A Change of Scale and Timescale

There has been a lot of excite­ment about the fact that some of the higher end dig­i­tal SLRs (notably the Nikon D90) can now shoot High Def­i­n­i­tion Video. This means that there are new pos­si­bil­i­ties for peo­ple who don’t have huge stu­dios or wal­lets to do cre­ative things. In one case, it was with lenses and a spe­cial tech­nique called ’tilt-shifting’ that makes for an extremely nar­row depth of field from a dis­tance, and video — in this case, time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy. The result is some­thing that makes one feel like a god, (or per­haps King Kong or Godzilla), look­ing down with placid seren­ity upon the bustling of tiny human­ity below. That’s what a series of videos by Aus­tralian Keith Loutit has pro­duced seem to be. Have a look at what I mean:

The North Wind Blew South

Loutit’s work has been fea­tured in lots of geeky places like Boingboing.com and Giz­modo, but I found out about it from my friend John Biehler, who showed another of his clips on his site.

I think there is some­thing here that tran­scends just the bizarre and unset­tling. It’s per­haps that we already have such a short time on the planet, but still, if we could just slow down and watch, we might see all sorts of things that we’d never seen before. If we could take a drug that would slow us down so that we were, say, oper­at­ing at 1/10 nor­mal speed for just a day, and didn’t suf­fer any ill effects, I bet that’s a trip that many of us would like to take. Yeah. A long, slow, trip.

I write this, remem­ber­ing that this morn­ing I heard that a critic and tele­vi­sion com­men­ta­tor who I used to watch reg­u­larly, John Leonard, died on Wednes­day. Kurt Von­negut once said: “When I start to read John Leonard, it is as though I, while sim­ply look­ing for the men’s room, blun­dered into a lec­ture by the smartest man who ever lived.” Who am I to dis­agree with Von­negut?  Leonard was indeed bril­liant. When­ever I heard him talk on the show Sun­day Morn­ing, I thought that he made being smart some­thing that was sexy, which per­haps the US is once again redis­cov­er­ing. I hope he was con­scious and knew what hap­pened the day before he died. Per­haps he left with a smile on his face.

Obama is Hiring

I just found out that there is a brand new web site for peo­ple who are apply­ing for jobs with the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion. Right out of the gate, this is an on-the-ball, tech­no­log­i­cally savvy move.

The URL is good, too: www.change.gov

I won­der if they need some­one work­ing for them who can do some/most of the work remotely, online from Canada? Or would that be ‘Out­sourc­ing an Amer­i­can job?’

And the morning after...

This car­toon from XKCD cap­tures it pretty well for me:

The World Celebrates

Saw this on Daily Kos and thought it was worth embed­ding here.

The Next Chapter

Like mil­lions of other peo­ple, around the world, I feel as if I’ve wit­nessed some­thing his­toric. I watched the broad­cast of President-Elect Obama’s speech to the throngs of peo­ple in Grant Park in Chicago (and again, around the world) from a nearby house near False Creek, with peo­ple who I don’t know that well, but now with whom I share a com­mon bond of sorts. I took a photo of the tele­vi­sion, just as Obama was about to speak to the crowd. I guess this is one of those moments you remem­ber for the rest of your life.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, USA.  For the first time in a long time, I am proud to be an Amer­i­can. Now, let’s get to work