Wednesday, July 18, 2007
new photo site
So I actually came through on a promise for once – the new photo site is finished and live. The portfolio section took the longest to get up and running but I'm happy with it. I'm still looking through stuff (10,500 pictures takes a while to sift through), so the photos currently online are subject to change.
CLICK!
posted by Jack Curry @ 10:35 AM | 0 Comments Links to this post
Friday, July 6, 2007
fotografia: summer oh-seven
So I've been trying to get out and do more shooting this summer, and I didn't really realize how much I've done until I finally sat down tonight and began sifting through the past 2 months worth of material. I'm currently in the process of recompiling my portfolio and getting a new photo website put together, so now was a good time as any to start looking through all my stuff and get a rough idea of what would be good.
So here's a sampler. I'm still working out the finer points on some, others have already had the full post-production treatment.
Audi A4
Beachies
Nicolette
Goofing Around
"As an artist, I find myself constantly reinventing the wheel – trying out new techniques, constantly going outside my comfort zone in terms of ability, and really striving for bigger and better things all the time.
Art is also a release for me in many ways. It takes all my energies, be they positive or negative, and transposes them into some kind of form of artistic expression. It essentially keeps me sane. But in that relationship, there's a kind of give-and-take – I constantly find myself unable to produce good work unless there is some kind of driving force behind it. That is to say, I am wholly unable to just sit down and have at it. There needs to be some kind of catalyst, be it emotional, theological, philosophical, religious (not so much, but it happens). I hate to sound pretentious, but there needs to be some kind of meaning behind it and not just be art for art's sake.
You listen to Beethoven or Mozart or Salieri and then read some of the tidbits that they were have known to say and you see that for these men, music was a religious experience – they felt as if they were the conduit for the voice of God, that God was speaking to mankind through their music. And that's what kept those men going, that was the driving force behind their art. Not to imply that I feel that God is the driving force behind my art (I'm 1) not the religious type, and 2) perhaps more selfishly, I like to take credit for my work), but an element of that kind of divine artistic spark is there.
With photography, I feel that the subject is that divine spark; they are the driving force behind my art. It is their energy that I ultimately feed off of, that I turn around and make my own. It is their exuberance, their happiness, sadness, that I try to coax to the surface even if just for a second. But in that second, in that glimpse, that glimmer of humanity, of raw energy, I feel that I am exposing the very nature of what we are as individuals, as humans."
Labels: fine art, photography
posted by Jack Curry @ 11:39 PM | 1 Comments Links to this post
Saturday, June 30, 2007
The Jesus Phone.
So last night Timi and I popped into the Apple Store at South Coast Plaza (bonus trivia: South Coast was the 4th Apple Store ever opened) to have a peek at the iPhone. A peek turned into a tour, a tour turned into an investigation, and before I knew it, it had been monopolizing one of the 9 or 10 floor models for over an hour. It's literally that good.
The Pros:
-The screen is gorgeous. The LCD is rated at 160PPI (pixels per inch). For a reference, your average laptop/desktop monitor screens are either 72 or 96PPI. This screen is a stunner - text is super crisp, videos and photos are beautiful and bright.
-The OS is super responsive. It was able to handle multiple things at the same time, and believe me, I taxed it; opening multiple internet windows, playing music, setting up a Bluetooth connection, sending emails and texts, all at the same time. Most of the time it performed beautifully (see why only "most of the time" in the Cons). The UI has a lot of little flair animations here and there (like when you send something to the trash, or create a new tab in the web browser) that really add to the polish and don't manage to be too in-your-face.
-Battery life looks like it might very well hold up just fine in real world situations. In the hour that I used it, what with running all of those tasks concurrently, the battery was still around 92-95%.
-The phone features are great. Timi and I initiated a conference call with 4 lines and each one came through clear - the phone didn't even flinch at adding that many lines. Looking at all the calls you have on hold and switching back and forth is really as easy as the demos indicate.
The Cons:
-EDGE. It's old, it's slow, pages take ages to render, YouTube is a gamble at times. For full-on internet use, I would stick to Wi-Fi. Personally, I'm gonna wait around until there's 3G support. AT&T has a 3G network in Orange County, so the network is already there. Now all that I need is the device to utilize it. I give it maybe 12-15 months before Apple rolls out a next-gen device.
-No Flash support. So much for the "real internet." Hopefully we'll see something in the future with a software update or something.
-The OS can lag. While most of the time it's a joy to use, there are times when it can stick. For instance, if too much is going on in the background and you rotate the screen to view it in landscape mode, it can lag anywhere from 10 to 15 seconds before the screen catches up and turns with you. Also, sometimes if you open up a new tab in the web browser and go off to do other things and assume it'll load the page in the background, you're going to come back only to find that a blank screen – you need to actually wait in the web app for the page to fully load. Minus one on the multitasking side of things.
-The keyboard is lacking. The software isn't necessarily as "smart" as touted by Apple. It only corrected my mistakes a couple times, and the remainder of the time it just kept the misspelling intact ("junk" kept as "jink"...I guess junk isn't a very common word as per the iPhone's dictionary). I suppose with practice (i.e. owning the thing) you'd get a lot better with it. This is, incidentally enough, not a phone that you're going to want to text with while driving, although I know that within the coming weeks we're gonna see some bozo get in an accident while trying to send email/messages while behind the wheel.
-Default ringtones aren't anything to write home about. Apparently, there might be a way to add your own songs as ringtones in the future as per some goodies found in the iTunes 7.3 update, but concrete info on that has yet to surface. Until then, no personalized ringtones for your contacts and no using songs for ringtones. Kind of a bummer.
I wouldn't let the cons hold anyone else back though (although they may be holding me back). There's no denying that this is definitely a watershed moment for Apple and that this device will see some serious market innovation within the US mobile sphere in relation to other manufacturers. It's not so much the hardware or any one feature that really makes is a remarkable device, but all of the features combined into such a nice little package that makes it so appealing, and I think sales in the next few months will echo that sentiment.
Labels: apple, phones, technology
posted by Jack Curry @ 2:50 PM | 1 Comments Links to this post
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
The Art of Adam Betts
I've patronized Adam's site a few times in the past 6 months or so, but I never really looked around enough – I more or less popped in, downloaded what I wanted/needed and went on my way. While getting a Firefox icon tonight (if you're ever in need of a good CS3 icon pack, definitely hit this guy's site up), I finally took the time to look around and find out more of what he was all about.
According to this interview, he started out in design when he was about 12 and just kind of kept at it. By the looks of his site, he's really honed in on his technique and style. I really think it's one of those things that tough to do – to kind of figure out what "look" works best for you and kind of sticking with it as a general theme, but not overdoing it too much. I particularly like the subtle elements he has going on - the CSS transparencies, tasteful use of reflections, rounded corners.
Great design, seems like an awesome guy. I highly recommend taking a look.
posted by Jack Curry @ 11:08 PM | 0 Comments Links to this post
Sunday, June 24, 2007
ok, gonna give this a shot.
So just now I was sitting at my desk, doing some design stuff, bringing my attention from time to time to a game of chess that I have going with the computer, and it dawned on me how completely dependent we all are on technology. Even if you hate computers and phones and gadgets, widgets, gizmos, what have you, it still stands that the infrastructure on which the world (that you, incidentally, live in) runs entirely on these technologies. I wondered what would happen if all of a sudden, all the electronics in the world just stopped working and how I, as a person who uses all this stuff day in and day out and depends on it (not to mention am enamored with all the new crap that comes out), would fair.
There's really no other way to find out than doing, so as of today, I will not be using my phone for the entire week. Far be it from stopping all my tech use, but I have papers to write and online reading to do, so cutting all electronics out at this point simply isn't do-able. So for those of you that have it, I'll be reachable at my home number, but good luck with that as 1) I'm never home long enough and 2) I never answer my home phone. And for those of you that don't, I'll be online. I want to see how this'll go.
Labels: technology
posted by Jack Curry @ 10:17 PM | 2 Comments Links to this post
Saturday, June 16, 2007
family guy...
...is comedy GOLD.
posted by Jack Curry @ 3:27 PM | 1 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, June 14, 2007
a wee bit political for just a second.
I saw this clip of Ron Paul on Tucker Carlson's show the other day, and it really got me thinking: I've never really liked Carlson, but all of a sudden I find myself agreeing with something that he's doing on his program. A paradox, yes. I felt so compelled about this that I had to write it out, and it soon turned into a letter that I just sent off to his program on MSNBC. I'm crossing my fingers that someone from the program actually reads it. Here's to hoping...
Hello Carlson,
First off, let me say that I've never been on the same page as you. I don't support a lot of what you say or believe, and I think that the partisan left/right dilemma that you and many other news networks seem to like to expound is despicable and wholly against what the Framer's of the Constitution believed in, that is that we "ought to be bound together by fraternal affection" rather than "alien to each other" (Washington).
I was very surprised, then, when you had Congressman Ron Paul on your program a while back, and I finally felt myself agreeing with you on some level. Maybe that's in some sense what Washington was talking about when he meant "fraternal affection," maybe not. Maybe I'm closed minded to other points of view simply because I'm stubborn or because my opinion of those points have been so sullied that I tend not to listen to them simply out of habit.
Notwithstanding, I felt that you did a great service to your viewers when you talked with Congressman Paul, however brief that talk may have been. I personally believe that this one man alone is the only candidate I've seen so far that actually takes the Constitution into account, sees the divergence of this country from it, and is willing to put himself out there and say something about it. Which isn't to say that he is a strong candidate, because in American politics, where the media dominates and holds only certain individuals in the political sphere up for all to see, he isn't. The idea of "frontrunner" and "second tier" candidates is a wholly undemocratic way of viewing potential leaders of our country as it automatically groups them in the eyes of the American public as such; either prominent or marginalized, depending. This man doesn't stand a chance in the debates simply because the media doesn't see him as important, and therefore, by extension, neither does the general American public watching those debates. Which is why I applaud you, to some extent, from bringing Congressman Paul on the program and allowing him to reach a segment of the American public that may, and probably, have not have heard of him or his positions before.
I sincerely hope that you will give it further consideration to bring Congressman Paul on again sometime in the future for a more thorough interview in order that he may really have a chance to speak what he believes and allow him more face time that has, up until now, only been afforded to the "frontrunners" of both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. I think the media, in that sense, has done a horrible disservice to the voting population, but I can only hope that individuals such as yourself, even though I may not agree with what you have to say most of the time, can help not only restore my faith in the American media, but also in how is plays a role in shaping the social landscape of this country.
You have a great power, sir. I only ask that you use it responsibly and judiciously.
-Jack Curry
Labels: politics, pudits, television
posted by Jack Curry @ 12:32 PM | 0 Comments Links to this post
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