puerto Rico, where I am scheduled to meet another flight destined for Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. I haven't taken a totally hedonistic vacation in at least a decade, so I'm looking forward to nine days of uncomplicated beachside leisure. Plans include: staring at things underwater, listening to foam hiss at the edge of the waves, eating strange fish, reading things, writing on paper, listening to the Bach 'cello suites (thanks, Andrew!), and spending every sun-addled minute with my girlfriend. Most importantly, I will be separated by the entire North American continent from my laptop and broadband connection--I'm sure I don't have to elaborate on why that's a good thing.
When I get back, two Mondays from now, I'll have plenty to say about Arthur Chi'en, my camera, t-shirts, the New York Post, food I recently ate, and the virtues of dance music's commercial decline. I am loving this right now, but I'll love it even more once I've gotten some sand in my eyes. Be nice.
meta-ish , vacation-ish by tangentialist at 01:03 AM on 27 May 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
Writing About Food Writing
Anybody who has ever seen me eat lunch at a desk knows that I love food writing. Nothing improves a quick plate of macaroni and cheese more than reading about some cream-poached pheasant or oxtail marmalade. I was raised on cooking shows and cookbooks, and while their influence on my technique was not always apparent (Hamburger Helper was about all I cooked for the first year I lived in New York), I have always held in high esteem those who eat to write.
I appreciate good recipes, but I am particularly drawn to restaurant reviews; the tense air of the opening paragraphs and the rhapsodic highs (or devastated lows -- though I'm not a huge fan of the new British Schadenfreude review method) of the first course are like a well-crafted mystery to me. I love reviews because the authors are, first and foremost, not chefs but writers. If I want a chef's idea of good food, I'll eat it. When I'm reading, I turn to Sietsema and Bruni, whose strength as artists is convincing me to drool. For those of you who are as obsessed with food writing as I am, here are two things to check out:
First, Adam Gopnik has a great review of food writing in last week's New Yorker. He covers Rudolph Chelminski's book about Bernard Loiseau, who committed suicide in 2003 after having lost his third Michelin star; Ruth Reichl's memoir of experiences as the New York Times chief food reviewer (a nice bit of meta-writing, reviewing reviewers reviewing their reviews); and two quasi-academic volumes on the art and science of eating. In two pages, he sold me four books.
Also, via A Full Belly (which I read daily), I discovered Saute Wednesday's list of Nominees for the 2005 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards. All scandals set aside, their selections of the best food writing in the country are pleasantly mouthwatering -- spend half a minute with Dara Moskowitz's review of Levain and you'll be hydrated for the rest of the day. If I could write about food half as well as these people, I'd be well-fed and happy.
I'm going to start writing more reviews of what I eat, if only to remind myself that an economical culinary life does not have to mean the laptop, a bowl of mac and cheese, and panhandling in front of the Time Warner Center for a dinner at Masa.
food-ish , meta-ish , writing-ish by tangentialist at 05:43 PM on 07 Apr 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
Meta-Tangentialism And The Perils Of Hosting
To those of you for whom "look and feel" is a concept as inviolate as "bread and water", I apologize for the coming week. I am making quick and intermittent changes to the front page of tangentialism to bring more of a "photoblog" feel to the place without sacrificing the words. So far, I am failing, and we're back to normal until my next five hours of free time.
My most recent attempt had some juxtaposition issues, with this picture appearing to illustrate an entry titled, "Once Again, Someone Jerks Off In Front Of Stacey". Not exactly what I was looking for, but an interesting look into my subconscious, nonetheless.
Complicating matters this morning was the sudden loss of power at the datacenter where tangentialism is hosted -- tough for me to wrap my head around, because the catalyst for the power loss appears to have been the two redundant power backup systems that ensure I never lose power to begin with.
So, barring further inexplicable outages, and time permitting, we're looking at possibly rolling with the photoblog crew in, say, five to twenty days. Tentatively.
meta-ish by tangentialist at 04:10 PM on 31 Mar 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
Starting Fresh
Bah, I wasn't writing there anyhow. I'll put up a link to the old wiki-based tangentialism soon, but I needed the change.
I'm obsessed with flickr these days, so I need a tangentialism that can talk to them. Old tangentialism, not the case -- new tangentialism, photos galore.
I've been checking my morning blogs with an RSS reader, but I can't check my own? Old tangentialism, very html -- new tangentialism, much RSS.
I like the old tangentialism, and I'm going to slowly make the new tangentialism do much of what the old one did, in terms of interlinking and creating spontaneous narrative, but I'm getting old, and all the kids are using fun toys that don't work with my spontaneous narrative. So we'll get back to what we were talking about in a little while, but I'd rather keep writing than keep programming at the moment.
So then. Let's get started.
meta-ish by tangentialist at 01:14 AM on 23 Dec 04 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)