Campaign For Real Ugliness

More on the campaign for real beauty rant:

And another thing...if you think those chunky gals in the "Plus Size" section of the sunday ad slicks are scoring a victory for regular schlubbos being properly represented you're mistaken. Those women are exceptional looking as well, they've just got extra junk in the trunk. The closest I've ever seen to joe average looking people in print would be the Fleet Farm catalogs I used to work on. Truly, there were indeed regular folk modeling clothing in there. But cripes, this is a catalog that sells toy manure spreaders fer pete's sake. I've never really seen anyone I'd describe as being homely or ugly in any catalog. It just doesn't happen. The truly ugly get weeded out. Nobody wants to see that, there's no demand for it. But don't fret, it's got nothing to do with real life cause ugly people get hooked up all the time.

I say we need a campaign for Real Ugliness instead. I don't watch it myself, but there's some TV show called "Ugly Betty" out there. Well dammit, she ain't ugly. Glasses and braces don't make ya ugly folks. Where the hell are the truly repulsive faces? If you want to make movies with dorky losers then get the real thing, don't insult us with these quasi-homely model types. But who can blame Hollywood for giving us this half-ass ugly? Because we don't really want it, no matter what we say. When truly homely folk are put up on the silver screen we secretly cringe because it hurts too much, it hits too close to home. No, it's probably better to dress a good looking person in ugly camoflage and suspend our disbelief.

Sometimes Look On The Bright Side of Life

Both places I've lived in within the past few years have had an empty field, a small cluster of trees and a water tower directly across from my bedroom window. I like empty fields, but I also like trees. But forests can be boring if left to their own devices. What seems ideal is a mix of raw Nature and Man's meddling chainsaws. Trees are more aesthetically pleasing when they are scattered about with empty space in between them. The lone tree on the farmer's field I like, as they often grow very large and gnarled. Still, many farmers have not observed Bob Ross' rule that everybody needs a friend. I say instead of one tree, a group of three would be better.

A water tower in itself is not terribly pleasing, but it is odd that they have "followed" me like they have. I would rather look at a distant water tower than into a neighbor's window. Neighbors are also something I could do without, but this post is supposed to be about the bright side so let's leave that to one side for now.

I'm grateful for the Time Warner corporation for allowing people to turn off their television service. To be able to choose what services you want and those you don't want is good. By doing so my monthly bill was cut in two. Choice rules.

I will now say something positive about a government worker. Rare, I know. Awhile back a nice lady at the water department was very kind to me when she could have very easily ignored it and left me with a huge bill. Well, I did get a huge bill but I was able to stop the damage. I had a super-duper-slowly leaking toilet in an unused 2nd bathroom and the sucker was slowly gobbling up water. The nice lady alerted me about the unusually high consumption even though it was in the water department's best interest to wish everyone had a leaking toilet. This shows that personal ethics can override bureaucracy at times.

I'm grateful for the internet. A decentralized, more or less anarchic system which totally works. How great to be free from the mind-numbing crap they feed you at the big media outlets. Now I can watch clips from those big media outlets at my leisure just to confirm the existence of the dark side of sound-byte ridden, emotionally-charged, shouting matches that pose as talk shows. The seemingly cruel view that the masses are stupid is painfully obvious if one assumes these shows are people's sole source of news. To watch CNN or Fox is like having your brain injected with a long needle filled with novacaine. What's that I was saying about the bright side? Crap! Well the bright side is that you don't have to rely on this garbage. It can also be pushed aside if you wish. That's bright.

If you're ever feeling bummed out with environmental hysteria and guilt over mankind's pollutive nature a good glance at Google Earth's satellite images are a wonderful elixir. Maybe I am a complete fool, maybe they are goosing the data to make it look better than it really is...I dunno. But what I see is an unfathomably BEAUTIFUL earth full of the most rich colors and textures. It also makes me glad to see large swaths of the planet seemingly not covered by humans and their little grid system. (We do love the grids) And how cool are the salt flats in Utah? Just look at that, a huge blob of white just sitting there amongst the browns and greens. I might not have a jet car, but I wonder if it is interesting to visit the salt flats or if the attraction wears off? Can you reach a point where there is nothing but white in all directions or are there always distant mountains visible? Hmmm.

Can People Ask Each Other Questions Anymore?

Has asking a simple question to a person been rendered pointless now than we have Google and Wikipedia? It seems like no matter what you want to know in life, the answer is 2 seconds away as long as you have a computer and internet connection. Often I feel like just asking a question of someone even though I know I could find out myself with a search. Wanting to ask a basic question from a living human is followed immediately by the thought of "Geez I'm lazy, I could find out in 2 seconds with Google..."

What do you think? Look it up on Google and keep the answer to yourself. Thanks!

*ist D Is A Stupid Name For A Camera

*ist D is a stupid name for a camera. What exactly were they thinking? I finally found a site that gave the pronunciation which is apparently:

IST DEE

So the asterisk has NOTHING to do with it. It's not "asterist", "star-ist" or "asteriskist" or something as I originally guessed. You just flat out ignore the * and say "ist dee". But what the fuck does Ist Dee mean? The artist formerly known as prince is behind this isn't he? I knew it! I guess I have to give them credit, the name is weird and annoying which is better than boring I guess. The vast majority of articles about this damn thing don't bother to explain the glaring question of, what the fuck is this thing called?

But now, thanks to Steve's Digicams all is right with the universe. Ahhh.

One Size Fits None

The whole problem with politics and government (besides being crushingly dull and maddening) is that it is based on the idea that there can be a single system that satisfies all people within a geographic area. We accept the fact that humans come from all different walks of life and yet we want to be all the same.

It seems the only political office that people care about is the president. I guess if you just focus on the one guy at the top then it becomes much easier. That's probably why cultures have endured kings throughout history, because it was such a simple system. One asshole out of the bunch declares himself to be the greatest human alive and somehow manages to convince other morons to follow along with the game. It's simple and easy to understand even though it's completely absurd. Not only did humans invent imaginary gods to rule over their "spiritual lives" but they also invented fellow humans to act as gods to rule over their physical lives. What are ya gonna do, we're a flawed race. We'll figure it out eventually, but just not now. Like the Acid Orangutan song goes, "I've got no choice, but to fuck shit up"

So I happened to catch some of the presidential debate stuff on YouTube and was pleased to learn that Ron Paul was running for president. Like Michael Badnarik before him (although to a somewhat lesser extent) I saw an intelligent man telling the truth (which is usually unheard of in politics) who was the only guy I could possibly vote for. But then again, here's the problem - this is all about which ONE guy is gonna get the top seat. Why does it have to be that way? Why can't I have Ron Paul be my president and your guy can be yours? This is a comedic statement because we all know that it ain't like that, we have to FIGHT over which guy wins. It's a fight over whose choices trumps all other choices. It is inherently competetive like sports, but on a grand scale. You can't leave the stadium unless you want to live under water in the middle of the ocean. I figure the ocean is the only place on earth a person can go to be truly free from retarded laws. Once you set foot on land you've become someone elses' slave in some form or another.

It seems that as long as we're married to the idea of borders I think we need more of them to accomodate the array of political opinion. I'd be all for abolishing the United States and thinking of each of the 50 states as independent countries. Just nip off the federal part of it. The less centralized power is the easier it is to manage. People should probably be more concerned about their local government than the federal government. I figure a lot of little tiny governments is favorable to a single monster government.

Why shouldn't people be able to choose the laws they are bound by just as they can with any other decision? We have so much freedom in some areas of life but none in others. If you hate Wal-Mart you don't have to shop there. If you hate the idea of killing animals for food and clothing you can become a vegan. You can choose what job you want and what car you drive to get there. Or you can walk. But you cannot choose to keep the money you earn at that job. That is not one of your choices. So sorry, but this group of people is going to steal part of your income. Why? Oh, Essential Services! Like what, I don't use any of those! Oh well too bad you're paying for them anyway. We should look at taxation as being equally ridiculous as if we said that you must buy $10,000 worth of goods from Wal-Mart per year, or go to jail. Does it make sense to pay for something you don't use? If you need to call upon the police shouldn't you have to pay for it? Why should it be any different than hiring a plumber or carpenter to do some work for you? Last year I spent nearly 10 grand on a bunch of shit I don't even know about. If I worked for a year, saved up my money and then burned it on the compost heap in the backyard people would think I was insane. But that is exactly what I'm forced to do every day of my life with all the numerous taxes. If you WANT to burn your money on the compost heap you should be free to do so, but why threaten me to do the same?

The human race is not made of coral, it is not like a school of fish. We're not all the same. It is pointless to think that one person can act as the avatar for millions. Nevertheless, I heartily endorse Ron Paul for president. I don't agree with all of his issues, but that's okay. The guy at least wants to stick to the government's rules. I don't know if there's any logic in the idea of electing good people to fix a bad system, but it seems that's the best we can do. And wouldn't it be nice to have a president who can actually speak, unlike the knuckle-dragging hillbilly that's in there now?

Smoking

For many years I have been somewhat of an asshole non-smoker. Although I didn't go the extra step of actively nagging smokers to their faces nor whining about any second hand smoke I might be breathing, I did still have an elitist internal attitude about smoking. But for the most part it was a genuine empirical judgement. The fact was that I thought cigarettes smelled bad, I observed that they made the smoker's surroundings yellowed and dirty, and observed that many smokers looked older and more grizzled than their non-smoking brethren. But I tried to restrain my distaste for smoking in a reasonable manner because after all people in my own family are smokers and I can't really get on a soapbox and condemn them. The general cultural notion that smoking is a terrible evil is of course unavoidable and informs one's opinion of it as well.

I began a new philosophical and political journey within the last few years, discovering that there were definitions for the ideas I had always felt. Part of that journey was starting to see different groups of folks who are socially persecuted. Certainly smokers have got to be on the top of that heap. Whereas I usually felt a sense of schadenfreude whenever tales of anti-smoking crackdowns came up, I began to see that they were getting the shaft for no good reason. The contempt for smoking seems to be an almost universal truth in American society. Therein lies the problem; how can an activity which (like it or not) really only affects the person choosing to do it be grounds for such aggression? Smokers as a group have been banished from most indoor places and forced to engage in their "filthy habit" outside in designated areas. Signs are put up to isolate them from non-smokers. For the most part they have shouldered this ostracism with total acceptance. On its surface it makes sense, smoke floats through the air and if you get a bunch of people smoking in a confined space without enough ventilation then yes, it's gonna be very smoky air. Probably not a place a non-smoker would want to be.

So even though for years my asshole non-smoker mind was quietly sneering at these ghastly people who were ruining their lives with yucky tobacco, I was more bothered by the persistent societal manifestation of that same attitude. I began to feel sorry for the underdog. It seemed cruel that these smokers were shouldering all this ostracism with such acceptance. I decided that I ought to switch teams and see how the other half lived. I decided I would try smoking, and one of the reasons would be spite.

Then somehow I got to reading about pipes on the web. I always had a soft spot for pipes. Some of my uncles smoked pipes and when I was at a family gathering with them in my youth I always liked the smell. It was a very rich and woody scent, for whatever reason they didn't remind me of cigarettes which seemed to make me cough and sneeze. Perhaps I had the same view of cigars, I can't remember. Actually I do recall one unpleasant second hand smoke experience at a baseball game where a man a few rows up from us was puffing away at a very smelly stogie. But pipes seemed to be even more rare. I had a picture in my mind of pipe smoking being this activity of kindly old men with long grey beards. It seemed like a quaint thing to do, a relic of a forgotten time or something.

The attraction to pipes really grew once I saw what kinds of beautiful craftsmanship was out there for these things. I am a gear junkie when it comes to hobbies. So pipe smoking seemed cool because there was an instrument involved. Cigarettes and cigars are just rolled up leaves that burn almost entirely to ash. But with pipes there was a collector aspect. There was woodworking and art involved. So I decided I would buy a pipe and try it out. Only I was still completely spooked by the idea of getting ADDICTED to tobacco. You know, that horrific EVIL thing which takes over your life and you can't STOP! So then I came across this whole herbal smoke thing. To make a long story short, it's overpriced. Trying to fight tradition turned out to be kinda futile, so I went ahead and bought a few bags of bulk tobacco. I figure there's gotta be a reason why this particular plant is the one of choice for smoking. The tobacco was more moist than the herbal stuff and seemed to burn better. There's a whole connoisseur aspect to tobacco as well with different flavors and types and whatnot. I can't pretend to know all of that of course.

I was able to get a bit of that old world smell that I remembered from my uncles, but to be honest the smell is much more noticeable when you aren't smoking it. It seems to be more of an external thing. It is noticeable when I first walk into my apartment. I could be wrong, but it does not seem to have as offensive an odor as that of a cigarette smoker's room. Maybe I am completely crackers on this, but I think it has a more pleasant scent. I haven't studied what difference, if any, exists between cigarette tobacco and pipe tobacco.

Is smoking bad for you? Well, you're sucking combustible material into your body, so naturally your body is going to react. I find that there's a lot of phlegm produced in the lungs after smoking. These are just my empirical observations. I quickly learned to take former president Clinton's advice and NOT inhale, though. (joke) No seriously, if you just suck in enough so that the smoke fills your mouth and then blow it out right away you'll do better than if you let a large puff of smoke hit your lungs. I do mean hit, because if you really inhale that stuff it's like getting hit in the chest with a hammer. You can really feel it. But if you just puff on it gently it's a very relaxing and fun leisure activity. I was worried that I would develop an addiction to it, but as of yet I have no cravings. I am actually more concerned that I would not even continue smoking and the beautiful pipes I've got would just sit unused. I bought 6oz. of tobacco in March and there's still about 2/3rds left. I don't smoke at work and I'll have one, maybe two bowls per day but there might be a day or two that I'll not smoke at all. Wikipedia has this to say about pipes:

"Pipes can range from the very simple machine-made briar pipe to handmade and artful implements created by pipe makers which can be very expensive collector's items. The popularity of pipe smoking in Western countries has declined in recent years. However, it has also enjoyed a resurgence of late among younger and middle aged smokers who find its contemplative nature and age-transcendent status as "hobby not habit" to be both thoroughly enjoyable and stress-relieving."

I'd have to strongly agree. Maybe one way of looking at it is that cigarettes seem like McDonalds whereas the pipe is more like a fine meal at a nice restaurant. Yes, I know it will kill you. We're heard every argument. But hey, so does food. Eventually everybody dies. We have yet to find the magical chemical which promises eternal life. Clearly if smoking was as evil as many people would have us believe nobody would be doing it. For all the health problems it causes they still come on slowly enough to as to not defeat the benefits.

The point is you've gotta do these things in moderation. Obviously if you chain smoke one after another there's going to be a price to pay. So don't chain smoke. Take it easy, take it slow. And most importantly of all, get off your high horses and stop sticking your nose into other people's business. I keep feeling that America has this eternal life fantasy and that if you do A, B and C then you'll live long and happy. But what use is eternal life if you can't enjoy it the way you want? We all need to lighten up on those who are lighting up. All this hysteria is just going to give the nanny state more power which will force our individual choices to weigh upon other people's choices and the whole of society will become more bitter and disgruntled. No thanks!

The Distortion Of Beauty?

Today I wanna talk about beauty and photography and people's perceptions. First check out the video on this website. I came across it on YouTube.com during a search for photography-related videos.

Campaign For Real Beauty

Also, check out this one:

Extreme Photoshop Makeover Video

First off, let me be clear I'm all for the idea that little girls should have positive self esteem and all that. Of course that's a good thing. I don't have any real quarrel with whatever it is that Dove's doing. What I want to address here are some of the youtube comments and moreover just the general knee jerk reaction people have when presented with the realities of digital imaging. This whole "boo hoo fashion photography is a lie" pretense I find extremely smug and condescending. I resent the idea that somehow showing great looking photos in magazines is deceiving or somehow ripping off the public. Yes, I know nobody made that exact claim, but that is the vibe I get. Dude these photos are bullshit, that chick isn't hot! or something like that. Photoshop can make anyone into a supermodel, man! Utter nonsense!

The fact is, people who are models are indeed more attractive than the average person. THAT'S WHY THEY GET THE JOB. That's why THEY are in magazines and YOU aren't. They're beautiful because they've got the right geometry going on. They've got symmetry and proportions most likely fitting within the golden ratio. They are exceptions to the norm. It doesn't mean that everyone else is ugly by comparison. It's just nature at work. Check out BBC's "The Human Face" hosted by John Cleese for more of this. It's a fascinating show!

Did anyone really think that girl was a hideous hag when she first sat down? No, she IS a good looking woman, they simply did the things you do when you want to make a striking looking billboard. Yes it's very extensive, but they're selling an image here, they're not doing a science project where person X is photographed and documented. I also have a feeling that Dove's video intentionally made sure that the model looked a little extra schlubby in order to drive their point home more. Okay, we need a model who's having a minor skin breakout... But that's just speculation.

I will never forget the time I was on vaction with my folks as a young lad. We were at some outdoor museum thing. There was a photo crew amongst the tourists doing what appeared to be a fashion shoot of some kind. There were a couple female models there and I was awestruck by their beauty. They looked so unlike normal people that I couldn't take my eyes off them. My parents were moving on down the exhibits but I wanted to stay and look at these girls because they were so surreal to look at. No Photoshop there, just exceptionally good looking people. One of the girls' sweater was pinned back in the rear so it better hugged her figure. This was a little "behind the scenes" trickery that I remembered. But does any of the preparation that goes into a photo shoot mean these were dull looking people faked into being gorgeous by deceptive artists? Hardly!

The ONLY thing I can agree on as being disingenuous about what they did in the Dove video this are the very final edits where the actual geometry of the model's body is altered. Same thing with the other person's video. I think they went too far. I wouldn't especially feel right doing that extensive work myself. But hey, I don't work with people photos usually. That's just my own personal "photoshop ethics" if you will. There's certain lines I wouldn't want to cross myself.

But look, this is art and advertising, not fucking journalism! Do you want magazines full of the caliber of photos found in the average joe's family snaps? Good luck selling that. Please go ahead, go and try to market a magazine loaded with schlubby punch-flash photos of people with acne! Maybe our idea of beauty is better served by a rag like the National Enquirer? (who probably retouch photos in the opposite direction, to make celebrities uglier than usual) No glamourous retouching there! How about the GARBAGE photos they take of you at the DMV? How about a magazine full of DMV shots? Those are pure reality, right? No Photoshop magic in sight! It MUST be more true to reality, right?

All photography is a lie. That's why we love it so much, because it distorts reality. That's what makes it interesting. If you want reality don't look at photos. No matter what they are it will be an illusion. A photo can not only make a good looking girl into a fabulous angel but it can take the ugliest, most grizzled old person and turn them into something visually interesting. That's the whole magic of photography. Even you have been made to look better than you really are in your own photos. Were your parents wrong to dress you nice for class photo day in the third grade? Was the teacher wrong for grabbing a comb and fixing the cowlick at the back of your head? Were they distorting reality and making for photos that would cause other children to have low self esteem?

The other basic thing to remember is that we're talking about STILL images. A fixed image doesn't change and thus has to be somehow attractive to us, otherwise we wouldn't bother looking at it. Reality is constantly moving, the light on your face is changing constantly. You are making different expressions and moving your body. Take some of those slices in time and put them in a photograph and you might turn out ugly. Take others and you might look really hot. I have a theory that people look completely ridiculous 50% of the time and that the only reason we can stand ourselves is that our constant motion combines these looks of goofiness with looks of beauty and the result is a tolerable combination. You just have to look at a video of a person talking in frame by frame steps to see that in some cases they look stupid.

Yes, it's not good if your sense of self-worth is hinged upon what you see in a fashion magazine or billboard. DUH! If you really get depressed because beauty greater than yourself exists, well then you really do have a problem. YOU have a problem, not the magazine, not "society", YOU do. Just don't be trashing the talented photographers and digital retouchers who make images that people WANT TO LOOK AT just because you're bitter. As I said, they are creating aesthetically pleasing images. That's good enough for me. Should the great painters of history be similarly scoffed at for portraying reality in a more favorable light? An image can mean something different for each person, this is good. I just think that to interpret the sight of any beautiful imagery as a commandment to compare one's self to the art is a grave miscalculation. We're smarter than that aren't we?

Jerry Falwell Dead

Hey, I just heard that Jerry Falwell snuffed it! Now, if only bad ideas died as easily as people do we'd have something to celebrate.

The Hard Escape Key

I have to wonder how often people's blogs on Blogger get inadvertently flagged as being "objectionable" when really you just wanted to click on "Next Blog"? What a lousy place to put those two buttons! Which are you going to click more often? And what's more annoying is that when you accidentally mouse over "objectionable" a 'tooltip-like' message pops up that obscures what you really intended to click, the Next Blog button. Making mistakes is fairly easy with a computer, but undoing them should be quick. More often than not software punishes you for your mistakes by slowing you down. Instead of:

DO THIS! (Yes sir!)
OOPS! STOP DOING THAT! (Yes sir!)
DO ANOTHER THING! (Yes sir!)

you get:

DO THIS! (Yes sir!)
OOPS! STOP DOING THAT! (What?)
STOP DOING THAT NOW! (I can't hear you, I'm doing something!)
PLEASE STOP! I MADE A MISTAKE, ALRIGHT!? (I'll just keep doing that thing you asked)
*seconds pass*
(Okay, I'm done)
UNDO! (Yes sir!)

That's why I wish there were a HARD escape key that really really really worked. No matter what, you hit escape the software obeys and stops doing whatever it's doing and awaits your next command. These aren't people, so they can be treated brutally. I will say that Photoshop is generally pretty responsive to the Escape key. You can stop it from opening images you accidentally opened, filters you ran which are taking too long and you wanna give up, and other stuff. Unfortunately there's some things that feel they must run their course no matter what. The hard escape key should be dangerous, you should be able to make potentially data-lethal choices with it. Heck, put it under a flip-up protective cover if you must, but there should be ONE key on the keyboard which the the ultimate cease and desist.

Farming out WHAT!?

This is the weirdest thing I ever saw...a company which apparently draws Photoshop clipping paths for you! What the hell???

http://www.misterclipping.com/

I think if I had that job my eyeballs would fall out of my head! Can you imagine drawing nothing but paths for eight hours!? Yikes! I'm gonna have to put this up there with nursing home worker as one of the most undesirable jobs I can fathom. Okay no, that's not fair. I can understand the nursing home thing, you know, a love for humanity and all that shit, but cripes drawing paths!? For OTHER PEOPLE no less!? That's almost suicidal! I can tolerate drawing one or two fairly complex images in a row, but beyond that I start questioning the purpose of my existence. Granted, there is a satisfaction that comes when you finally select and blow out that background to perfect edges...but then the eye-watering tedium begins again and the honeymoon's over.

It's true, there is NO substitute for a genuine hand-drawn path; it's unquestionably Full-Ass as opposed to the close-enough-for-government-work Create Work Path from a selection cheat; but wow, to think that people would wanna do this job! Gotta wonder though, do they really do it by hand? Well, you can almost always tell...but still... It's a crazy, crazy world!

On Scanning and Ancient Grudges

My first "real" job out of college was working at a printing company. It's a fairly large plant situated in a little tiny nowhere farming town. I worked in the pre-press department as one of five people who scanned and color corrected photos for the numerous trade magazines and weekly newspaper ads printed there. I really was stoked at finally getting to work with cool equipment. I remember being especially enamoured of the TWENTY-ONE INCH monitors everyone used! THAT was a big deal to me then. Hell, it's still a big deal. You can never have a monitor that's too big or too high resolution. Okay, maybe you can but we aren't there yet. Anyway, the main attraction in the department was a ginormous Hell drum scanner. Yes, "Hell" is the name of the company. It's German. This thing was a monstrosity, it took up the entire width of the room (about 12 feet I reckon) and also had an outboard box full of electronics the size of a refridgerator. Think of those early computers which took up entire rooms. I am not sure if vacuum tubes were inside, but I wouldn't be surprised. I scrounged around Google to see if I could find a picture of one of them and this is about the closest I could find. Sorry it isn't larger.

This PMT (photo mutiplier tube) drum scanner was probably about $100,000 or so and capable of recording the finest images you could imagine. In theory, that is. You see, this device is designed by engineers. Engineers are extremely smart people, they know their stuff. Sadly, they aren't quite as good as making stuff easy to use for people less smart than they are. No, let's not say "easy to use" because a device like this probably shouldn't be easy to use. It's a professional tool after all, not a consumer widget. It should at least be ABLE to be comprehended by the average power user, that's all I ask!

The company had purchased this unit used from some other company a few months before I started working there. They were very proud of it. It was given its own room with a sign on the door about how it must be kept closed to keep out dust. And why shouldn't they be proud? After dropping all that dough you might as well make the scanner feel special.

When you've got such a massive and complex piece of pre-press equipment that you want to put into service you're gonna need some help, right? Help came in the form of a representative from Hell (I wish they were called "minions") who flew in from Germany to train the photo people on how to use this beast. I think he was there for like a week. I am not sure, as I said this training period occured before I got the job.

When you've got fundamentally difficult equipment like this the training you receive on it often takes the form of step-by-step actions one must take in order to make a scan. You couldn't hope to truly grok this behemoth unless you were one of the engineers who designed it, and I wonder if even they knew. But they managed to boil it down to a number of fairly straight forward steps that you had to punch in to get this thing to scan. It involved setting your scanning area, focusing on the film under extrem magnification, measuring the lightest and darkest areas of the photo, adjusting colors and sharpening. After awhile we got the hang of it, but we pretty much stayed away from the deeper menus. Scary territory there, one wrong move and you could blow up the universe!

After I got the job the people who received the training first hand then taught me how to use the Hell. After a few months of using the Hell I got a little more comfortable using it and experimented a little with the different settings. As it turned out there was indeed a sharpening setting which yielded better results than what they had told us to use. Otherwise we would get these really dark and heavy, high contrast halos around image detail. It was sharp, but looked very unnatural. People's s faces became very harsh and grainy, like they had an odd skin condition. The look really bugged me. It was clearly apparent on the printed proof as well, not just on the screen.

I worked second shift with one other guy and we got along really well. A rivalry kind of developed between us and the first shift crew. The first shift people were all part of the Good Ole Boys Club meaning that they had friendly ties with upper management. This was a very small town and nepotism was rampant in the company. This is great if you're Family, but for me I was an "outsider" as was my cohort. But the rivalry was more than this, it was also a fight over the scanner settings. They were dead set on the dark and heavy edges look while we rebellious 2nd shifters always put the scanner settings where they looked better, and rules be damned. Yes, I realize this can be a subjective thing but I am putting my foot down: Our settings WERE objectively better! We had no unnatural artifacts in our scans.

This bitterness slowly simmered underneath the surface as time went on. The second shift crew continued to embarass the 1st shift crew, getting stuff doner quicker, better and more efficiently. We were also successful in satisfying the desires of one particularly onerous customer who was such a stickler for image quality that he was feared by the rest of the company when his magazine came in the department. This incident and others like it, all more or less having to do with me and my partner doing things not necessarily according to the rules eventually resulted in my untimely termination. They told me "I wasn't a team player"! (The stress of getting fired at the time overrode what I now take as the highest compliment!) Oh it was a hard blow for sure, getting canned from your first real job, but I got over it eventually.

Now I look back with some more perspective on it. It's funny how wrapped up people can get over machines. I think it has to do with fear of failure. I think the other guys were a little bit scared to mess with the scanner. They didn't really care about the results, as long as they were doing what was asked of them they were cool. But you can't be afraid of these things. You've gotta go in there and see what stuff does. It's not gonna bite you! We're not talking about a dangerous device that will chop your fingers off if you don't do it right, it's just a fucking scanner! If it doesn't look right, change it. If it's not cooperating, try something else!

And we did have something else! In addition to the giant drum scanner there was also a smaller drum scanner as well as a large flatbed scanner. These two "lesser" machines were vastly easier to use and in most cases produced equal or better results than the giant Hell. The only thing the Hell was really good at was making ridiculous enlargements of 35mm slides. But you had to oil mount them, a particularly tedious and messy process. For reflective art the large flatbed did wonders. Even though you could wrap a piece of paper around the large 24" wide drum on the Hell it just did not capture the surface texture of art paper at all.

I went on to have far less stressful and confrontational jobs in the graphic arts business and am happy to still be scanning stuff today. I am using far cheaper equipment now, but I have 100% total control over the equipment. I don't get to work with beautiful large format chromes anymore, but it's much better than having to deal with a bunch of brown nosers towing the company line for good or ill.

Once I even got a small bit of revenge. It was not as sweet as I had hoped, but it felt good nevertheless. At one point I got sent out to do a press check at my old employer. Years later the very same company who canned me was now working for ME! *MUWHAHAHA!!!* Unfortunately I didn't see any of the old 1st shift jerks nor my old asshole boss, but I did get to see my former co-worker. They had a new scanner by that time and I am sure it was much easier to use than the Hell. It's a shame that so much fuss was had over something so simple, but it all worked out in the end.

Holy Smokes!

This guy may be the best fucking photographer I have ever seen in recent memory. Let me put it this way, he's so fucking good I can even give him a pass for doing Amy Grant album covers! Does it get any better than this?! Holy Smokes!

http://www.marktucker.com

The Epic Quest For A B-Spline Tool

Do you remember a company called Creature House? Of course you do. Remember an application called "Expression"? Of course you do, your grandma uses it everyday. It's a mostly useless little app if only because the curmudgeonly user was so set in his ways with this Illustrator shit. But they had a unique tool: the B-Spline! Joy! Make a wonky polygon shape and what's this...smoove curves result! Math majors know what this curve stuff is and can probably plot it with some equation that scares the hell out of me just to look at. All I know is that it's smoove. It probably has something to do with the word "log" or something.

This was long ago, in ancient times when I used this quirky little app. Now, aeons later on the Mac what the heck happened to Expression, aina? I'd like to get a B-Spline tool here if I could, please? B-Spline tool in Illustrator? Oh, too much to ask! Oh but CS3 is on the way...nope still no B-Spline. Sorry schmuck, maybe you should've hunted down the feedback submission form instead of losing it with your old bookmarks after the OS migration.

Anyway, it looks like Creature House was bought up by Microsoft and all the cool artsy shit was flushed. Then lo, a few googlings later and this sweet beauty shows up:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14792

Freebie OSX Expression! With B-SPLINE TOOL! A Keyboard Shortcut editor! The shapes paste into Illustrator! Joy! You know how easy it is to draw a guitar pick\Leonardo DeCaprio's head now?

(he's only happy cause it hasn't crashed yet)