Month: February 2003

Lomo-rific

Inspired by Jason's foray into Photoshop Lomoization, I tried this morning to improve on my often dull and uninspiring photos. I used one from last fall taken in the Dahlia Dell in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (located next to the Conservatory of Flowers). In the fall the Dahlia Dell contains the most amazing display of dahlias of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

Here's the before:

pre-Lomo effect dahlia photo, SF CA fall 2002

And here's the Lomo'd version:

post-Lomo effect dahlia photo, SF CA fall 2002

So cool! I can't wait to play around with this more.

Trying to understand Google/Pyra

Why Did Google Want Blogger? Wired News' Leander Kahney talks to Dieselpoint CEO Chris Cleveland, whose company worked with Pyra Labs last year, for the answer.

Cleveland said Google's acquisition of Pyra would, quite simply, help Google create a more accurate search engine by adding rich new sources of data gleaned from weblogs…The secret, Cleveland said, is in the scores of links webloggers create every day to content on the Web.

Color Danger Hiptop

Yup, it's true. The Danger is coming out with a color hiptop, but not in the US until, "stocks of the monochrome one fall," according to this article. Rumor, according to an email from a person who talked to a rep, is that you'll be able to remove the monochrome screen and replace it with color once it's available. Now that's be pretty cool…

Update: Ben Brown says the rumor about being able to swap in the color screen is untrue and that Danger have been trying to squash it for months. Drat.

Son of Patriot Act

Anita Ramasastry, a professor from the University of Washington School of Law, has a commentary on the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (aka Patriot II), Patriot II:
The Sequel Why It's Even Scarier than the First Patriot Act. There are a lot of scary things highlighted in this article, too many to even know which to select as an excerpt. But do note two things: this document wasn't publically released, it was leaked, and apparently Congress has played little to no part in its drafting. [via Dan]

Local farmboy does good

The Omaha World-Herald is running the AP story about the Google/Pyra deal, which is unfortunate because they're missing the local angle here. Co-founder Evan Williams is from Nebraska, as were Blogger's first two employees Paul Bausch and Matt Hamer. For nearly a year, Pyra Labs was 3/4 Husker. Football games were one of the few things that interrupted our weekend working. Lincoln Journal Star, here's a scoop for you! Or better yet, the Columbus Telegram. Go Big Red!

Gerry

After nearly three months living in New York City (and recently scoring a lowly 41% on the Hipster quiz) it was time to take advantage of the City's breadth of cinematic offerings so we went to see Gus Van Sant's Gerry last night at the Angelika. The story of two friends (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) who get lost in the desert, it was full of sweeping panoramic shots that were gorgeous. What dialogue there was (not much) was pretty entertaining as well. But about 2/3rds of the way through, it lost me. mob61uk says it best in a comment at IMDb,

[T]he film loses itself in existential an[g]st, as it hammers home its "indie" credentials.

Ultimately it was a little too slow, a little too self-indulgent, and a little too strange to leave me feeling anything but annoyed at its conclusion. Well, annoyed and longing to go hiking again in the desert, with proper supplies.