SATA Yadda Yadda

Well, my recent computer issues seem to be entirely a case of two SATA hard drives just coming to the end of their existence. The replacement drive -- just $80 for a 500 gigabyte 7200 RPM with a 16 megabyte buffer -- seems to be working great. Cross your fingers.

Ah, Computers

Had a hard drive go out. Installed an operating system on the second hard drive, installed my applications, got back in business.

Then the second hard drive went out.

Managed to get the needed files off of it, but no go on the reinstall. Been working on my laptop in the meantime, which is a bit slow and tough, compared.

It's Not You, It's Me

I deleted my Twitter account. It's not for me.

I've also turned off the Flash plug-in for my Web browser. (Advertisements show up as empty white boxes for me now.) As well, I've unsubscribed from a lot of RSS feeds. I've started turning my cell phone off whenever possible.

Back in April, on my friend's blog, I said I would.

Ted and Internet

“Between your 16 blogs and everyone else telling me to Facebook and Twitter… I’m about to get rid of everything except one email account. It’s starting to look a bit empty. (I can’t think of one interesting thing I’ve seen online in the last two months anywhere. I don’t care about the Octomom, I don’t know anyone making decent money from blogging, and online video is generally weak crap.)

It might be time to return to the real world — just to tick people off.

Or maybe that was the plan: get the Internet started, wait for all the normal people people to get fully committed to it, then get off of it — so only the cool people will be offline.”

I'm not advising anyone to do this. I just think that people talking on their cell phones as they attempt to walk down the street look a bit dumb. I'm sure you don't.

My brief experience with social media was rather unsocial. Everyone was very friendly, they posted links to things I read last week, and told me that social media was the path to success. (Good luck with that.) When I responded, they generally ignored me.

My friend who posted my comment above knows: I'm not any sort of Luddite. I've been on the Internet forever. A lot of the things people send me excitedly as something new -- I did back in 1997.

The thing is this: I'm noticing that my students increasingly can't focus as well as I'd expect. That the media gets away, increasingly, with posting water cooler talk, easily debunked with any search or thinking, but right there in the big red headline. That as a culture we can't match the post-destruction resolve of the ancient Greeks -- who rebuilt the Acropolis -- and instead rebuild movies from our collective childhood.

I don't care about Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers, G.I. Joe, etc. I'm not twelve years old, and I think there's a lot more to sophistication than better visual effects underneath improved marketing.

I'm noticing that things are getting shallower, and that folks seem happy with that. That's fine. There's someone just waiting for them. His bio says:

"I make stuff, actually I make up stuff, stories mostly, collaborations of thoughts, dreams, and actions. Thats me."

Go check him out.

Photography in the News

Are there any really unfortunate stories about photography in today's news?

Yes, yes there are.

Thief steals camera with couple's 800 wedding photos

"In a crime caught on tape, a thief dressed in a suit to look like he was a wedding guest snatched the photographer's camera when he set it down for a moment while shooting the affair Saturday. The camera contains nearly 800 wedding photographs on a flash card inside it."

Bitter on Twitter? Au Contraire, Mon Frere

I've been using Twitter, but perhaps not in the way it's intended.

Basically, whenever someone follows me, I take a quick look at their post timeline, and if it is at all reasonable I follow them back. (If they aren't posting, or seem to be a marketer, I don't.) That's normal, I think.

Then, however, I diverge from the social contract. I've learned some interesting things, seen many well-intended, positive posts, and understand that there's a community there.

But I can't help myself: the minute someone posts something naive and stupid, or otherwise idiotic, my radar switches on. If they do it again, I enjoy a slight frisson when unfollowing them.

It's fun: one minute, their quoting some idiot motivational speaker, the next, they are no longer in my universe.

Of course, people might do the same to me, and I'll end up with no followers. I'd be fine with that.

Report from the Met

We went to the Met on the holiday Monday, and saw three photography shows:

The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard

The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion

All three seemed to me on the shallow side. It's my opinion that none of these shows know when to stop, really.

Model as Muse would have been fine with just the photos and the clothes. More than fine.

Instead, its credibility is destroyed by an overlay of crap culture. An ill-considered and immature "era" approach is taken in which fake graffiti, bad pop songs and off-base cultural references distract us from the content so that we won't discover there's no material here that actually addresses the basic conceit of the show.

You can't present fantastic taste -- which is what fashion photography is, in the end -- underneath a frame that seems like an underinformed 19-year-old trying to encapsulate past decades. Using the unsophisticated idea of "the 1950s was this, then the 1960s was this, then..." is bad enough, but trying to then flesh that out with the weakest and least cool cultural touchstones reduces the show to a touristy, bland blanket, smothering fantastic images and clothes.

This is not a case of the Emperor wearing nothing. Rather, the Emperor turns out to be wearing a poncho, and hoping we'll say it's very nice.

It was, however, fun to see a connection to William Klein's Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? integrated into the show in the one room that worked. I just wished they'd paid more attention to what Klein was satirizing.

I enjoyed Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective much, much more.

Above: an iPhone snapshot at the Met today.