answers without questions.

acquaintances. yes, the many people that we talk to on a semi-frequent basis, of which there are dozens, scores, even several. having lived in so many cities, i seem to have acquired a vast quantity of them and, while they are all distinct and individual, there seems to be one common thread. most of them have inhabited only one general location in their lives and are curious about such other locales — and, since my movement has been rather continual and sporadic (yes, those are contradictory but i shall leave it at that and assume that you know about what i am speaking), i am frequently interrogated on the relative merits of various and sundry (sundried?) cities and towns.

so i shall start with my current location and work my way through places, which i have inhabited. and some, which i have not but have visited frequently. no, this isn’t a ploy to get you to move to vancouver and keep me company. i’m quite blatant about telling you all to do that. this is more an excuse to write copiously so that i don’t forget what it’s like to live here, amongst the fog of daily life.

welcome to vancouver. i’m just going to give you the high and low points and you can take it from there. actually, i’m going to pair them up so that you can measure things for yourself. if you want to see pictures, you shall have to wait a little and see them either on my facebook profile or on my smugmug albums. preferably the latter, since the quality is oh-so-delicious there.

first of all, let’s get something quite straight. there’s vancouver the area and vancouver the city. these are not the same thing. i didn’t realize how different the family of cities was until i got here. not visited, actually began to live here. we shall take a look briefly at her partners in crime in a moment, but i shall start with the different locations and short descriptions, before i get to the actual talk of substance.

vancouver — the city itself, trapped in the middle, against the pacific ocean. in a word, wet. in another word, wet.

richmond — where i currently work, a lengthy drive from downtown vancouver, stuck between the real city, which it is not really attempting to be, and the american border, to the south. in a brief word, chinese. not that that’s a bad thing, of course, but it’s a hugely different experience from any other canadian city. it’s like beijing, except they take canadian dollars and you don’t need immunization to visit.

burnaby — the city of the mountain. well, they’re all cities of mountains, since we’re stuck between the rockies and whistler’s glorious snow-topped skiing paradise, but this one is actually on the mountain. sfu lives here, as does, er… nothing else, really. but it’s a beautiful and relaxing place where driving is easier and the forest comes to visit. in a word, trees. and more of them, even.

new westminster — think newark. without the high crime rate. a bedroom community nuzzling vancouver’s south-east boundaries like a chronically dependent child. there are houses there. they’re rather pricey by newfoundland standards. but cardboard boxes here are rather pricey by newfoundland standards. we drive through this city to get places if we don’t live there. and there are box-stores there, like the big ikea. and ikea makes everything worthwhile. the word? dishwater. (bland as, that is).

langley — it’s a place with grass, trees, and things that grow in, stand on, and consume on a regular basis, grass and trees. yes, that makes it sound like it’s our own in-house marijuana growth facility. it’s not. well, it could be. but that’s not what i’m getting at. there are farms there. like, legitimate farms with things that go moo on them. yes, they really do go moo. langley’s word is peaceful.

coquitlam — like langley but more mountains. really, more mountains. but the farms are much the same. the word? altitude-curious.

surrey — there are bad things that people say about surrey. i won’t repeat them. it seems like a lovely place to me. the people there, well, there’s a large variety of people there. and some of them are rather stereotypical fans of lynyrd skynyrd. with pickup trucks. but they’re not really in the majority and most of them are actually rather pleasant people, most of whom live there because they can’t be bothered with the vancouver lifestyle. surrey’s word is nice. in almost every way, it’s the middle-of-the-roadness that is typically associated with a small midwest town. except it’s neither small nor midwest nor town.

coquitlam is not really of note here and the further-out places, we will cover in a later message.

so, on to vancouver, point-by-point.

the driving is truly atrocious. i should get that out of the way. there is no other way to say this. the locals, in general, can’t drive. this is why. they don’t pay attention to what they are doing. when the average vancouverite drives, driving is seventh or eighth on the list of things to do. and that’s while the car is moving. when the car is stopped, say at a stop sign, a traffic light, or even behind a car that is making a left turn, it drops off the list entirely. and not until the car begins to move. it’s until the car hits 30mph again. so the initial start is completely without thought. it’s dangerous and aggrivating. i’ve never felt so afraid for my life in a car while only hitting a maximum of 10mph on many roads, before. that being said, the balancing point is that, when the other drivers aren’t around — say, at 5am, which is a lovely time to drive, anyway — the roads are fantastic. especially the ones up in the north (note, i didn’t talk about north and west vancouver in the list above. it’s because i really like them and i’m going to write a different post about that particular location, which is my likely new home, once i move, unless i end up teaching in burnaby, which would be altogether different and take up more space than i am willing to devote to a paranthetic addendum.) are truly beautiful. they are twisty, hilly, and other joyous adjectives that end in -y. and you can drive relatively quickly without fear of flipping your motor from badly maintained surfacing on a tight bend. even in downtown, the driving is great, except for the drivers. so my recommendation is to work close to home and drive at night for pleasure.

oh yes, and the price of fuel — it’s astonishingly bad. but that’s not just a local thing. note to canadian government — give it a rest with the petroleum taxation and let us get on with our days. it is not the fault of opec. you could fix this. i shall move on now.

housing is expensive. like, really expensive. living in downtown will cost you something just shy of black-market-elicit. it’s absolutely painful. the upside to this is that housing is much better quality in these places. an expensive apartment in st john’s will cost you much less, but you get much less. the quality just isn’t there. at least in this city, people demand quality construction, appliances, etc. and things simply work. i suppose you get what you pay for.

unless you live in kitsilano, that is. then you pay a fair amount and are likely to get a basement that is only six feet high and about as bright as the armpit of an average chimpanzee.

there are wonderful neighborhoods. yes, wonderful. yaletown is beautiful and upscale. gastown is beautiful and, er… not so upscale. across the river from yaletown is a lovely quiet area that feels very safe. and kitsilano is nice. yes, nice. out by the ubc campus is staggeringly beautiful. and impossible to get anywhere from, since it’s so far out there. but the ocean is nice. and so is the park. but it’s very expensive out there and it’s much easier simply to live downtown with the amenities and drive to campus. or anywhere else, for that matter. the other side of that is that bad neighborhoods are rather extreme in the other direction. go thou not to east hastings. or commercial drive.

ever.

yes, i mean it.

even if you’re big and strong. it’s not a violent area, per se. it’s all about drugs. and the biggest guy in the world’s still not going to want to take on a desperate heroin addict on the street. consider yourself forewarned.

produce is cheap. yes, really cheap. and it’s fantastic quality. for canada, in particular. the cost of food is very nice. unless we’re talking about specialty stuff. and i’m very much into the specialty foods, since my diet is rather non-wheat-oriented for reasons that i shan’t discuss here. that being said, it all comes out in the wash and food prices become relatively average and produce quality is definitely the best in the country. thou shalt be happy if thou eatest healthy foods here.

people are healthy here, in general. the locals are overweight, in general, in newfoundland. it’s just the way things are. if you walk down the street in downtown st john’s, the locals are, on average, blatantly consumption-oriented. walk around downtown vancouver and you will discover that people are healthy weights, in general. not everyone, but the vast majority. it’s because they exercise. obsessively. it’s warmer here and you can spend time outside, so that’s progress, too, but whatever the reason (and part of it is an absolute obsession with yoga and the like, from the pseudo-hippy new-age-yuppy mentality), they keep the weight under control.

the other side of that coin is that many things here feel fake. the healthiness is definitely an act in many ways. it’s not a result of eating well — it’s much more a result of eating badly then being overworked to the point of not having a snack. but at least it looks good.

salaries are much higher here. good point. yes, very good point. cost of living is absurdly high. housing is expensive beyond the point at which it would be painful to a reasonable person. fuel is absurdly pricey. but at least salaries are high to match.

and there’s an obsession with the technology industry. yes, i work in the technology industry. as does just about everyone else in this city, unless they’re on the film crew for battlestar galactica.

oh yes, they film just about everything here. walk around vancouver for an hour and you’ll start to recognize scenes from your favorite television shows and films. we’re cheap, close to the american border, and have no distinguishing marks in our cityscape. a filmmaker’s dream come true. and, yes, it’s our tax dollars at work. i’m not bitter.

beyond that, we get to the weather.

people complain about the weather here a lot.

yes, a lot.

more than in newfoundland, if you could believe that. and i didn’t, until i moved here.

yes, it’s wet. and overcast. almost all the time. and seasonably-cold seems to be a frequent state of mind.

but it’s warmer than the east, continually. and it gets sunny on occasion. and i’d much prefer wetness to snow. one doesn’t have to shovel rain. and the drainage system here is second-to-none. flooding is unusual and that’s quite a feat with all this water falling.

we have beautiful sunny days and not just in the summertime. it’s a photographer’s dream come true and there are mountains, ocean views, small coves, and cityscapes, often within minutes of each other — even on foot.

so there’s your unvarnished and highly condensed look at the city of vancouver.

next time, we shall look at some other location, but for now, this should relieve some of your curiosity, i hope.

in the wake of various and sundry questions from friends with regards to the last (if novel-length) entry on social photography sites, i believe that it may be time to address the question of digital photography, as opposed to film. this is a wide-ranging discussion and i’m only going to talk about a few aspects of it here — in particular, the ones that relate to my expertise on the topic — and leave the rest to your imagination.

so what’s the difference between digital and film photography, just as a start?

to take a photograph using a film camera, the procedure begins long before the act of button-depression. film is acquired, loaded through a time-consuming and delicate procedure, and the canister door is firmly sealed to ensure that light does not contaminate the mimesis. the photograph can now be taken but not seen, even by the artist. the image is created, in negative form, locked on a sheet of plastic waiting for the assistance of a human for its escape. this creates a vast temporal distance between the act of initial creation and the subsequent discovery of the art object. in contrast, a digital camera’s memory is infinitely reusable. while simple film-based units are referred to as point-and-shoot cameras, it was not until the digital was introduced that this nomenclature was truly made possible. a digital device allows for true instantaneous art creation. the artist points the camera at an object, depresses the requisite button, and a representation manifests itself on a convenient screen for post-creative commentary and enjoyment. on the development side, it is possible for the film camera’s operator to perform the messy, time-consuming task of transmission of negative image to paper but, due to its relative unpopularity, it can be assumed that developing typically took place in a laboratory setting, without the control of the artist. this procedure is vastly separated from the initial creation of the image, both from a temporal perspective and from the viewpoint of human interactivity. with the use of a digital device, the image exists from the moment of storage to the memory and development is both unnecessary and impossible. quantity is the other point for comparison and its impact cannot be swept under the metaphysical carpet. a typical consumer camera operator from the film generation will limit herself to the restraints of no more than several canisters of unexposed film. with two canisters netting a total of 48 pictures and necessitating a time-consuming and potentially destructive procedure of daylight-loading of the second canister, this would likely be a theoretical maximum for a typical amateur user. in contrast, a quick trip to a national chain electronics store flyer reveals specials on 2gb and 4gb digital camera storage chips. holding a minimum of, respectively, 500 and 1000 photographs, per chip, the order of magnitude of the increase in potential storage is astonishing.

now that we’ve got that out of our systems, let’s take a look at the real difference between the two modes.

film is decidedly old technology, whether it be plate, medium-format, or 35mm. even aps has been around for almost as long as many of my sister’s friends. digital isn’t exactly new, either, but there is one significant difference. a film camera from the 1960s is going to work in almost exactly the same fashion as one that you buy today at your local photography store. you load the film (yes, likely 35mm, unless you’re feeling particularly adventurous), you depress the shutter, you develop the negatives, and you have yourself a print, which you then likely must scan, edit, and reprint, if you’re serious about results. that’s what we call cumbersome, where i come from.

i’m the first person to admit that film, combined with a solid body and a quality lens, provides a beautiful result. i was a film photographer for years and the old habits die hard even with someone who is more graphics designer than shooting enthusiast, when it really comes down to the metaphysical tacks of alloy-oriented fame. that being said, however, film is dead.

i say it again — film is dead.

and it’s not digital shooting that killed it, either. it’s the shift in focus on the research and development side from companies like kodak, nikon, and fuji. the problem with film is that it hasn’t progressed at all in the last thirty years, in any meaningful way. and like all other arcane technology, it was ripe for replacement, since its updating had been remiss.

what is a film camera good for now?

well, you’re going to get many professionals tell you that you get clearer photographs. or that medium format is the way to go, because the film size is so large and enlargements, then, are made easy.

laugh at these people, would you please?

the simple answer to the question is that film is only good if you have lots of money invested in film and you have to justify it to yourself. other than that — if you’re just starting out, for example — get yourself a solid digital and skip the film generation.

yes, i still have a soft spot in my heart for my old fully-manual pentax. but it lives in the closet and i have no actual desire to take it out for a joyride.

now that that’s out of the way, there are a few other questions that need to be answered. three of them, actually. the first is point-and-shoot versus slr. the second is what’s so good about digital. the third is the question of brand, which is a much touchier subject.

i’m going to give you a simple set of questions to determine whether you should buy a point-and-shoot or an slr (yes, both digital) camera. this is a rough guideline that i use when my friends ask me questions about photography, as they often do.

ok, they’re not really questions — they’re binary division statements. but that’s much the same concept and i ask them as questions to people, when voice is involved.

1. how much money do you have to spare? if you don’t have at least $1000 in completely guilt-free currency on hand, then you’re going to have to seriously reconsider your slr purchase, because it’s not going to be worth it.
2. are you obsessive about control? if you’re not, then an slr is likely going to sit in full-auto mode most of the time and you’re not really going to get the use out of it.
3. how much do you like to zoom? if more than 3x, then you’re going to need an slr. really, if you want to zoom at all, give up on the point-and-shoot right now and move on.
4. do you take low-light photographs? if you do and they’re close-up, then you’re ok with p&s. if they’re at a distance, or you’re particularly adverse to the use of the flash, get thyself to a large-aperture lens. and that’s not going to be all that cheap, i warn you. you may wish to reconsider your hours of photography if expense isn’t in your near future.
5. how much do you like editing? if you’re not going to do some serious modification of the shots, then something with the power of raw and the ability to edit large images is not going to do you all that much good and you should stick to a camera the size of your hand rather than the size of your head.
6. how much time do you spend taking pictures? or, perhaps i should say it another way, how much time do you want to spend taking pictures. if the answer to this is less than a few hours a week, don’t bother. you’re going to spend thousands of dollars on gear that isn’t going to bring you much enjoyment. if you want to put some serious time into the hobby, get to the store with your credit card and you could be a new member of the club today.

so hopefully that helps a little.

the second answer is why digital. i’m going to answer this one in much the same manner.

1. digital is easier. there’s no room for error. you can take a hundred shots in the blink of an eye and that’s the first reason on the list and often the last one you’ll ever need to consider.
2. there’s no waste. it’s cheaper to run, since it’s marginally more expensive than free. in addition, that’s a fantastic argument for the environmentalists among us (of which i certainly am not). no film, no cannister, no processing, no nasty chemicals, and no dark room.
3. which brings us to number three — no darkroom. so things are instant. instant, i tell you.
4. you can see your pictures right away. and that’s nice. because your models haven’t gone home yet. or even gotten up off the… well, nevermind that.
5. and, perhaps most importantly for the professional or serious amateur amongst us, digital is being developed and film is not. so you will reap the benefits of progress, while concentrating your experience on the future.

and now we go on to the land of brand.

i’m going to make this simple for you and tell you what you should buy and what you shouldn’t. if you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. these are recommendation, not discussion topics.

if you want a point-and-shoot, buy a panasonic. yes, olympus, nikon, and pentax make good point-and-shoot cameras. kodak, canon, sanyo, and your local walmart brand do not. but simply put, the only ones worth the bother are panasonic. and don’t get the cheap one. if you want a camera, put in the extra hundred dollars and get something that will make you happy. it’s worth it in the long run and if you can’t afford it, wait a few months. you will be joyful that you did, when you see the results.

and for that matter, you’ll likely want to print your pictures. the hp photo printers are fantastic. the lexmark ones cost a fortune to run but give great results. the canon, epson, kodak, and similar units are not worth the boxes that they’re packed in.

for an slr, the recommendation is also clear. there are two options — the nikon or the panasonic. the nikon d40 isn’t truly worth the bother, but anything else they make is beautiful. the panasonic slr is a little overpriced but it is also magnificent. canon hasn’t made a quality piece of equipment since the 70s, olympus can’t compare to nikon at the same price point, pentax is cheap at best and if you want that kind of quality, get a panasonic point-and-shoot and be done with it, since it will look better, anyway.

so i hope that helps. in any case, happy shooting!

social photography. yes, indeed, now that i am back on the camera-obsessive train from which i fell (was tossed?) truly not all that far into my my forgotten annals of history (yes, annals, people, we’re not in sixth grade, are we?), i am discovering that i take many (too many?) photographs at social gatherings, which must then be processed, parsed, pared, pruned, and published.

(there are several comments that can be made here. one of them is that photographic pruning, like most selective pruning, has exactly zero connection with the regularity-promoting fruit of seniors‘ home fame. the other is that, after such a profusion of alliteration, one must take a p-break. the first may be classy. the second definitely is not. i shan’t make the second. if you believe that i already did, it was your mind playing with you.)

such is life, you tell me. and it is true. my life, at least, consists primarily of attempted sleep, depressing (suppressing?) keys for eight hours out of the day (lunch exempt, thankfully enough), friendship of a truly vibrant nature, which shall be the subject of another article, i assure you, since it is of paramount importance to me and provocatively little significance to the topic at hand, and alternative depression. now, when i say alternative depression, i don’t mean such things as are treated with Prozac et al. i mean, the depression of the joyous shutter control on my photograph implement of choice. while i am not naturally depressed, as an aside, i could certainly understand how this sort of action would have a positive effect on those who were so afflicted.

life it is, but how do we, as modern photographers of a society of internet obsessives, communicate our vision to the masses? perhaps not the masses — how do we communicate it to our friends? or is that really the same thing? aha! a topic at last. and it only took me half a page to get here. ah, dear reader, thou art patient with my ramblings and i am copiously and vigorously thankful therefore.

photography and internet obsession

so what’s the difference between being a digital photographer and being an internaut? (cybernaut?)

a camera is not a computer. i say that again so that there is no confusion on the topic — a camera is not a computer.  as much as my slr may have more processing power than a Vic 20 (or even a Pentium, for that matter), it doesn’t have a mind of its own. and yes, i am aware that neither does sir Vic of ages past, but the idea of a computer is to perform your tasks so that you don’t have to and the idea of a camera is to allow you to perform exactly the task (in this case, art object creation) that you are seeking, preferably in the most pleasing way possible.

and this is where the confusion comes in. at which point does the camera start doing things for you and you stop being involved in the process of taking the picture? well, i’ve published several articles on the disappearence of the self in photography, which you can read on my public site, but i shall sum it up for you here in a sentence. since we are choosing what to shoot (and, more importantly, what not to shoot), the ultimate responsibility for the creation of the art object lies with us. end of story. (two sentences, i know. you can feel free to shoot me now, if you are so inclined, but please get it over with, so that i can get on to completing the article, while bleeding on the keyboard.)

many of my friends are lovers of the internet. (many of my friends have lovers over the internet but that is indeed a story for no other day.) they do what has euphemistically acquired the appellation of surfing, which is exactly what the posterior section of the body tends to do after long periods thereof. i cannot understand the draw of such things as youtube, random articles on wikipedia, and typing dirty words into google’s photo search function. for me, the internet is a tool to be used, to be used quickly, and to be left alone when not expressly desired. but i’m a child of the eighties and i shan’t impose my arcane views on you.

the difference, though, is that i sit at a computer to edit photographs and often find myself longing to go out and take more shots instead of being tied to keyboard, mouse, and tablet.

but i do it quickly, unless they’re shots for publication and sale, so survival shall be my result, regardless. the question here, though, is how do we get from processed photograph (or unprocessed, for those photographically-procedural-nudists amongst you) to social communication?

to share or not to share?

sharing photographs is an age-old question. as long as the age is recent enough to take into account that the photograph has only been around for less than two centuries, of course, but you get the idea. do i take photographs for my own edification or for the purpose of sharing with my friends?

this is an excessively personal question that has no definite answer for the masses. but i shall leave it for you to contemplate and give you my answer, while you do such.

for me, my memory isn’t exactly in top form, most of the time. i take pictures, primarily, because i want to remember. i might not remember things exactly as they happened, but the idea is that i have a picture in my mind of these times that i have, at some future point, forgotten. and if i have enough pictures, then i have fantastic evidence, sitting in some dark room, when i am agèd and reflecting on my long, past life, that i lived a wonderful youth and middle-aged period. or perhaps something not quite so nostalgic. i want to look upon yesterday’s photographs and make sure that yesterday has not disappeared from my mind, so i shoot the present for the future.

in addition, i love the act of taking pictures. a timeless borrowing from a present that disappears as quickly as it arrives is a beautiful way of making art.

plus, i do it for you. which is a song, i think. but i’m truly not certain if i would take nearly so many photographs if they were not for public consumption. if this is not the case for you, this is likely not a subject that you’re going to want to pursue any further and, as such, you would likely be better off reading something else, since this is the train of thought that i am unable to derail at present.

photographing for the metaphysical y’all

for whom is a photograph?

we have established that it’s for me. and for someone else. but who is that elusive other for whom taken the snapshot is?

there are three possible answers, of course, since we divide the world into three groups, as a general and i’m-unwilling-to-go-into-this-discussion statement — self, friends, and others. self we have covered. yes, i take shots for myself. good for memory, good for enjoyment, good for future. good. plato would be proud.

i take shots for my friends. this one’s just as obvious, since they are often in the pictures and i want to share with them images of themselves and other mutual acquaintances. no discussion required. but what about the general public? this is often a bone of contention between those of differing views of personal privacy and public freedom.

does sharing my pictures with the general public violate my privacy? some would say yes. and they would likely be right, but so does walking down the street without covering my whole body so that i am unrecognizable, since my right to undisclosed movement is a principle of privacy that cannot be ignored. but this is going too far for most people. so it’s not a black-and-white division. well, it is, actually, but there is a point at which we just say that it’s far too much trouble to be private and move on with our lives. this is one of those points for me. i post my pictures for the public and they are free to do with them as they will.

but then comes the far more confusing scenario. if i am comfortable posting my photographs for the public to peruse and you are not so comfortable, i do it and you don’t. simple. but what if i take a picture of you? do i post that on the general-purpose interwebs or do i keep it to myself? or do i show it to my friends? and how do i go about doing that without showing it to everyone else? or just select friends? now this has gotten far too confused. i want to go back to the shoeboxes under the bed where i used to keep my slide shots.

this is where social photography sites come in.

shooting the masses

if truth is what we see, then the camera is the only weapon for good that we have left.

i’m not going to explain that but you can think about it while i go off on a tangent, if you like.

there are two types of photograph sharing sites out there. there’s the general sharing site and there’s the friend-oriented site. these lines have become rather blurred but i’m going to pretend that they are relatively distinct for my purposes of illustration.

the best example of the general sharing site is flickr. at the end of the photo flow, an upload happens and the world can see our latest masterpiece or our friends taking too many shots of taquilla and falling on the floor in an amusing fashion. quick, simple, public. there are many of these, but we’re going to deal with that in a minute.

the friend-oriented site is epitomized by the immortal dominant in internet connectivity, facebook. i, as did many people, resisted the temptation to join and participate for quite awhile. and then gave in. and to be completely honest about it, i think it’s a fantastic concept in almost every way. but the purpose from this perspective is quite clear. upload photographs, select group of availability, tag friends et al.

so there’s quite a difference, mostly because of this tagging and privacy thing.

and i know that you can have truly public albums on facebook and private ones on flickr, but we’re talking about the common-use scenario as an archetype, not a custom solution for those inclined to poke around the settings areas.

the long and short of it is, though, that if you haven’t thought about where to share your photographs online, it might be a good thing to contemplate. we’re going to move on to a brief bit of thinking about the individual sites in a minute, but i’ll answer the obvious question first. i post my photographs on facebook. yes, pretty much all of them. if you are on my friends list, you will see dozens of albums, ranging from artistic shots to snaps of friends to pictures of my newly purchased car and such various and sundry items. even mirror-shots of haircuts make it onto my facebook photo area. and i tag my friends. pretty much every time. and that’s the feature that gets me. i believe that it’s the best thing since sliced bread. actually, i hate sliced bread but i am a fan of the face-tagging system. i want to know when i’m in a photograph, when my friends are, and when they’re not. there are too many pictures out there to deal with if i can’t filter by content and that’s exactly what this allows me to do.

in addition, i post my artistic shots to deviantart, smugsug, and have been contemplating another. but more than that, i have a personal site and that’s where the real content ends up. my pride-inducing shots sit side-by-side with my published articles and samples from my books, but that’s not a social experience — that’s marketing.

what’s in a site?

you’ve got the idea now. i just want to make sure that this is something that you have thought about and made a decision on that is right for your purposes, rather than try to squeeze your current site into the mold, which you are seeking. there are so many automated tools out there for iphoto, aperture, etc, that switching is quite easy, if that is what frightens you. now we shall move on to a brief overview of your more popular options. if i leave out one, it could either be because i have forgotten or because i truly don’t think it warrants mention. you can feel free to ask which.

facebook — share photographs with your friends or the public, tag them, comment on them and let others do the same, and control privacy on a granular level. but you can only use low-resolution photographs and there’s no way to share anything a bit clearer. and the resizing engine kills any semblance of artistic quality that you might have. it’s a social publishing site so that you can mass-share with your friends. it’s not an artistic venue. but it’s fantastic. i don’t think i’d have bothered with facebook except for this feature.

smugmug — yes, it’s a pay-for-use site. but it’s absolutely worth it. the ease-of-use is phenomenal and it integrates beautifully with my aperture flow. if you haven’t tried this out and you’re an avid amateur or professional photographer, it’s definitely something to consider. and the cost is quite low. and yes, ideed, i am against the pay-for-use model. but sometimes we just have to do what works and forget about the currency required, when it is fairly insignificant.

flickr — i’d have to cast my vote here for the fact that flickr’s interface is stuck in the last century. it’s confusing, slow, and cumbersome, not to mention that they’re making the switch to do many of the things that facebook does, without any of the finesse that facebook has showed for it. and for a mass-market site like facebook to be leaps and bounds ahead on the finesse scale, that’s quite a comparison to be made. flickr has one of the worst user experiences that i’ve ever seen in a site and, as such, i’d highly recommend against it.

google (picasa) — the idea is fantastic and the implementation is, well, not so great. as with most google products, the concept is quite obviously best-in-class. and they forget about the fact that we as humans are visually motivated people who want things to be a pleasant experience. if you want a free alternative to smugmug, though, skip the flickr train and just get yourself a copy of the picasa uploader. it will save you headaches and only cause you mild questionings at the fact that a company with so much money can’t quite get the user interface to feel nice.

deviantart — if you haven’t taken a look at this one, it’s worth a poke-around. it’s a community site dedicated to artistic creation. so you can comment, receive comments, share artwork, not just photographs but drawings and even writings. it’s a lovely little environment with only one thing lacking — a mass-upload tool for artwork. now, if you’re a pen-and-ink artist, you’re only creating one piece of artwork at a time. if you’re a photographer, it’s not unusual to have fifty good shots in a day that you’d like to get comments on. and their staunch position that artwork takes time to create and shouldn’t be mass-uploaded drives me crazy. yet, i am an active member of the community and take the time to upload many shots. that being said, i’m a bit behind and have a backlog of over a thousand in the upload-to-deviantart folder on my storage array. and they have an optional pay model to get some more features. definitely well done.

.mac — it’s fantastic, it’s integrated, it’s easy, and it’s expensive. if you’ve got a mac, you should certainly give the free trial a whirl. if it’s your cup of tea, then i’m happy for you, since the thing is fast and the interface is wonderful. but if you want to do anything on a large scale, it’s going to take you forever and you should keep that in mind before you commit.

photobucket — it’s not worth the bother. just go and use the google site if this is what you’re looking for.

shutterfly — again i say it, this is a site designed with sales in mind. if you are going to part with some currency, take a look at smugmug and you will be rewarded. if you are not financially committed to your camera like i am, google is the way to go and you can just swallow the interface shortcomings.

webshots — it’s a site where people try to put porn and it gets taken down. the interface is terrible but the hosting is fast. use at your own peril. oh, and don’t download the awful background-changing software. it’s proprietary and painful and you will kick yourself for the time you spend trying to get rid of it.

so there you have it. and now i’m off to shoot some more in lovely downtown vancouver.

ta-ta.

No, this is not a post about nuns. I just thought I’d get that out of the way right off the top to make sure that any fans of the more ecclesiastical version of the garb wouldn’t be disappointed by such discussion as does not pertain thereto.

We, not just the humans, but the developers, indeed a subspecies unto ourselves, to be certain, are creatures of habit — not that we call it that. Convention is the word of choice. I go to a convention, in a convention center, to talk about coding conventions. I didn’t say that we were are creative bunch as far as naming conventions (yes, that’s it again) go. But that’s how things stand and we shall work within the framework that we are given. And yes indeed, framework is another fantastic means-very-little-yet-used-very-much keyword of the industry. But that’s a story for another day.

I remember being asked to write my first handbook for coding conventions. It was the nineties and I was working with languages that we have all tried to forget and that have even made their ways out of the introductory course materials for computer science degrees by now. But a new language, of sorts, was making its way onto the scene and it was well on its way to being shunned, bitten, and converted into an effigy to be burned on the front lawn of Microsoft offices across this fair nation (among others). It was called Visual Basic and, even though I spend my days writing PHP and Ruby code, I am prepared to say that VB was quite possibly the most significant development advancement of the nineties. And no, I’m not going to give you ten pages explaining why that is the case. It shall have to suffice to say that VB brought simplicity and efficiency into coding that was never possible in C++, Fortran, or even in Java, which was a long way away, by this time. It was graphically based with a solid textual code foundation underneath and allowed the beginner to bash out not just a line-writer that repeated Hello, World ad nauseam but actually did something. I am the first one to admit that it likely didn’t do all that much, but from text processing to automation and from file parsing to database integration, there was nothing simpler for the entry-level developer than creating a VB application. And that redefined the job description of what an entry-level developer was. We like, as an industry, to forget that there was a time when that stereotype of the dork with tape-insulated glasses and deformed dentistry sitting at a green-on-black terminal typing machine language was an accurate depiction of reality.

But that’s just background.

I was writing a reference guide for Visual Basic’s new web-oriented little sister, ASP (not the .Net version, which I shall complain about on a later date and which drove me to open-source in the first place), the prettiest of scripting languages, based firmly on the VBA gene pool, with some nice little custom objects and the like.

Which is when it struck me. I was working at a company with a variety of developers, many of whom were supposedly expert-qualified in Visual Basic and C++ (of the visual persuasion, mostly), but none of whom had successfully made the transition from the Visual-Basic-and-Visual-C++-and-Visual-Interdev-oriented model to the write-it-in-notepad-and-compile-on-the-fly web scripting mentality.

Hence my coding convention guidebook.

I’m not going to post it here. Not just because it was eaten by the techno-faries years ago but because it has little relevance to today’s development world. But it got me thinking about what a web-scripting language is that’s different from the bulky, segregated-code model of a compiled application. And that was the answer. It’s not segregated or complex or multiple-anything. It’s simple in every sense of the word.

So now that I’ve led you down this path, I’m going to leave you with a short description of what is to come and head off to complete my daily shop in the land of carrots and potatoes and yams. (Oh my.)

I propose a different way of developing for the web and I’m going to show you what I mean about conventional simplicity. That means not just reusing code, project to project, but line to line. I write so that the code knows how I think and that makes things much more efficient, as a developer. And I think it might help you, if you’re interested in changing the way you think about efficiency and accepted coding practices, which we’re going to jetison from quite a height at the earliest opportunity.

Before we get started, I’m going to make a few assumptions. You don’t have to know PHP to follow along, but if you don’t have a good grasp of HTML, you’re going to get lost. And knowing PHP might help, but any scripting language should stand you in good stead. This is a theoretical discussion with an applied component, not a tutorial.

I’m going to make a deal with you, too. I don’t care if you don’t agree with me. You don’t have to code like me. You’re not going to change me mind that this is how things should be done and if I’m not going to change yours, then we can agree to disagree and not start a fight here in the land of public discussions. So please don’t post “that’s against what my high-school PHP instructor taught me” or “in this well-respected book on coding practices, it says not to do that”.

I already know that. I can tell you right now that you’re going to have a thousand reasons why not to do what I am talking about. But that’s ok.

Oh, one more thing. If you’re curious where I get off talking about throwing out coding conventions and developing better through personal aggregation rather than standard-best-practices approaches, that’s a legitimate question. These are approaches that I have developed over the last decade as a web-language developer and director of Azure Media Studios, a national design studio specializing in online and print media.

Now that we have the ground-rules set up, let’s get started on some code.

Well, in the next post, at least.

It is a new day. Yes, I know it’s a new day every day but I mean figuratively. It’s a new day in my life, so to speak. Poetic license, you know. Arrivals have come and I seem to find myself no longer in St John’s, a city of cold, damp snow and personalities to match, but on the relaxing west coast. Vancouver is my home suddenly and that feels curiously unfrightening and more invigorating, to be perfectly honest. When people say that they don’t believe in regrets, it typically means that they wish they had done something differently but are prepared to suppress the desire to think about it. Not in my case, though. Not only do I not typically believe in regrets, I have none, other than that I didn’t do this sooner.

But I shan’t live in the past — it is time to acquaint myself with the new present.

So what does it mean for me to have left the secluded, detached island where I spent my childhood in favor of a city that couldn’t really be any farther away and still be in the same country? (Yes, I am aware of the existence of Victoria. But I wasn’t prepared to let that destroy by lovely rhetorical image, was I?)

In a word, nothing. I’m not homesick. I don’t miss it at all and I doubt that I ever will. Not that I haven’t lived elsewhere before, so I expected to feel like this. But it’s nice to have one’s suspissions confirmed — eliminates the need for further humility, which is one of the more dirty words whose meanings that I have been forcibly familiarized with.

Now, I miss people who live in the east. But I am certain that, in time, they will all finally escape the black hole that is The Rock and gravitate elsewhere. Perhaps more of them will arrive in Canada’s rainy city. There seems to be quite a collection of us here already, I have discovered. Not that I’d ever consider myself a Newfie. Not that anyone else would consider me that, either. I am approximately equal in Atlantic Canadian status to Winston Churchill. And if you didn’t think that was amusing, then I applaud you, either for your lack of historical background or your intelligence in knowing that I am not funny.

Enough with this sentimentality and on with the joys of writing for writing’s sake.

Why am I in Vancouver, you ask? Ah, young Padewan, the answer to that rather simple is. Higher education. Alright, perhaps not exactly higher, but at least some more letters. Particularly those starting with P. More than ten years ago, I made myself a promise, that I would not simply sit in a classroom, that I would stand in front of it and lecture, share, and help. And I have done it, of course. But that is never enough and I will now make it my life.

Not that I’m ever going to be able to give up technology work, since being a professor will neither take up anywhere near enough of my time to keep me busy nor will it pay for the lifestyle that I enjoy. But teaching makes life bearable and I love it with a passion that shall never die.

So joyful, sweet UBC shall be my savior and grant me pleasureful reprieve from the daily necessity of hard labor and keyboard existence, allowing me quill and parchment (Yes, that’s more poetic license. Get over it, please.)

My days are filled with design but my life is filled with reading, writing, and potentially a third item, since all lists should be in groups of three.

Anyhow, I have arrived. On with the show…