Home Sweet Home

This morning while I was reading last Thursdays Home section in the New York Times and drinking my second cup of tea Danae poked her head around the corner and said, "there's a tour group standing in front of the house go look." Sure enough the Saturday morning Florence History Trail tour given by one of our local historians Steve Strimer has paused his group on our sidewalk and they're learning about the houses' history. We live, I've recently found out, in the Joshia White Cottage built in 1811 and moved to it's current location in 1879 (yes, they did that sort of thing all the time). The site where it had been before then became the very large brick mill building that sits on the edge of the Mill River just down the hill and around the corner from us. They saved our house and moved it probably a little more than half a mile (depending on the route they took). Thanks.

I've known it was an old house, but I was thinking Civil War era, not that much earlier. Joshia White ran a grist mill on the Mill River and built a large dam there to harness the water power for the mill. So it turns out our house was one of the earlier buildings in Florence. That's fun.

Florence has a proud and old tradition of abolitionists and workers industrial communes in the early nineteenth century. The communes were based on the concept of "free labor" or in other words, non-slave labor. They tried raising silk worms to compete with cotton cloth – a slave crop, but the New England weather didn't work out. Sojourner Truth lived around the corner from my house, just across the graveyard that's our quiet neighbor.

So it's fun to actually live in a part of local history and feel that connection of ideas and time, even while I mow the lawn. I've started to read Lydia Maria Child books to get a sense of what they though and how they lived. She was a active abolitionists who lived in our house for a few years around 1820 after Joshia White moved out and then rented it. Lydia was the Martha Stewart of her time, but switched to more impassioned anti-slaver topics. It's quite impressive. I'll have to learn more just to feel that I fit in to the responsibilities of the house.

gunther

All I Know About The System Is What People Tell Me

Accounting wise the end of the year is always fraught with peril, confusion, anger and surprises. This year was no different. We had been warned to "use it or lose it" or "if you don't spend it they will" and several sentiments similar to that. It's a little paranoid, a little bitter, and a little true which motivates all of us to rush to judgments on items we've been thinking about way too long and now need to frantically purchase on the spot.

I usually try to resist the madness and haste, but it's hard not to get swept up in the fury. We're in such a moment of change. Change in the basement labs with the film/photo people pulling back into their own building, change in the formats and methods of recording video with SD cards, changes in the storage requirements of footage as we move more quickly into full HD. In other words there are a lot of places to spend a couple of hundred dollars, but as always some more wisely than others.

With the studio space returning to the possibility of actually becoming a studio again after several years being used only as a classroom the desirability of adding more lights was too captivating to resist. I really enjoy lighting. It's both a skill and an art and takes place in that quiet time, just before all of the shooting starts. Well, sometimes it's really frantic and pressured and then the shooting starts. In the old days we used the overhead light grids with most all of the lights turned on. Now I like to use much smaller, less expensive, more controllable stand lights – the little Pro-Lights from Lowell. Not only are they actually cute, but they're easy to use and give the quality of light we need now when we use much more sensitive cameras. OK, we've got a couple of soft boxes in the studio too. So a pair of Pro-Lights, a hand full of Avenger Maxi light stands. These are the best light stands I've ever used and they go up to 11 feet tall.(You know I've never liked C-stands. Maybe if I were in a more industrial production world I'd get used to them, but I'm lower on the food-chain, more local, more independent and yes, cheap. C-stands stack well in a truck or on a wall, but for throwing in a bag and traveling I like basic floor stands.) A couple of barndoors, a couple of snoots and bang I'm at $770 easily.

Just a little more money left, what to do, maybe that hybrid DSLR concept I've been dreaming about? We all are intrigued by the ability of new DSLR still cameras to also shoot quite reasonable HD video. It's a merging of photography and video that we never really thought would happen, but it has and it has a lot of ramifications that only direct experimentation can actually show us. (I'm a big believer in the value of direct experimentation to discover hidden meanings and appropriate methods.) So we need to get one at some point – why not now. So after spending a day going back and forth over the mangled handful of cameras available I selected the Canon EOS T1i for around $850. Well by this time there's less money in the budget than I thought (it's due to mingled accounts – OK that's another topic I know) so now I'm short of money by $400 and I trot off to talk with Andrew with my hat held out and yes, what a guy, he says sure he'll kick in the extra. Now we're short on time so thinking it will be the fastest paperwork turn-around I head off to the local Best Buy to get the camera.

Before I left I went on-line and printed out their price of $849 to have in hand in case the price had gone up in the store. Sure enough when I get there it's listed for close to $900. After waiting for about 10 minutes for someone to finally wait on me I have the camera in hand and go to the check out. They'll grant me the on-line price, no problem. I also have with me four sheets of paper describing in difference state forms that I'm a tax deductible institution. I'm all set. I show them the paper work, they hum a few times, show it back and forth to each other, ask for my drivers license, Xerox it all, then I hand them my corporate credit card and they ring me up. Declined. What? Declined. Your card has been declined. Great. Why? Oh it doesn't tell us that, but it doesn't go through that's all we know.

So the next day back at school I ask everyone why the card was declined. No one knows. I call the business office and find that now is a great time for most everyone to be on vacation and they are. Finally, I talk with a very nice and knowledgeable woman who tells me my credit limit has been reduced to $1,500 and that's why it bounced. Why? Don't know. Normally that's not a problem, but this summer I'm buying items for the new Liebling Center and I've been spending $1,500 a week for them alone. My limit had been raised to $10,000, but now it's back down. She suggests getting a PO for the amount and that way it's in the system and I've got 10 days before the paper work needs to clear. Good idea, I'll do that. I thank her for her kind help.

Now I'm off to get someone to help me write up a PO in Datatel our enterprise software. I hate Datatel and have found it one of the worst software applications I've ever used in my life. It makes no sense, there's no reason for anything, it looks horrible and it never tells me anything I really want to know – other than that it's fine. As I've found in on-line discussions people in my world think all enterprise software sucks. It's a bunch of aggregated feature sets that make up a disjointed collection of capabilities that only managers who buy enterprise software like ("Oh, look what it can do". The real question should be, "what does it feel like when you use it?" That too is another story and maybe the most important of all - hum.). I'm used to working with the best software in the world which is really quite easy to use and has the most important element of all - discoverability. You can teach yourself how to use it. It's easy and fun. Datatel on the other hand makes no sense and needs to be learned by rote. It works this way period and it's never any fun. So help I need. Hey, it's Friday afternoon now and every one is gone for the day. I'm help-less.

Andrew suggests just calling B&H and ordering it with his corporate credit card. OK, I'm worn down, let's try it. He calls, the price is only $800 with them, wow, let's do it. He does. Declined. Same thing. Your credit limit gets dropped and no one tells you! OK, let it go, just walk away. It's not worth thrashing around trying to use up the $400. (Did I mention that I'm on vacation. Yes, these last two weeks of my vacation I've worked every day. OK it's my choice. To me work is fun, but it's still a nuisance and certainly is to my wife.) I'm sure the school can use it somewhere else in the budget. It's my donation. The real problem is if you spend the money, but don't get it to register in this years budget you lose the money and then still have to pay for the item out of next years money, so it's like losing the money twice. It's not worth it.

Time passes.

Now it's the next week and I get an e-mail from Andrew saying the camera just came in. What? Yep, B&H shipped it. At some point Andrew's card reset his monthly limit and the order went through. Now we've got that great hybrid DSLR camera to work with. What a life.

Now all I need are some sandbags for the light stands.

gunther

Waiting for the Snow Lepoard

I've been telling people about the importance of the new version of the OS coming at the end of the summer OS 10.6. It will only run on Intel computers. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is.

Recently I've been plotting about how to shift machines around after we do some upgrading in the library media labs. I've got two 24" iMacs on order with the hope for two more so thinking about how to deploy the four G-5's that they will replace is reasonable. It's like all things, planing makes good sense, but the realities hit hard and fast when you trip over some unthought of problem or your view point shifts and a new idea is discovered.

I was going to suggest that we give the Music Program one of our old G-4 machines so that they could run Siebelius on it for music notation. Well the Siebelius concept that I know is way out of date. It's a whole new animal now and has much higher technical specs, an Intel machine for one. That keeps happening more and more and bodes ill for the usual trickle down effect we normally get from updating. Nothing trickles down anymore and we're about to hit a big technology wall.

The newest thing I've just tripped over is QuickTime X that comes as a part of the new 10.6. It does streaming all by it's self. You no longer need a QuickTime Streaming Server. Yea, so what? Well it sounds to me as if a lot of people will be "doing the stream" all on their own maybe at a much lower level but much more often. Hum. No, I don't really know what that means, but I'll start thinking about it. Watch out YouTube you're in trouble now.

But what it really means is that there are a lot of hidden doors with problems and opportunities lurking behind some or all of the current and future changes. There's a flow to the direction of all of this. It's not a given that everything is going to work out well, but it also doesn't pay to go against the flow. We need to see the pattern, establish directions and ride the wave. SD cards, hybrid cameras, Intel processors, cheap RAM, AVCHD, H.264, full HD, working across the network - all of which require higher skill sets, deeper insights, more experimentation and most of all good humor.

gunther

Happy Vacation Days

My energies have moved over to the new Liebling Center building this last week and it's both fun and physical. It's always exciting designing new installs  – stations and labs – for working and learning, but it's also a lot of moving boxes of books, computers, monitors, and just stuff all over from one building to another in the heat, in the rain, and mostly right in the back - ouch.

I'm at a point now when I need the internet working in the building, but it's not there yet. So, I thought, now's a good time to take some of those vacation days that are still sitting there ticking away. Use them or lose them is the phrase. Bob Crowley says no internet until Tuesday so Friday and Monday are vacation days for me.

You might think that days off are happy and carefree, but not always. Yesterday a neighbor woman stopped at the door with a flyer of her white cat Twinkie who's missing. Oh my goodness what agony in her face. We talked a long time about cats and the neighborhood with tears just barely remaining behind her eyes. An hour later I went out in our yard to look around in likely hiding places and "meowed" out loud hoping for a response. I'm actually pretty good at it, but just silence. How sad. I watched her all day going up and down the street stopping at front doors and walking up driveways.

Today while working in the backyard garden my wife came over and said there was a tragedy. What? One of our resident chipmunks had drowned in a watering can left in the yard. Oh the poor little guy is all I could think, what a sad way to die. Our cats love watching him run across the deck with their eyes wide and their noses pressed again the sliding glass door. They'll miss him too.

Happy relaxing days off and it's only Saturday afternoon with two more days to go. At this rate I'll be a wreck by the time I get back to work.

gunther

Back to the Tube

Through out the week, I confess, I still watch the Susan Boyle YouTube video of her first performance. I find it, or rather the first version - not this still slightly truncated one, to be almost the quintessential perfect story. It's just over seven minutes, has great background, asides, characters, music, heroic figures, the hero's quest, tension, drama, emotion, and a surprise ending. What more could you want in a story?

The second round I found disappointing both musically and as a story. It's distant, isolated, non-interactive and unresolved. It's a let down. I've seen it once and mostly likely never again.

Tonight I stumbled upon her "final" performance just posted on YouTube. I was 324 to view it - sort of like having a low license plate number I guess. It still has that distant feel to it that their level of production and staging makes. She sang her original song from Les Merisables and it was good, though I felt her first performance had much more character. In her interactions on stage afterwards she seemed on the edge of coherence, less certain, caught in the spotlight in the worst sense of the phrase. Not that I could do any better. In fact she seems to be doing much better than I would ever manage. I think I would have passed out by now from fright. Sort of like wondering how Jack Bauer can actually live through the day with that much adrenaline in his brain. But in my mind it does seem to highlight the artificial nature of that "professionally packaged" level of performance. You can't really see anything on stage from the glare of the spotlight - it's all black beyond a few feet and that emotional wall or distance seems to kill any spontaneous interaction that she exhibited at first. That "cheeky grin" and head shake that the crowd roared to. It's all deer in the headlights and stammering prepared quotes that don't exactly fit the question. But it's not her I dislike, it's the situation she's in. It's not real. It's fake and uninteresting.

Even the judges and the two guys on stage all seemed less interesting, less likable, more packaged with odd clothes and too much makeup. It was unseemly - unpleasant. Simon, unusually, was much more philosophical and tried to contextualize the situation the most with phrases of "no matter what happens", alluding to the fact that she, in fact, might not win the show, but would beyond all doubt still be a winner.

So, again we can ask, what's this really all about. It's classic. It's the contemporary intersection of commerce, talent-scouting, vaudeville, media in the form of both old-school TV and semi-new-school YouTube, and just people. People transposed out of their normal lives into environments unknown and not well understood; put up both for their own benefit and the vaster benefit of others to be poked and exposed on a scale that should cower most of us and certainly alter anyone.

Other than Susan Boyle's performance I've lost interest in the show, but I do miss that ungainly Scottish woman who sang the first time. I wonder where she went to and I wonder how she is. I wish her well and hope that woman gets to sing for the Queen. They both need it.

gunther

Graduation, Celebration and the New Liebling Center

That bitter-sweet, happy-sad time of students finishing their final year with a flourish - speeches, applause, hugs, handshakes, tears and goodbyes - was mingled this year, as if that wasn't enough all by it's self, with the opening and dedication of the finally finished Jerome Liebling wing of the Film Photo building. This year held an unusually friendly collection of students who have all turned into friends and fellow workers to be missed most now, just at the height of their abilities - as their work shows.

Also sandwiched into all of that was an alumni weekend with older and wiser graduates returning for still yet more hugs and handshakes. Their stories of life and projects sounding bigger and bolder than we could have imagined interspersed with the hint of children unknown and travels previously unmentioned while eating, laughing, talking, drinking and more laughing all under a large tent.

The commencement speakers sheltered under the biggest tent of the day were official (president Hexter), funny (Bob Goldwaith), and deeply interesting (Ken Burns). Seeing the students so well dressed standing next to people who look much like them only older - of course their parents - made the day rush by and merge into the final ceremony under still yet another tent, of thanks to donors, praise for faculty and admiration of the new Liebling  building as a shrine to photography and workspace for media.

I've seen the Liebling building grow from drawings and ill formed ideas stumbled over in meetings to foundations, steel, sheetrock and doors. Only days before the halls were still littered with conduit, ceiling tiles and buckets of paint, yet you could see how nice it was going to be, but when the track lights came on and the floors finally swept clean it seemed even more impressive - quite nice indeed. Then the surprise. Robert Seydel and a troupe of students started hanging the photos. Suddenly - what a change - we're all working in a museum quality space. A really great museum in which I have a small office. Wow. I'm actually impressed.

So now all of us have to "up our game" to measure up to what the building demands of us. It's a real tribute to Jerry who we all have admired for so long both as a working photographer and as a teacher. It isn't just a building anymore - it's a feeling -  a spirit but it is a tangible reminder that what we do is important and substantial. Seeing the alumni photo work on the walls makes that direct connection from the past to the present to the future. You stand there and see current students looking at the work and you can read on their faces the wonder and the power of images and the stories that we tell through those framed prints. Earlier listening to the alums talk about what we all were thinking decades ago also reminds me that the uncertainty of that time was much like the uncertainty of this time. We didn't know then where we would go or how we would really live and oddly that seems to be closely reflected in our current time - a disappearance of certainty and a discovery that not only don't we control our world as we thought, but that we may barely know how it works.

gunther

Make - Don't Consume

Who would have thought that Susan Boyle would represent so many possibilities for metaphor and example. The YouTube video that I linked to previously is dead - taken down by the poster. Well that's my impression of YouTube. It's quick and easy, but not to be counted on over time. It's unreliable as a reference or repository and for all of it's pretense at being able to show HD, most of it is technically inferior. 

So now the remaining Susan Boyle videos that I can find are not up to my standard. They either don't show all of the footage (you miss the full story - I hate that) or they have bad audio (why post a music video with sucky audio?) or it's the wrong format (16:9 images squished down to 4:3 - again why do that?). 

I saw someone on CNN last night commenting on the remarkable number of hits her video has generated - about 50 million (I had this at 500 million at first, then I doubted that number after a while and changed it, but the one that I'm linking to now already has over 50 million - so who knows?) That's a lot, but it's even a little more amazing because it all seems so ad hoc and kludged together. That must be an aggregated number combining all of the versions of her performance.

So what's the point to all of this. I guess this is just more of a reflection on the way YouTube has penetrated our world. It's an easy way to show ourselves work, but it's also too off the cuff, unreliable, and arbitrary. If we need to post a video to show to each other we need to control that ourselves, not rely on a middleman to do the heavy lifting, because later, it's just not there. Don't be a consumer, be a maker - own and control your work.

gunther