3,600 miles in 3.5 days
Okay, this will be a quick post. I'm taking off for Tucson tonight and driving back tomorrow night in a Uhaul. Wish me luck!
Here's some stuff to check out while I'm away.
Photography
The amazing work of Michael Crouser.
I found Chris Jordan's work in a free magazine a few months ago. I absolutely love his shots of shipping containers (you'll have to click on his 'images' link and scroll to the very bottom to see these).
Patrick Hoelck, fashion photographer.
Web
Google Maps - Seriously, how cool is this?
10x10 - 100 words and pictures that define the time.
Pushing Your Limits (and other secrets of designing with CSS)
Making Simple Work of Complex CSS Layouts
Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications
Simple Ajax Toolkit - "Sajax is a tool to make programming websites using the Ajax framework - also known as XMLHTTPRequest or remote scripting - as easy as possible."
Recent Geeky Purchases
Apple's wireless mouse is one of the most exciting new toys in my computing arsenal. I can't believe I've waited so long to get one!
I also picked up an Eye-One Display 2 a couple of weeks ago. I was really struggling to get a color profile that worked well when editing images on my Powerbook and this little gizmo did the trick!
Okay, that's all for now. I'll get back at y'all when I return. Oh, comments are going to be disabled until I return.
4 MPG
I'm finally back from Tucson. We stopped on the first night for 7 hours and drove straight through for the next two days. I'm pretty sure I haven't been up that long since I was 21. I'm still exhausted.
Driving the Uhaul truck was the worst. I'll never get a rental from them again. It was old, loud, and slooooow. We ended up spending $955 on gas (I still can't believe it!), which means that we got about 4 miles per gallon. Despite a near breakdown in Oklahoma and almost running out of oil, we made it back to Minnesota without major incident.
Here are some observations I made during the trip:
- New Mexico sucks. It's now my least favorite state and will be referred to as the "a$$hole of America" from now on. All of the towns along the freeway felt like fronts for meth labs and I feared for my life a couple of times. At a few exits the locals warned us not to risk parking the truck and even told us to avoid driving down the streets.
- Dear Oklahoma, could your roads get any worse?
- Magazines and other reading materials are not to be found south of the Mason Dixon line. Okay, I lied. There were a shitload of wrestling and racing magazines.
- I need to learn how to change a tire. It's embarrassing when two girls ask for help and you have to turn them away.
Well, there you have it. The trip was basically a good experience, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to return to normal life. Now that my brother is home, there shouldn't be anymore surprise trips in the near future.
Late Night Links
It's late, so this will be a quick one. I basically just have some links to share. Here goes...
Happy Snaps Daily is a wonderful photo site that is now among the few sites that I check every day.
A friend of mine linked to some Photoshop actions that imitate X-processing, Fuji Velvia film, Kodachrome film, Tri-X film, and infrared film. Very cool.
If you're in the mood for some virtual travel, check out NASA's World Wind. I vaguely remember reading about this in Wired on my flight to Tucson. Thanks to Matt for reminding me to check it out.
Ever wished you could attach an old school telephone handset to your cell? Me too. I absolutely can't wait to get one of these!
Found Software
I've been a fan of MySQL-Front for a long time. It makes managing a MySQL database really easy when you don't have access to phpMyAdmin. It's one of the main reasons that I still use a PC at home*. I've been casually looking for something similar to use on OS X for a few days and stumbled across CocoaMySQL. It's not as robust as MySQL-Front, but it does almost everything that I need it to do. I hope that it's still under development. The last update appears to be a year and a half old.
Also on the software front, I upgraded Transmit to version three. The column view and new sidebar are welcome new features. This app just keeps getting better!
Oh, before I forget...I saw something on digg today about a version of Knoppix that runs inside of Windows. It looks pretty sweet. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but you can check out a post about it on the Knoppix forums.
* - Quicken is the other reason that I use a PC. Does anyone know if the Mac version is good? I've read mixed reviews.
Prelinger Archives and More
This may be old news to some of you, but it was news to me last night. Check out the Prelinger Archives. It's a sweet collection of advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films.
Links
John Perkinson - Daily photo log
Apple covers color management and virtual color proofing.
Random Friday Goodness
There's a photography exhibit at the Mpls Institute of Arts that looks amazing: Alec Soth: Portraits. It's running through May 8th.
Open Source projects from Google! - code.google.com
iPodder 2.0 is out. Get it.
This article is linked to all over the web, but I'm fascinated with it and have to share. Thirteen things that do not make sense.
The Photobloggies
The Photobloggies - There's still time to cast your vote.
C'mon and do the Humpday Hump
My friends and I are gearing up to see Sin City this weekend, which reminds me that I didn't post about seeing Ong-Bak. As far as martial arts movies go, it was amazing...some of the best action I've seen.
Elsewhere...
Bansky - Check out his latest work.
I need this poster of London. Too cool.
Turning your scanner into camera seems like a bigger project than I'd want to get involved with, but the results are pretty cool.
Grafedia - I'm not sure that I get the point. Am I missing something? Maybe I just need to try it.
