I read an article in Mac World which tore iMovie (the recent version) apart – complaining about most of the stuff that I had found annoying, including what the guy called “the live mouse.”

True.  So true.  I had never seen a mouse that you couldn’t turn off and that was constantly doing things you didn’t want it to do.

Anyway, just for the heck of it, I realized I had Adobe Premiere 7, and Parallels for the mac (which was pre-installed) so I thought – what the heck, let’s install Premiere and see how it works under Parallels.

A couple of strange things during installation: the numeric keyboard wasn’t recognized when I was putting in the serial numbers, so I had to use the numbers from the keyboard proper.  No big deal.

And of course, Premiere 7, is old already – I bought it in ‘09, so it wanted to patch itself during installation, which went okay.  And then it wanted to get the most recent PC version of the Quicktime  but here was what was very surprising: yes, I immediately remembered how to use it, and created a new project and went to import media, and guess what – none of the internal mac drives showed up.  I guess that makes sense since they were all formatted with Mac whatever… though I thought that the PC could read that format… and the only files that showed up were the system drive, and all the USB external drives (also formatted with mac whatever, as far as I could remember).

That was about as far as I got – as I am now falling asleep sitting at the wheel; and I have the feeling that I’ll end up picking up Final Cut Express.  There are going to be too many issues with Premiere running in Parallel.  Maybe I’m just tired and there’s a quick fix to the file issue.  Although I also have to say that Premiere also didn’t know anything about the movie files created by the Canon 500d, or the CR2 still images.

Who knows – might have the same issue with Final Cut Express – would have to check that out first for sure.

G’night.

* * *

Picked up Final Cut Express today at the Apple store.  First time I was in there to buy something.  Jam-packed.  I filmmed going up and down the steps.  FCE works just as it is supposed to.  It had no problem reading the movie (mov) files from the Canon 500D.  Now it’s up to me to relearn a bunch of stuff, that is very similar, somethings almost exactly the same, as what I knew with Adobe Premiere.  Most interesting thing was the card readers that they had attached to their iPhones, so that I didn’t have to stand on line; though the guy almost sold me the upgrade instead of the full version and the first woman I talked to sent me to stand on the long line – though I ended up finding the faster way around the whole thing.

So, in short – I have the tools I need to do some of the first simple film ideas… p.o.v. shooting as a street photog.  I believe this will show more clearly how it is done than anything I can write about it.  Now when I returned to the house, I discovered that I also had a copy of Adobe Premiere for the Mac that had come with my upgrade to the mac suite.  Not the latest though.  But I’m going to spend a few days with Final Cut since that is being upgraded at reasonable prices, and I think it’s the type of program which needs upgrades as new cameras come out.

If anyone wants to recommend a good book on Final Cut Express, especially for the DSLR – let me know.

* * *

I woke up this morning all set to really blast into the day and get the last three orders matted and packaged today.  Then I could have the next few days to work on a few other projects that are floating around.  One I’ll just call project x for now; another one is a small film I’m trying to make in iMovie about street shooting; and when I say small, I should say short.  But it involves learning some clunky things in iMovie, after I had been used to Adobe Premiere.

Only problem with Premiere which I was using on a PC was that it would crash all the time.

iMovie doesn’t crash, but there are a few very basic things that I can’t figure out.  I was almost thinking of buying one of those books: iMovie for morons.

Then there’s the idea I have (after a very quick sale yesterday) of keeping popular prints in stock and letting people know that these can be shipped or picked up quickly in given sizes.

And then I also wanted to try and set up pages that would show how prints could be arranged together.  People seem to need the most help with that.

Then there are tasks that involve the Helen Levitt documentary… just getting together some images to send to the editor for the demo reel…

And wouldn’t it really be nice to brush up the Zazzle store?  That’s died badly since I stopped adding things to it.  It’s always like that since new things will pop up at the top of various categories, and if you aren’t constantly working and updating your material – you sink – or at least I sink to the bottom.  I had the same experience with my eBay store.

Looks like another project having to do with shooting stills for a New York play is on the horizon.  I did stills for the authors last New York play a few years ago and he said they were the best images anyone has ever taken of his work; and now he’s opening a new play, a bigger venue then the last, off-broadway though you’d know the name of the theater if you were into the New York play scene.

Then there are just a ton of errands that have built up over the last few months.  And I begin to worry about money again as Buddy is going to be on this medication for a fairly long time for his thyroid, and then there will be blood tests again.  In other words, results of last blood work are good, and vet wants to keep Buddy on the thyroid medication.  I don’t know how much it costs because I’m afraid to open the bill from the vet.

But I ran out of steam in the afternoon after getting two orders out; and matting the third order (which goes out tomorrow).  It seems like there were also a bunch of phone calls and emails with questions about possible buys… or phonesters (I know there’s no word like that but I like it) – phonesters that were promising to get me to the top of Google for phrases that I was already at the top for… or that if I had thought of I could have done myself… In fact, the phrase, “black and white photography for sale” was suggested by the phonester, and after getting off the phone with her I added that phrase to a few key places in the store…  such as the description meta tag, and the home page title…  good idea I think…  and she said she liked my photographs very much.  So there’s a fair trade.  Art for tips.

Yes – alot of the todo list is related to money.  However, if money weren’t an issue I would still do the following: film on street shooting from p.o.v. of photographer; still shoot of the off-broadway play; stuff for the Levitt film… maybe it’s not all related to money.  Half of one and half of the other or however the phrase is supposed to go.

One thing to remember from this post: phonester (definition: person who uses a phone to sell you something, usually from a boiler room).

The ethics of photography place us in odd positions that we just didn’t find ourselves in ten years ago.  As photographers, we have the ability to easily cross the line between documenting what we saw at the time, and strengthening the theme of what we saw.

I’m not even talking about the most obvious uses of post-processing where you take someone’s head and stick it on a body to show that so-and-so was at a certain rally.  In other words, the easiest issues to deal with are when post-processing is used propaganda.  That territory has been well-covered.  The ends justify the means (for example).  And you can read Plato’s thoughts about such things.

But what interests me is the ability to start with a legitimate fine-art idea.  In this case, there are three objects that seem related: the Aphrodite of Melos (sans arms), the prosthetic leg, and maybe – the religious figure next to the Aphrodite of Melos.  The beautiful statue that is missing limbs; the piece of equipment to replace a leg; and the idea of prayer.  Those ideas are floating around in the image.

But they will probably be lost on the viewer because these items are physically far away from each other.

So what if you decide, as the photographer / artist to cross the line, and re-arrange the important objects so that they still look realistic, but are closer to each other?

Is it still a photograph?  In the old days, photographers used as many tricks as they could dream up.  The main one may have been adding clouds to a cloudless sky.  But here you are making an editorial statement.  You can still be subtle about it.  No need to throw it in the viewers face, but make the connection that you see more visible.  Would you do it?  Is it simply a new form of art, processed photograph?

The same questions were (maybe still are) asked about the inkjet print.  But as time goes on, customers don’t seem to care anymore.  A beautiful image, is impressive, no matter what technique was used.

And over time, I guess that a new form of media called ALTERED PHOTOGRAPHY will arise.  Maybe it has already – I haven’t googled it. But the idea is that if you call it what it is, that seems to be okay, but it is an odd mixture.  As a viewer, you have to wonder what the photographer has changed.  And at what point is the photograph considered altered?  Today, just about every photograph is altered to some degree.

You could say that anything that could have been done in the darkoom is okay, i.e. unaltered.  As someone who worked for a few decades in the darkroom, even that is pretty tricky, because you could cut contrast masks for a particular negative, but would you really do it.  I didn’t have the time or patience.  Now I can do the same trick with a few clicks.

Well… let me do a bit of work on this shot and I’ll just call it ALTERED PHOTOGRAPH.  Same for the crummy iPhone picture of Buddy (the cat).  ALTERED PHOTOGRAPH.

Put another way – we are living through a time when traditional photographic techniques are merging with painting techniques and painting technique is merging with computer renditions.  That, to me, is actually a good thing to be enjoyed.  How many artists get to live through such fantastic transitions?  My own experiments with HDR, for example, lead me to try and use it to make more naturalistic images with a wide tonal range.  It’s up to the artist to decide what tools they want to use and how much they want to say about their creations.

MAN WITH TWO PHOTOGRAPHS

MAN WITH TWO PHOTOGRAPHS (Altered Media)

The UPS guy showed up this morning with a flat envelope.  I couldn’t figure out what it was, I have so many things going back and forth with UPS and Fedex and so I just opened it up and there was a coupon for a woman’s hair product.  Now why would someone spend the money to UPS me a woman’s coupon?  It’s true, that there’s one bunch that believes I’m a dermatologist, and I continuously get dermatology magazines, or offers to test dermatology products.  But I can’t ever remember one coming by UPS.

I look at the sender, but it’s sort of rubbed out.  You know that blue copy and I can only make out a few letters.  But it definitely says Unit 3B.  While that “Unit” rings a bell I toss the UPS envelope in the garbage and as I flip it I remember where that “Unit” was from.  I pull the UPS envelope back out and feel around in it for other stuff, and sure enough, stuck to the side is a piece of cardboard which I pull out and of course it’s the ticket for John Prine  I ordered a few days ago.

In short, I’ve been scrambling to make some progress on the todo list, and yes, I got through the 14 prints for Australia which went out today, each with a little Certificate of Authenticity signed dated and with the title scribbled on.  And with the overseas Custom papers signed (they want about six copies) and each ticked off saying that I am not a relative of the person I’m signing it to; along with scripting: beckerman / owner / aug. 24 2010 and I did come up with a nice system though it won’t work much longer.

If I am lucky enough to have an empty box of the print size, then I’m really in business because I put down one print, which fits perfectly, and is cushioned (Epson gives you cushioning around the paper) and then I slice off a sheet of glasine (sp?)  paper from a roll and place that ontop of the print… repeat until all 14 prints are separated nicely.  Then cardboard cut to the right size. Into the original Epson box.  And for the final touch, I take two fedex cardboard pieces that are meant to be turned into triangle tubes and cut them around the Epson box.  In other words, the final box can be dropped on any corner from about five feet without damaging the prints.

So that goes out.  And now I’m waiting for the vet to revisit Buddy (the cat).  That will be a terrible ordeal for him.  I’ve been through it a few times.  But they need bloodwork to follow up on the thyroid pills he’s been on for about ten days.

(CLICK IMAGE TO SEE FULL SIZE FROM IPHONE: from the iPhone, un-retouched)

I also finished some work for another project that’s on the horizon… and now I need to put together a bunch of images for the first of the two documentary films about street photography that are coming out.  And yes, I’ll put up a link to a clip from the first film soon.

And then tomorrow will be printing again.

I’m not looking for advice.  I’m not even complaining.  File this under: just the facts.  Because frankly, I can’t even write about half the personal stuff that’s been going on.  Maybe personal stuff is the wrong word.  But you know unless you write an anonymous blog, it’s nearly impossible to really write truthfully.  I sort of miss the days when I’d take out one of my paper journals – I used to write on those bound ledgers that accountants use – and write without feeling that anyone else is going to read it unless I want them to.

Of course the problem with writing an anonymous blog, is that even if you can do that (technically I guess it can be done, though not that easily); anyone that knows you, your friends, or family, might stumble upon it, even if you change everyone’s names, and then you are a dead duck.  What I mean by that is that the episodes and things the characters do are so specific – I doubt if they’ve ever been done before.  Any single story, and a few just flashed through my mind, that would be read by the person involved, would get me into big trouble.  Wow.  I wonder what that says about my life.  That it’s mostly a lie?

The older I get, the more it seems as if my own life, and those of the people I know are mostly lies.  Isn’t that a terrible thing to realize.  Friends lie to friends.  Or at least don’t tell important things.  Sisters lie to sisters.  It’s all a big circle of lies, the purpose of which is to protect ourselves from each other..

Wow.  That is a scary thing to realize.

Anyway – the original point was – that I was out of it to the point of almost throwing away the John Prine ticket; and after a bit of writing, I also come to the conclusion that most of my relationships are built on either lies, or at least keeping a fair amount of information private.  File that part under the phrase: nobody really knows anyone else.

Apres tout — here’s a retouched b&w version from the iPhone.

Yes.  A whole post for John Prine.  I have followed him since his first album which came out while I was a student at SUNY Buffalo.  Singer / songwriter.  Country-ish story teller.  One of the greatest songwriters of my lifetime.  Songs often written in the “voice” of someone else, i.e. “I am an old woman, named after my mother, my old man is another, child that’s grown old.” Angel from Montgomery (a song which has been covered by tons of performers).

The songs range from downright hysterical (Dear Abby) to woeful tales of loneliness and sorrow.  Unlike Dylan (the other great in my book), his songs are usually stories that can be understood – not always from the first listening, but eventually they dawn on you.

Yes – he had throat cancer (heavy cigarette smoker) but I’ve seen and heard him since then and he’s still okay as a performer.

My list of favorite musicians is thin.  Like a iceberg, if you were to look by artists’ name, you would only see a few, but if you were to look beneath the surface, you’d find, that just as I’ve done with writers that I like, I have everything I can put my hands on for these artists: Randy Newman, John Prine, (to some extent Dylan, but his recorded output is really for collectors), Tom Waits, and it’s hard to think of anyone else that I am still that gung-ho about.

Definitely a similarity.  They are story tellers that often use literary devices.  Every once in a while, they will have a song that hits mainstream, but as great a writer as Randy Newman is, I’ve been to concerts at small venues in New York that he couldn’t sell out.  And Governors Island isn’t exactly Madison Square Garden, though I’m sure Prine has played there before.  But they made it.  Randy Newman has had a couple of top hits, like I Love L.A.  but his real mark on pop culture is probably the soundtrack for The Natural.  Yes, that’s his score, and one of the great ones of recent years (no wonder – he comes from a line of Hollywood orchestrator (all uncles) such as Alfred Newman, and Lionel Newman. Other Newman scores include:  the music for A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Pleasantville, Ragtime, Seabiscuit, Toy Story.

Anyway – that’s one aspect of my own character – the idea of finding a few artists and having long-standing, deep relationships with their work, that I can trace back to the idea of serialization that began, in my own case, with the Hardy Boys and continued into the realm of the Russian novelists, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, and so on.

At least with Dostoyevsky – there’s always more.  With Gogol, you will find yourself re-reading his books, or finding a book written by another Russian about him.  I suppose that affinity for Russian 19th century work can be traced back to my own Russian ancestry.

Anyway – there you have it.  John Prine. Sept. 10th. Governor’s Island.  I’m informed that photography is permitted, and I will be one of those nuts that will be waiting ahead of time to try and get a good seat.

Boy on Bike: HIE Infrared with Leica M3 / Tonemapped Single Image / Lightroom Adjustments

Interesting, mood-wise if you were to hang this on the wall next to the previous post of woman with water bottle. It’s that sort of contrast that you don’t (at least I don’t) get to make in the blog format; or any format unless everyone had a a large monitor.

Pretty much how I felt today after getting up at 5 and packaging through the afternoon for about the fourth day in a row. And frankly, I think this is the first shot I’ve taken in a few weeks (not including the non-photo iPhone-Fire pictures).

Don’t worry. Not complaining. Just telling it like it is, though I did have a chance to have a smoke with Matt. Everything else that I’ve got to do falls under the heading of publicity, or self-promotion. It was funny, because while I was sitting with Matt smoking our Upmann cigars, I saw the UPS guy with a package. I wasn’t expecting anything but I asked him who it was for and it was for me.

Looked at the address and still couldn’t figure out what was inside. But then I remembered a while back I had sold a skating rink image for greeting cards… and sure enough that’s what was in the box. In other words, I can’t even keep up with these little projects where I’m selling images for cards, and calendars. Well, they’re having a House marathon on – and that my plan for the night.

Sorry for the boring post, but the image is pretty good; one-for-one.

I’m pretty sure that any New York photographer has a bunch of steam shots, whether they saw Taxi Driver or not.  I came across this one while looking for the lost negative; and it’s one of my favorite steam shots.

How was it that I couldn’t find the negative ?? Very logical in retrospect.  I was sure that it was a 35tmm negative but it was taken with the Pentax 645.  Now, why did I think it was a 35mm negative?  Because it was taken a really really long time ago and I just didn’t realize I was shooting with any medium format stuff back then; and I also didn’t pay much attention to what I shot with the Pentax 645.

That’s it.  Now it has to be spotted, cleaned, and turned into a good print.  I don’t think I’ve ever sold this one before.  And I don’t even remember how I could have put it into the store without having a high res version of it somewhere.  Which I don’t since I actually looked through every image on the mac.  Enough of that.

Have a good day.

Relax.

And stay cool people.  Don’t get turned all upside down over one friggin’ neg.

Walker Evans – I don’t think of him as a street photographer, but I was very influenced when I started out by his subway series and used similar techniques (stuff like cable releases up the jacket sleeve; and other stuff that nowadays would seem sneaky.) As time went by, you begin to get inured to possible reactions; and you get faster on the draw.

Just more stuff I’m finding while looking for the mysterious missing negative.

Stuff happens in threes.  Every scientist knows that.  So the second thing that’s been happening today:

I was getting many requests from potential customers who wanted to just view horizontal images at one time because they would go together better than mixing horizontal and vertical pictures.  So, this was easy enough, and I tagged the images as either horizontal or vertical, and put links in the store so you could view all the horizontals, or all the verticals.

A funny thing happened though.  I got several calls from people who were sitting in front of the full-size web image and wanted to know if it was a horizontal or a vertical picture.  I also got a bunch of emails about this.

(You can see what I did by clicking on the vertical picture or the horizontal picture) links.  So I couldn’t really figure this one out.  It was just confusing the viewers, or at least some of the viewers.  So then I thought, maybe I was using the wrong terminology, and should call it landscape vs. portrait orientation.

But I’m afraid that people may think I’m only selling landscape and portraits.

Any other words that would make sense.  I wanted to do one more thing which was to make little collections of images that go together, but I’m sure that once I do that, someone will want to change them.    I just thought it would be a good idea to group images together as a starting point for customers – but it is beyond my imagination what sort of problem that will cause.  Should I try it?

How many in the collection?

just spent two months organizing and scanning negatives (as necessary) and adding about 30 prints to the site (from negs. and from digital shots) – considering that I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time making sure that everything was catalogued in Lightroom; yes, you guessed it, I can’t believe that  a negative has gone missing, both the scan, and actual negative.

It’s an old negative, maybe from 12 years back.  I may have re-scanned it, or maybe I didn’t.  I don’t know anymore.  Let’s say that I didn’t.  But when I was writing the description of the photograph I had the negative in front of me because I made reference to it being a 35mm negative….

Where the heck did the friggin’ thing go?

It’s one of the reasons that I disliked working with negatives so much.  I’m absent-minded.  I’m disorganized.  No matter how hard I try, I’m no good at filing stuff the way it should be filed.  On the other hand, every digital image has a unique number as part of the file name, and I can always find it by searching for that number in Lightroom.  To put it another way, I’ve already spent almost the entire day searching for this one negative (it’s part of a larger order); and it will be embarrassing to tell the client that I can’t find the negative.  I’ve never had to do that yet.  Negative always turns up.

I’m sure I’ll find it today.  But man – a waste of time.

The cigar boxes come in handy for organizing the medium and large-sized negatives.  But after all, we are dealing with way over a hundred thousand negatives of all sizes, most are not scanned; and barely filed; and I suppose about 40,000 digital negatives, all easy to find if I’m looking at the web jpg.

Anyway – that’s what’s going on now.  I’m just taking a break before going back to the hunt again.

And believe me, know there are photographers with many more negatives who are able to put their fingers on anyone they need and have worked out wonderful filing systems – but I have to tell you – that has never been me.  Whether it was paperwork for software projects, or anything at all that needed to be filed – you are looking at the original Oscar Madison.

I went down to have a cigar and only had the iPhone in my pocket.  There was a big fire in the Pizza store (no not Two Boots, I think it’s called Fat Sals) but a crappier store on second between 83rd and 84 on East Side of street.  What is amazing is how many shots I managed to get my thumb into, never having used the iPhone before for shooting.  I then imported the shots (most of them screwed up in one way or another) into Lightroom.

It’s the Pizza store right next to Monicas’ bodega where I get my breakfast once in a while.  Hope Raul didn’t have any damage done to his place.

I had been using TweetMeme for the last month or so, which puts the Tweet thing with your Tweet Count by your posts… and then read recently in the Times that Twitter had finally made their own Tweet Button for use on blogs or any website where you want users to be able to tweet the article or post etc.

I guess that puts an end to TweetMeme, although they say they are working with Twitter on the new button.

Here’s the link to make your own Twitter button — Twitter Button Page.

Of course I lost all my counts that had been saved in TweetMeme to they’re all set to 0 now.

I added it to the Store sidebar and I’m putting it up now in this blog.

One thing to note – if you’re not using self-hosted Wordpress, i.e your using something like blah-blah.wordpress.com it won’t work, at least the button I chose won’t work, because it uses javascript which ain’t allowed on wordpress.com

Another thing – you’ll have to stick the thing into your Wordpress template files, where you want it to show up, i.e. if you want it for each post you’d need to stick it in single.php.

Tweetmeme used to do all this sort of stuff for you, including positioning, and a bunch of other nice tidbits.

So, what I did just now, sticking it in the widget panel of the blog doesn’t make much sense… I’ll have to put it in the wordpress template for single posts and pages for it to work properly.  Also, although they don’t call it a beta – I’ve had enough whales showing up with Twitter to be a bit hesitant about it slowing things up… but we’ll see.

I remember when I was writing software, I was always thinking, what if the big company writes this before I get it really launched.  With Tweetmeme they reallly had that thing accepted everywhere… and for Twitter to make their own… that’s got to be painful unless they get bought out.

* * *

And the answer is.  There are already plugins for wordpress.com sites and for self-hosted sites like this one.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetbutton-for-wordpress/

Takes the place of TweetMeme.  Very very similar look and feel in the dashboard.  Basically looks and works like TweetMeme but with a few additional options that the “official” twitter button has.

and

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/new-tweet-button/

for the Wordpress hosted blog.

Hey, what else could you ask for?

Buddy continues to do better.  He was given a bottle of pills to tune down his thyroid, and he likes them.  He thinks they’re treats.  As far as getting the eyedrops in his right eye – that’s still an adventure.  He doesn’t like that at all Probably burns.  Plus even if you hold his head still, he’s got the upper hand in that you really can’t exactly hold his eye open.  So that’s been hit and miss, mostly miss.

* * *

Still not smoking cigarettes. Stopped July 1.  But I have replaced them with about two cigars a day.  Right now, my favorite cigars are from the H. Upmann line.  Either the half- or the full coronas.  Of course, anyone will tell you that it’s better to stop altogether, but for an addict, this is a different experience from cigarettes.  Cigarettes are simply a very fast nicotine delivery system.  You don’t exactly savor them.  Cigars are  all different.  You don’t inhale the smoke, and you sort of roll it around in your mouth like a sip of wine.  If you like this sort of thing, it’s an enjoyable experience.  I even seem to enjoy chomping on the thing when it’s no longer smoking.

* * *

One project to finish – my Bronx portfolio.

This was my room on University Avenue until I was thirteen.  My father and I went back to photograph the apartment about six years ago when I started the Bronx photography memoir.  The window looks out on street level at University Avenue.  On the right it’s a few paces to the bathroom.  You can see the cable wire on the floor.  Obviously when we lived there from about ‘52 to ‘65 there was no cable.  How many coats of paint does that room have by now?  Must be dozens.

And yes, it is tiny.  My two sisters shared a slightly larger room which was off to the left and looked out on the alley where the super kept the garbage cans.

So after doing a ton of work on the storefront, I figure it’s about time to check it in various browsers.

I had bee working with Dreamweaver as the design tool, in Max OSX, and I have parallel and Windows 7 installed, though I haven’t used either in many months; and the only reason would be to see what stuff looks like in Widows IE and Windows FF.

As Parallel is starting up, I get an error message saying something is wrong with Windows, and asking if I want to repair it.  If I do repair it, the message warns me, then any changes that are made cannot be rolled back.  It’s true, that I have a mirror image of the all the drives, but still, why should I have to fix something that I haven’t touched in three months.

I’m mumbling to myself, this just ain’t right.  This just ain’t right.  When suddenly the black box with the message goes away and it says, repair cancelled, and another box pops up, with a few dots and some more messages, and then suddenly I find myself in Windows 7.

The first thing it asks is whether I want to upgrade to windows 8?  I think it was 8.  With a few things that will be useful to me if I upgrade.  But frankly, I just want to see what the cosmetic changes in the store look like.  And sure enough, right next to the LOGO (upper left-hand corner) their is a middle blac empty rectangle.

So this is new. I haven’t seen it in all the time I’ve been designing in mac environment.  It wasn’t in Mac Firefox, and it wasn’t in Mac Safari, and it wasn’t even in Safari on the iPhone.

What the f*** is goin’ on.  This just ain’t freakin’ right.

I know where the black background is coming from.  there’s a table (yeah, I know, don’t use tables, use CSS) but sometimes tables are easier to maintain, and so it’s a table with three columns, and the cells are all marked to have a background color of white.  There is also some CSS around the table but that also tells the background to be white.  In fact, just about every freakin’ thing, in every little bit of code I can find is tellin’ the background to be white.

I take it one step further and do a regular expression search for * (anything) that points to #000 or #00000 (black).  Nothing to be found.

Well, I’m too tired to try to ponder it out now.  But there you have it.  Just amazing what MS manages to do.  And it does look so nice in Mac Firefox…  or if not “so nice” it looks homey and sophisticated at the same time and simple to use.  I’ve got a gray bar going across the screen that has my promotion about shipping about it (that doesn’t move) but sits there like I want it to while you do your scrolling.  The categories and the pages on the top and bottom are both done with a nice CSS  menu plugin.  All in all – easy to maintain.  Now to find out where that black space is coming from.

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS WITH CASCADING STYLE SHEETS, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE MAJOR COMPANIES CAN’T AGREE ON HOW THEY SHOULD WORK, AND WHAT THEY SHOULD DO WHEN INCORRECT CODE IS USED.  I SUPPOSE THAT ONE DAY I’LL WAKE UP ON AND READ THAT THE FDA HAS OUTLAWED POT FOR MEDICAL PURPOSES AND THE REST OF THE WORLD HAS OKAYED IT’S USE FOR MEDICAL REASONS.  Naw… that couldn’t happen… could it.  No freakin’ way.