Author: Mark Alexander

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Scenes from San Francisco, 1993

I still find it amazing that for all the years I lived in San Francisco—inarguably one the most photogenic cities in the United States—I have so few photos of The City itself. Again and again I used to say, “I really need to grab my camera and just start walking the neighborhoods,” but like going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium—something else that kept getting put off “because it’ll always be there”—one day I woke up and realized I no longer had the opportunity.

But every so often I did get out…

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The AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1988

Going through more photos…

Even though I’d been in San Francisco a couple years when the quilt was unveiled at Moscone Center in December of 1988, I was still semi-insulated from the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, having lost only two friends to the disease: Kent “Red” Kelly (who’d moved from Phoenix to San Francisco in 1979 and remarked shortly before his death in 1987 that, “Six years in San Francisco are better than sixty in Arizona,” and Ben Walzer, a dear friend and “neighbor with benefits” from my time in Tucson who passed only a few days after Kent.

But like happened with so many others, the arrival of the horrible 90s changed all that.

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Dear iPhoto…

I want to like you. I want to use you. I really do. But I just don’t understand you. Maybe it’s because you’re too easy, and after decades of manually sorting and renaming my photos into folders that are just so, I simply can’t wrap my head around that simplicity.

Yeah, I get that that you’re basically just one big database, and that anything I do inside you leaves my original images “on the outside” untouched. But if I want to use an altered photo from the database I have to export it, essentially creating a duplicate image. WTF? Other than from a safety standpoint of leaving all your original items untouched, what’s the point? For me it’s a bunch of extra steps that provides no benefit whatsoever.

I already have everything anal-retentively sorted and named inside [the admittedly huge steaming pile of shit that is] Adobe’s Bridge, and all my editing is done either with Photoshop or a quick-n-dirty editor called Flare, so even your photo manipulation facilities leave me unmoved.  And even if I did use them, we’re back to the whole having-to-export thing.

My workflow is basically when I snag a new image off the internet it first goes into a “Downloads” folder to later get renamed and shuttled off to its respective folder. Importing photos from my camera works basically the same way. In that case, I used to have folders by year, with individual dated subfolders for each “event” as you like to call them, where I’d put the images, but I blew away that system—which became too anal even for me—a while back and now just dump everything into yearly folders. I figure since everything is time stamped already,  I don’t really need to break things down any further.

I suppose that if I’d started my photographic career off with you initially and had never been exposed to ThumbsPlus (that I curse on a daily basis for still not having a Mac version available) or Photoshop, we’d be having a marvelous love affair right now, but importing 80,000+ images (and no, that’s not all porn!) after the fact and then basically recreating the folder structure I already have and use seems a huge waste of time.

I do understand a few of your benefits, most notably the ability to create virtual folders where disparate images can be grouped. I like being able to create a “Wallpaper” folder, and throw images from a dozen different albums into it. I find that useful. You’re also great for making Photo Books. But other than that, I just don’t see how you can fit into my workflow without doubling the number of steps I need to perform to get from Point A to Point B, and ain’t nobody got time for that!

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I Am So Ready to Move Back to Phoenix…

…or Tucson, or or any fucking place where it doesn’t snow.

I’m ready to go back to 115 degree summer weather. At least in Phoenix you know when it begins and ends. In Denver, the weather is absolutely bipolar, and you never know when winter’s going to end. Last year it lasted through May. It was 60℉ earlier this week. It will warm up again over the next couple days only to have snow again next Thursday. I’m sick of it.

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Karma, She’s a Bitch

Old news, but still delicious:

Five months ago when Bank of America filed foreclosure papers on the home of a couple, who didn’t owe a dime on their home.

The couple said they paid cash for the house.

The case went to court and the homeowners were able to prove they didn’t owe Bank of America anything on the house. In fact, it was proven that the couple never even had a mortgage bill to pay.

A Collier County Judge agreed and after the hearing, Bank of America was ordered, by the court to pay the legal fees of the homeowners’, Maurenn Nyergers and her husband.

The Judge said the bank wrongfully tried to foreclose on the Nyergers’ house.

So, how did it end with bank being foreclosed on? After more than 5 months of the judge’s ruling, the bank still hadn’t paid the legal fees, and the homeowner’s attorney did exactly what the bank tried to do to the homeowners. He seized the bank’s assets.

“They’ve ignored our calls, ignored our letters, legally this is the next step to get my clients compensated, ” attorney Todd Allen told CBS.

Sheriff’s deputies, movers, and the Nyergers’ attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on it. The attorney gave instructions to to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller’s drawers.

After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.

“As a foreclosure defense attorney this is sweet justice,” said Allen.

Source.

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Quote of the Day

“Here’s a suggestion for all the hatey, butt-sore, anti-gay bakers in Arizona: start an organization—The Arizona Association of Homophobic Bakers—and publicly identify yourselves as homophobic bakers. Put up a website with a list of bakeries that don’t want to do business with LGBT people. Put signs in your windows that clearly state that gay and lesbian customers are not welcome and will be turned away. As Anderson Cooper pointed out earlier this week, gays and lesbians are not covered by existing anti-discrimination law in Arizona. So it’s perfectly legal right now for bakers—and florists and caterers and photographers—to discriminate against LGBT customers. Discriminating against LGBT people was legal in Arizona before Jan Brewer vetoed the turn-away-the-gays bill, and it remains legal after her veto. So homophobic bakers who identify themselves as haters and bigots run no legal risk. They can’t be sued by the individual gay people they discriminate against and the authorities can’t fine ’em or shut ’em down. Don’t want gay customers? Great. Let us know who you are. Put up a list online, hang signs in your windows, and we will take our business elsewhere.” – Dan Savage, writing for the Stranger.

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Never Again

Tonight I thought I’d install Windows via Bootcamp onto my Mac so I wouldn’t have to bring that stupid HP laptop home from work on the rare occasions I needed to.

What a mistake that was.

Yeah, it installed easily enough, and surprisingly, it actually worked. That is, it worked until I downloaded 135 software updates and after rebooting, the network adapter disappeared.

It’s shit like this that caused my initial move to Apple back in 2009.

Fuck you, Microsoft. Windows will never be installed on anything I own ever again.

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And This…

…is just one of many reasons I love Apple.

CEO Tim Cook said Friday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting that there is no room at the table for climate deniers.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, a D.C.based conservative think thank, arrived at the meeting demanding that the board not pursue any environmental initiatives that hurt the company’s bottom line. The group’s proposal would have required Apple to disclose the costs of such initiatives and to be more transparent about its relationship with “certain trade associations and business organizations promoting the amorphous concept of environmental sustainability.”

Cook’s response to this squawking was priceless: “We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive,” and reiterated Steve Jobs’ founding vision for Apple: “We want to leave the world better than we found it.”

And if the NCPPR wasn’t unhappy enough with that, he went on, saying they could just leave. “If you want me to do things only for [return on investment] reasons,” he said, “you should get out of this stock.”

Oh sah-nap!

Needless to say, the NCPPR did not take the rejection well, throwing a tantrum by tossing themselves on the floor, stomping their feet and threatening to hold their breath until they turned blue…like typical toddlers.

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