Two of the aforementioned kittens ended up staying with us, despite intentions to find them [...]]]>
Whatever holiday you celebrate in defiance of self-important nitwits, there is always one thing to remember: make the cats happy. However, I’m not going to participate in the whole “Caturday” or phonetic spelling nonsense, as my gift to you.

Two of the aforementioned kittens ended up staying with us, despite intentions to find them all homes, and while this still may not be a permanent situation, that didn’t mean we could neglect them come christmastime. One of them is named “Kaylee,” for a couple of reasons. She is a calitabby-point Siamese (or Snowshoe) mix, and in the beginning we simply referred to her as “Cali” to differentiate her from the others. Later on as her adult coat came in, she developed numerous random blotches of pale brown in her coat, making her look as if she’d been wrestling in the garage, so the name morphed to “Kaylee” since we’re Firefly fans here. If you don’t get it, just begone with you.

Anyway, a few days back at a thrift store we spied the pile of stuffed animals and wondered if the girls would like something like that for christmas, and since 69 cents wasn’t a serious risk, we went ahead and got a choice one for them and presented it this morning. After some curious hesitation, Kaylee realized what such things are best used for. No, that’s not an adorable hug at top; she’s kicking the ever-loving shit out of the toy, which was just what we intended. Kaylee does kind of lose her mind when the playful mood kicks in…

What we didn’t foresee was her turning jaguar and carrying the toy around the house like it was fresh kill, at times running selfishly down the hall with it to protect her food from opportunistic scavengers. Because of the size of it, this usually required straddling, lending her gait a hilarious waddle. The other kitten, unoriginally named “Little Girl” until we find something better, showed distinct interest in the toy too, but soon got outclassed by Kaylee’s vicious enthusiasm. They still have plenty of other things to share, as well as treating one another as stuffed animals most evenings. And whenever that fails, the tables (that they seem to keep forgetting they’re not allowed upon) serve as handy sources of pens and fiddly bits.

One of my presents to The Girlfriend was a (personally) hand-carved manatee with calf, which I wanted some pics of. While I was setting the lighting levels to get the best detail, Little Girl decided it was time for attention, and when I wouldn’t pet her she hopped onto the table to see just what was demanding all of my attention. She thus provides a little scale to the piece.

By the way, this (and another figure) were my first attempts at working with soapstone, and my third at carving anything. I’m kind of a stickler for accuracy, so the end results aren’t exactly to my liking since the proportions are a bit off, making the figures a bit… ‘stylized,’ I guess you could say. The Girlfriend’s happy with them, so I’m cool with it, but like just about any project I tackle (or any image I’ve shot,) I can find ways to improve them, and will be aiming for that in subsequent pieces. The positive side of being critical of your own work is that you’re always seeking to improve, which can never hurt, but the negative side is that you can be pretty hard on yourself too. Though it’s still not art.

Anyway, here’s to hoping your own celebrations are entertaining, and that you’re remembering that “mellow” is a pretty good thing to aim for too. Cheers!

Now, I clarify things a little. Despite the strong sentiments expressed in his book God Is Not [...]]]> As I was writing another post and remaining, surprisingly to some I think, unconnected from the world at large, I was notified that Christopher Hitchens died last night of his esophageal cancer, at the age of 62.

Now, I clarify things a little. Despite the strong sentiments expressed in his book God Is Not Great, Hitchens was not a high priest of atheism, even when ignoring the fact that we simply don’t have those. I personally identified with less than half of what he said at any given time, and was polarly opposed to his feelings on the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and George W. Bush – not to mention alcohol.

And that is, in part, what makes his death regrettable, to me and others. One of his defining traits was in speaking his mind, in open disregard for how this might be perceived. In this way, he trashed the sneaky tactics of political correctness and the Overton Window, blasting through a veneer of ‘proper’ discourse to state what was really on his mind. Another, perhaps his most defining, trait was his remarkable ability with words, an old-school British skill that allowed him to combine a classical education and manner with a gangsta’s attitude, demonstrating that speech can serve as a better weapon than most allow themselves to recognize. No one could match this ability, and being cut down by Hitchens still commanded the respect that he did it so gracefully and precisely, a gifted surgeon of conviction.

I also have to appreciate his approach to impending death, where he foiled the hopes of the pious that he would waver in his atheism while still being remarkably genial in his responses to them. Death was only a deadline, and he kept on with his pursuits as long as his physical ability allowed, at times appearing to actually defy such.

He wasn’t an idol, in some cases he was a twit, but he had some appreciable traits too, many more so than Steve Jobs. If there’s a legacy left at all, I hope that it’s the knowledge that being forthright and outspoken has much more merit than being agreeable, but maybe we can foster a little more ability to eloquently lambaste something, too.

I mentioned earlier that I would include a tutorial on removing noise, and so I have: it can [...]]]> There have been a couple of things I’ve been working on and trying to update, and I finally have them available, so this post is simply a short list of new things available on the site.

I mentioned earlier that I would include a tutorial on removing noise, and so I have: it can be found here. Bear in mind that this is limited to noise from bad sensor pixels, the kind that shows up in many images, especially low-light or long exposure shots. The other kind of noise, usually multi-colored speckling from low light or high ISO, is a very involved thing to remove, and the tutorial would be much longer, but I still may get to that someday.

I might have to start teaching my students directly about the next one, which is how to effectively resize an image. I’m still amazed at how few people understand this, and how many websites I see where the images load slowly because no one knows how to make their images web-sized. You can save a lot of download time and server load by making web and e-mail photos the right size, and get better results from your prints too.

Last year I provided instructions on making a year-long guide to rise and set times for the sun and moon, and I have updated it for 2012 (formatting and leap year stuff.) Call me optimistic, but I didn’t cut it off after December 21st, either. It’s admittedly a bit fussy, but you only have to do it once and then have a quick reference for the sun and moon for the year, which you’re going to use frequently to get those great landscapes and ‘golden hour‘ shots, right?

And I figure I’ll just mention this here, rather than make another post about it. You may recall my taking Cecil Adams of “The Straight Dope” to task on his wishy-washy answer to the question, “Does god Exist?“, and apparently I wasn’t the only one. Yesterday, he responded to one of his detractors in a disparaging way, claiming that he really was making the point of how weak the Cosmological Argument is. I’ll be blunt: bullshit. If you’ve ever read the details of some of his answers, you’ll know that he’s more than capable of getting past the appearance of importance to deal with the crucial details, and if anything, his advisory staff is even better. Even the Straight Dope Message Board handed him his ass over the reply, which is no doubt what prompted the revisit. That he couldn’t do so without both shameless backpedaling and several petty digs is just a lack of character.