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266 search results for “round”

Narrative Magazine Spring 09 Short Story Contest

April 24, 2009 |

About Writing and Writing

Matt Toder of the inimitable Steve’s Word sent me this today. It’s a short story competition held by Narrative Magazine. I’ve never read or seen Narrative Magazine, and with the current downturn in the print industry, who knows how long it will be around, but a contest is a contest and who am I to turn down the possibility of earning a little money? So I intend to enter. And since the deadline isn’t until July 31, I have time to write a new piece. What the hell, right? I’m going to try for the full 15000 words. I’ve never written anything that long before; I think the challenge will be exciting. I know that when writing for Hunter I thought I was going to have a hard time getting to 20 pages with my idea, but really I ended up having the opposite problem. I think that Julian & Clive suffered because I was trying to shove so much into 20-25 pages. I ended up cutting a bunch of ideas that probably would have made it better, or at least made the plot make more sense, feel less stilted.

Now I just need an idea.

Anyway, Matt Toder you get the seal of approval.

seal_of_approval

> Continue reading...Narrative Magazine Spring 09 Short Story Contest

Can you see The Space Pope’s Palace?

April 24, 2009 |

Thoughts

Hahaha, just kidding! Any fool knows the Space Pope lives far beyond this pathetic solar system.

Nevertheless, Cassini’s photos of Saturn are incredible. These are from a recent set that NASA received from the satellite as it cruised around Saturn’s outer rings. It’s like a hippy-dippy trip through the mysteries of space and cosmic unknowns. I will never see this with my own eyes, though, hopefully, one day some people will. It really makes me wonder what the hell else is out there in the unfathomably massive universe in which we are but a tiny speck. Further, the scale on these photos is a little mind-boggling. Often they note that the scale is something like 8km per PIXEL. What? Whatever. I’m not even going to try and think about that.

Here are some of my favorites.

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Rhea passes in front of Saturn’s larger, hazy moon Titan (which is lit from behind by the sun) in June of 2006. (NASA/JPL/SSI)

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Cassini looks toward Rhea’s cratered, icy landscape with the dark line of Saturn’s ringplane and the planet’s murky atmosphere as a background. Rhea is Saturn’s second-largest moon, at 1,528 km (949 mi) across. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired on July 17, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.2 million km (770,000 mi) from Rhea. Image scale is 7 km (5 mi) per pixel. (NASA/JPL/SSI)

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Small, battered Epimetheus before Saturn’s A and F rings, and and smog-enshrouded Titan (5,150 km/3,200 mi wide) beyond. The color information in the colorized view is artificial: it is derived from red, green and blue images taken at nearly the same time and phase angle as the clear filter image. This color information was overlaid onto a previously released clear filter view in order to approximate the scene as it might appear to human eyes. The view was acquired on April 28, 2006, at a distance of approximately 667,000 km (415,000 mi) from Epimetheus and 1.8 million km (1.1 million mi) from Titan. The image scale is 4 km (2 mi) per pixel on Epimetheus and 11 km (7 mi) per pixel on Titan. (NASA/JPL/SSI)

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Cassini peers through the fine, smoke-sized ice particles of Saturn’s F ring toward the cratered face of Mimas (396 km/246 mi wide). The F ring’s core is dense enough to completely block the light from Mimas. The image was taken on Nov. 18, 2007 at a distance of approximately 772,000 km (480,000 mi) from Mimas. Image scale is 5 km (3 mi) per pixel on the moon. (NASA/JPL/SSI)

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Cassini peers through Saturn’s delicate, translucent inner C ring to see the diffuse yellow-blue limb of Saturn’s atmosphere. The image was taken on April 25, 2008 at a distance of approximately 1.5 million km (913,000 mi) from Saturn. Image scale is 8 km (5 mi) per pixel. (NASA/JPL/SSI)

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Saturn’s high north is a seething cauldron of activity filled with roiling cloud bands and swirling vortices. A corner of the north polar hexagon is seen at upper left. The image was taken on Aug. 25, 2008 at a distance of approximately 541,000 km (336,000 mi) from Saturn. Image scale is 29 km (18 mi) per pixel. (NASA/JPL/SSI)

Shit, I could post all 24 of these. So just go to the site I stole them from: The Big Picture on Boston.com.

> Continue reading...Can you see The Space Pope’s Palace?

Portola Valley – 2/16/2009

April 9, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

Here’s some photos I shot while hanging out at my mom’s when I was in California. Nothing serious. There were more from this day, but they sucked BALLS, so I’m not going to share them. I shot a few more days wandering around town, but I haven’t had time to clean those up yet, so look out for one or two more posts of PV shots. I will make a gallery of all three sets when I am done. Fun times!

As much as I love my superduper 5D Mk II, it really has a hard time with skies. I think it is really ugly when the blue channel clips and you get this band of cyan around the horizon just before it goes full white. It’s really hard to fix if you’re even half a stop over and ruined a number of my photos completely. They had some detail left in the high highlights, but because the blue channel was clipped so far beyond the red or green channels, they photos were basically worthless. Ruined.

Maybe I’m being too picky, but I don’t think so. I have no problem with the idiosyncrasies of optics or noise in high ISO shots, but when I know highlight exposure can be and has been done better, I get a little frustrated. I envision one thing when I take the shot, and then another, worse thing is revealed when I try to make it look nice. It’s a characteristic of digital capture, true of audio and images alike, that once you hit the peak value the level clips HARD, resulting in noise and crud that no one likes.

It makes me long for the soft, organic clipping of highlights in a film exposure. One day we’ll have digital exposures where the high end rolls off smoothly like it has for the last hundred years on film, but we’re not there yet. I will post some examples of the bad clipping when I get home, but it almost makes me too mad to think. RAGE!

At least I got a handful of photos I liked from this day. The next two days of shooting were much more successful, so expect a better selection there.

> Continue reading...Portola Valley – 2/16/2009

02 – Darkness Wails

April 7, 2009 |

Fiction and Writing

The cave stretched out dark and long ahead of the little band of travelers now irretrievably lost.  The light of their torch sputtered and wavered in the unearthly gusts rising from deep within the ground.  The bottom of the cave was slick with bat guano, moisture, and some slimy substance they tried not to think too much about.  Death sat heavy in the hot dark air around them, suffocating, threatening.  And then from behind them came an unnatural wail that drove itself through their heads, scraping at the fragile walls of their slipping sanity.  

“What was that?” one asked.  

“The wind?” another answered.

“It must be.”

“The wind.  It must be.”

They knew that it was not the wind.  They waited to hear if the wail would come again, but it did not.  They continued their trek through the sweltering shadows toward the perceived source of the wind.  The wind must signal a way out of this pit, they had reasoned.  Where the air moved they would find their salvation.  Where the air moved there was life.  

> Continue reading...02 – Darkness Wails

01 – The Biker Kills a Mexican

March 31, 2009 |

Fiction and Writing

The motorcycle purred beneath him as he ripped across the desolate highway stretching off into forever lit only by the single light on the front of the bike.  The wind whipped his hair against the worn leather of his jacket, singing the sweet song of freedom past his ears.  His beard collected whatever unfortunate insects happened to be in his way on this still, cold Southwestern night.  The pistol in his belt felt empowering, assuring, like three and a half pounds of steel confidence.  

Hell was in his veins.

> Continue reading...01 – The Biker Kills a Mexican

Isa in New York

March 25, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

My sister Elizabeth came to visit me for a few days last week here in New York. It was her first time, so we did all the normal touristy stuff you do on your first trip to New York City: we hit Central Park, we went to Times Square, Juli and Isa walked around Soho and Chinatown, we ate at John’s of Bleeker Street, we ate cannolis, we took the Staten Island Ferry, we went to the gigantic candy store on Third Ave, we went to Motor City, we ate Polish food, we hit McCarren Park, we drank coffee, we ate, we hung out. It was a successful trip, overall, with Isa already planning her return trip this summer with her roommates in tow.

Of course, it was an opportunity for me to be out and make some pictures.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Here’s the whole gallery: Isa Visits New York Gallery

I spent a lot of time during the development of this set playing with spot adjustments in Lightroom. I typically don’t like the photos to look TOO processed, but I like a crunchy richness to the final photo. I found there is a fine line between looking processed and looking natural with the paintbrush and graduated filter tools, and while they can definitely help an image maintain its focal point, they can really make things look cheeseball if used inelegantly.

When I sit in a telecine session watching the colorist color film, I’m always in awe of the ease with which he makes adjustments to specific color ranges within a defined area. He throws a window on the image, tells it only to color a certain value of red, feathers that, and makes whatever adjustment he likes. Awesome. The local adjustment tools in Lightroom are a little like that, without all the super powerful masking tools. It’s like telecine light. I would love to have a comparable toolset within Lightroom. I know I can do all that stuff and more in Photoshop, but that means I have to start Photoshop and that can go to hell. Lightroom has certainly matured since its 1.0 version, but it can be even better.

Now I just need a computer that doesn’t choke to death on my raw files.

> Continue reading...Isa in New York

Death of a Legend

February 4, 2009 |

Thoughts

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Joe Ades, legendary salesman of carrot peelers made in Switzerland by people who make knives for doctors, has passed away. I loved walking past him in the mornings on the way to work. I always enjoyed that he used the same damn lines on people every single time and would often be rewarded with a crowd surrounding him as he shredded yet another hapless carrot. Oh how many carrots he must have peeled! A true New York icon has been lost. If you, dear reader, have experienced Joe the Peeler Salesman, leave a comment.

But, if you’ve never been fortunate enough to see his shtick, here are a few videos.

Photo from the NYTimes

> Continue reading...Death of a Legend

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