So we put our two girls to bed tonight, the five-year-old in her bed and the two-year-old in her crib. And as she sometimes does, the five-year-old crept out of her bed to play quietly for a while. Unusually, the two-year-old expressed an opinion:
“Annie, go to bed! One…two…NOW!”
Our five-year-old was unmoved, and the two-year-old had said it several times before I realized what I was hearing.
Yesterday afternoon, freed by a babysitter, Jane and I went down to the Autry Museum of the American West to see their current exhibition, Yosemite: Art of an American Icon. I’d heard that the exhibition had a number of Ansel Adams prints on loan from the Huntington, including two prints of Monolith: The Face of Half Dome, one printed in 1927 just after the exposure was made, and one printed in 1980 shortly before Adams’ death. It turns out that that was just the beginning: the exhibition contains a wide variety of photographs from the 1860’s on. In addition to many by Adams, including Clearing Winter Storm (a personal favorite), there are many prints by pioneers Charles Weed, Carleton Watkins, and Edweard Muybridge, and a fair number by Edward Weston as well. There are also many paintings, old and new, few of which did much for me, and a fair number of more recent photographs, some of which are quite good. But the real heart of the exhibition are the photos by Weed, Watkins, Muybridge, Weston, and Adams.
If you’re at all into photography, don’t miss this exhibition. Seeing a photo on the web, or even a good reproduction in a well-done art book, just isn’t the same as seeing a real print. And while the great paintings get hung in galleries, the great photos tend to be kept in drawers and only brought out on special occasions. Seeing so many prints by some of the real pioneers of the art of landscape photography all together in one place is a real treat. I might have to go back for another visit; once the exhibit closes on April 22nd, it’s unlikely that I’ll get another chance to see most of these.
Once it closes here, the exhibition will be travelling on to Oakland, Reno, and Indianapolis. And if you won’t be able to visit the exhibition, the catalog is available from the museum’s store; I was glad to get a copy.
Joel on Software has a post regarding the corporate wooing of bloggers. It seems that Microsoft has offered a number of bloggers free laptops running their new Vista operating system. The expectation is that these bloggers will review Vista, and no doubt Microsoft is hoping that they’ll review it positively. Whether they review Vista or not, positively or otherwise, the bloggers get to keep the laptops.
In Joel’s view, the real virtue of the blogosphere is its independence. Bloggers write what they write because they want too, not because they are paid. Joel suggests that gifts like this amount to a massive bribe, and causes these bloggers to lose credibility. Worse, it causes all bloggers everywhere to lose credibility, even if the gift is disclosed. Blogger A, in the midst of a positive review, discloses that he has received a free laptop; but Blogger B, who also gives a positive review, does not. Did B receive a laptop as well, and fail to disclose it? Was B bought? How can you tell? Joel’s come to the conclusion that bloggers simply shouldn’t accept such gifts. (I’ll note that Joel was offered one of these laptops, and turned it down.)
Me, I think it’s a matter of scale. As a book reviewer, I occasionally get review copies from one publisher or another. Sometimes I like the book, sometimes I don’t; and my reviews reflect this. I admit, I don’t like giving a negative review for a book I’ve received for free–but long-time readers will be aware that that doesn’t stop me. And because review copies are typically for books I’d not have read otherwise, I’m much more likely to give a negative review than for a book I chose myself. Regardless of how I review the book, no one expects me to return it to the publisher. The cost is simply part of the publicity budget for the book.
I note that a number of pro photographers with blogs, notably Michael Reichman, frequently receive cameras for review; and the fine folks over at Engadget receive a wide variety of gear. But it’s clear from their reviews that they don’t get to keep any of it–if they like something and want one for their very own, they must buy one, as Reichman recently bought one of the new Leica M8 digital rangefinder cameras. Everything goes back to the vendor.
Thinking about it, I think Joel’s on the right track, but he goes a bit too far. I don’t think it’s necessary for bloggers to eschew all gifts; it’d be silly for me to send my review copies back to the publisher, for example. It would be perfectly reasonable for Microsoft to give out free review copies of Vista to appropriate bloggers, just as Simon & Schuster sent Pamela Aidan’s books to me–nobody’s going to stick with an operating system they dislike just because they got it for free. Free laptops, though, strike me as rather over the top–especially when it’s not the laptop that’s being reviewed.
I can see Microsoft’s point–they want to spare the reviewers the pain of installing Vista as an upgrade, and they want to be sure that Vista is running on a system on which it can shine. And it’s really hard to judge an operating system unless you make a real commitment to it and use it for real work, which is psychologically tough to do if you know the machine you’re using is going to go back to Microsoft at the end of the month.
So I don’t feel as strongly about it as Joel does. But he certainly has a point.
A pack of nut-cases have put together a couple of albums of “Solstice Carols” based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft…to the tunes of well-known Christmas songs, of course. I’d run into them before, but Byzantium’s Shores brought them back to my attention, and I thought they were worth mentioning. A number of the songs are on-line, notably the afore-mentioned “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men”, which is quite well-done and funny. Some of the others are a bit of a stretch, but I’m particularly fond of “The Carol of the Old Ones (i.e., “The Carol of the Bells”). If you’ve any taste for things Lovecraftian, you really owe yourself a listen.
I got a copy of these a few weeks ago, thinking the boys might like it. Then, of course, I had to read it myself, as I was unwilling to give it to them sight unseen, or to begin reading it aloud with having some notion as to whether I’d have to stop in the middle. My final judgement: no harm in giving it to the kids, as the only way to learn to appreciate good books is to read a lot of bad ones.
I just saw (courtesy of Byzantium’s Shores) a delightful review of the movie version of Eragon, currently in theaters:
look! a farmboy wow! check out the destiny! instant grown-up dragon! mentor! evil wizard! platonic love interest! minor confrontation! hidden fortress! major confrontation! is she dead?! of course not! come back for the sequel!
Oh, by the way: Spoilers Ahead!
What it is, in fact, is Star Wars, Episode 4 (which I persist in thinking of as just plain Star Wars) transplanted from deep space to your basic Dungeons&Dragons-derived medieval fantasy setting. The parallels are stunning in the first hundred pages or so, then settle out for a while, then resume for the climax.
First, the back story. For a thousand years, give or take a few, peace was kept all over the world by the dragonriders and their dragons. So we have Jedi Knights, with intelligent dragons instead of lightsabers. Then, one of the riders went mad, turned to evil, betrayed his comrades, and made himself Emperor. The power of the dragonriders was broken for ever. So substitute Evil Emperor Galbatorix for Palpatine. However, there’s a plucky Rebel Alliance (of humans, elves and dwarves) called the Varden.
Then there’s the plot. The tale begins with an elven princess–actually, I don’t know that she’s a princess, but she’s nevertheless an important elf, a member of the Varden, who’s transporting something crucial to the success of the rebellion (a dragon egg, as it happens). She’s captured by an evil Shade and his horde of Urgals, standing in for Darth Vader and his storm troopers, but manages to magically transport the egg far away. It’s picked up by a farmboy named Eragon who doesn’t know what it is, but who nevertheless bonds with the dragon when it hatches. Servants of the Emperor kill Eragon’s family, and of course he has to avenge them, with the help of Brom, the enigmatic Obi-wan Kenobi figure.
Eragon and his dragon travel with Brom, learning a variety of skills from him, and are eventually captured by the Shade. They escape, first rescuing the Elven Princess (remember her?) although Brom dies in the process. They have help through all of this from a fellow named Murtagh, who’s sort-of-kind-of the Han Solo character. They join the Varden, and fight a huge battle against the Shade and his Urgals (with yet more parallels I’m too tired to remember) in which Eragon manages to kill the Shade and save the Varden from utter destruction.
From the final pages of the book it’s clear that he’s going to begin the next book by going to a wise old sage to complete his training. Check.
The elves and dwarves owe much more to D&D than to Tolkien, but there are a few nods to Tolkien as well, including a near copy of the scene in which Aragorn tells the hobbits a bit of the tale of Beren and Luthien, translating the verses from the Elvish into the common tongue.
In all fairness to Mr. Paolini, he began writing the book when he was 15; it would be more surprising if it weren’t horribly shallow and derivative. Given that handicap, it’s not too bad. There are some original bits, and he’s an OK teller of tales; I wasn’t tempted to not finish the book. And I confess I’m curious to know whether there’s more originality in the next book, or whether he continues to follow the Star Wars books.
But if you’re looking for the next Harry Potter, Eragon ain’t it.
There’s been something of a resurgence in Black and White photography in recent years, due largely to the digital revolution. B&W film photographers had to rely on colored filters applied when making the exposure to bring out or suppress the particular tones that they wished to appear in the final print; this was, and is, something of a black art.Digital photographers can simply shoot the scene in color–and then mix the red, green, and blue channels as desired. The results are considerably more flexible, and the process is much more forgiving. It’s this new process that is the subject of this book.
I’ve come to realize that many photographs of the kind I like to take simply look better in black and white, and so I brought this book home. My feelings about it are mixed. On the one hand, I learned a few things from it, and have made a number of (I think) decent B&W prints as a result. On the other hand, the book has a number of flaws. It is extremely Photoshop-centric, and many of the techniques described simply can’t be done in Adobe’s entry-level package, Photoshop Elements. I don’t have the full version of Photoshop, and I really can’t justify spending the money on it at present. (It’s surprisingly expensive.) Further, although the book is full of before-and-after pictures they are poorly laid out, too small, and printed so badly that often enough I really can’t see much difference between them. I don’t know if these presentation problems are the fault of the author or of someone further down the chain; but they are a real shame, as the book would be 100% better if they were taken care of.
Pity.
This, of course, is the third volume of Aidan’s Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman, concluding the trio of An Assembly Such As This and Duty and Desire. As such, it’s the volume in which Mr. Darcy concludes that he simply must marry Miss Elizabeth Bennett, is soundly refused, takes a good look at himself, and changes his tune, finally succeeding in his goal. (It was ever thus.) It does a remarkably good job of showing the influences and causes that lead Darcy to so thoroughly change his manner; and does so in a delightfully believable way.
The good folks at Simon & Schuster were kind off to send me a review copy just in time for Christmas, and I read it through, not quite in one sitting, during the long, lazy Saturday of December 23rd. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
In short, if my reviews of the earlier books in the series at all piqued your curiosity, wait no longer….the sequence starts adequately, becomes quite good some way into the first volume, and continues to charm from there to the end. Enjoy.
One of my new favorite blogs is The Online Photographer. It’s run by well-known photographer Mike Johnston, with contributions from a fair number of other folks; if you’re interested in the art of photographer or you’re a photographer yourself, it’s one of the better sites I’ve found.
Another photography site I’ve been enjoying for the last few months is Michael Reichman’s The Luminous Landscape. This is a more traditional community-oriented site, aimed at the serious photographer, with user forums and the like, plus considerable on-line content contributed by Reichman and others (including Mike Johnston). The site’s “What’s New” page is not precisely a blog, but I find myself taking a peek there most days.
Christmas isn’t over until Epiphany, you know. I’ve no interest in a pair of turtledoves, even if that is the canonical gift for today, but I thought I’d pop on-line long enough to wish everyone Merry Christmas on this the Second Day of Christmas. May Jesus Christ whose birth we are celebrating bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you all through the new year!
You appreciate the finer things in life. You have a split personality – wild or conservative, depending on your mood. Wherever you go, you like to travel first class. Luxury, style, and fun – who could ask for more?
Jane took it, too. I think I’m jealous:
You’re sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when it comes time for everyday chores, you’re willing to do your part.
Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.
The View from the Foothills 