This is a fascinating look at the design process from a guy who does covers for the Criterion Collection. He explains how they comissioned and designed a cover for Robinson Crusoe on Mars, using an illustrator I’ve long admired, Bill Sienkiewicz. (via)
In the last couple of weeks, we’ve had a bunch of people in to look at the house in order to estimate some repair costs. As with everything else, it’s all more expensive than I was hoping for. But I knew my hopes were completely unreasonable, so the prices are actually pretty good considering the amount of work to be done.
The first thing I wanted to check out were the basement windows, which offer as much security as a sheet of saran wrap, and half the thermal protection. And, of course, they aren’t standard size, so every replacement needs to be custom made. I had a guy give us quotes for four vinyl windows around the perimeter of the basement, and while each one is pretty cheap, the total price adds up quickly. While he was here, we had him estimate the cost of replacements for the dining room windows as well, and it turns out they are much cheaper than I’d feared, but still expensive in the grand scheme of things.
Secondly, I had a strange little man come in to estimate repair and cleaning of the gutters on the south side of the house, which are about half a story too high for me to reach. (Also, the main power and phone lines run off the back side of the house, making three-story ladderwork very dangerous). This guy reminded me of a nervous ferret on valium—jacked up but super-mellow at the same time; I could hear his record playing at 45rpm but the words coming out of his mouth were at 33. Again, the price was higher than I’d hoped, but when I broke it down, it seemed reasonable. My next step is to have a larger company come out and price out total replacement of my existing gutter with a single-piece covered dripless version, because I got kind of a hinky vibe from ferret-man, and I wasn’t all that impressed with his gutter guard choice.
Meanwhile, the driver’s window in the Jeep decided to go down but not come back up last weekend on the way back from the airshow. Dreading the worst, I pulled the panel off the door and dug around in the guts to diagnose the problem: It wasn’t the window motor, and it wasn’t the mechanical linkage; it was the worm screw that connects the motor to the linkage. More specifically, it was a $.50 piece of plastic that keeps the worm screw in place to provide consistent upwards pressure. Calling around last week, I was quoted $500 for parts and labor, which was about what I figured. If I had more time to fool with it, and another couple of weeks of warm weather, I’d buy a used part and attempt the repair myself—I’ve spent some time cutting my skin on the innards of door panels before—but this is one I’m going to have to suck up and pay for, I think.
I have dreams of getting this basic stuff accomplished, but it seems like every time I get the cash together to tackle something, another need comes along and knocks it right back out of the realm of possibility. The most annoying part is that I’m in repair limbo: I could do all of this stuff—I’ve replaced windows, cleaned gutters, and repaired window assemblies—but I don’t have the time to do it, yet I don’t have the money to hire it out.
Here’s an interesting question that popped up on Ask Metafilter a couple of days ago: Who owns the rights if you’re a freelance designer/artist, and what is common? The responses to the question that were posted before me were excellent, so I decided to offer my own experience in a similar situation.
We’re driving north on Saturday with Jen’s father to check out the Collings Foundation fly-in, where there will be three 1940’s era bombers parked for the public to see. I’ve been wanting to do this since I found out they were touring years ago, and I plan to stay as long as I can, bring as many cameras as I can carry, and spend as much time as possible in each plane.
In preparation, I bought an inexpensive but valuable tool for my D70: a F/1.8 50mm Nikkor lens. I’ve read several articles in the last couple of weeks touting its power and simplicity and when I put it on the Nikon I was transported back to my first weeks of photo class, using a Minolta with an identical lens: the view is the same and the camera weighs the same (maybe a little lighter, actually). Using it to snap some basic photos, I remembered how much more it made me work back then—in order to frame the photo correctly, the photographer is forced to move, making the process that much more intimate and engaged. In the short time I used it, it made me think harder about how I wanted the photo to look and where I needed to be instead of simply zooming in to compose. I spent a lot of time habitually tugging on the focus ring trying to get closer…oh, right.
The other great feature of this lens is manual exposure setting. Most of the kit lenses shipped with new DSLRs are auto-exposure only, which means a whole measure of lighting control is lost. Both of my current lenses are auto-exposure, unfortunately. This one takes me back to the basics, which I’ve forgotten completely, so I cracked Jen’s copy of Horenstein’s Black and White Photography: A Basic Manual this morning and started reading up on my basic camera theory.
What’s funny is how boring I thought depth-of-field exercises were at the time (and how expensive they proved to be) but how fascinated I am about getting the theory down today. I’d like to get to the point where I can shoot manually without stopping to remember if F/1.2 is wide open or closed down, but I think that’s probably a long way off. (Tom Baird, I hope you read this someday and reconsider the low grades you gave me in theory class.)
I’m also going to take my through-the-viewfinder rig and hope that the event staff doesn’t think I’m shooting lasers at them or something. I’ve been perfecting my setup for that rig for a while now, to the point where it has a preset on my Canon and shoots with excellent results about 90% of the time. The only thing I wish I had for it now is a macro lens for the Nikon so I could get larger-quality originals; I’m at the limit of what I can do with the pairing of the Canon on the rig, and I’d like to be able to expand the possibilities. All in good time.
In old historical plane news, The Swamp Ghost, a B-17E sitting in a marsh in Papua New Guinea since 1942, is in the middle of a legal dispute between the PNG government and the American businessman who claims the salvage rights. In the 1960’s, the U.S. Government relinquished all rights to any crashed or abandoned military equipment, excluding underwater wrecks, placing this airframe into a curious limbo. Other wrecks have been “salvaged” from PNG and restored to flying status, but for some reason the removal of this particular B-17 got people upset.
I’ve seen pictures of this plane before in its original location, but wasn’t aware it’s been moved—it’s sitting on a dock, disassembled, awaiting the resolution of the legal dispute. From what I can tell, PNG isn’t letting it leave, and most likely it will stay there (unless they ship it to the states for a restoration, which I doubt they have money for).
In any case, stay tuned for more airplane pictures this weekend…details to come.
I had to stop into the Apple Store to have them look at my MBP— it recently started shutting itself off after one or two minutes’ battery usage. The Genius looked it over, verified I had the correct firmware (apparently there was an update that fixed random shutdowns), and then pulled the battery out…to find a good-sized bulge along the bottom. WHOA. Without another word, he said, “OK, we’ll get you a new one,” and when he couldn’t find one in the back (internally identified as a “part”) he walked out to the store, pulled one off the shelf (identified as “stock”), opened the box, slapped it in, and bid me farewell with a smile.
God, I love proper customer service.
The mail may not be running today, but the UPS guy dropped off a box this morning at 8:30 that contained our new DSL router, which means we’re back online! It took Jen several hours to coax me out from under the stairs, where I’d been growing out my beard, eating by campfire, and carving crude stick figures into the walls with a chunk of rock, but I’m feeling much better now.
It’s a good thing, because I was beginning to get real sick of the food at the Panera.
I’m sitting in a Panera (thank GOD for you, Panera) with all the other laptop warriors wishing I had a pair of headphones to drown out the sound of a bleached blonde selling a Ponzi pitch to a frumpy middle-aged couple. Seriously, when anybody shows you the pyramid diagram and gives you the subscription shpiel, big fireworks should explode over your head spelling out the word SCAM. Or, maybe SUCKER.
So far, it’s Big Monopoly Carriers 2, Bill 0. Our DSL modem, a Westel unit stamped with a Bell Atlantic logo that dates back to the early days of DSL service at my old house circa 1998, finally crapped out yesterday at 3PM. A half-hour of dropped calls, one conversation with a perky CSR in Bangalore, and $39.99 later, we’ll have a new modem in 6-8 business days. I think one of the reasons they shipped customer service overseas is that it becomes painfully evident the person on the phone can’t do anything to speed up the process, even when threatened with cancellation of service. I’m tempted to call the cable company to see how long it would take to get someone out to install a cable modem, but I’d bet it would be about the same.
Speaking of Comcast, they sent a tech guy out to a consulting client of mine to hook up a new cable modem with digital voice. When faced with an Airport Express, he balked, loaded some kind of proprietary Comcast setting on her laptop to get it online, then cleared out. My client’s Airport Express won’t pick up a DHCP address from the modem, nor will my laptop, and I’m stumped. All efforts to renew the address from the command line met with the same result. Even sharing the connection wirelessly from her laptop did not work, which tells me something’s funky with Comcast. But, then, is that really a surprise?
The bottom line is that my email connectivity will be spotty for the next week or so while the new modem gets shipped by donkey from Tasmania.
For Baltimore, Housing Slump Slows a Revival, from the NY Times. Bottom line: It’s slowed, and there are a lot of unsold houses on the market, but there are a lot of local businesses still fueling growth.