Acknowledgements

It feels a little strange to refer to Going Offline as “my” book. I may have written most of the words in it, but it was only thanks to the work of others that they ended up being the right words in the right order in the right format. I’ve included acknowledgements in th…

NEW GENRES

The mass influx of new voices and the various platforms that inform and enable an avalanche of free, readily viewable video have accelerated the genre-making process, creating more than a handful of recognizable forms. This month, the Museum of the Moving Image's exhibition…

Infinite Loops

The contemporary prevalence of the gif both reflects and obscures just how much it has been integrated into our own everyday aesthetic practices — incorporated into cellphone keyboards and Instagram stickers, gifs are always ready at hand. While video has since developed past…

Games Without Frontiers

The evolution of video game culture has been shaped more by the sense of nostalgia, intimacy, and privacy games can evoke among players than by the more conspicuous desires for agency, vicarious violence, or an instrumentalist sense of control they might speak to for a lone user…

The Wild Ones

Local TV news used to fill time now and then with odd pet oddities, but with YouTube, the occasional distraction has become a willful routine of mild transgression. If a home is meant to set humans apart from nature, the presence of wild animals both violates this logic and exte…

True facts about frogfish

Proto-YouTuber Ze Frank momentarily steps down from his executive perch at Buzzfeed to get back on the mic for the humorous nature documentary True Facts, which is “f(bleep)ing back” following a three-year hiatus. This episode is about the elegant & graceful frogfish. (via…

This 14K Solid Gold Ring is Actually a Soviet Era Spy Camera

Just when we think we've already unearthed the coolest spy cameras in the history of photography, something just pops up and proves us wrong. From the depths of ebay's vintage awesomeness comes a super rare and unique Soviet Era spy camera, concealed in an ornately decorated and…

Four short links: 25 April 2018

Music Biz, Amazon DNS Hijack, Embedded Platform, and Tech Change Music Industry's "Fantastic 2017" -- That $1.4 billion of growth puts the global total just below 2008 levels ($17.7 billion), meaning that the decline wrought through much of the last 10 years has been expunge…

Japanese Poster: World Table Tennis Championship. Uenishi Yuri....

Japanese Poster: World Table Tennis Championship. Uenishi Yuri. 2014

Quote of the Day

“Full speed ahead! Damn the torpedoes!” – Bart Simpson “What’d he say? Put on our tuxedos?” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson “I want some taquitos.” – Old Jewish Guy

How to Use a Softbox: A Visual Guide for the Photographer New to Lighting

Over the years, I've used many different lighting modifiers, but one of the mainstays has always been a variation of the traditional photography softbox. Along with the umbrella, it's also arguably the most popular option on the market. Photographers of all types use them, but t…

The Twenty-Four-Book Aeneid

I've read many translations of the Aeneid. I've even, from time to time, had a go at translating bits and pieces from the original myself (there's a small example buried in the middle of this post, for instance) so I know how hard that job is to do well. And Sarah Ruden, in her…

Wouldn’t It Be Cool if Nikon Brought 5 Way Image Stabilization to Their DSLRs?

It has come to light, through some new patents, that Nikon is prepping, or at least working on some tech to bring the 5 axis stabilization that we all love from mirroless cameras over into the Nikon ecosystem. This is some pretty big news because this sort of tech has really, mo…

Review: Sony a7 III (What Sony Calls the Basic Camera)

I got the chance to spend time with the Sony a7 III in Las Vegas and then again here in NYC; and after all the time that I spent with the camera I am not totally sure who the customer is that may purchase it. There are three mindsets here: those who need really fantastic high IS…

Quote of the Day

“You’ll have lots of special people in your life, Lisa. There’s probably some place where they all get together and the food is real good and guys like me are serving drinks.” – Homer Simpson

Wall++HCI Research from Future Interfaces Group and Disney...

Wall++HCI Research from Future Interfaces Group and Disney Research is a relatively low-cost method of turning walls into sensors: Human environments are typified by walls – homes, offices, schools, museums, hospitals and pretty much every indoor context one can imagine h…

Survival of the Mediocre Mediocre

I have a theory about why the notion of an arms race between human and machine intelligences is fundamentally ill-posed: the way to survive and thrive in an environment of AIs and robots is not to be smarter than them, but to be more mediocre than them. Mediocrity, understood…

New 311 app feature allows users to report double-parkers

This is glorious. On April 9, The City launched a new feature in the smartphone application that allows users to report double-parked cars with photos and request enforcement. Double-parked cars blocking bike lanes and traffic lanes and cars blocking driveways or parked illegall…

Four seasons in the life of a Finnish island

Nestled amongst hundreds of stunning shots of the aurora borealis taken by Finnish photographer Jani Ylinampa is a series of four photos of Kotisaari, showing the island from a drone’s point of view for each of the four seasons (clockwise from upper left): spring, summer, au…

Cheap Photo: Sony Rebates, Some with Over $450 Off!

If you are a Sony photographer right now, or you are one of the many DSLR owners out there seriously considering jumping into the Sony Mirrorless ecosystem then you will want to have a look at the list below, which includes deal on a vast array of cameras and lenses within the S…

Samsung’s New 970 PRO and 970 EVO SSDs Are Crazy Fast, As In 30% Faster Than The 960s

It is the year 2018, hard drives are becoming less and less common in most work focused computers as significantly faster SSD storage has come down in price. SSDs (Solid State Drives) are smaller than ever and they are faster than ever, and no company right now is pushing that n…

The Design of Childhood

Design? Parenting? Playgrounds? iPads? Architecture? Toys? Probably Lego? Alexandra Lange’s upcoming book about “how children’s playthings and physical surroundings affect their development”, The Design of Childhood, is firmly in my wheelhouse. Parents obsess over the…

Another day at the augmented officeLatest video update from...

Another day at the augmented officeLatest video update from Leap Motion’s Project NorthStar development presents desktop AR: Another day at the augmented office. Our latest foray into #AR design with #ProjectNorthStar makes your entire world interactive. pic.twitter.com/SB8…

Four short links: 24 April 2018

IoT, Migrations, Prisoner's Dilemma, and Security IoT Inspector -- The Princeton University research team is digging into the traffic that IoT devices do, to identify malicious or otherwise dodgy behaviour. They want to know what IoT devices you have so they can test them. Th…

DxO Labs Goes Into Receivership, Says Not To Worry

Following the announcement of their planned split, a move that took DXO turned them into DXO labs and DXO Mark, it has now been reported that the company has gone into receivership. The move is being reported as a necessary piece of the process in french law to officially split…

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

From CGP Grey, an animated version of philosopher Nick Bostrom’s The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. Seeing that defeating the tyrant was impossible, humans had no choice but to obey its commands and pay the grisly tribute. The fatalities selected were always elders. Although s…

Philip Glass: “I expected to have a day job for the rest of my life”

I enjoyed reading Lolade Fadulu’s interview with Philip Glass about the composer’s early life and how he made a living in NYC before being able to fully support himself with his music (which didn’t happen until he was in his early 40s). As a boy, his mother made sure he go…

Going Offline, available now!

The day is upon us! The hour is at hand! The book is well and truly apart! That’s right—Going Offline is no longer available for pre-order …it’s just plain available. ABookApart.com is where you can place your order now. If you pre-ordered the book, thank you. An email…

Slow Train Coming

I came across these sorts of videos while studying for my PhD examinations. For six weeks I spent 10 hours a day in my office reading and taking copious notes, accompanied by the sights and sounds of train rides through Scandinavia. These offered just the right amount of presenc…

Lorenzo Papadia Explores Impermanence Using a Polaroid SX-70

Lovers of instant photography, particularly of the retro-hued images revealed by Polaroid film, find it a particularly striking and effective medium for emotional visual stories despite the imperfections. Among these is Italian photographer Lorenzo Papadia, who is also the lates…

Scores Unsettled

“The ear goes more toward the within, the eye toward the outer,” French director Robert Bresson wrote in “Notes on Sound.” Thus the seductive power of musical accompaniment, and the Richard Spencer punch’s lack of it raised an irresistible question: If this was a movie…

Altered States

As algorithms have become better at detecting copyrighted content, more elaborate YouTube countermeasures have been improvised: cutting a thing into small pieces, adding watermarks or silence at the beginning or end. The videos strain toward esotericism, new ways of working, the…

Film Emulsion Review: Lomography Redscale XR 50-200 Color Negative Film (35mm and 120)

For years I've walked into Lomography's shop and looked at Lomography Redscale XR 50-200 with disdain and wonder why any hipster would want to try something like this. But then I tried it myself partially out of curiosity, part out of needing to do this review, and part out of…

Here’s What’s Really Keeping You From Taking More Photos

"Practice makes perfect" is still the most fitting adage for anything you want to master. Sure, it's easy enough to say and understand. However, it can easily become an insurmountable task with the mere mention of one thing: time. When work and responsibilities start taking big…

This is Why Staying Away From Social Media Has Helped Me as a Photographer After One Month

At the time of writing this piece, I've kept myself unplugged from most social media for over a month. I'm not completely against social media but I don't think it's either healthy and beneficial for us, humans being a highly sociable species. At the beginning of this year, I co…

Corpse fingers.

Gang of murderous thugs use dead man's finger in attempt to access his phone. Victoria Armstrong, whose fiance, Linus F. Phillip, was shot and killed by a Largo police officer last month [was] at Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home in Clearwater the day two detectives showed up with Phill…