backyard, mid-august 2002

Jen and I had a very, very good weekend.

The backyard is further along; the brick is down, the sand is in, the planters are full awaiting plants, and there are a number of hearty survivors from last year poking their heads above the soil: sage, tarragon, lavender, zinnias, and both crepe myrtles.

Jen was kind enough to pick up two rolls of 620 film I had developed from the antique cameras I bought last year; the results were mixed, mostly because of my limited skill in composing pictures. One roll was four for twelve and the other was seven for twelve. One of the shots is above: the south planter before we had to tear it up. The results are remarkable when you consider that the glass in these lenses was ground fifty years ago and made for much grainier stock film. The trick seems to be not to attempt any interior shots, period.

There is a new radio station here in Baltimore, a relic of a lost age, attempting to fill a void that is perhaps larger than the universe itself: a free-form college radio station spinning a mixture of eclectic and non-mainstream music (I have to use these dopey adjectives because the “alternative” moniker, as you know, has been co-opted by the Man.) This morning, flipping through the stations, I settled on the new single by Radiohead, and that was followed immediately by “Fight Test” by the Flaming Lips. God help you, WTMD; you’re a rookie welterweight stepping into a ring full of old, bloated Rocky Balboas. I hope you stick around for a while. And I’ll be pledging money to keep you going.

Apple has released the new iTunes, with a pay-for-music service integrated into the player, so people like me who don’t want to use file-swapping can actually pay a reasonable price for the songs we like on demand. Right on. Funny how the music business couldn’t figure out how to do this themselves.

Jason hooked me up with Dreamweaver MX, which is a fancy upgrade from 4.0 for OSX. Very nice; let’s see how it fits in with my workflow.