retrofocus ramblings.

I left ‘my’ newspaper. To date it still publishes something each day. I don’t check up on it all that often. To be honest, I’m done caring.
That’s kind of a loaded statement and not totally true.
It hurts too much to care most days. ( someday I’ll write about this – not yet )
More than halfway across the country a really nice well made, well reported and just a nice place to work from what I have been told no longer is anyplace at all to work.

The owners of the Rocky Mountain News have shut the doors.
The video that they have made of this closing is exceptionally well done.
You should check it out.

The Rocky’s Last Edition

During the In Memory portion of the show:

” The big difference between people, is not between the rich or the poor or the good and the evil, ’cause the biggest of all differences between people is between those who have had pleasure and love and those that haven’t. ” – Sweet Bird of Youth, by Tennessee Williams, film: 1962, by actor: Paul Newman, as: Chance Wayne

After doing some cursory research about the play from where the movie was derived it makes me wonder a bit more if this is really as positive as it sounds. Tennessee Williams wrote some real good words.

For some reason I tend to think to post more to this nascent ‘blog when I’m on the road. As if regular life as lived is less ‘blog-worthy. That might be true.
In the last few days I’ve had a raging fistfight with various technological annoyances. First it was with Skype’s business control panel function.
I like Skype. If I actually telephone somebody 9 out of 10 times I’m seated in front of the computer and therefore use Skype. This is great for calling banks and credit card companies or any other large corporation that has linked your phone number to your account. Messes with them big time. It’s especially good for those off the wall calls you get when you run your own business from those snake-oil salespeople that want to discuss your “merchant account” – mind you I know I don’t have a merchant account with these people, but it’s always good to double check in case some moron would be dumb enough to attempt an identity theft or something. Regardless, calling these types of places via Skype always seems to give me a leg up on the conversation. They really don’t know who you are and have, on occasion, sworn up and down that they didn’t call me in the first place. It can be fun. Turning the tables usually is.
However, that doesn’t explain my issue with the service. What I was trying to do is take my existing Skype name (which is the same as my Twitter name) and fold it under a Business Control Panel thingy along with two other Skype names I have launched for my two separate photography avenues. This worked fine until I tried to buy and distribute Skype “credits” from the administrative account, which was not my original account. It would seem if you tie a Skype name to a PayPal account that’s it, the two are linked forever. So I couldn’t use my PayPal account to add credits until I figured out a trick. You CAN have more than one administrator in the Business Control Panel. Eureka! That meant I could make my old account and administrator, buy credits with PayPal and distribute the credits among my 3 accounts in the Control Panel. Okay, now written, it doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but while I was fighting with the Skype and PayPal conundrum it was annoying to no end.
That solved I began fiddling with my domain name collection on GoDaddy and my hosting on FatCow. Back in 1995-1996 all this was so much easier. Would seem now that no matter what I try to do – and I’m trying to forward various domain names to folders on my main domain – good old GoDaddy has the domains as parked. Just some of them, others are working fine. So just some are not forwarding and one doesn’t even seem to be an active domain now if I am to believe OpenDNS. Arrrgh.
That’s what I get for messing with how it was before I guess. And I have followed GoDaddy’s instructions. To forward a domain it has to be on the “parked” nameservers. I did that. Maybe I just have to wait a bit more for the DNS lookups to reset, but – it’s still wicked annoying.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I’m trying to craft a total redesign of my main website? Yes I am. A project that has been ongoing now since June of 2007. Just don’t call me a procrastinator, no, that word is not big enough for me.

Off to do what my 12-year-old Dalmatian does so very well:

A few thoughts…
People still read – books. Yup, on pretty much every transportation mode I was on in the last 4 hours somebody had a book in their hand. On one occasion the Hispanic Spanish-Speaking bow-tie wearing boy behind me on the escalator in Boston’s Terminal C seemed to be reading his book to the person on the other end of his cellular phone call. Interesting.

You can take the A train subway from Columbus Circle to JFK, but it’s not quick. Plus, as the train moves into Brooklyn it’s pretty cozy.

Here I am sitting at a terminal bar in JetBlue’s new home. ( Free Wi-Fi! ) The bartender seems ready to head home. Since I’m drinking juice I don’t blame her. She just spent the last 15 minutes dolling herself up for somebody – lipstick, eyeliner, and the whole gamut. Given the rock on her finger I’m guessing she’s heading home to Papi.

Since this is my last 20 minutes in greater New York City I have one last image to post here. I decided to really use my ‘real’ camera while out for a morning stroll around Midtown. In an effort to be somewhat creative I abandoned my Nikkors and shot only with my LensBaby. I have one of the older styles with the set screws and plastic lens. It’s fun to play with. Specially on the streets of Manhattan pushing, pulling and twisting the thing around. Photography with two hands, imagine that!

In honor of the new motion picture in the theaters “Hotel For Dogs” I now present my homage – Hotel For Cars:

Too early to sleep so I’m doing some web surfing.
Over a Daring Fireball I found this link here and it’s a good one. Probably writing this post to remind myself as much as anything. Still, it’s a good post to remember.

Such is the thing about Winter. It finds you. After such a nice pleasant day on Monday today in New York City was decidedly less so. I did make it over to the International Center of Photography gallery and bookstore. Was not open on Monday. So that was a plus. It was a very interesting show on the upstairs for a number of reasons, but the more historic show downstairs celebrating the life and work of legendary Conde-Nast photographer Edwards Steichen was the meat and potatoes of the gallery. Much was there that really explains what fashion photography was for a long time.

The work upstairs, far more current – so much so that most of it was tear-sheets glued to foam core – only served to amplify the power and elegance of Steichen. There was even a goofy 16-mm silent film made by Eastman Kodak I think that showed Steichen at work in his Conde-Nast studio. (Early multimedia!)

Walking around the city after my stop at the ICP was fairly frustrating. No matter what corner I took the snow was in my eyes. Ended up making a trip towards Chelsea with the idea of visiting the Adorama store that I spend a bit of cash at. Have been to B&H last time I was here. Never made it, however, as the snow was driving me bananas and I had the good fortune to get a call from a old friend to do lunch. Back to Times Square I went.

While in Chelsea I snapped this one with the PowerShot. Not a great day for golf.

Another pretty full day of walking around New York City. Had a total of four possible museum stops on the day’s agenda and had a 50% success rate. Seems Monday’s are a common day for some of these places to be closed. Two were. I found them all with little issue, but it did require some traveling. Had a mixture of walking and subway as my means of getting around. One thing I did do was take the subway to Brooklyn and then took the walking path back over the bridge back into Manhattan. That was unique. Not sure I’ve done that particular stroll before. Actually busted out my D200 for that. Figures the autofocus on my off-brand 12-24 would go kaput today. Given the range I went back to some old-school lens twisting. Not a real issue with that wide of angles.

In the end for today here’s a snapshot of good old 30 Rock – The GE Building.

Did a small sort of photo-walk today on the Upper West Side. Walked from Columbus Circle North and crossed Central Park to get to the Guggenheim Museum. Carried my D200 over my shoulder, but the only camera I pulled out all morning was the Canon SD750 happy snapper. Don’t know why, just felt like not looking like a photographer today. Even though I removed the grip from the D200, it’s still fairly big and black and intimidating. The tiny Canon, not so much.
Speaking of things to see I have no idea why I was so fascinated by shoes, boots and feet while I’m walking around. Maybe New Yorkers just wear more snarky footwear. Who knows. I’m normally not much of a foot person at all.

Here’s a picture I grabbed near the Museum of Natural History. LOVE the boots and contrast.