A Spartan Obsession, Uniformly Speaking

One of the many things I’m not in the habit of doing is making New Year’s Resolutions. I have never in my 28 years resolved on December 31st to do something starting January 1st for the 365 days that followed. It’s not that I have anything against resolutions; I’ve just never been one to look that far down the road. That all changed on January 1st of 2009, though, when I resolved to definitively and measurably simplify my life....
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Flash Test

I'm playing with a new toy, the Sigma DP1 compact camera. This is a flash test. I got my Canon 580EX to work on the hotshoe of the DP1 by putting tape over all pins in the hotshoe except for the center pin. Then I post-processed the result (added grain, vignetting and saturation). There's much to learn but it's a fun experiment so no complaints here. Will I be writing about the DP1 anytime soon for my column? There's a good chance a prosumer compact showdown (Lumix LX3 vs. Sigma DP1 vs. Canon G10) is in the works....

New Article at Forces of Geek

The latest article of my column, ob·ses·sion: redefining unreasonable preoccupations, is posted. 

Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/dfoxlj 

THE IMPORTANCE OF NARRATIVE

Over the past month, I’ve been thinking a lot about what to write. While a number of things came to mind, an article in December’s New York Times piqued my interest. The article, titled Between Obama and the Press, profiled White House Press Secretary (and former communications director for the Obama campaign) Robert Gibbs. Mark Leibovich, the author of the piece, asked Gibbs about the accuracy of frequent accusations that Obama got a free pass from the press during his campaign, while his opponents did not. As one would expect, Gibbs denied the charge saying that good campaigns like Obama’s garnered deservingly good press, while bad campaigns didn't. “We had a narrative that was probably better,” he said.

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ob·ses·sion: redefining unreasonable preoccupations

I have just become a contributing writer for Forces of Geek. I write a monthly column called ob·ses·sion: redefining unreasonable preoccupations. Here is the start of my first article. Link to read more, see pretty pictures and subscribe!







This is a column about unreasonable preoccupations, a column about the minuet details that, momentarily or eternally, manage to seduce my mind with the call of their siren song. A man once said, “I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.” That has been my excuse, my justification for my tendencies in life. It’s the answer I give when my family or boyfriend asks what I’m doing or why I haven’t slept in days. The more accurate response might be, “Well, dear family member/boyfriend, I have been reading about ISO, which used to be called ASA, which was short for American Standards Association, an association that rated the speed of film with a number such as ASA 50 or ASA 400, but now that we’re a more global community, ASA has fallen out of favor for the more universal ISO (International Standards Organization) rating, but they are in fact essentially the same, in as much as ASA 50 is equal to ISO 50, so it’s really just semantics, but those semantics have kept me up for precisely 72 hours, and now I need more coffee.” Instead, however, I resort to quoting the concise statement above because I figure it will more effectively communicate my point. Those words were good enough for the man who said them, (Albert Einstein), and I figure they'll do just fine for me.
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