Monday, April 18, 2005

Read and try not to weep

I barely knew about Marla Ruzicka, or her organization, CIVIC, until I heard about her death in an NPR feature this morning. Terrible news about an amazing and valuable soul.

Here's her journal and her about page.

Reports from Justin Alexander, Raed Jarrar, riverbend. Here's the Technorati search. I'm surprised I haven't seen more. The only one of the above to show up, so far, is Raed's post. Nothing on PubSub, either. Feedster finds more results, including Lost News, Indymedia, Speed of Life, Craigslist, NY Daily News, Liquidtoast, Washington Post, Joel Shurkin, Crooks & Liars, Steve Gilliard, Jamie Jeffords, Real Conversation for Your Ass, Hello Iraq, Truth, Rants and Rambling, and a bunch of others that were here before something crashed.

Most of the above are from the Left. Looking around Righty blogs, all I've found so far is this by The Anti-Idiotarian Rottwieler.

Getting (even more) Sirius

Jeff Jarvis: Dear Mel Kamrazin. A chunk:

Streaming's OK, but it's not enough; it's already so yesterday. Listening to a PC just doesn't cut it.

So when Howard Stern finally gets fired and rejoins you, I will want his show as a podcast I can download so I can listen to it when and where I want. I'm paying for it, so give it to me that way.

And when I get a broadband phone, I'll want to stream my favorite shows over the phone instead of your satellite (since it doesn't work everywhere and it's bulky and balky).

: As for your music channels, why not let the DJs create iTunes playlists according to their nichey tastes so I can buy from them (and you get a cut, Mel).

Why not also let your audience program some channels: Let various communities submit their playlists and may the best taste win.

Well put, and I agree.

Looking around

I just uploaded a pile of pictures from a January trip to Las Vegas and the Red Rock country to the west of there.

I didn't realize, until I started shooting around, that Las Vegas is a City of Ceilings.

Can you tell I'm at least as much a photographer as I am a writer? Thanks to Flickr, it shows.

You might get the idea, from the sets I've put up there, that I'm all about shooting nature and architecture. Not so. I just keep family pictures private.

My favorite subjects are people. I'll probably get around to showing more of those. These I put up first because it was easier to organize and gang-tag them.

By the way, all the shots I've put up, so far, were shot with a Nikon Coolpix 5700. It's several generations old now (released in 2002), but does a pretty good job.

Here's my review of the camera, from a little more than a year ago. All the kudos and complaints still stand. Notice the barrel distortion on shots like this. I have to say, though, the white-point correction is pretty good. This shot is uncorrected for incandescent light. Here's the same subject, corrected for incandescent lighting. The first is much warmer; but the second is more accurate. Nice how Flickr also publishes a pile of details (including white balance) for each picture.

Who let the dogwoods out?

Sheila Lennon, whose native clime has yet to be graced by dogwoods this year (forsythias have arrived, however), points to NPR's Music for dogwoods.