Thurs 07.02.09 - Dan's latest installation. Photo taken by Ms. jen with a Nokia N97.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Mon 06.29.09 - Speaking of Carl Zeiss lens's, Dan Rubin brought his lovely eBay steal of a Hasselblad with him to my last night in London meet up at the Phoenix Artist Club. And the Hasselblad had a Carl Zeiss lens on it. Everyone at the table was very excited when Dan brought the Hasselblad out of his bag.

Yes, photo geeks we are. All too true.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Mon 06.29.09 - As I was walking back to the Tower Hill Tube station after visiting Steve and Lobelia Lawson at their house barge on the Thames near the Design Museum, I saw The Gherkin, the glass skyscraper euphemistically named after a pickle rather than a phallic symbol, framed by the Tower Bridge. I was in a rush to not be late to meet up with folks at the Phoenix Club, but I stopped nonetheless to catch this photo.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sun 06.28.09 - Much fun was had by all at the post-birthday BBQ for Ms. Vikki Chowney that Camilla Blackett held at her fabulous loft flat at the Church in Camden. This photo was taken after a flat of Kinder Eggs and a fifth of Jose Cuervo tequila was procured. The chocolate exterior's of the kinder eggs were used as shot chocolates for the tequila. It was later determined by the testers that rum worked better in the kinder eggs than tequila, as rum is more favorable to milk and white chocolate. Tequila would do better in a dark chocolate egg.

Allix formed the internal plastic kinder egg cases into jewellery for Cam.

Thurs 06.25.09 - Praise the minor and major deities that rule over YouTube and BTInternet! I have *finally* after 2 days of trying, got video uploaded. In case you were wondering, the internet connection at my hotel in London had slowed the BTInternet snail got off the salt bed intact and found a nice cool misty forest to traverse over, thus while it was still slow it was reasonably slow rather than chew my f*ing arm off slow.

Thus, here it is my video of Phil Campbell reviewing the Nokia N86's video capacities mere minutes after Anssi Mäkelä handed us the phones as we got in the car to go to the Carl Zeiss lens factory tour.

Phil was quite happy with the video capabilities of the N86, and I am more than quite happy with the photography capabilities (with the exception of the focus on the macro setting, but that can be fixed in a software update).

My full review of the N86 and my review of the Carl Zeiss factory tour upcoming.

Panorama photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.

Tues 06.23.09 - This panorama is a bit clunky, as I was just learning how to use it, but I love it. I love the Panorama option on the Nokia N86's camera.

Late this afternoon, I will board an airplane at LAX to travel to Stuttgart, Germany, with the eventual destination of arrival in Aalen tomorrow evening. The important detail here is that Aalen is the home of one of the two Carl Zeiss lens factories in the southern part of Germany.

Yes, that Carl Zeiss, the Carl Zeiss of gorgeous Hasselblad lens kits, the Carl Zeiss lenses that photographers drool over for their (D)SLR's, the Carl Zeiss lens that has been on every Nokia Nseries camera phone since the N90. Yes, that Carl Zeiss lens.

Now I love factory tours. Love 'em.

This love dates back to elementary school when we were taken on a tour of the Laura Scudder's peanut butter and potato chip factory in Los Angeles. I love the maze of machines, I love the idea of constructing items within this large space and seemingly endless array of processes. I have gone on tours of champagne bottling, plum jam, peanut butter, extra large printing presses, among others.

On Monday, I get to go tour the Carl Zeiss lens factory.

Photography + Great Design + High Tech Factory + Tour = HAPPY!!!

***********

The next equation I will write about in this series on the Carl Zeiss tour, will be what makes a great digital or mobile phone camera:

Lens (optics) + Sensor Chip + Algorithms + Memory

For as much as I can get ear worms of songs stuck in my head for weeks at a time, I also find that a line or two of poetry can worm into my head, reverberate, expand, and live a full multi-week life, and not exit.

Lately, I have had two lines of poetry on rotation in my head along with will.i.am's* "Chunky" from Madagascar 2, one line from "The Act" by William Carlos Williams and one line from Ursula Le Guin's "The Old Lady".

Tonight I will point you to William's "The Act" as I blogged about it when Vanessa, Edel, and I were turning it into an interactive flash piece in February of 2006:

The Act

There were the roses, in the rain.
Don't cut them, I pleaded.
They won't last, she said.
But they're so beautiful
where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said,
and cut them and gave them to me
in my hand.

Tomorrow or the next day I will blog about Le Guin's wonderful new poetry book, Incredible Good Fortune. For now I am off to bed.

* p.s. Am I the only one who thinks that will.i.am and animation team at Dreamworks are having good fun at poking at "My Humps?"

Mobile Tidbit #1: I just tweeted:

LG Viewty Smart & Samsung Pixon will do it, will Nokia & Apple do it? Choosing camera focus with touch: http://tinyurl.com/touchfocus

Honestly the most interesting bit of the new camera phones that LG and Samsung have coming out is not the 8.1 megapixels on the LG Viewty Smart nor the 12 megapixels on the Samsung Pixon, but the fact that both of them will be using the touch screen to introduce a "manual" focus to camera phones. By touching the area of the view screen, you can choose what part of the photo that you want the camera to focus on. This is exciting.

I am *shocked* that the Apple UX geniuses did not first come up with this innovative use of the touch screen as applied to camera phones, but then again, I am not really shocked, as the camera is just an after thought on the iPhone.

When I had my 45 minute trial of the Nokia N97 at SXSW where I compared its photos to the photos that my Nokia N95 took, my biggest complaint about the Nokia N97's photos is that the focus was off. It would be great if the N97 had the touch focus feature on it, as then I could have chosen where or who I wanted the camera to focus on rather than have sharp backgrounds and slightly blurry subjects.

Hey Nokia! That first firmware update for the Nokia N97... The update you will most likely release in July? Make sure that touch screen camera "manual/auto" focus is a part of that update, as it is too brilliant and and too useful to be left out.

Mobile Tidbit #2: What is in a Name?

For the last 5.5 days, I have been calling my new lovely Google I/O gift mobile device the "Android HTC Magic", as that is what folks that the Google I/O conference were calling it. But I heard at the event some folks calling it the G2 or the HTC Ion.

When I was hanging out with Justin yesterday, he was calling it the G2. And today on Android and Me, Taylor calls it the Google Ion (HTC Sapphire).

People, can we decide on one name and stick to it? Thanks.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her HTC Magic camera phone.

Sat 05.30.09 - Even though the Google Android HTC Magic phone only has a 3.2 megapixel camera, HTC and the Android team have put them heavy lifting image algorithms to work, as this mobile device takes the best looking photos daytime and strong light I have seen from a device that is under 5 megapixels. The phone has no flash, so night time or action photos are usually blurred.

The new Google Android phone did a great job on local flowers today even though the daylight was gray from June Gloom cloud cover. I purposely put the camera lens within 4 inches of the big vine flower. The camera auto-focused on the buds behind and to the left of the big flower, as well as distorted the color of the big flower a bit to the orange, but nonetheless, the photo turned out surprisingly nice for a 3.2 mp camera with no close-up function.

The big failing so far with the HTC Magic is that there is not a sharing application, like Shozu, to send the images to places on the web. From the photo gallery one can send the photos to email, messaging, and Picassa, but not to Flickr or to one's blog.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Thurs 05.14.09 - Now on to color research and comparison, I am trying out different shades of aubergine. To this end, I after I dropped Scruffy McDoglet off at the groomers, I walked into India Sweet & Spices to buy little cute baby eggplants in a range of shades to see what colors of aubergine I could capture for a design I am working on.

Yes, design research with vegetables. They will make a tasty saute or bake later.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sat 05.09.09 - Bird jumping and Mom spotting at Dog Beach.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Mon 05.04.09 - Late this afternoon, Erika and Erin arrived after body boarding in the choppy surf near the Seal Beach Pier. For the next four hours we had a lovely time: laughing, catching up, making dinner, eating dinner, talking about books, Facebook, hot guys, trying on various shades of red lipstick, and more laughter.

I think Erin needs to move back to LA.

Photos taken on Sat. 05.02.09 by Jen Hanen with a Nokia N79.

Sat 05.02.09 - Oh Sweet, Young Love. Sometimes when one of your friends is in love, it can be a bit too sweet, a bit sticky; but at other times it can be sweet indeed to know your friend is so happy.

It was good fun to hang out with James Whatley and Vikki Chowney today, and sweet indeed to see them both so happy. I am glad that they decided to take their much needed holiday, or escape from London to SoCal.

We had a good time going to dim sum at the Elite Restaurant in Monterey Park, driving around downtown, stopping to take photos at the Gehry Disney Concert Hall, driving from the start of Sunset Blvd at Main Street all they way to the 405 fwy, and then off to the Getty Center and Museum on the hill for the views and the art. After toddling about the Getty for a few hours Matt Singley and his lady met up with us and I departed for home.

All and all a lovely day.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Tues. April 21, 2009 - Carnations are interesting flowers, in that depending on place and culture, they can be seen as cheap, throw away flowers of the industrial flower age or as a flower of celebration and history, or as flowers of ritual, time and place.

In California for most of my lifetime, they are the cheapest flowers that one can buy in a mixed bunch at the supermarket or on a busy street corner. To purchase carnations says that the buyer did not think, as well as the grocery store carnations smell bad in a clean sort of industrial way.

According to various sources online, carnations have a grand and long line as a meaningful and majestic flower through history. And last year, when I was in the south of India, they were everywhere and beautiful. Bright red and yellow carnations floating in big bowls of water, being strewn in the streets of Chennai by a funeral procession, or in the streets of Panaji as a shrine, used as the flowers in garlands for wedding and laced along gates & buildings, temples, and trees.

Given the context and color and look of the carnations in India, they did not convey cheap and industrial, but were lovely, sacred, and vibrant.

When I saw this typically modern American red & white carnation washed up in the intertidal zone of the beach today, instead of thinking of my not so great American carnation associations, I thought of the loveliness of the flower in India and its role in ritual.

I wondered who tossed it in the Pacific Ocean and for what life occasion. Then, with the diurnal ritual known as the tides, the Pacific brought it to the beach. And I photographed it.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N95.

Sat 04.18.09 - Ever since Tammy saw Mary Tsao's fabulous photo of her pregnancy that I favorited on Flickr, Tammy asked if we could do a photo shoot with her and Magnolia (aka Bird) before the new baby arrives. Given that Tammy is now in the last 2-3 weeks of her pregnancy, I have asked her every couple of days the last two weeks if she would like to do the photo shoot today?

It has never been the right time, until late this afternoon when Tammy and Bird showed up at my door all dressed up to go to a play. It was not quite yet the 'golden hour' but in the shade between the apartment buildings the color and lighting was just right for my Nikon FM3a. We took half a roll of Agfa slide film at that Jason Schupp had given me last year with Bird performing admirably and taking good photo art direction.

When I pulled out my Nokia N95 to get a few digital stills, Bird started to act up. Whether it was being so good for the previous 10 minutes or whether it was the appearance of my tried and tested Nokia camera phone, but Bird started to goof off. The above photo was the best of the photos from my Nokia, the best in a good cheeky way. Go Bird Go!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Fri. 04.17.09 - This afternoon, I met up with my mom to go to lunch and to see the Roger Kuntz painting exhibition, Roger Kuntz: The Shadow Between Representation and Abstraction, at the Laguna Art Museum. We had a delightful outdoor garden patio lunch across PCH from the Museum at the Madison Cafe and Gardens before we headed over to the Museum to see the Roger Kuntz show.

Both my mom and I truly enjoyed Kuntz' Freeway series of paintings from the early 1960s as they had strong light and shadow all the while hovering between Abstract Expressionistic Color Field paintings and Pop Art. We also loved the marvelously impish "surrealistic pop" Blimp series from the early 1970s, I particularly liked the "Lunar Approach" and "Goodyear Hits Target".

My mom liked Kuntz works so much that she bought the exhibition monograph the Museum bookstore. As a small aside, my Grandma Grace studied painting under Roger Kuntz in the early 1960s, so after we went to the museum, my mom left to directly go over to my Grandma's to show her the Kuntz book.

Thurs 04.16.09 - One of my favorite Long Beach area artist/musician is Nicole Welke, who not only is a great musician, but is a fabulous painter of cutely subversive paintings. If you have been in the Ladies Room at Alex's Bar, you have seen her pink baby/bunny and little girl paintings on the walls. If you are a fan of the True Blood tv show, then you have seen Nicole's paintings.

Come out next Saturday night to Salon Pop to see Nicole's work in person and have a lovely time with the rest of us!

What: Art Show at Salon Pop, featuring Nicole Welke's paintings
When: Saturday, April 25, 2009
Time: 7-10pm
Where: Salon Pop, 1085 Redondo, Long Beach

Fri. 04.03.09 - After some prompting, the refrigerator repairman returned late this afternoon to replace the defrost motor in my fridge. The warmth of the spotlight contrasting with the blues of the late afternoon sun in the kitchen was lovely. Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Photo Credits: All photos taken by Ms. Jen either with her Nokia N95 (v.1) or Dustin's Nokia N97 prototype on Sun. March 15, 2009 at the Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, during SXSW Interactive. Nokia N95 photos on the left column, Nokia N97 on the right. Click on first photo to start the lightbox slideshow.

One of the best parts about SXSW Interactive this year was getting to not only hold the upcoming Nokia N97, but use it to take photos. Yes, I did actually put the Nokia N97 through its paces rather than just pet it.

Big thanks to the Nokia USA folks who were hanging out in the Austin Convention Center hallway and let folks stop by to check out (fondle, really) the new & upcoming Nokia Nseries and Eseries devices.

Thus, the above photo comparison is a straight showdown between my own Nokia N95 (N95-1 - two years old) and the soon to be released, much ballyhoo-ed, Nokia N97.

Yes, the touch screen and qwerty keyboard on the N97 were delicious. Yes, I drooled. Yes, I love the new Symbian Series 60 version 5 OS. Yes, I want one. But... and the big but for me, before I purchase, is how will the camera really perform?

All the features are great, but if the camera is not as good as my current, 2 year old, completely paid for Nokia N95, then what is the point of getting a new device? I am in the market for a new Nokia Nseries, but I want a camera that is better than the one on my current N95, not as good or less than.

All the photos above were taken in the Austin Convention Center hallway during the Nokia Sunday afternoon meetup to see how the Nokia N97 would perform against the N95 (with most recent firmware update v. 30.something.something). I asked all the people to hold the same pose so that the photo set up would be the same for each photo and I turned the flash off on both camera phones. The lighting was sun streaming in through big windows and some overhead fluorescent lighting. Between the lighting, the neutrals of the ACC, and the white walls, I was interested to see how clear the Nokia N97 images would be and would they veer towards the warm or cool in the color spectrum.

Disclaimer* aside, while the Nokia N97 prototype that I used for the above photos did an ok job, the photos were slightly less clear than my Nokia N95's photos and warmer in color tone. I was really hoping that Nokia would seriously up the ante with the N97's camera, but for a camera phone that will be the top of the line and the flagship product from Nokia in 2009, I would hope that between now and release that the Nokia engineers and programmers will upgrade the N97's software and tweak the camera performance so that my Nokia N95 will not beat it in another photo comparison in a couple of months time.

*DISCLAIMER: The Nokia N97 that Dustin Randall (aka DocMobile) had for me to play with is a prototype, of which the browser and other software bits were not fully ready for prime time. Which if some of the software on the prototype N97's was faulty, then it stands to reason that other bits may be to. Whether the camera software on the device was ready or not , Nokia does have some work to do, as the N95 is still taking better photos..

Sat 02.28.09 - My Mom and I decided to drive up and explore Lake Havasu City to combat "cabin fever" this afternoon, as we drove north on the Arizona Hwy. 95, I decided to stop at the Bill Williams Wildlife Reserve "scenic view" spot for photos. Scenic it was.

All photos taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N95 and stitched together with Fireworks.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with Mom's Nokia N82

Mon 02.23.09 - The rear guard / back up troops have arrived... Mom and Scruffy pulled into my brother's place in Parker, AZ, around 5pm or thereabouts today. My mom kindly agreed to come out to Parker to help me keep Cam resting and taking care of himself.

Which is a very good thing, since when I walked out of Joe's house this morning to go across the street to my dad's place to check on him, I found my dad in one of his crony's trucks about to take off to go to have coffee. Grrrr....

While it seemed like a good idea after a night's rest, when Cam returned from the jaunt, he was much worse for the wear and more willing to go back to his bed and nap. When Mom showed up, she told him that if he didn't behave that she would get a electronic dog training collar for him and set up a perimeter. She was only half joking.

On the night of the U.S. Presidential Inauguration, Tues. Jan. 20, 2009, musician and hostess extraordinaire Kerry Getz threw an Inauguration party and House Concert at her place on Balboa Island. It was a lovely party and the music was amazing. I tried to get a round of the Beatles "Here Comes the Sun" going, but we didn't get very far, though all the musicians who played were delightful.

As Steve and Lobelia Lawson were playing their set, I video'd one of the songs with the Nokia N82 and one with the Nokia N85. I then took the movie files, unaltered, and uploaded them to Vimeo, and have now embedded both mobile videos above for you to watch and determine if the Nokia N82 or the Nokia N85 wins for best picture, sound, and all around video quality. I hand held both mobiles, there was no external microphones or lighting to aid the videos.

What you see & hear is what you get from the Nokia N82 and the Nokia N85. What do you think? Which mobile wins the video wars?

Mon 02.16.09 - A candle shrine inside La Placita Church.

Yesterday, I took Steve Marshall on a curated tour of Los Angeles; by curated, I mean sites picked by me as interesting, opposed the usual Santa Monica, Venice, Hollywood and Beverly Hills tour of LA. The most delightful parts of our day were visiting the La Placita Church and Union Station.

I have loved Union Station since I was a child, but yesterday was the first time I stepped into La Placita, the oldest church in Los Angeles. The interior reminded me of a smaller version of San Thome in Chennai, as both churches were fairly plain inside* and just as delightful.

From Explore El Pueblo de Los Angeles:

Directly across Main Street from the Plaza, La Placita Church is the oldest Catholic Church in Los Angeles. It was first established in 1784 as a chapel. Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles (Our Lady Queen of the Angeles Church) or Old Plaza Church as it is also known was completed in 1822.

19th Century Photos of La Placita from Wikipedia:
A photo of the church from 1869
A photo by W.H. Jackson from the 1890s

My Flickr photoset from yesterday's Photowalk.

Los Angeles - At least one facet thereof. Union Station.

Thur 02.12.09 - Or the Nokia N95 is back in action.

Wed 02.12.09 - The Nokia viNe project N82 has been decommissioned. I will be sad to see it go back to WOM World, as the Nokia N82 is my absolutely favorite camera phone to date.

I am back on my Nokia N95 until after SXSW, when I will buy my very own black N82.

Photo of Scruffy McDoglet guarding, very diligently, a plate of apple slices taken with a Nokia N82 on Tue. 02.12.09

Sat 02.07.09 - Make Magazine's profile of sculptor Reuben Margolin's beautiful wave creations. More of Make's videos at their You Tube channel.

Rather than treat you all to my annual Groundhog Day's post or my annual St. Bridget of Kildare Day's post, I will say "Happy Birthday!" to my dad, Cam, and regale y'all with my totally lame film watching habits.

Yes, if you know me in IRL, you know that I live without a TV and maybe see a movie a year, until recently when I decided to get a Netflix subscription to watch on my laptop while I code and to ostensibly get caught up on the films I have wanted to see but never did. It is slow going, mostly because I receive the DVDs from Netflix, put them on a shelf, never open then, feel guilty about 6 weeks later, and then mail them back unwatched. Netflix, unrelentingly, keeps sending me more. Bastards.

Tonight, after finishing up work, and making dinner, I decided to actually open the "Amelie" Netflix packet and watch it. Amelie is every bit as delightful as folks have proclaimed it to be and more.

It is a perfect movie. A very singular vision. The color is beautiful. I love how stylized it is, in conception and in each scene. The story is delightful. I love mischievous heroines.

I may even watch it again before sending it back to the folks at the Netflix distribution center.

On the Groundhog Day's note: according to Punxsutawney Phil this morning, we will have another 6 weeks of winter. But NYC's Bloomberg biting Charles Hogg, is predicting an early spring. Regardless of winter or spring, California needs about 12 more weeks of rain and snow to get us out of the current drought. P. Phil, how is your rain predicting abilities?

Happy Candlemas | St. Bridget's Day | Groundhog Day!

Sun. Feb. 1, 2009 - It has become quite the thing to tilt-shift one's photos and make them look like architectural miniatures. Recently, I came across a tilt-shift maker and decided to try a photo or two.

Due to my style of photography, most of my photos were not successful, at least to my eye, when rendered in the tilt-shift mode. Except the above photo of a red white & blue curb in Kilkeel (or possibly Ballymartin - sorry I didn't geotag this photo at the time due to driving when I took it).

This photo was taken during the Around Ireland mobile / geo-photo project in the summer of 2006. I made many trips to Northern Ireland that summer, as I was attempted to suss out as much of the real NorIE from all the tales as possible.

Frankly, the Unionist towns CREEPED me out. They mean to. All that red, white and blue is meant to give the viewer a big case of the creeps. It is meant to keep you in line. It is meant to let you know who is boss.

The painted curbs and buildings, the Union Jack flags, the flags posted on light poles and painted on bridges in certain towns. It is all meant to send a sign. To the let the viewer and visitor know who rules this town.

Thus, the tilt-shift is perfect for this photo as the whole perspective becomes even more tilted than the drive by tilt already in the photo (taken at driving speed) and the tilt-shift technique blurs/focuses, and miniaturizes the objects in the photo. Just like sectarianism does for people's perspectives and lives.

Most of Northern Ireland is delightful. I have been back since 2006 to take my mom to NorIE, as her grandfather was from Ulster and much of my father's people were from Newry and surrounds. This is the land many of my people came from. I felt at home in much of the north. Except the towns with the red, white, and blue.

Fast forward to the recent U.S. election season. All the red, white and blue this election seemed darker and slightly creepy this past year, as if America was blurred and focused on a small dot, tilted in all the wrong places, and miniaturized in all the wrong ways. The emphasis on patriotism with out reflection, lock step to the party.

America, we have fought long and hard for our freedom, let's not fall down the dark, myopic hole of sectarian, partisanship. The flag is only a sign, a symbol, not an idol to worship. Let's take the opportunity of a new beginning to work together.

Original photo taken by Ms. Jen on 07.15.06 with her Nokia N80 while driving north in County Down on the Newry Rd to Belfast.

As a small note: I am neither Republican of the Irish or American variety, nor am I an Unionist of the Irish or American variety.

Sun 01.25.09 - Spied a fiddlehead fern unfolding while out on a walk with the dogs. Photo taken with a Nokia N82 camera phone.

Mon 01.19.09 - The last few weeks have been odd: sad at times, waiting, and mostly a feeling that I have outgrown my skin, making me think of Eustace desiring his dragon skin removed in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

The last eight years have been a steady downward spiral at the hands of a power hungry administration and I am ready for change. On Friday night, I was awoken half way through the night with the most beautiful dream of change, a new day for America where beauty, aesthetics, and compassion triumphs over power, war, and depression. This was an odd dream to have at a punk rock bowling tournament in Las Vegas.

Then last night, Vicki Pepper was so overcome by her excitement for tomorrow's Inauguration and shouted about it in happiness at the bar at the hotel. Today as we drove home from Vegas, I found myself voiceless due to a smoke-full Vegas, unable to really talk to my car mates and fretting. Fretting about tomorrow. Worrying about the safety of the Obama family. Worrying that America won't be able to pull out of the spiritual and cultural pall we have been under for the last eight years. But fretting amounts to a hill of beans and lost miles on the road.

So starting tomorrow, I will be letting the fretting go, looking forward to change, looking forward once again, looking around in my world to see what I can change, and not just hoping for Aslan to come cut us, America, out of our dragon skin. It is not one person or one new Administration but ourselves as a culture who will make the changes and shuck off the old skin for the new one.

All photos taken by Ms. Jen from Jan. 9 - 11, 2009, with either a Nokia N82 or a Nokia N85.

Tues 01.13.08 - Last week I emailed the lovely folk at WOM World asking if they would send me a Nokia N85 so that I could do a rigorous photography comparison with the Nokia N82.

Now for the record, after taking the Nokia N82 out to India for the Urbanista Diaries and having one in my possession this fall for the Nokia viNe challenge, I am very partial to the mobile camera phone wonder that is the Nokia N82. Also, let's note that in Sept. when I had the opportunity to fondle the Nokia N85 at the Nokia House lounge in Espoo, Finland, I found it lacking. I did not like the front faceplate keys on the Nokia N85 keys at all, nor was I excited about the fact that it was a slider. For photography, I prefer a candy bar to a slider or other bits to fiddle with. All I want to fiddle with is the camera, not the handset.

The photos above were taken one right after another with me making sure that the state of the subject, lighting, and other conditions did not change. The idea was to make sure that the only differentiating factor was the mobile device used to take the photo and its software, camera, lens, and flash. The N82 is noted to have the better camera, lens, focal range, and zenon flash. The N85, while the new device, is not noted for making a great evolutionary step forward for photography but instead a sideways step from the N82.

The N82 has a better flash and a better focal range than the N85, but the N85 takes the photos as you click, it does not focus and then capture. At times this is much more satisfactory as one is not frustrated as the camera focuses, but as you can see from the photos above the N82 takes much clearer and sharper photos than the N85. I conclude that it is worth it to wait for the N82 to focus rather than have the immediate satisfaction that the N85 is fast.

As for night and difficult lighting situations, I purposely took the camera phones to the badly lit red interior of Alex's Bar in Long Beach, California, which is the bane of rock photographers LA wide for the lack of spotlights and the red walls which eat light right on up before your camera can sense it. The N85 won in this situation when I turned off its flash and just had it shoot. It was fast, captured warm colors and made the most of the dim lighting, but the N85 failed miserably when I turned the flash on as it was dark and dim. The N82 was blurry and a bit darkish with no flash inside of Alex's, but with the lovely Zenon flash really lit the band right on up.

The other difficult situation that I took both camera phones to was the bright sunlight and water reflections of Huntington Beach's Dog Beach that included two white dogs, Scruffy & Belle. Usually the white fur plus the sunlight makes for a photo failure, esp. when it comes to rendering the form of the dog as they usually become just a white blob. Both the Nokia N82 and N85 did valiant jobs with the bright sunlight, white fur, and water reflections but the N82 rendered warmer, clearer colors and the N85 shifted the color slightly to the cold, blue spectrum.

Overall, other than the no flash at Alex's Bar, the N82 wins this round against the N85.

Up next: Round 2 - Punk Rock Bowling. Who will win in the lights of Las Vegas and the yellow shift of the Sam's Town bowling lanes? Check back next Monday for the answer on whether the N82 or the N85 will win...

****
Please note the following specifications on each camera phone:

The Nokia N82: 5 megapixel (2592 x 1944 pixels) camera, CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar™ lens, Focal length 5.6 mm, Focus range 10 cm ~ infinity, Macro focus distance 10-50 cm, Integrated xenon flash
v20.0.062 firmware (RM-313)

The Nokia N85: 5 megapixel camera (2584 x 1938 pixels) camera, CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar™ lens, Focal length 5.45 mm, Focus range 10 cm ~ infinity, Macro focus distance 10-50 cm, Dual LED flash
v10.045.53 firmware (RM-333)

Why do I list the firmware of the camera? Well, a recent update for the N85 is rumored to improve camera function via software and I will update both today so that this weekend's Round 2 will be on the most updated firmware.

Update: 01.14.09 - I made an attempt to update the firmware on the N85 today, as there are rumored improvements for the camera performance, but the ancient borrowed PC I used would kept disconnecting the Nokia Updater and the N85. Since, I don't want to send a bricked N85 back to WOM World, I gave up for today. Everyone I know either has a virus ladlen 2003 or older PC or they have switched to Macs. Over the Air (OTA) firmware updating can't come fast enough to the Nseries line for me.

My neighbor, Ryan, has been painting away all fall for the big opening at the Taylor de Cordoba gallery in LA this upcoming Saturday night. Consider this your invitation.

Ryan Callis
Are You Ready to Testify

Jan. 10 - Feb 14, 2009
Opening Reception: Sat. Jan. 10, 2009 6-8pm

Taylor de Cordoba
2660 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
310-559-9156
taylordecordoba.com
Google Map

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Tues. 12.30.08 - The International Year of Astronomy 2009 - go out and truly watch the night sky. (Video via APOD.)

Sat 12.27.08 - The Barflies.net post-Xmas White Elephant Party at the Hillskemper Haus.

Now that video is all the rage, Flash seems to have been sidelined to banner ads, games, and corporate websites.

I miss the days of silly, homemade, whimsical* Flash animations with very little purpose. While I am not a big fan of all Flash websites in which most of the time I immediately exit, I do like fun Flash.

Where have all the silly Flash animations gone? Are art students and high school students too broke to buy the education version Flash from Adobe and don't have a crack code? Are they too deep into WOW/Wii/XBox/etc and celebrating 4:20 to create their own Flash silliness? Are they too used to the Facebook & MySpace communities to put up their own websites?

Do you have a favorite fun Flash that has been created in the last 2 years?

************

* Let's not even talk about silly, off the wall animated gifs...

Tues 11.25.08 - This afternoon, my Mom and I drove down to the Laguna Art Museum to see the William Wendt exhibition, which is entitled, "In Nature's Temple: The Life and Art of William Wendt".

While some of Wendt's paintings were a bit too landscape-y and verging on the academic, many of them were delightful and a few were transformational. Almost all of the paintings in the exhibition were from his California days (1901 - 1930s) and they represented a California that is now gone or at least highly developed over.

For all of the wide, open landscapes, sycamore and eucalyptus trees as figures, and canyons turned majestic, I loved his approach to color the most: greyed out greens and darks that were purple, as they were the colors of California when she is cloaked in glory. And in that glory is how Wendt portrayed her. A glory that can only now be found in glimpses, if one takes the time to go hiking in the hills or up a canyon and one diverts one's eyes from the stuccoed McMansions on the ridgeline.

A docent overheard us talking about one of the paintings, and asked how we knew so much about painting and the California Impressionist era. I explained that I was the 5th generation of artist along my mother's line and that my mother's grandmother (great-grandma Rachel) dabbled in the California Impressionist style in a few of her paintings dating from 1910 - 1925 and that we still have the paintings in the family. I grew up with looking at those small paintings and we as a few others that my mom and grandmother have by other artists of the genre.

It is a genre I like and possibly love, as the California Impressionists were not painting in the vein of the American Romantics or Hudson Valley School or even the Ash Can School, but were taking queues from the innovations coming out of France and then applying the plein-air, loose marked strokes to the California that they saw.

Some of the best of the paintings we saw today could only have been painted in California, all while one could see the cues that Wendt had taken from Cezanne's Provencal period as well as a few tips from the Les Nabis. As we stood in directly in front of Wendt's work, most of the paintings dissolved into marks and colors, but when we backed up 15 to 20 feet, the paintings would look refined and defined, much like may Impressionist and post-Impressionist pieces.

Cues from the French or not, the true glory of the Wendt show at the Laguna Art Museum is the vibrant views of a California gone by. At times, I giggled at some of the works, "Look, Pacific Coast Highway as a one-lane dirt road." "Hey, when did Aliso Creek ever have that much water in it?" "This painting looks like the grand view of Santiago Creek and its Sycamores" etc.

A celebration of Los Angeles and Orange Counties long before the current blight of stucco and strip malls.

Ok, so I have failed the last 3 days to write something substantial in the morning for my NaBloPoMo challenge to myself. I am writing but...

Due to the headache and the nearness to the midnight hour, you all will be getting a few tidbits out of me.

1) The new Nokia viNe update for alpha/beta testers, Nokia viNe 1.02 (11/20/08 release) is FAST! Yay! Instead of the upload time taking forever, my 5 photos of this evening's sunset went so fast that I thought viNe was lying to me when it announced the upload was done. But it wasn't, all my photos were up on my Sports Tracker account and up at the nseries.com Nokia viNe flash viewing thingy. Yay!

The Nokia viNe 1.0 was supposed to be released to the wild last week, but they have delayed it and I will let you know when it is out.

2) As for MOCA's economic failure and near collapse of the institution, I have a few things to say. I bent Tammy's ear about tonight, but it can be all summed up in the fact that I think they have been way to rock star-y high brow about the contemporary art they were showing and did not really interact with the community over the last decade.

The Hammer museum has done a *great* job of involving the community by putting on annual group best of shows (best LA MFA graduates, best of LA young artists, etc), as well as having lectures and other community events that draw folks in. I would love it if MOCA were to have a best of LA young artists or best of Downtown artists or best of east side taggers or best LA mid-career artists that haven't had a one person show yet. Etc. etc. etc.

MOCA, I would rather drive downtown to see great local events at either your Main MOCA space or at the Geffen then drive to Westwood. Give me a reason to care about you. Give me a reason to want to participate. The Hammer does. The Getty does. So, why don't you?

The LA Times' art critic, Christopher Knight, has an Open Letter to MOCA.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time, knows that I am not a big movie person and that I eschew TV completely. Due to the lack of TV, unless I rent a DVD and watch it on my computer, I don't see movies.

But this last year, in an effort to join the rest of the human race, well - at least be up on some movies, I got a Netflix subscription to be able to watch some of the films that I have missed out in the last 25 years of luddite behavior. I have mostly received a movie or two a month from Netflix of which are either art house movies of the last two decades or movies of Jane Austin books or adaptions thereof.

Tonight, after the movie sat on a shelf since August unopened, I watched Mira Nair's "Mississippi Masala". I love Mira Nair films, esp. "The Namesake" and "Mississippi Masala", as well as lighter fair such as "Monsoon Wedding". Mira Nair hits the mixture of family, displacement, life changes, tradition vs. modernity, and identity on the head in her movies.

I have spent most of my life in Southern California, born here to folks who have been in SoCal for 3-5 generations. For all of my living in SoCal for most of my life, I come from a long line, on both sides, of folks with itchy feet. Folks who move frequently, both in&out of California and within California. Folks who travel. Folks for whom settling is really something that other people do. Even though we keep leaving, we always come back to California in one way or another. I love this big, crazy sprawled out cities within the city / metro area with all the people in the world who have also made this city their home.

While I love Los Angeles, I have always felt not of this place. I love the land fiercely, but am also fiercely frustrated by the transient nature of this space which causes folks to abuse it so badly or attempt to mold it into what they had before they moved here. I have spent most of my life not feeling like I match any of the majority cultures or sub-cultures.

As a short, brown haired, brown eyed woman in a region that celebrates the blond beach bunny or blonde starlet du jour, I have felt culturally displaced most of my life. Did I mention that by and large, I dislike Hollywood? Maybe it is my dislike of the stereotypes that Hollywood pushes out to the rest of the world that makes me so fiercely reject watching or consuming their products. More than just maybe.

Most of my Netflix watching this last year has been British, Italian, or Indian films or films made by British, Italian or Indian folk who live in other places. Not so odd that.

What I like about Mira Nair films, is while they celebrate the Indian expatriate or migrant experience, she also keenly shows us characters that are trying to navigate cultural spaces that are not always home. Ms. Nair's films focus on the experience of characters who are navigating the waters of cultural otherness all the while they are fighting for their own space in that place and discovering their identity between two worlds.

When I watch a Mira Nair film brings into sharp focus a question that I ask myself almost every day, really where is home?

I haven't found it, yet, I yearn for home with all my heart.

I will admit that I have a photography problem. In any given week, I will take over 200 photos and if the day contains a good event or if I am out and about, I can take up to 100 photos in a day.

Most days, per reviewing my iPhoto install, I will take between 10 - 20 photos or more. It has been my goal the last few years to take at least a photo everyday and then to post, usually via moblogging directly from my camera phone to this website, everyday.

There are a few days every month where I don't take a single photo. At all. Usually the no photos days are a day where I am chained to my computer working and I am too involved in said project to go out and about or even to remember to take a photo. Or if I do take a photo, it is a dud that involves the interior of my house or my dog. Y'all have seen enought photos of Scruffy.

Today, I have been wrapped up in finishing a website redesign. I thought that I should take the Nokia N82 with me when I went to the store, but I by accident left it on the charger at home. I did see two very extraordinary California Pelicans flying close to the car, that if I had the mobile camera phone with me, I would have a photo for you all today. But I left it at home.

Due to absent mindedness, I didn't take a pelican photo. A good mobile camera phone, like a Nokia Nseries, always at hand is essential to my daily photo workflow, but if I forget to take it with me... well, it becomes a day with out a photo.

Sun 11.16.08 - Today I set my alarm clock to wake me up at 8am (on a Sunday!) so that I could meet up with Julie Wanda, Jessica B, and their friend Beth at Julie Wanda's house in Orange, so that we could drive up to the Shriner's Auditorium near USC in Los Angeles for the Felt Club.

There was a huge line around the building and parking structure a good half-hour before the event even started and once we got in it took rigorous, organization to be able to see all the booths and not get too separated. I went along, not because I was planning on shopping, but to see a bit of the world that many of my friends love - crafting - and have the time to hang out with and talk to Julie Wanda, which was worth it. After 3 hours of the zaniness that was a couple of thousand folk milling around the Shriner's, I was ready to get the heck out of dodge and have some lunch.

All in all it was very good to see the amazing creativity of the folks who are involved in the alt-craft / alt-art scenes. My favorite booth was the Nifer Fahrion felted elf ladies, super cool nifnaks and the Nifer elf gals were also super cool. Julie Wanda bought one of the black & white flower brooches to wear with her conservative work suits as a sprucer-upper.

Jessica was very excited to buy two squirrel prints from the Berkley Illustration, which were super cute and subversive all at the same time.

While very crowded, the Felt Club was fun browsing and great people watching.

I may have invited y'all before, but the Seal Beach art | music | writing salon meets once every two months for a night of art, music, and poetry/reading - and drinking & snacking & talking. It really is a mishmash of folk from all over SoCal and from a variety of creative disciplines. This Saturday is the 1 year anniversary and they are moving the location to Dan Callis' new studio on Marina Dr. Come join us, it will be fun.

What: The Seal Beach Salon's First Anniversary
When: Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008
Time: Starts at 6pm, ends at 10pm.
Where: 700 1/2 Marina Drive* at Dan Callis' new studio (just back from the corner of Marina & PCH, in the yard behind the flower shop & plumber that are on PCH in the same building) - Google Map
Who: Filmmakers Hobo Soul will be showing their film in an RV, Dan Callis will be having an Open Studio, poet Aaron Belz will be giving a reading, and Avi Buffalo and Band will be performing.

Bring: Yourself, friends, and beverage of choice.

Come and join us in Seal Beach on Saturday evening.

All Photos taken by Jen Hanen with a Nokia N82 at the Haute Dog Howl'o'ween Parade, Oct 26, 2008, in Long Beach, CA.

To view the Lightbox slideshow, please click on the thumbnail you wish to see and then use the "Next" & "Previous" to maneuver through the slideshow.

Big thanks to all the folks at Haute Dogs for putting on a fun parade and many thanks to our own Scruffy McDoglet & Belle Le Cane for being willing to be dressed up and sit on a dog parade float!

Update: More photos of the Howloween Dog Parade can be found at howloween.info.

Sat 10.25.08 - At the Getty for the Bernini exhibition.

The G-dcast's first CartoonCast with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner on Genesis 1. Delightful.

Sat 10.11.08 - Water hole cover as seen this evening on a sidewalk in Culver City, Calif.

Sun 10.05.08 - The 12th Annual Japan America Kite Festival at the Seal Beach pier. The sky was beautiful.

Tue 09.30.08 - The air was so very clear this evening that not only could I see Catalina clearly, but also San Clemente Island to the south and Santa Barbara Island just to the north. Extraordinarily lovely.

For the next two months I am participating in the Nokia viNe project, of which a number of different folks from around the world have been given trial Nokia N82's that have a new Nokia geo-tracking-photo-video-music application* called lifeviNe**. At its most simple, lifeviNe is a 2nd major iteration of SportsTracker mobile app that has been repurposed and redesigned for photo and video geo-tracking rather than adding photos to one's workout.

This past February, I had the opportunity to participate in the Nokia Urbanista Diaries, where four bloggers / photographers were sent around the world in four separate two-week trips. During the Urbanista Diaries trip, we used Nokia N82's to take photos, all the while we ran SportsTracker as we went out and about. At the end of every "Workout", I would upload the "Workout" to my account at the SportsTracker web site, and then the Urbanista Flash app on the Nokia Nseries website would display my/our photos on the geo-tracked-located-mapped route for each of the Urbanista Diarists.

Sun 08.31.08 - At the Assumption Church for the Long Beach Greek Festival.

Tues 08.19.08 - This evening I drove up to LA to Venice Beach to meet up with a very jetlagged Donna & Colin from WOM World along with Amir, Bryan, Jean, Jeb, and Mike at the Sidewalk Cafe. As we were walking out, I looked up and was enchanted by the blue of the sky, the old wires, and the striped awning.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 in Chennai, India.

Fri. 08.15.08 - Happy Birthday to the Republic of India!

Sun 08.10.08 - Los Mysteriosos played a great set at Alex's Bar tonight.

Sun 07.27.08 - Scruffy and Belle enduring apartment torture.

Sat 07.12.08 - Painter Ryan Callis and Poet Chris Davidson decided nearly a year ago to start an art / writing / music salon every two months in Seal Beach as a way to lure the Silverlake hipsters out of their lairs and out into the big wide world of SoCal.

The Salon has been quite successful with 30-50 attendees (mostly artists and writers) the second Saturday of the odd numbered month. I went last time (May) and had a good time listening to folks present their work and talking with other attendees of the artistic and writerly persuasions.

Ryan approached me about presenting some of my work at this month's Salon two weeks ago with the statement that the web has been under represented so far. I decided that I would promote all things web / mobile and photography by showing some of my India photos from the Urbanista Diaries adventure.

The other presenters were: Los Angeles painters Liz Carney and Feo Voronov, who displayed and spoke about their paintings (Photo of Liz Carney above with one of Feo's paintings on the wall next to her). Poet Patty Seyburn read from four of her poems. And Summer Darling played an acoustic set.

The constraint for the evening was that I had to show my work, describe my process and be done in 10-15 minutes.

Thus, I decided that I would actually present on a dual set of subjects: One being the adventure and process of geo-mobile-photo-blogging with the Nokia N82 on the Urbanista project and the other being the phenomenon of photowalking and making friends through Flickr groups. How would I cover so much ground and images in 15 mintues?

I distilled my presentation down to the bare minimum facts on mobile photo blogging and then specifically talked about the 4th Chennai Photowalk. I took all the photos that I took from the Chennai Photowalk and put them in a slideshow that played while I spoke on the Nokia Urbanista event and on the Chennai Photowalk folks. It was great fun and the audience liked not just the Chennai photos but also the whole idea of photowalking.

All in all, Salon #5 was delightful.

Sun 07.06.08 - All Photos taken by Ms. Jen whilst on a bike ride from Seal Beach to Dog Beach in Huntington and back again with a Nokia N95.

Wed. 06.18.08 - The more sedate exterior of Kimberly's glovebox.

Tues 06.17.08 - Two of Grandma Grace's recent art works on display.

Alternate title: Why my next phone will be a black Nokia N82 & not an iPhone...

The iPhone 3G that was announced today during Steve Jobs' keynote at the Apple WWDC in San Francisco and the Apple fanbois/grls were drooling, as well as drowning Twitter into a catatonic state with their drool.

I waited patiently next to my laptop for over 2 hours this morning to see if Apple would add two features to the iPhone that would convince me that it might be a good phone for creators. What two features would that be?

1) An upgraded camera that would make it at least competitive with other phones in its price range, at the very least a minimum of a 3.2 megapixel camera. If Apple really wanted to make creators drool, then 5 megapixels with a good lens that would be competitive to the Nokia N95 and N82.

2) Video recording capacity. My mom's crap little camera phone that she bought 2 years ago for half the price of an iPhone can record video. iPhone's can play video but they can't record it.

So, I wait by Twitter, MacRumors, and Engagdet Mobile. The announcements starting rolling in... $199! 3G! GPS! Approved applications store coming! Thinner! Plastic! White & Black!

Wake me up when the Jobs announces a real camera... snooze snooze snooze...

zzzzzzzzzzzzz....... Twitter dries itself off and comes back online and I notice that none of the fanbois/grls are tweeting about the camera. Hmmmm...

Off to the Apple site I go looking for the new iPhone 3G specs... After 10 minutes of reloading it, the new specs come up just before noon.

Guess what?

1) No new camera. Same old 2 megapixel, puny lensed, blurry non-wonder as last year, only addition is geo-tagging of photos with new GPS feature.

2) No video capture / recording.

The iPhone 1.0 and 2.0 are beautiful mobile devices with a lovely User Interface (UI) but why nearly all consumption and very little creation?

I am disappointed. I wanted to be able to have more than just the Nokia N95 and N82 to recommend to fellow artists, friends, and family when they are looking for a new kick ass camera phone with an easy to use UI, internet, and GPS.

To quote James Whatley, "Meh. Next."

To quote me, "One would think that Apple would have upgraded the phone to at least 3.2 megapixels... As Bill the Cat would say, 'Ack! Pphhhbbbtttt!' "

Unless something better comes down the pipe, my next camera phone will be the black Nokia N82. Nokia, release a North American 3G version of the N82 at $199... Kick Apple's bootay!

Fri 06.06.08 - Two women painting on the beach as seen this morning while walking Scruffy.

Tue 06.03.08 - Here is a photo from this morning's walk on the greenbelt of my favorite local tree in dappled light. It is a fairly young sycamore (plane tree, for the Brits), probably less than 20 to 40 years old, but already trifurcated and growing in bendy, lovely directions. It will be a glorious tree in 80 - 120 years from now, much like the Wedding Lawn Sycamores at my Uncle John's house or the Sycamores that line Santiago Creek at Irvine Regional Park.

I wanted to spend the time to blog about the Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom food photo / blogging contest and voting that is going on right now, but I had a long day working on deadline and a very frustrating evening. So, click on the link to Food 2.0 above to vote on the best of the photos & blogging and I will make the blog post tomorrow when I am in a better mood.

The movie "Sex in the City" was released today. My reaction is "meh." A friend sent around an email to a group of us asking if we wanted to go to lunch or to see "Sex in the City". I voted for lunch. Date to be determined.

Now let me make a few caveats:

1) I have not ever owned my own TV. In fact, I have not lived in a household with a TV since college. That is nearly two decades of TV-less living. I am VERY behind in my TV watching by choice. So, I have never, not once, seen the HBO TV series "Sex in the City".

2) In recent months, to not appear to the the serious computer savvy luddite or jacobite that I can be at times, I got a Netflix subscription of 2 movies a month, of which I watch on my MacBook Pro with headphones. My Netflix movie subscription has most comprised of Bollywood romantic comedies (no kissing, no real handholding), Jane Austen movies (Extensive handholding in the countryside), an odd happy indy foreign film, and a few indy cinema classics.

Basically, I did not grow up in a happy, intact family in the 'burbs, so I really don't like horror movies, film noir, serious complex indy films, and throw away sex movies. I grew up in a constantly divorcing & moving family in the sometimes burbs and now I like nice, happy movies with redemptive endings. Mock me all you want to, I lived the shit and now I want a happy ending.

3) New York is a foreign country to me. London and Mumbai are much more familiar cities to me. I have been to NYC a number of times and could not wait to get out. My last visit, I stayed for only four hours to go to dinner & see a band, and then got out as fast as possible. I love London, I go there all the time. I fell in love with Mumbai this February and plan on going back soon.

Movies and TV shows about New York are odd to me. It is another culture, a bizarre one at that, that I really don't get. Los Angles, London, Istanbul, and Mumbai, I get and like. I will watch films about those cities.

4) If you have met me then you know a very important fact about me, I have a case of terminal nice girl. Forget the funny colors in the hair (honey, that is all about art & color), forget the tendency towards loud & fast music, forget the tendency towards outrageous stories (I am a Hanen after all!), but remember I am a nice girl despite the colorful external trappings. Viva extensive handholding in the countryside!

End of caveats.

One thing I have done for years, to make up for my lack of TV watching and movie attendance, is to read the LA Times' film review section in the Friday Calendar so that I can at least know some of the plot and the critics' opinions on the latest movies. I surprise friends with my skimmed knowledge of the latest flicks at times even when I have no intention of seeing them at all, not now in the theatre or later on DVD.

After my friend's email and all the hype about "Sex in the City" to women of my age group (post-25, pre-60), I made sure that I read today's LA Times review about the movie. It was glowing. It made love to Carrie, Samantha, et al. The LA Times critic, Carina Chocano, seems to think even though they would deny that they ever stepped into the theatre that men would like the movie. The LA Times asserts that the film is quite revolutionary for Hollywood, in that it depicts middle-aged women (40-50) having a complete, fulfilled independent life.

"Sex and the City" can't rightly be called a romantic comedy in the dismal, contemporary sense, though it is at times romantic and is consistently very funny. It's also emotionally realistic, even brutal. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), now in their 40s and 50s, continue to navigate the choppy waters of urban life, negotiating relationships, work, fertility and friendship, only now the stakes are higher, the risks are bigger and decisions feel more permanent.

For a film that delights in indulging in frivolity at every possible turn, it examines subjects that most movies don't dare graze for their terrifying seriousness. And when it does, the movie handles them with surprising grace, wit and maturity. In other words, it's a movie for grown-ups of all ages. The press and industry screening I attended was uncharacteristically packed with women in their 20s, and my guess is that their interest had zero to do with the inclusion of Jennifer Hudson as Carrie's personal assistant -- though her character, Louise, is likable and allows the writer to expand the scope of the film from a story about four friends living in New York into a tale about the contemporary lives of urban women from early adulthood to maturity.

After I read this review, I thought, "Hmmm... maybe I will put it in my Netflix queue to watch much, much, much later."

But then the New Yorker's film critic, Anthony Lane, panned the movie as an extendede TV show on steriods, ending his review with this quote:

In short, to anyone facing the quandaries of being a working mother, the movie sends a vicious memo: Don't be a mother. And don't work. Is this really where we have ended up--with this superannuated fantasy posing as a slice of modern life? On TV, "Sex and the City" was never as insulting as "Desperate Housewives," which strikes me as catastrophically retrograde, but, almost sixty years after "All About Eve," which also featured four major female roles, there is a deep sadness in the sight of Carrie and friends defining themselves not as Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, and Thelma Ritter did--by their talents, their hats, and the swordplay of their wits--but purely by their ability to snare and keep a man. Believe me, ladies, we're not worth it. It's true that Samantha finally disposes of one paramour, but only with a view to landing another, and her parting shot is a beauty: "I love you, but I love me more." I have a terrible feeling that "Sex and the City" expects us not to disapprove of that line, or even to laugh at it, but to exclaim in unison, "You go, girl."

I really am not interested in watching a movie about NYC consumerist fashion obsessed women. If I wanted to watch something vaguely similar, even if the West Coast version, I could go to any upscale bar or restaurant in Newport Beach or the Westside of LA and watch it live and in person. Bah.

What ever happened to hand holding and true love or at least love that is concerned with others as well as self? I guess I will be missing "Sex in the City" and I could watch a Jane Austen flick or a Mira Nair movie. Or maybe I will read a book instead.

This week Sandra and I are working on an iteration or somewhat-redesign of her Debutante Clothing blog. The other night I went over to her house and used a photo of Justin's sister to make a big bold splash of a banner header.

But by the time I got home and all through yesterday day, I felt it was too bold for the rest of Sandra's blog and overwhelmed the content. This afternoon, I plugged my Wacom tablet in, turned on Fireworks, opened up the photo of the roses outside of Sandra's front door that I took on Tuesday evening and started to draw over the photo with colors from her blog.

I wasn't sure if Sandra would like the drawing for her masthead or if she liked our big bold statement, or if I should take the the drawn over roses and weave them into the new masthead I created on Tuesday evening.

Tuesday Evening's Masthead:

This Afternoon's Rose additions to the Bold Banner:

Now looking at the two ideas above, I thought of a subtler iteration:

What do you think?

For a variety of reasons, fast cars and even faster panicked dogs at the vet, the last few photos I have moblogged here have been blurry.

I am happy with them. Yes, blur is good.

When Greg took off before I could capture the photo of him & Ryan in the hot rod, I was afraid that my Nokia N95 could not and would not take the photo fast enough to capture Greg's peeling out on to Electric avenue. But the N95 did get the photo.

Last evening, as I drove north-east to Sandra & Justin's house in Ontario, I wanted to get a photo of the golden Brea Hills that were speckled with oak trees and shrubs. I kept pointing the N95 to shoot while I was driving at the or a bit over the freeway speed limit. Due to the fact that the sun was going down, the light was all wrong and I kept getting a bright sky with dark hills. I decided to fool the light meter in the N95 by pointing it low and then moving it to see a bit of the sky as the shutter was releasing, which caused the white out effect. I love it when I can get a Nokia camera phone to white most the landscape out but leave a few saturated objects, in this case the red car speeding by on the other side of the freeway.

This morning I took Scruffy for his yearly vet check up and shots. He gets nervous and shakes violently when he is at the Vet and the Groomers. This morning it took a while for the vet, Dr. Kali, to come into the examining room, so to distract Scruffy I tried to take photos as he attempted to jump off the exam table and into my arms.

It wasn't that bad. Scruff survived. I love how the N95 focused on his legs & paws on the exam table but everything else is slightly blurred.

Which brings up one of the major reasons I primarily shoot photos with my camera phone: the gift of a good shot within the randomness of very little control and the constraints of capturing good photos with a mobile phone.

About two weeks ago, I received an invitation to join a Flickr beta test. I was intrigued, so I said yes. I had to sign an NDA stating that for the love of a tasty chicken I would not breath a blog, twitter, or in person word that I was beta testing Flickr Video. Yes, Flickr can have my silence in return for uploading 60 seconds of various tasty chickens from India, SXSW 2008, and Scruffy & Belle.

Oh, what a delight. I have had quite a bit of fun over the last 2 weeks uploading videos, really participating in a Flickr group in a way that I have not been interested in or invested enough in before, and watching with baited breath what folks would post as their videos. And then there was the Fridget meme that Derek started...

In all truthfulness, while I appreciate YouTube, Google Video, and Vimeo, I am not drawn into these services. I don't wait to see what will be posted, I only go when someone else sends me a link. If the video is longer than 5 minutes, I don't watch, be it too much work or just plain not interested.

It has been very different with Flickr Video. I am drawn in. I love the short format of 60 to 90 seconds. As the Flickr folk said - think of it as a long photograph. I also love the fact that I can use the same uploader and same Flickr tagging and interface that I use for photos. The user interface is simple and easy to use and not just because I am used to it.

Most of all, I am having fun with video on Flickr in a way that has never been fun before. Thanks, Flickr! Y'all rock.

Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95, of which the Lifeblog is borked so this photo was uploaded via MT rather than moblogged.

Mon 03.03.08 - Driving towards the 110 southbound on Olympic Blvd., downtown Los Angeles, after having a lovely dim sum lunch at the Empress Pavilion with Megan and Murray McMillan.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Fri 02.29.08 - Happy Leap Day!

Wed 02.27.08 - Goodbye London and Oxfordshire, it was a lovely 3 1/2 days. Going home now.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Sun. 02.24.08 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 while on a walk around Hyde Park, London, UK. The color is accurate, I used the "night" mode on the Nokia N82's camera to get the light saturation.

Sat 02.23.08 - Stephansdom (aka St. Stephan's Cathedral), Vienna, Austria. Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Fri 02.22.08 - Photo by Ms. Jen in Vienna with a Nokia N82.

Fri 02.22.08 - Photo of Antonio Canova's tomb for the Archduchess Maria Christina by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 in Vienna, Austria.

Thurs 02.21.08 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

[note: This post was written on Feb. 18th in Goa, India, but could not be published until later due to lack of wifi or internet connection.]

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue."

India as the bride. From all of the billboards and other street advertising, India is big on weddings. Thus, I decided to pull the above proverb from the Euro-American tradition and use it as a major theme for the photos I would be taking / am taking with the Nokia N82 for the Urbanista Diaries trip to India.

It is fitting as South India, where I am visiting, is in a period of economic growth and cultural change. On every corner there is something old, something new, something colorful, and who knows... possibly something borrowed.

As I take photos of the India that I am photo walking and driving through, I am most intrigued and captured by the contrasts in architecture, color, typography / signage, and people in the cityscapes / landscapes, as well as the street dogs that are in all of the cities. The color and geometry of buildings in contrast to each other, the environment and the bustle of city life has been particularly intriguing.

In Chennai there was quite a bit of great art deco architecture, Bangalore is sprouting glass medium to highrises, Kerala is a mishmash of old dutch colonial and new sky scraping apartment buidlings, and Goa is a fascinating mix of old colonial Portugese with 1940s art deco to 1970s socialist brutalisme concrete block buildings.

India is the place to be if you are a graphic designer in love with type. The range of signage and advertising from hand painted to the highly sophisticated is amazing. And then the placement of said signs in their environmental milieu can be extraordinary.

I have not taken a lot of photos of people, unless I have their permission or if they are within the context of the cityscape / landscape. I hope that when I am in Mumbai there will be more opportunity to take appropriate people photos, esp. of street fashion. Today I saw a Goan couple walking down the street, she in cuffed jeans and he with a moderate quiff. Hmmm...

On top of what I am choosing to take photos of, I have after the Chennai Photo walk and viewing all 150 of those photos in the context of the Flash interface on the Urbanista Diaries site, I realized that they functioned almost as stop motion animation when the Urbanista slide show was fully loaded and playing smoothly with the big photos and the thumbnails. Since last Sunday's photo walk, I have been purposefully shooting a lot of photos, not deleting, and shooting multiples of a subject as I walk or drive past as to maximize the cinematic effect of the Urbanista flash slide show.

There you have it: Ms. Jen's photo theory thoughts on shooting mobile photos in India. For the moment at least.

Wed 02.20.08 - The subway adjacent to the Mumbai central railway station (formerly Victoria Terminus). Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Tue 02.19.08 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Photo by Ms. Jen on Fri. Feb. 15, 2008 in Goa with a Nokia N82.

Fri. 02.15.08 - Much like the independent film that came out in 2004, "A Day without a Mexican", I wonder when a film entitled "India: A Day without a Horn" will be made. Of course, it won't be an art house film, but an action thriller horror movie, as what would Indian drivers do without a car/truck/motorcycle/rickshaw horn... It could also be a comedy under the right writers and director.

Also, I love the artwork painting on trucks, esp. the front of the cab and on the tailgate. The truck above on the road between the Goa airport and Panaji was one of many with signs, art, and slogans on the tailgate.

Wed 02.13.08 - Fort Chochin, Kerala. Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Sat. 02.09.08 - San Thome Cathedral, Chennai, India. Photo taken with a Nokia N82.

Sat. Feb. 02.09.08 - As seen outside of the Amaravathi restaurant at the corner of Cathedral Road & TTK Road, Chennai, India. Photo taken with a Nokia N82 camera phone.

I will fly into India late Friday night / early Saturday morning from London to officially start the Urbanista Diaries adventure. And the very next morning at 8am, I will be meeting up with the lovely folk from the Flickr "Chennai Photowalk" group to go on a Photowalk of Mount Road in Chennai (Madras)!

This will not just be hitting the ground running, but photo-ing! Ok, bad pun.

I am excited. I like to plan for my photo and mobile blogging adventures a bit beforehand and it is always better if one can meet up with like minded people.

I am looking forward to next Saturday's Photowalk in Chennai. Big thanks to Chandrachoodan for organizing it!

Sat 02.02.08 - Ryan and Tammy at my Groundhog's Day Party.

24 hours ago saw myself and Tink arriving at Julie Wanda's house in Orange. The yearly January migration to Lost Wages had begun. Now, sitting on my little bed on the floor of our hotel room in Las Vegas, I am writing to report to you that this year's Punk Rock Bowling is shaping up very very nicely already. Happy Days.

Fun road trip out. Hanging out with friends at our annual Friday night cocktail party in the room. Going to see The Adolescents and 7 Seconds at Jillian's downtown. Breakfast at 1:30am at the hotel coffee shop. Yapping with more friends until 3:30am. My group has decided I must be running for Mayor...

So far I am having a ton of fun! Today is the big bowling day.

I am moblogging to this blog, to my flickrstream and to barflies.net's flickrstream as we go.

When I first heard of the new Nokia mobile app shipping with the new Nseries phones, Sports Tracker, I envisioned a mobile stop watch combined with GPS and a how many steps have you taken monitor. Dull. Sigh. Where is an updated, GPS enabled Lifeblog?

Ok, I grew up in a family that was sports obsessed, esp. my first stepdad - my mom's second husband. He was on the Olympic committee, competed in the Pan American games and has won in the Master's division of the some sort of spin off of the Olympics (Allison, help me here). My childhood, from ages 3 to 13, was spent with the stepdad, mom, and various other mom-related relatives who were pathologically compulsive about exercising at very darned opportunity.

Beach volleyball in the evenings? Check. Olympic style kayaking and canoeing? Check. Surfing? Check. Running? Check. Skiing? Check. Hiking with a pace meter and stop watch? Check!

By the time I was 8 years old, I was hiding when the folks were ready to go out for yet another bout of daily evening EXERCISE! Me hiding with my mom yelling at me that it was time to leave. My high school rebellion was to cultivate super-white, never see the sun skin. To do this in an ultra-athletic, sun-worshiping family was even more rebellious than teenage pregnancy or drug use. I kid you not. The cousins that got knocked-up and/or were smoking pot were excused as long as they were in competitive sports and winning.

The cousins have sports trophies and I have a great collection of black vintage dresses and goth jewelry. I also now have great skin.

So, the nice folks at Nokia's WOM World asked me to evaluate the Sports Tracker app, as it will be used on the Urbanista Diaries adventure as our way to track our path and upload our photos to the Nokia server.

Photos of the Irish Brothers taken on Thurs., Dec. 27, 2007 at Alex's Bar in Long Beach, Calif.

The true test of any camera is shooting movement indoors at night in low light situations with no flash. The ultra true test of any camera is shooting a band at Alex's Bar in Long Beach, Calif, as there are no windows, the interior lights are low, the walls are all painted dark red, and there is no stage lighting whatsoever unless the band brings their own. Shooting live band photos at Alex's is a huge challenge without a pro-sumer SLR camera with external clip-on flash, but extra flash is a no-no in rock photography as it distracts the band, and at many concert venues will get one kicked out of the photo pit for using a flash.

Any good music photographer worth their salt learns how to push one's camera to shoot in any nightclub or concert venue situation without a flash early in their career. I learned how at age 15 with 400 iso film and setting my f-stops and shutter speed for low light but fast movement. With the advent of digital photography in the late 1990s, this became a challenge as most early digital cameras were point & shoot for daylight at best.

One of the fun & challenging parts of mobile photography with my various Nokia camera phones has been concert photography. To see how I can capture a photo with a camera that was never designed for low light / fast movement situations. Two of my favorite concert photos I have taken in 24 years of shooting shows were two photos I took with my Nokia 7610 - one of Social Distortion's Mike Ness and one of Mike from the Riverboat Gamblers. The fact that the little kickin' 7610 could get those photos... rock on! Rock on!

The big disappointment of the Nokia N80 and Nokia N95 is the delay between pressing the shutter button and ... and... and... and.. and.. focusing... and... and.. and... photo taken. Many times this can take up to 15-30 seconds, esp. in low light situations. How many times did I wish it would just trust me and snap, like the 7610. Stop over thinking, just do it.

The glories of the Nokia N82 is that it just takes the photo. Rarely is there a delay while it thinks, focuses, and snaps. In most situations, even at night with the flash off, it trusts that I know what I am doing and takes the photo without fuss. Without the big delay to focus and refocus and pick its nose and refocus again, like the N80 or N95 does, the N82 about 90% of the time will take the photo that you saw through the viewfinder at the time of pressing the shutter button. Yay!

In the above two photos (double click for the larger versions) I took the one on the left with my Nokia N95 with no flash and the one on the right with the trial N82 with no flash. The Irish Brothers kindly made my job easier by bringing in their own bluish halogen lights that that cast a strong upward light. In the above photos, the N95 was able to capture the two front men clearly and the background decently. The N82 blurred the Keith & Karl a bit, but captured David the drummer and the background with great clarity and lighter than the N95 did.

I also used the flash on both camera phones, of which I am not displaying the results as it was not conclusive in this case. The N95's flash did not add much illumination or significant difference, as the dark red walls of the room and lack of light eat up any of the N95's flash real fast. The N82's powerful Xenon flash was actually too bright and gave both Keith and Karl glowing red eyes, as well as added some flash light bubbles to the photo. In this case it was better without the flash for both Nokia camera phones.

Using the Nokia N82 to take photos at night and at a show was a delight. This is a big step towards camera phone I have been dreaming of, except for the fact that the N82's pre-installed Lifeblog is not interfacing with this MT4 powered blog when there is not good reason why it shouldn't.

******

Up next in Ms. Jen's review of the Nokia N82 - all the night and indoor photos that I have taken with the Nokia N82.

The Nokia N95 on the left and the Nokia N95 8GB on the right column. Click on the 1st image for slideshow and titles.

A camera is a tool. A tool to help actualize the photographer's vision, what is seen right there and then. depending on what the photographer wants to capture is which camera tool she/he will use, be it film SLR, digital, mobile, pin-hole, toy, point & shoot, etc.

As high megapixel digital prosumer cameras have become common, many people are switching back to film or to toy cameras (such as the Lomo or Diana or pin-hole or...) or to mobile camera phones to achieve different effects and to impose a system of constraints. Many times the best art happens within the boundaries of constraints as one is forced to push the medium.

I love mobile phone photography. I love the immediacy, the ability to send the photo to the web right on the spot, the ability to not worry about f-stops and focus but instead to shoot frequently and often. I have a lovely Nikon FM-3a manual film SLR camera, but I use my Nokia camera phone to shoot about 98% of all of my photos. There are shots I can take with my Nokia mobile that it would be quite difficult due to size and weight and mass to get my my Nikon.

To this end, each iteration of the Nokia camera phones does not necessarily mean* that the camera is better with each additional megapixel or new imaging algorithm or sensor chip.

Each one of the Nokia mobiles I have owned has had the ability to take photos in a different way than the next one. The 7610, while only 1 megapixel, could capture close ups in a way that the 6680's 1.3 megapixel never could. The 7610 also has a lovely dreamy without being pixelated effect that many photographers have to use vaseline to achieve. The 6680 had its charms and so did the N80. The N95 can capture closer to real life purples than any of the previous mobiles (purple is difficult for digital sensors to get right without a lot of software and algorithm bulk). The 7610 and N95 v. 1.0 are my favorite Nokia camera phones to date, for very different reasons.

When WOM World offered to send me the Nokia N95 8GB (v. 2.0) for a 2 week trial, I said yes, as I really wanted to see how the photos would differ from the first iteration of the N95. Initial reports and reviews of the N95 8GB indicated that there was a slight change in camera speed and possibly in the algorithm. As seen from the photos above, there is a slight difference - an increased saturation in the N95 8GB photos.

When I put the N95 and the N95 8GB to their paces, I made sure that I was able to stay in the same place and attempt to shoot the photo from the same angle (exceptions with the ship photo while driving and the dogs as they were moving) to be able to increase the accuracy of the comparison. I also shot all the above photos with the flash off.

From the photos above it is obvious to me that the N95 8GB mobile camera takes photos that are a wee bit sharper and a bit more color saturated, but that the N95 handles direct sunlight (ocean view), strong back light (Xmas tree), and night colors (sphere lights) much better. Some photographers may prefer the more pastel effect of the N95, whereas others would prefer the deeper color saturation of the N95 8GB.

It is up to you to determine what you prefer and which device you would rather shoot photos with. As I look at both sets of photos, I am divided as to which camera I prefer, as it would depend on the situation. But as I detailed out in yesterday's review of the N95 versus the N95 8GB, the 8GB device is a wee bit too big for my hands and caused a bit of cramping. Thus, color saturation or not, I will stay with my N95 and pull out the 7610 when I want a bit of good distortion.

*****
Footnotes:

* In Jay's N95 v. N82 camera comparison, while the N82 may have a faster shutter speed and be able to "stop" the fan in its place, the N95 actually took the more visually pleasing photo.

Tue 11.27.07 - Doris Salcedo's "Shibboleth" in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern.

Tue 11.27.07 - The romanesque ambulatory and contemporary sculpture at St. Bartholomew the Great.

Fri Nov. 23, 2007 - Today was a big day for travel. Mom and I started out the day after checking out of the lovely & funky Litten House B&B by walking over to the Chichester Cathedral.

The dreary rain of Ireland and the off and on rain of Wednesday had fully cleared out and a good wintry wind came in its stead. I was all bundled up and it was brisk to say the least. Of course, I loved the clear, clean, cold air. Not only was it invigorating but it made for great exterior photographic light all day, be it at Chichester or Stonehenge or Old Sarum.

The wind bit the most and was downright cold on the Salisbury plain as we hurriedly trotted around Stonehenge. Mom wondered if it was warmer when they built Stonehenge out on that hill.

Tonight we walked from our B&B down to town to have dinner and it didn't feel as cold as this afternoon, due to lack of wind, but when I checked the temperature it was 32F or 0C!

Our "Stones: Cathedrals and Circles" tour of Southern England will continue tomorrow as we will visit the Salisbury Cathedral in the morning and Avebury in the afternoon before moving on to Oxford tomorrow evening.

Thanks to my high school World History instructor, Mr. Giroux, and my freshman in college history professor, Dr. B. Bradford Blaine , I have a deep and abiding first love of medieval art, architecture, history, and accomplishments (go visit the Magna Carta, if you doubt anything good could have come from 450 A.D. to 1500 A.D.).

Mr. Giroux was the best sort of extra bright and eccentric teacher for a 15 year old to have. He taught several generations of high school students and was a couple of years away from retirement by the time I passed through his class in 1982-1983. He started out the day by saying to me, "Miss Hanen, your uncle John (class of 1969) was one of the best students I have ever had, I expect you to do better." I had no choice, I did. When my brother arrived the next year, Joe received the following speach, "Mr. Hanen, your uncle John and your sister Jenifer were two of the best students I have ever had, I expect you to do better." He didn't, but Joe still loves all things history and medieval regardless of his performance in Mr. Giroux's class.

Long memories and family jokes aside, Mr. Giroux spent about 1/3 of the year covering the middle ages when they were only 1,000 years out of a potential 10,000 to cover. Mr. Giroux was openly and deeply in love with Eleanor of Aquitaine, of which their separation in centuries and stations in life is why he never married. Best of all, when Mr. Giroux retired the LA Times did a big article on his full scale model of Aquitaine that inhabited his whole living room and took 30 years to build.

How could one not fall in love with all things 500 - 1500 A.D. with a 9th grade history teacher like Mr. Giroux?

Thur 11.01.07 - In Alex's driveway.

Wed 10.31.07 - Bird as a Lamb and her two pumpkins.

@ the Biola Art Dept. Alumni/ae exhibition.

In the last few months, I have received a few comments from friends and acquaintances about how white the decor in my apartment is and how little wall decorations I have up. Over the last 15 years of having my own places, with or without roommates, I have noticed that while I love American pioneer antique furniture (1790 - 1870, preferably in cherry or mahogany wood) and contemporary art, my interior design sense prefers lots of interior white space, be it white walls or curtains or just plain space.

In my current 224 sq. foot apartment, any space at all is a premium. Half of my belongings and furniture, including my treasured 1820 cherry pioneer carved bed, are in storage. I have worked hard the last four months to make my new cubbyhole of a place appear spacious while accommodating my stuff, esp. my books and corner cabinet. To this end, I have purposely chosen white curtains and cheerful accents, but I have no art up on the walls.

It is scandalous amongst artists to have bare walls, especially when one owns and has in storage as much artwork as I do. Dan Callis has already given me trouble three times now for my bare walls.

But. but.. but... My house is so small and more importantly I have realized that some of my favorite visual moments, the ones that have burnt the images to my brain, are the ones where I am inside, relaxed and looking out onto a visually saturated out of doors, be it looking through a window or a door.

I don't mentally record this visual stimulus when I am inside a visually compelling or overwhelming space nor when I am in an industrial or office space, only when I am in a home space where there is a great deal of white of which to contrast with the colors outside.

Thus, my reluctance to paint or over decorate my home space. Fine wood furniture in shades of brown and red or fabrics of red and gold make nice accents to the white, but the interior white makes the blues, golds and more muted colors outside shine even brighter.

Thus, I wait for the golden hour to record such external vividness whilst inside with my camera. My interior is acting as a blank canvas for the spectacle outside.

"While it may not always be great marketing, artists should be free to explore whatever quickens their pulse. Over the long haul they will inevitable find a thread that unifies their vision. Finding this revelatory thread ... seems to be one of the most meaningful experiences to come from a life making art."
- Alec Soth, from a blog entry on Richard Barnes

Wed 08.15.07 - @space Contemporary Art on the NW corner of Buffalo & Main St in Santa Ana.

Sat. 08.11.07 - Making a portfolio, 9.5 x 13", last day of bookarts class.

I have truly enjoyed this class on how to make books. It has been a great artistic release for me to make physical objects after pushing pixels and code about on my computer. I am very glad that Tammy Callis asked me to come and take this class with her.

Eva Vacca, the Master Printmaker at the Angel's Gate Cultural Center, will be offering a fall bookarts class and I will be there.

Sat 07.28.07 - Finishing touches to the Japanese style bound book of my mobile photos from last summer's Arnund Ireland project.

Sat 07.21.07 - Today in bookarts class we glued the book linen & paper to the board of our Japanese Binding project (in red). We also a made Piano Binding book (in blue to left), of which I used paint brushes for my sticks & handmade watercolor paper for the pages.

Today at my book arts class, we learned how to do the Japanese style book binding. For my book arts project, I printed out mobile camera phone photos from last summer's Around Ireland project and will be making a book of the photos.

For some time now, I have been stumped on how to best display / frame the ephemeral photos from my Nokia camera phones outside of this blog and Flickr. I am very glad that Tammy Callis convinced me to join her in taking this book making class at the Angel's Gate Cultural Center, as I think I have found an authentic way to display / frame my mobile photos in a physical manifestation by making a unique book to contain each set of mobile phone photos.

I first searched through most of my original downloaded photos from my Nokia N80 from last summer in Ireland, used Fireworks to crop and set them in the page, and then printed a set of four to Kodak matte ink jet paper. Print and then cut to fit the size of the pages for the book. The Kodak matte ink jet photo paper had the look and feel of good drawing or book paper. Now I just need to get a better printer.

Little jewels of books to display little jewels of photos.

Book making as an art form, not as gambling... Front door neighbor, Tammy Verricchio Callis, encouraged me to join her in taking a Bookarts / Book Making with printmaker and book artist Eva Vacca class at Angel's Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro. Today was our first class and we made an accordian book in class, of which I will add a photo of it when it is finished drying.

Tonight, I heard Ryan telling Earl about the Painting's Edge and I joined in on the conversation. After Earl returned to his apartment, Ryan and I continued talking about painting, mediated visual thinking, and painter's block.

As our conversation progressed, I encouraged him to stop the over thinking and to get fast and furious. To that end, I remembered my Wacom tablet, I invited Ryan in, set up the pen & tablet and showed him how to make digital drawings with Flash and the tablet.

This evolved into Ryan getting his sketch book, me scanning one if his sketches, importing it into Flash, and showing him how to layer and color. Published the "mediated" drawing as a .jpg, uploaded it to Ryan's flickr account, and here we are.

We will now be having the Electric Arms summer of art. Collaboration, mediation, and iteration.

The above drawing by Ryan Callis and Jenifer Hanen.

All photos taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610.

Mon. 06.25.07 - Today, my Mom and I pulled my "art" table out of storage and I rearranged my living room / office space to accommodate a better working environment. Sitting on the couch with my laptop was wrecking havoc on my motivation to code and design. Upright at a desk forces me to stay alert and work.

Fri. 06.22.07 - Mom and I were walking the dogs down Ocean Ave in Seal Beach when I noticed that the last house just across from the San Gabriel River had its street address announced in a sans-serif font (name it?) between the first and second stories. I had to take a photo of this whimsical blend of modernist typography and architecture.

Fri. 06.22.07 - In the check out line at Wild Oats in Long Beach.

I will let my Twitters from this afternoon speak for themselves:

"is finding Facebook annoying. Again. Updating my Nokia N80s firmware. Then off to coding fun."

"It is a very BAD idea to attempt to upgrade one's Nokia firmware with Parallels. Nokia N80 now dead. Nokia - release Mac OS X software!"

"Crap. Now charging old 7610 so that I have a phone. Crap."

Why update the Nokia software? Just like it is a good idea to update your computer's software, it is marvelous that Nokia provides an update for my lovely mini-computer the Nokia N80. But today things went wrong. Very wrong. Be it the Nokia data cable or Parallels, I know not.

I have updated the firmware on the N80 three times in the last year with no problems, but for some reason today the update stopped 90% of the way through and pitched a fit. The phone is not turning on, the Nokia updater is not recognizing the phone or data cable. Argh.

I bought my Nokia N80 in Ireland last June and nokiausa.com is not recognizing my serial number. Will make phone calls tomorrow to rectify the problem or at least find a Nokia Care provider who can resurrect the N80 from the dead.

The silver lining to this particular cloud is that I kept my Nokia 7610, charged it up this afternoon, and even though the camera is only 1 megapixel, I do love the photos from the 7610. Welcome, old friend.

On a sidewalk in Culver City.

At Dave Mau & Lora Wilson's wedding.

Ryan, Earl and I were talking about the Napoleonic Wars when Ryan recommended Ian Svenonius' book, The Psychic Soviet. The only way that Ryan knew to find it was to go to the Dischord Records website.

Upon reaching the Dischord site, I was more than pleasantly surprised, as the Dischord site is lovely. I can't say that about many websites, as most either follow a specific stylistic trend or are just plain corporate.

Dischord's website is subtle but fun. A sheep is escaping the flock of its kind in the banner. The layout, while in a box, is lightly broken by cut-off corners and individualistic sheep. Good ratio of content to whitespace and great colors.

Thanks Dischord for a beautiful and functional web site!

This Saturday is a very full day in downtown Long Beach with the Ink & Iron Tattoo & Music Festival and the East Village Art Walk. As well as the usual 2nd Sat. of the month art walk, the Walker and Kress Loft artists will be opening their studios and showing their work on the bottom floor of the Walker Building (Pine & 4th St.).

See you there.

Fountain at the Denver Intl Airport

On my last night in Denver, I went downtown to the area near Union Station. I had a very expensive and mediocre dinner at Venice Ristorante and Wine Bar (avoid this place if you can, $56 for risotto and 2 glasses of wine! Yikes. The risotto was not nice, with muddied flavors.) But as I walked out of the restaurant, Union Station in all of her glory was before me. I could not resist taking a picture.

Austin in Long Beach for the B-day party.

As you can see North Carolina was fabulously windy and brisk today. A lovely and perfect day to be out and about rather than in an office doing a programming course. But the day one of the course is good and I am happy.

Here are few notes, bits, and links from today's browsing:

1) More troubles between my phone and Flickr: I had to send the above tulip photo three times before it appeared in Flickr. It showed up first time around on Vox.

2) Excellent article on the truckers of East Africa by Ted Conover. Go read it.

3) Tom on the Tube. Photo by George. Must visit London soon, so that I can go to dim sum with Tom and catch up.

4) Having trouble with MAMP and my Mac. MAMP works with all types of files as a localhost for me, but not PHP. And it is supposed to be Mac-Apache-Mysql-PHP. hmph. Wonder if the additions to the config file to allow for SSI caused a disconnect with the functionality to interpret PHP on my machine.

Update: Solved my MAMP and PHP problem thanks to Splash of Style.

On my way to SXSW 2007!

All photos taken at the Getty by Jenifer Hanen with her Nokia N80.

;o)

@ Bordello in downtown L.A. for Kim V.'s birthday.

All photos of Royal Crown Revue taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N80 camera phone.

Sat. 02. 17.07 - All photos taken by Ms. Jen at Bolsa Chica Wetlands with her Nokia N80. More photos were taken with her Nikon FM3a, but those photos are pending film processing, et al. ;o)

The grand glory of Ryan Callis' MFA painting show was in the details and in the borders / transitions within his paintings. Ryan presented 10 - 12 large mostly non-objective geometric abstraction paintings with a few surprise figures or organic dioramas popping out of or under the geometric and field parts of the paintings. Good stuff from Mr. Callis.

All Photos taken by Jen Hanen with her Nokia N80 on Tue. Feb. 13, 2007.

All photos of Family Callis and Family Cargill taken by Jen Hanen with her Nokia N80 at the Claremont Graduate School's Art Gallery.

Photo Friday : Sky

Photo of the lifeguard towers at Bolsa Chica State Beach taken on Fri. Feb. 2, 2007.

Yes, I bought one.

Every time I drive north on La Cienega Blvd., I see this chained up old gas station and I swear to myself that some day I will slow down and get a good photo of the skeleton Mobil horse. Today, I did.

The Countdown to Punk Rock Bowling 2007... We are now 6 days away from Lost Wages and too much fun.

02.18.05 - Alex's Barrachos team members, Jason and John, at the Friday night Flock of Goo Goo show. Bless PRB.

"Sorry, We Had To Lose The Stool For That One," were the last words out of Paul of the Harbortown Saints that I heard as I departed Alex's last night. The Harbortown Saints were on fire and are more amazing than ever. Hello SoCal, wake up! Best new band playing around in Long Beach.

Billy Burke has departed as guitarist for the Harbortown Saints and Roger Ramjet (formerly of the Humpers, the ADZ, and the Smut Peddlers) has come on board. With Billy departed the band's laconic blues punk style and with Roger the band has amped up to a ripping, searing jump blues punk. Hot diggity.

And Roger, sometime recently, probably coinciding with his marriage, has gotten smokin' hott. Yes, no longer the kinda cute, but really scary guitarist for the Peddlers, Mr. Ramjet has taken to marriage like a duck to water and is lookin' good. Good on Mrs. Ramjet for taking a diamond in the rough and giving it a good polish.... ;o)

The best outfit of the night goes to Max, of the Habortown Saints and Vooduo. Max was wearing a fabulous Teddy Boy suit coat with a red button up shirt, a string bowtie, black jeans, black electrician boots, and a porkpie hat. Now there is an ensemble! Max said that only one company is making Teddy Boy suit coats anymore and that he has 3 of them. Go Max Go! Please single handedly bring back good, adventurous male fashion.

Even better on the Harbortown Saints for the great music last night. Ok, gentlemen, when are you releasing a full album / CD? Inquiring listening ears want to know.

Photo Friday :: Best of 2006

"Seaweed" is my favorite of the year. "Seaweed" was previously posted here at Black Phoebe and at Around Ireland back on Aug. 27, 2006 from the beach at Burtonport, Co. Donegal, Ireland, but is getting trotted out again as my favorite photo that I took this year with my camera phone.

To me this photo is a great example of why I love camera phone photography, constraints and all. Yes, my Nokia N80 has a 3 megapixel Karl Zeiss lens and so I am able to capture good high resolution photos, but I would not have been able to take this photo easily and without changing the environment around the seaweed with my Nikon FM-3A SLR camera or a big digital SLR.

I noticed this clump of seaweed in the tidal zone, I leaned over, put my camera phone on level with the seaweed, snap!, moblogged it to this site and Around Ireland right then, and when I viewed it in a browser a couple of days later, wow! I was able to leave the beach with nothing more than a few footprints and a great moblogged photo.

The more I moblog from my camera phone, the more I love the immediacy of deciding which shot is to be blogged right as the photos are taken rather than downloading them to my computer and photoshopping them into perfection before posting them. I like the constraint of no on board / on phone photo editor. What you see is what you get. Unaltered. Unfiltered.

Either I get the composition, the light, and the subject right at the time of snapping the photos, or I don't. Camera phone photography and moblogging the photos within 5 minutes or so, has forced me to hone my eye and decision making process.

My other favorite moblogged photos from 2006 and 2005 can be found at this flickr photoset. Thank you to my beloved Nokia N80.

I never watch TV or movies. I just read the reviews. And think about seeing a movie or so a year.

Tonight, after years of thinking I wanted to, I am watching "High Fidelity." I borrowed the DVD from Sandra and Justin today.

The first 9 minutes caught me, especially in minute 9 when Jack Black's character, Barry, starts a fabulous musical fight. I have to go with Jack bouncy monday morning music rather than Dick's Belle and Sebastian...

I have always loved independent record stores, esp. the used ones, and the knowledgeable fellows working behind counter. My fave is Bionic Records on Bolsa Chica.

I am laughing.

Update: 1:12 hours into the film, Tim Robbin's character, Ian Raymond, is the Cami Sigler of men. The two alternative scenarios in the record store were hysterical.

Update, II: 1:20 hours into the film. "Some people just feel like home." - Rob Gordon. I have experienced this, then he went on to get married. Good bye, home. Hopefully, like moving, one can find home again.

Update, III: 1:48 hours into the film. This was a good movie. I am glad I borrowed it from Justin and Sandra.

I was sitting on the couch reading when an airplane landing at Los Alamitos was landing and I noticed that between the shadow of the fan and the audio "shadow" of the landing Airforce / Navy jet that it was a video moment. A quiet one at that.

Filmed / Video'd with a Nokia N80 camera phone by Jenifer Hanen on Oct. 16, 2006 or thereabouts.

As my mom and I were driving southbound on the US 395 near Owens Lake, California, the sky in front of us was dark gray with thunder clouds and lightning was flashing through the sky and clouds. I was unable to take any digital stills as we were driving, but was able to take a 5 minute video and capture lightning in the 3rd or 4th minute.

Filmed / Video'd with a Nokia N80 camera phone by Jenifer Hanen on Fri. Oct. 13, 2006 near Olancha, California.

At the Slim Cessna show at Safari Sam's, and I am not quite sure if I am ready to be out in Hollywood yet.

Text added on Sun. Oct. 1, 2006 - Last night I joined 9 lovely folk for dinner at Shonagh's family's house. Shonagh and her mom made 3 lovely curries, a vegan one, a veggie one, and a chicken curry. While we were waiting for the curries to finish cooking we sat in a warm little room of the kitchen that had wonderful light for camera phone photography. This photo of Shonagh's brother, Niall, and family friend Paul best illustrates the light in the room.

Thanks to family Hurley for the lovely dinner and evening!

The students of the M.Sc. in Multimedia Systems, Trinity College Dublin are pleased to invite you to view their end-of-year exhibition at Regent House, Trinity College.

*SENSORED MEDIA 2006* is a fascinating, varied and fully interactive exposition of the multifaceted nature of current digital multimedia art and technology. The show is a collaborative creation by the students of
Trinity College Dublin’s Masters of Science in Multimedia Systems featuring computer games, time-lapse photography, artificial life simulators, wireless and internet technologies and sensor-controlled environments.

For more information and directions go to http://www.tcdmultimedia.com

The Exhibition will be open to the public on:
Thursday 28th September 11am-6pm
Friday 29th September 11am-6pm
Saturday 30th September 11am-5pm
Monday 2nd October 11am-6pm
Tuesday 3rd October 11am-3.30pm

****
Ms. Jen says: Come on down and see our show!

How I truly miss the Crowns....

Sun 07.02.06 - 176th Royal Hiberian Academy Annual Exhibition, May 30 - July 8, 2006.

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Thurs. 06.08.06 - I was walking to get my daily diet coke and newspaper when I saw the gutter was full of yellow and white flower petals.

Thurs 05.18.06 - This was the day that I printed out the last of my class notes at our class lab and brought them all together in four big binders. On my way into town, I walked to the Luas via the TCD Botantic Gardens, which are in full bloom and the sun was peeping in and out of clouds (photo on left).

Here is how I know that Dublin is at a high latittude (53 degrees north): Bright, strong afternoon sun at 7:41pm (center photo). The sun has been setting around 9:30pm and I am told that in June it will be after 10:30pm. My mom will be very happy when she comes to visit.

Near midnight, I finally had all of my notes collated, organized, hole punched, and living in their respective binders (right photo). Now just to read it all plus finishing up my "required" book reading. I also finished reading "Photography: A Critical Introduction" (edited by Liz Wells, I highly recommend this book) on Thursday, now to finish the last chapter of Susan Sontag's "On Photography".

[End Thurs 05.18.06]

Sat 05.20.06 - I am currently reading Lev Manovich's "Language of New Media", of which I am enjoying as it is theoretically wrapping up the school year. "Actionscript for Flash 8" is up after that. Good thing that reading is one of my top 5 favorite activities of all time. ;o)

FYI: The first of the exams is on Tue. May 23rd and the last is on Fri. June 2nd. If I appear to fall of the planet, that is why.

For the final Audio class project, lecturer Nicky Ward had us make a soundtrack to a video. I chose to string together a bunch of my video clips of Scruffy taken with my Nokia 7610 over the last year and put them to the late '60s cartoon theme song, "Underdog".

Thus, I present to you, the compressed version of "Wonderdog".

When I was fifteen, my step-mom at the time gave me a Nikon FG camera. I took photography every year at high school, I shot practically every concert I could pull my camera out at, and the summer of 1984, I traded my leather jacket plus $100 for a whole dark room set up, which included a Besler 23c enlarger with lens, from a Hollywood photographer with a drug habit. Hey, I was 16 and knew how to make deal. With tin foil, my bedroom became a darkroom.

After going to college and moving out, the Besler moved around in parental garages, the lens carefully stored in its box stayed with me (still have it), and my faithful Nikon FG camera continued to travel with me. Until 1996, when my apartment in Boston was broken into and all my valuables stolen. I didn't care about the jewellry or the cds or my other leather jacket, what upset me the most is that my faithful 12 year old Nikon FG was now doing the pawn shop rounds in Boston or surrounds. I cruised pawn shop windows for the next two weeks looking out for my camera and one pair of lapis lazuli earrings I had bought in Bethlehem, to no avail.

On New Year's Eve 2005, I had the opportunity to go and hang out with my Grandma Grace after lunch. I love my Grandma Grace, she is one of the strongest women I know and a great inspiration to me as an artist.

My Grandma Grace is just a few weeks shy of 86 years old and she is working hard on putting together new collage work for her solo art show in March 2006. She has been painting and making collages diligently for over 30 some odd years and is one of the best watercolorists in my acquaintance. All through my colorful teen years and college art years, she was my biggest supporter, in all ways, but mostly by example.

Grandma Grace started to paint right after her divorce from my grandpa to make sense of the chaos. She has tamed the chaos and made some wonderful paintings of the east Oregon mountain-scape as well as many other subjects, as well as making collages from her own watercolors and printed materials. Grandma Grace is an accomplished cook, naturalist, friend, storyteller, hostess, and reader. All the things I love and aspire to be.

Besides the love of art and making art, as well as cooking, my grandma instilled in me the love of education. She is the 5th straight woman in her family line with a college education, starting with her great-great grandmother Grace Dana Ewart. Next October, I will be the 2nd generation of women with a masters degree after my mother. And my sister, Allison, is the 2nd woman in the family who has a J.D. and passed the Bar, after Grace Dana Ewart.

When we hung out on her couch in Grandma Grace's apartment in Laguna Hills a couple of weeks ago while I was home in SoCal for the holidays, we talked about her upcoming show and her copyright issues with the gallery, it was raining outside and the diffused light on her face was lovely. I asked permission to take photos. The cameraphone did not take kindly to the lighting, but my Casio digital camera did. We continued to talk and Grandma Grace was gracious enough to let me keep taking photos.

If I am ever so blessed to have a daughter, I shall name her Grace.

Wed. 12.07.05 - Niall, the drummer, from Skylight.

Sat. 12.03.05 - On our way to see "Titus Andronicus" at the Project in Temple Bar. The play was violent, complex, and excellent.

Fri. 12.02.05 - While I was supposed to go out to a classmate's birthday party at the Turk's Head tonight, my bad choice of cobbled together dinner foods is keeping me in. Tummy distress to say the least. So, I am reading.

One of the delights of my Design class with Feargal Fitzpatrick is the reading list. Tonight was the first chapter of "Photography: A Critical Introduction."

The first chapter is very timely given this debate on film vs. digital photography going on over at MeFi yesterday.

Thurs. 12.01.05 - Our video team - Emmanuel, John, and Amy - hard at work. We will be shooting a music video for the Dublin band, Skylight, next week.

Fri. 11.18.05 - The Damned at Temple Bar Music Center, Dublin, Ireland.

Fri. 11.18.05 - The Damned at Temple Bar Music Center, Dublin, Ireland.

Fri. 11.18.05 - Captain Sensible.

Tues. 11.08.05 - Basic Camera and Lighting I class. We did a news segment.

Sun. 10.16.05 - My new Pfefferhase, a fabulously silly bit of German product design, because everyone needs a pepper grinder in the shape of a rabbit.

Tomorrow, Fri. 10.21.05, I will fly to Germany for the weekend to attend Erika & Thomas' German wedding reception.

UPDATE: Thurs. 10.20.05 at 8:44pm GMT.
I suck. I called Aer Lingus late this afternoon to get my itinerary and I got my plane reservation wrong and it was for last weekend. When it is very late at night, you are moving and you have given your printer to the Goodwill, don't try and book a non-refundable, non-transferable plane ticket. And then when your computer goes into a coma with your reservations on it... well... I am not going to Germany, after all.

Photos taken with Ms. Jen's Casion Exlim Z-40

Wed. 09.28.05 - Sunrise dawning while flying over the north Atlantic to Ireland and then view of Ireland from 30,000 feet.

Tues. 10.18.05 - Previous to BlackPhoebe the laptop's electrical issues last Wed., I saved some photos to my thumb drive that I am now posting. I have more that I will post later. Also, last night, I was able to back up my photos from Sept & Oct, Thank God, and BP goes off to Dell Computer Spa (repair) tomorrow or Thursday, depending on DHL's arrival.

Photo of Arnaldo Pomodoro's "Sphere with Sphere" taken on Sat. 10/1/05 by Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610.

I continue to apologize to all of the readers of this blog and the surfers who trot on as I still do not have internet connection in my housing nor have I been able to make my Vodafone Ready to be Really Lame SIM chip work with Data on my Nokia 7610. Thus, I have TONS of photos to blog here and they are all stopped up on my laptop or phone. Grrr.. grrr... grrr...

I will *supposedly* have a broadband connection in my room within the next week and hopefully I will have a 3G/GPRS unlimited data plan with some mobile carrier within the week as well. Due to Fun With Bureauracy™, I can't get any type of cell / mobile contract without an Irish bank statement (all raise their eyebrows with me), and the bank statement is days late, even though Bank of Ireland promises it is in the mail.

My big accomplishment in Fun With Bureauracy™ is that at 5:57pm on Thursday, I walked out of the Immigration Garda station on Burgh Quay with my cute little one year "Certificate of Registration" card in my hand. I was 644 in the queue, it took 4.57 hours to get it, and the bathrooms were beyond disgusting...

When all is said and done, I am settling in, I love my little hermitage room with a view of trees. The birdsong in the suburb I am in is loud and lovely. I even saw my first tree squirrel today. Classes start on Monday and I am excited to get going.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610.

Photo Friday : Darkness

Wed. 09.28.05 - A large, lovely tree on the Hall grounds as seen on the walk back from the Luas to my apartment. I am very glad to be in the leafy birdsong 'burbs rather than in the stone and diesel jungle downtown.

Dublin is lovely so far. I have yet to go grocery shopping and am subsidizing on my apples and power bars that I brought with me on the plane. ;o)

Thank God for the wi-fi and power outlet at the Central Cyberspace Cafe on Grafton Street, as I can use my own computer and programs to do email and blog. Now I just need to get my pay as I go Vodafone SIM card to work...

Sun. 09.04.05 - Flowers in my uncle's garden blooming and budding.

Photo Friday : One

Fri 08.19.05 - Veronica holds her one Boddington's.

Photo Friday : Violet

Fri 08.12.05 - An odd violet tinged cream colored rose in the struggling rose beds at Hart Park.

... from the Rock'n'Roll Industry.

I still love music, but I am ready to get the heck out of the music industry and go back to loving music for the pure shear pleasure of it.

After ten years of making a smallish living as a rock journalist/photographer and for the last couple of years as a promoter / booker and small venue business consultant, I am ready to throw in the towel and get on with my own art weirdo life.

And I shall at graduate school. Art, web, photography, writing, and reading. I am excited.

Naturally, in my last few weeks of booking and promoting bands at Alex's Bar, the worst of egotistical musician behavior has surfaced and I am itching to blog about it. I am waiting until I am in Ireland before I start telling good stories, but in the meantime the semi-non-specific rant...

Two booking pet peeves:

#1 - You are in a baby band that that has minus 5 fans and you call and email me at least 3 times a day *demanding* a direct support slot on a firday or saturday night. What glue were you sniffing before you called? The worst part is when you brag in front of a bunch of hot chicks at the Warped Tour that you can bring in 150 fans and that you MUST have a friday night. Nice that you cleared the club, smokers & non-smokers alike, to parking lot on your Thursday night opening slot. Practice before you play and force Mikey to scream, "Turn down the Suck!"

#2 - You are a BIG Talent Agent. Some of your bands play arenas and have bought you a house in the hills with your 15% cut. Marvelous. Wonderful. Glad to hear it. Please be honest. Please don't demand that your baby band get a Friday night slot with a $12 cover charge. We both know that you will NEVER EVER give me your arena rock band, so don't blackmail me for your baby band's overblown ego when they would do quite nicely on a Thursday night opening slot with a $3 cover charge. If you are honest, I can help you build your baby band's career, but now I don't want to take your phone calls or return your emails.

More to come...

The Bird Show : Aug 6 - Sept 25, 2005 at the Grand Central Gallery, 125 N Broadway, Santa Ana. Artist Invitational, of which Dan Callis