Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

When I first asked Joel Eisenberg about posting a few of his Grateful Dead concert photos on a few back pages, Rockpix, at this here Media Spin web site, I added that it might take awhile for folks to find us. Well, in less than two years, two of his images have risen to positions #1 and #2 on the Google image search engine when entering “Grateful Dead Concert“. Of course this is an ever-changing statistic, but for now, as Walter Cronkite would say, that’s the way it is.

A Google search for simply “Grateful Dead” yields us the #8 and #9 spots. The image appearing in both searches has ghostly lettering “Grateful Dead” which I added using Photoshop techniques.

I’ve seen a number of these images linked at large sites such as Myspace, and music forums all over the world, so I suppose that is how these receive such high rankings. Other than running Google ads, Joel and I are curious about how to monetize the images. We’ve taken a few requests for photo prints on an individual basis, but merchant sites such as CafePress.com do not allow the marketing of celebrity images.

As exciting as this is, it reminds me that I must soon build a new web site for my own professional design work. Mediaspin.com has organically sprawled into my own little multi-purpose fun site, since Media Spin Interactive, Inc. closed its doors in 2003. I’m planning to use a new domainname for my professional design website, and maintain Media Spin as the random fun web site. That way professional business contacts will not be confused by the diversity and commercial nature of the current Media Spin site. What a long, strange trip it’s been!

See the video! Joel and I do a show and tell on Tubular TV about his concert photos.

I’ve been away for awhile… on vacation, at the beach, golfing, working on a project that is way past due, hovering between boredom and stress, poverty and contentment.

Anyway, I thought I’d post a nice bloggy woggy entry with an old classic Grebe black and white photo of a guy with his shirt off sitting on park bench near the Brooklyn Bridge. So, I get out my old Kodak Photo CD with 100 of my favorite film negatives from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s scanned in the Kodak Photo CD format way back in 1996. Now here is what makes the technology era so frustratingly, rapidly changing: it turns out Photoshop CS3 and CS2 fail to open these files!

When Googling the problem, a link to Adobe came up, but their solution did not work on my Apple Mac G5.

There are lost image pioneers that have gone before me in this search for solutions, such as Ted’s Unofficial Kodak Photo CD Homepage. I guess my previous versions of Photoshop’s PhotoCD plugins were OK, or I would have noticed this gross legacy error sooner. Another entry is from the year 2000, “What ever happened to the Photo CD?”

Kodak, you losers. You deserve to die a slow death in the transition from film to digital.

Hobnobbing in front of Walnut Creek’s Apple Store with the iWait.org crowd, who were holding places on line to be among the first to purchase the highly anticipated new Apple iPhone.  Visiting around 4 pm, I asked an iWait kid, about number twelve in line, how much he was selling his place in line for.  His answer, “Two-fifty.”

The glass front of the Apple store was covered from the inside with heavy black paper, I assume to be unveiled at the 6 pm iPhone sales opening. There was a carnival atmosphere building Friday evening at Walnut Creek’s upscale shopping district, the pulse quickening with iPhone launch excitement.

For those who care not to wait, there are plenty of exotic phone gadgets already on the market, such as this Verizon LG model (below).

The documentary film Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? is an arresting study of whether or not a found object is worth over $20,000,000, and how to go about proving it. The documentary gets better and better as art critics, art dealers, and art experts try and determine whether a dumpster diving, truck driving woman really has possession of an original Jackson Pollock painting.

Part of the film shows the floor of Pollock’s studio where he was the software engine that threw the paint onto the horizontally reclining canvas. Gravity, excitement, gesture, inspiration, knowledge and whim played a part in the programming of the painter’s mind as he cast dripping paint noodles onto the awaiting virgin canvas. While in the excited solitude of his studio, did Pollock ever masturbate on any of his canvases? That would truly provide the DNA link that Teri Horton seeks for her painting in question. Some paint drip!

Jackson Pollock stands as a giant of real physical painting. Here is jacksonpollock.org to honor him with Flash-induced dripping pixels. Take note that these are flat 2 dimensional pixels of computer encoded light.

Brian Eno calls his current touring exhibition, 77 Million Paintngs. I say that Eno has perhaps rendered 77 million musical notes resonationg in the physical airspace over time, but these are not paintings.

Eno has for a long time been a maker of stylish relaxed “ambient” music and art, sort of non-intrusive, office art without balls.

Spot Draves has been developing this idea long before Eno in his Electric Sheep project, as documented in my Tubular TV interview. Spot’s pixel throwing algorithms have been 10 years in the making, and are highly sophisticated.

To see the full text of the C.I.A.’s recently released, yet censored, documents go to The National Security Archives. The National Security Archives web site was written about on this blog in an earlier post about the Nixon-Elvis photo session.

Ugly Dog
Originally uploaded by michvet3

Photos from a World’s Ugliest Dog Contest held recently in Petaluma, CA.   This year’s winner, Elwood (right).

See the SF Chronicle article for more details and photos from this unusual pet show.

2005 newspaper article about Sam (below) from the Ugliest Dog show of that year.  Sam has championship ugliness!

Sam, World’s Ugliest Dog Champ
Originally uploaded by lmennuti

Of course, a leading 3-D virtual world is Second Life, a rich 3-D experience which you enter after downloading Linden Lab’s browser portal.

A friend was telling me about an acquaintance whose son had fallen in love with a woman he met within his many hours of Second Life absorption. The innocent young man planned to travel to Texas to meet his virtual girlfriend in her primary world flesh form. His concerned parents ran a background check on her. It should come as no surprise, the siren turned out to be in her mid 40’s with a criminal record.

Second Life was presaged in part by Neil Stephenson’s insightful work of modern science fiction, Snow Crash. The detailed mind of imaginative writers through the ages, such as Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles,recognize that as many planets we may colonize, how ever many virtual worlds we create, we always manage to fuck it up! Corrupted by greed, power, prejudice and fear there will always be the insecure knigget, the weakest link, probably a Republican, who will introduce a tear in the fabric of the psychic community trust.  The rest is history.

If Monty Python’s Flying Circus had a virtual universe, this would be it. Check out a strange and beautiful land, an interactive 2 1/2 D world, Red Universe.

It’s interesting to observe that as we struggle with the real world, the virtual worlds can be more enabling for design and play. There is so much in the real world we cannot control. Virtual worlds and online communities provide us with experiences that permit more control, opportunities for fresh starts and re-invention.