Twelve Black Code Monkeys

As I’ve described in detail here before, I have been into photography for much of my life. After selling my old SLR after college to pay some bills, I spent many years without any camera at all, but then got a point and shoot 35mm, and soon had my first digital camera. I’m not on my 4th digital and I’m pretty sure than my next digital will be either a “prosumer” or professional digital SLR – either the Cannon EOS Digital Rebel 300D, or the EOS 10D.

Anyway, most of my digital photos are online at Pbase, a site I joined a couple of years ago that is a kind of home-grown site which used to be totally free, but now charges for hosting images. Now that we have all these wedding pictures we want to share with people - and let them print the ones they want directly as opposed to going through us – I have been looking into alternatives to Pbase to host my images. Pbase has no printmaking services. Many other sites do have print services, and in the past I used Sony Imagestation for this purpose. But that site has its disadvantages as well. I came across a great site that compares a lot of image hosting sites, and used its search engine as a starting point for looking for a site that would suit my needs. So far, I have pared my list down to 5 sites: Fotki, FotoTime, ImageEvent, Printroom Professional, and Smugmug Professional.

Even trying out the free versions of these sites and looking at reviews, it’s still hard to get a feel for which would be ideal. Another resource that I’ve found helpful in my search was dpreview.com. This is my favorite digital photography site as it has great reviews, lots of news, and a huge, extremely active discussion forum. On it there are discussions about various image hosts, but kind of scattered all over the place, and really not enough for me to make a decision that may entail laying out a decent amount of money for a year’s subscription. I felt there was a need for such a forum so I created my 4th Yahoo! Group, Image Hosting Sites. Hopefully it will generate some great discussions and resources.

A couple of other sites that do some comparisons of image hosting sites are:

Digitalvale.com

Rachael Kreisler’s review of print quality (no longer available)

If you have any experience (good or bad) with any image-hosting site, I’d love to hear about it, either here or at the Yahoo! Group.

Thanks for your patience! The wedding was perfect and aside for coming down with a cold, the honeymoon was great as well. I hope to post some pictures of these soon, as well as a book review and a dvd review. For the moment I am still trying to get back into the swing of things, get the apartment clean and things relatively organized and there’s still a lot to work on even though we’ve been back for a week already!

Despite this recent flurry of activity, I wanted to forward readers that I may be out of commission for a couple of weeks or a bit longer. I leave today for St. Michael’s, Maryland, where I’ll be getting married on Sunday! I’ll be bringing the laptop there and on the honeymoon (Key West), so theoretically if I feel really compelled to write something I can, but chances are that I will have other things to do, hahah! I’m currently listening to an audiobook that I will probably be finishing on the way there this afternoon, so who knows; maybe I’ll try to review it. There’s also the chance I may decide to post some pix of St. Michaels or Key West, but we’ll see. — Levi

Sarah Vowell is a unique voice, in more ways than one. In A Partly Cloudy Patriot, her third book, she mixes astute observations with historical facts and throws in a lot of wry humor and biographical musings that will have you laughing out loud at points. Idiologues will probably be impatient with the contradictions. Although she is unabashedly liberal, she is also unabashedly patriotic and fervent about the documents of the founding fathers. Not that these two are contradictory, but the way things play out liberals are often seen as unpatriotic because they are not flag wavers shouting “America first no matter what.”

If you’ve heard Sarah on This American Life, you know she has a very distinct-sounding voice, which I can only describe as being a little like Lisa Simpson. If you like This American Life, I would highly recommend getting The Partly Cloudy Patriot in the unabridged audiocassette or CD (I listened to it on Audible.com) as it’s a lot like listening to 5 hours of This American Life, although it’s just Sarah with a few cameos (from the likes of Conan Obrian, Paul Begala, and Norman Lear) thrown in narrating quotes from presidents and friends. Of course if you’re a They Might Be Giants fan like myself, you will also get to enjoy their little ditties they apparently created for the audiobook at the start and end of each chapter. Most of these are instrumental but there are a couple of typically helarious ones with lyrics.

“Travel narratives” as they are called, are one of my favorite genres of book. They are a kind of autobiographical story or diary that tell the story of visiting a new place. Unlike your standard travel guide, they do not simply contain lists of standard attractions, accommodations, and the like. They are instead, a personal perspective on one person’s experience visiting or even living in a new and foreign (to them) place.

Probably one of the better known ones to come out in the last 15 years is Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence. Mayle and his wife, both English, bought a house and moved to Provence in the late ‘80’s and describes the process of renovating the house, getting to know the local culture, and that of France as a whole. Mayle has a wonderful, wry wit and describes the absurdities of everyday life in Provence with great humor. Mayle is also self-deprecating and although he describes many local eccentrics, they eccentricities as described are just as endearing as they are baffling. Food, as it does throughout France, plays a supporting role in the book. Food is such a central piece of French culture and life that listening to A Year in Provence, I often feel as though living in the United States has deprived me of a key facet of “quality of life.” If the stereotypes are true, one can only imagine how much more a brit might feel comparing his native cuisine to that of France!

The beauty, the wonderful food, and the fascinating people of Provence shine through this wonderful travelogue of Mayle’s and I heartily recommend it for those who like this type of book. I listened to an abridged version through Audible.com, and would have loved to listen to even more via a fully unabridged version, but so it goes. Sometimes you must take what you can get and hope that eventually more will be offered in the future.

The late veteran newsman came out with his Charles Kuralt’s America a while back about his “perfect year” where he visited twelve of his favorite locations for one month each. They are all in America, and vary wildly in terrain, climate, population, and culture. Kuralt jubilantly describes the unique beauty of each and every one of them. This is kind of a condensed travelogue. Well, I should note that I listened to it as an abridgement. Nevertheless, you still see very clearly through his eyes as if you were there yourself.

Kuralt visits New Orleans, Key West, Charleston, Main, Vermont, Montana, and Alaska, amongst many other places. You don’t get the typical tourist views either, but much more of a native’s view, since Kuralt over the years has built friendships with people in these places and they show him a lot of stuff that is off the beaten path. His commentary is always self-deprecating, charming, and informative. We hear about little historical anecdotes, legends, and obvious tall tales, but Kuralt manages to couch even the tall tales as imaginative creations as opposed to demeaning them as ignorant ruralisms.

My only complaint about this book is that it was too short! As I mentioned, I listened to an abridged version through Audible.com, but if you can read the book or find an unabridged audio version, all the better!

Well, I’ve gotten a little behind writing my reviews of (audio) books, so Why We Buy was actually something I finished a few weeks ago! Hopefully my memory will not fail me too badly, and indeed it was a memorable enough book. Why We Buy was written by Paco Underhill, the CEO of a research company dedicated to examining how people shop and then recommending ways of improving a store to help make that experience easier and thus improve sales.

The book in some ways is almost a study in both sociology and psychology - not only of the customer but of the store owner, managers, and clerks. All areas of retail are covered, from supermarkets to clothing stores, to online stores. Underhill’s firm observes shoppers in all these environments and they take detailed notes about what people pick up, put back, put in their cart, etc. Their conclusions and recommendations, according to Underhill, have unfailingly had one result – they improve sales. Many of these recommendations seem like total common sense, but I wonder how obvious they would be to many of us if we were told to go out and make such recommendations.

The main theme running through the book is that stores all too often get it wrong and do not make the shopping experience an easy one for a large segment of its customers due to wanting to portray a certain image – whether that image is the designer of the store or signage, or the image that marketing wants to portray, etc. For example, in a woman’s clothing stores, often the smallest sizes are placed within the easiest reach. So teenagers and 20-somethings are favored, whereas an older and/or heavier woman has to stoop down to the floor, reach way above her head, or even worse go looking for a sales clerk to help them find a larger size.

As mentioned, I actually listened to this book as opposed to reading it. The version I listened to was an unabridged one from Audible.com, narrated (very nicely I in my opinion) by Rick Adamson. Unfortunately it appears that Audible.com is the only place that it is available in audio.