Via Clark Humphrey:

One Minute Vacations for your ears. I especially like the 15,000 rubber balls falling down the stairwell. And be sure and check out June 21, 2004.

Well golly gee! The Bush administration has tossed out the list of the coalition of the willing. This just after sending the WMD weapons inspectors home having found zip, zilch, nada.

Elections in Iraq: Good thing. Too bad it’ll be contested both legally and in the street. There’s also a semisolid rumor that the US and UK are trying to find a way to pull out just after the election, which is simultaneously wise and foolish, as are all contingency plans related to this fucking war.

I mean, that was what I thought we should do in the immediate aftermath of the war. I said we should create something, *anything* resembling a semi-legitimate government there, and then get the fook out of that situation. But the reconstructionists had to make their wad of cash, during which time we got sucked into conflict with the insurgents. If we had pulled out, the insurgents would have been a legitimate reason to go back in, and legitimacy is the only currency in this situation. Too bad we’re bankrupt at this point.

Rising Hegemon preaches the truth (and stuff).

And Juan Cole sez:

Bush has sworn an oath to uphold the US Constitution. He won’t. But Congress can. It should insist that the sunset provisions of the so-called “Patriot Act” (which should be called the “Abrogation of the Constitution Act”) be allowed to expire in 2005 and that the extremely dangerous “Patriot Act II” be completely rolled back. Republicans who care about the Constitution should join Democrats who care about the Constitution in putting a stake through the heart of this abomination. A noble 200-year-old experiment in civil liberties and democracy, for which US troops are giving their lives, must not be ended by a single act of terrorism and a clique of authoritarians in Washington.

(Read the whole thing; it’s got pictures.)

Fnordware has free Photoshop plugins for such stuff as PNG and JPEG2000 support. Also one that extracts ICC, EXIF, and IPTC info.

And they’re called FNORDWARE.

The new version of iPhoto looks pretty spiff, but don’t be fooled by the promise of RAW file support: It renders a JPEG and that’s what you end up editing. You have to export the original RAW file to another file before it’ll let you edit that file in an external editor, too.

I’ll be tremendously glad when the industry settles on a good way to handle the digital workflow stuff. The reason I’m doing this research is because I want a ‘digital lightbox’ program that will let me browse through my Pentax (and Olympus) RAW files, without sucking majorly like the one Pentax provides. I also want to be able to change ColorSync/ICC embedded profiles from the lightbox, not from an AppleScript, which is what the ColorSync documentation tells you to do.

In fact, the longer I make the list of things I want, the closer I come to a design document for a piece of software. Maybe it’s time to learn the ColorSync API. Woot.

It turns out that the National Park Service has a program called the National Natural Landmarks Program (NNL), which is basically a promise from private land owners to maintain the ‘naturalness’ of significant natural places.

And I missed their photo contest by a few months.

Learn everything, and you will see afterward that nothing is useless.

–Hugh of Saint-Victor (12th century): On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith

[Note that some of the pictures in this blog are a little dark, so you might need to adjust the brightness or contrast of your monitor to see them.]

On the 16th, I woke up in yet another motel room and looked out the window. Giant red stone walls surrounded the valley that is the justification for Moab, UT. The sun was shining. I had to make some decisions… Where to go and take pictures?

The main contenders were Canyonlands National Park’s Island In The Sky area, and Arches National Monument. Both are lovely places. Arches is full of exotic landforms the size of semi trucks and Goodyear blimps. Canyonlands is a huge hole in the ground (thousands of square miles), and a hugely complex terrain, and the Islands In The Sky area is basically a place to stand and look at it from above. So the question really was: Things you can touch and climb on? Or things you stand and look at?

Being me, I bailed on both, and ended up going down a road into a canyon following a creek, and spent 6 hours taking pictures. I might have been inside the Canyonlands boundaries, or I might not have. Terrain like this:

Finally, I decided to head back out of this canyon and it’s dirt road, mostly because I got to a spot I’d need a 4×4 to cross. The time was around 4pm, and I was losing light. I spent a little while debating with myself over whether to get another room for the night here. Spend some more time (and money) and get some more pix. But I couldn’t do that; I had to get back home and be responsible and stuff.

Went to Wendy’s, got a single value meal thing, took my time eating it. And while I was chewing on what ostensibly is beef, I hatched a plan: Islands in the Sky is about 30 miles away from where I was sitting, and I could go there and get some long exposure night time pictures. I’d get star trails falling into the grand (small ‘g’) canyon. Then I could run along to Green River or some other place, and not have to feel bad about staying an extra day. And if I lucked out, I’d get some cool shots of the sun setting. A plan!

Driving down the road off the main highway, it was clear I wouldn’t get the benefit of any direct sunlight. I was only halfway there, and the mesa was already in the shadow of the horizon… I was racing the sun around the planet! I got to the entrance gate of the national park… No one there. A place to put your fees into an envelope and into a slot… No time! Cruise by the visitor’s center… I don’t need a map, having been there before. Rush to the first overlook point… Pull to a stop… Grab the gear… Hike as quick as I can down the quarter mile or so to the overlook… All the while, in my mind, thinking, “20 seconds, f/11? Or f/22? Need depth of field, try 11 first, then 22…” Set up the tripod, set up the camera, press the button….

Twenty seconds seems like forever when you’re in a hurry.

And then:

The moment of looking at the little 2″ screen reminded me that… Oh yeah! I’m in one of the most beautiful places on the whole of the planet!

I settled down a little bit. Started breathing easier. Laughed at myself.

The goal now was to drive out to the grandest view point, called Grand View Point, on the southern tip of the plateau where I was now driving. In the picture I was hoping to take, the grandness of the canyon would be simultaneously contrasted with and complimented by the infinite grandness of space, the distance between here and the other rim of the canyon being roughly equivalent to the distance between here and any star in the sky, practically speaking.

The sky was so big and clear that to the west, there was still more than a hint of daylight left, while to the east total darkness was interrupted only by intense and vivid stars. I got into the mode of only watching the road with my peripheral vision, so my eyes wouldn’t adjust, and I could look out the window at the Big Show In The Up.

Finally arrived at the Grand View, and the sunset had become a tiny sliver of blue to the west. The first quarter moon was straight up, and when I turned off the car’s headlights, I realized I wouldn’t need a flashlight.

Gather camera. Turn it on. No battery juice.

Now let me explain something: Before I left on this trip, I bought a whole bunch of rechargable batteries, and a monster charger than can put the fear of God into a dozen batteries at a time. I had charged them all up before I left Seattle, and I had charged them all up just before leaving Houston. Now, however, they were all dead. Every last one of them. I tried them all. Dead. Gone. Kaput.

I watched as my momentum ground to an ambivalent halt. I mean, I was at one of my favorite places on the planet, and there are hundreds of thousands of people who come here and enjoy themselves without taking any pictures at all, aren’t there? So how, precisely, could I justify feeling bad about it? In my mind, looked at the picture I imagined taking, every element of it, the sheer coolness of it, the stars gently arcing toward the canyon lip…

I let it go. I got out of the car and wandered down the trail that went to the absolute edge of a mile-deep drop into something only vaguely visible under the moonlight.

For those of you who worry, I made it back.

I’m too tired to ‘blog, so here’s a picture instead:

Hunter Canyon, near Moab. Maybe a part of Canyonlands National Park, or not. I couldn’t quite tell from the sign.

What the heck. Here’s another one from the same day:

That was the day I learned how to turn off automatic sensitivity adjustment on my new camera. They made it so it’ll change from ISO 200 where I had it set, to ISO 1600 under some conditions. Which leads to crap images that look like sand painting and piss you off if you don’t know the camera is doing this. One can only learn this after one has finished, and loaded the pictures into the computer for close inspection. I seriously considered staying in Moab an extra day afterwards, but I had already burned up enough time there. And besides: The lovely clear weather had already come to an end.

Journey with me now down Interstate 70…

This is a motel out in the middle of the plains of nowhere, in Kansas. Actually, the motel is on the right, off the edge of the picture, but the columns were so striking, I had to get all of them:

Here’s some more detail of the columns and statues. Check out the cut-and-paste architecture on the building in the background:

As you can see, the weather was peachy.

Later on, I passed mile 23:

I used to obsessively photograph mile 23 markers. Now I don’t care as much, but I’ll do it sometimes.

A considerable amount of time after taking that picture, I found myself in Boulder, Colorado, at a table in a crowded restaurant called the Boulder Cafe, and I was eating a grilled rainbow trout, with the best mashed potatoes ever, and almost-undercooked green beans. Aw yeah.

Today I woke up feeling great, which was strange because I’ve felt vaguely awful this whole return trip. Went down to Wild Oats and got some supercharged organic and politically-correct comestibles and got under way again. The sun was out, I was in the mountains… Eating a $20 rainbow trout was the best decision of this trip; it changed my whole outlook.

Here’s a little stream at a rest stop. If I had my atlas, I could tell you exactly where it is. Photography is so much more fun when there’s sunlight:

Speaking of which, here’s a hint: If you ever go to Colorado National Monument at sundown, go to the west entrance instead of the east one, so you stand a chance of getting better pictures than this:

However, my mom always says that when life gives you lemons, you should try taking long exposure photographs, but even that attempt was cursed:

The story here is that I stopped in the middle of the road with my hazard lights flashing to get this picture, because there wasn’t any place to turn out. Even with the window mount, and only a 5-second exposure, there’s jiggle, though you can’t really tell in this shrunk-down version. The town in the background is Grand Junction, CO.

So now I’m in Moab, UT, and the only reason I’m here and not Green River, is because tomorow I’ll be forced to choose whether to visit Arches or Canyonlands/Dead Horse Point on the way back to I-70.

So I’m still in that motel in Hays, KS, and this is what just happened:

A guy walked in to the room next to mine, obviously drunk. Our two rooms are suite rooms, meaning there’s a door between them. The door is locked, but it still transmits sound as easily as if it were open.

He says to someone: “We could order pizza…” A barely-audible “No…” and some more, something about it being too late, or whatever.

Some minutes passed, and now they’re having sex. Either it’s sex, or snoring that sounds like sex. I really can’t tell which. If it’s snoring, then it’s the most unique snoring ever. And if it’s coital moaning, it’s the most pathetic sound I’ve ever heard anyone make during that particular human endeavor.

It reminds me of when I lived in a shared house and one of the housemates would always bring her boyfriend home at 3am and start having sex. I don’t have a problem with sex or even sex at 3am, but when it’s happening three feet from my head, separated only by a wall, and I’m trying to sleep, it’s more than a little frustrating. Add to that the fact that this was the loudest, most intense sex you can imagine. It’s not hyperbole to say that the bed, normally in the center of the room, would end up banging against the wall next to me, having walked there itself. And the yelling and screaming… It was like a parody of loud sex. It’s like it was intended to bring attention to the fact that it was loud, by being louder than any loud sex should be.

Anyway. I’ve determined now that my neighbor here in the motel is snoring. I suppose it’s possible that the moaning could turn into snoring without skipping a beat, but that’d be too sad to even consider seriously.

Update: They ordered the pizza and then went to sleep. The pizza guy is knocking on their door. Har! I’m impressed that the tiny town of Hays has pizza service at this hour.