Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

Let's get one thing straight: Portland – or more specifically, Portland TV news – is obsessed with the weather. Maybe it's because the four local stations, KATU 2, KOIN 6, KGW 8 and FOX 12 all seem to have four news shows running directly after each other and they need to fill them with something. And I'm not kidding here... the evening schedule on KATU looks something like this.

• The 4 o'clock news (FIRST AT FOUR!)
• The 5 o'clock news
• The 6 o'oclock (national) news
• The 6.30 news
• Some other TV programs getting in the way of more news
• The 11 o'clock news

Geez! Really? Portland ain't that big of a town and, when it comes down to it, not a lot happens here. So for one network to give us more than four hours of local news a day (there's also the morning news to consider!) is kinda ludicrous.

So it ain't surprising that they fill a lot of this time with inane banter between the anchors and that great time-filler, the weather. On a really slow news day, the weather can be the big top story of the day. "And in breaking news, we cross to Rod, our chief meteorologist, for more news on that rain that could be coming our way on Veterans' Day." I made that story up, but it's not too far from the truth.

Each channel prides itself on its extensive weather coverage: "Your Storm Watch Team!" intones the Voice Over Man™ solemnly, or, "your trained local meteorologists!" followed by, "Doppler 8000 radar!!!" (whatever that actually is!) and every channel has a veritable arsenal of weather cameras dotted around northern Oregon. Out at the coast, along the Columbia River, on every tall building in Portland – just waiting to show you what it currently looks like outside. I dunno, if I wanted to know what it was like outside right now, I could just... go outside.

Look, we all like to know what the weather's going to be like (although at this time of year in Portland, "rainy and cold" is probably the answer pretty much every day), but do we really need vast tracts of time every night given over to the subject? I really bet the forecast hasn't changed that much in the five minutes since they last gave it to us...

Posted in: chaosboy, general musings, portland, weather on November 9, 2008 at at 6:32:00 PM 0 comments    

It's almost 7:30pm Pacific Time here in the United States, and the race for the Presidency - the most powerful job in the world, as they say - is almost over. At the moment, Barack Obama holds 207 Electoral College votes to John McCain's 135. Under the US's remarkably obtuse voting system, once a candidate reaches 270 votes, they have a majority and are declared the victor.

More importantly, Obama has just (and I mean minutes ago!) been declared the winner of the state of Ohio. Much like the Federal electorate of Eden-Monaro back home in Australia, it is the bellwether state - you just don't win the Presidency without winning Ohio.

I haven't commented on the election yet on this blog, basically because the one thing everyone hates is a know-it-all foreigner telling them how things should be done and who you should vote for. But, on the actual night, and with America on the verge of history, I feel that I can offer a few observations.

The electoral process in this country takes far, far, far too long. The initial primaries and caucuses to select the Presidential candidates begin in January, the election itself is in November! The period inbetween is filled with campaigning, saturation of television with increasingly negative and vitriolic ads, followed by more campaigning. It's draining, annoying and ever present. The amount of money raised and spent by the campaigns over this period is staggering, ridiculous and even slightly obscene. At least electoral campaigns only last six weeks or so in Australia - a blessed relief!

Sarah Palin. I'm not even going to dignify her with a comment.

The Obama campaign has done a remarkable job encouraging young people and minorities to get out and vote.

The financial crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for the Republican party - if you preside over a meltdown like that, it's always going to be difficult to win an election, even with a new President at the helm.

The Senatorial battle in Oregon between Jeff Merkley (D) and Gordon Smith (R) has to be one of the dirtiest, nastiest no-holds barred fights I have ever seen.

Finally, I feel that Barack Obama is the right choice for this country. He's not perfect - no politician is - but he is a statesman, something America desperately needs after eight years of President Stupid. At this point in time, change is needed and that's what Obama offers.

Posted in: chaosboy, politics, united states on November 4, 2008 at at 7:27:00 PM 0 comments    

A couple of weekends ago, our good friend Leah called me up in a bit of a tizzy. Leah works in the campaign office for Jeff Merkley, the Democrat's Oregon candidate for the US Senate, and needed my help in a hurry. Her usual graphic designer had gone AWOL and they needed some posters and postcards for a huge campaign event – Al Gore was coming to town to talk and endorse Jeff – and they were needed yesterday. Could I help? Never one to let a friend down, I stepped up to the plate and produced the material n record time. The front of the postcard is above... not ground-breaking work, but it does the job and was commented on favourably by all parties.

Leah, recognising my hard work, went to her boss and asked that he pay me for my work. However, asking a campaign manager for money for what they consider to be "volunteer work" a few weeks out from election day tends to be a fruitless exercise – how can you pay for all those interminable TV spots if you're handing cash over to some graphic designer? Leah stuck to her guns, saying that I had have earned something for my work, and in the end managed to score Christine and I free tickets to the event. And not just any tickets, these were "have your photo taken with Al Gore before the show" tickets, which were being offered to the public for the tidy sum of $1000 a head.

I'll admit that initially I was quite bemused by the offer of the tickets: while I admire Al Gore, especially for what he's done outside of politics regarding climate change, I felt a little distanced from him, like I didn't know enough about him to deserve the chance to meet him. However, by the morning of the event, I was pretty excited.

We both dressed up for the event – it's not often you meet ex-Vice Presidents and you'd like to look your best – and headed down to the Convention Center after work. We found Leah soon after arriving and she made sure that we got what she had promised us. Another volunteer only wanted to give us general admission tickets – Leah was having none of that! Pretty soon, we were lining up with all the others to meet Mr. Gore, but we were waiting for almost an hour. Christine's (very cute) shoes weren't designed for standing around in for so long and the small waiting room got hot very quickly. Surprisingly, for a $1000 price tag, there was no food and drink available for the people waiting, but everyone was extremely happy and patient.

Finally, we were told that Al Gore was on his way down and to form a queue. As the event was starting soon, we would only have time to greet him, shake his hand and have our photo taken - no time for chit chat or political discourse! We gradually made our way into the room where the photos were being taken, and we were both struck by his immediate presence: he's a tall, barrel-chested man with an extremely calm demeanour, which seemed to affect everyone in the room. When it was our turn, he somehow managed to make us both feel very welcome with just a few words and a confident handshake. I wasn't starstruck by him, but he definitely has an aura. Photo taken (it's going to be emailed to us soon!), we headed into the auditorium to hear people speak.

The first few speakers were other Democrat candidates for all sorts of public offices (Americans vote for everything all at once on Election Day), who all exhorted us to vote Democrat all the way down the ballot. Some of them tried a bit of cheerleading... "Who are you going to vote for??!!" and expecting everyone to chant "Merkley!!!" back at them, which frankly, was a little embarrassing. That kind of stuff is best left to high schools, football games or rallies with around 50,000 people.

Jeff's speech was somewhat better, but everyone else's words were forgotten the moment Al Gore came to the stage. His speech was amazing, there's no other way to describe it. Powerful, thought-provoking, funny... tying together the economic crisis, alternative energy, the war in Iraq and more into a tangible and spell-binding narrative, all of them giving reasons to vote for Jeff Merkley. Easily one of the best political speeches I have ever heard and totally inspiring. Listening to him speak like that, one can't help but wonder how different a place the world might be now if he had won that election eight years ago... I certainly can't imagine that he would have reacted to world events in the same way that the Bush administration has...

Posted in: chaosboy, politics, portland, united states on October 25, 2008 at at 8:28:00 AM 0 comments    

Flickr is awesome. Not only does it enable me to share my photos with family, friends and like-minded photographers from around the world, but it also acts as my agent. Companies of all sorts need photography, and it seems to me that they are increasingly turning to sites like Flickr instead of traditional (and highly expensive) photo libraries like Getty Images.

The image above is an initial cover concept for a novel that is being produced by a Dutch publishing house - and that's my photo on the cover! They found it on Flickr and asked me whether they could use it for a fee. After some negotiation, we came to an agreement and the result is above: I think it looks great!

This is the third image I've sold through Flickr in the last year, the other two being this and this. I've also donated this image to the Bath Abbey Trust, and a whole heap of images to the Crater Lake Trust – I'm always open to helping non-profits out with my photos, especially ones where I feel a connection.

Posted in: chaosboy, photography on October 11, 2008 at at 5:52:00 PM 2 comments    

When it comes to a declining economy and everyone, including the media, always reminding you so, begins to sink into your mind. You begin to think, that your calm little world is about to explode into a chaos of havoc and crime and will to sink into a demise similar to Gotham. That's kinda how I feel this week.

At work, people every other day come into report that their computer/ iPod/ hard drive, etc. was stolen and we are meant to do something about it. These people, I do take seriously and we send out emails to staff reminding them to keep an eye out for so forementioned stolen object. That gets 10X more serious when your own sister experiences her first break in by some desperate meth head/kid who saw her shiny white laptop and made a run for it. The guy (we'll assume its a guy) busted in through her bedroom by pushing in the air con and the continued to scavenge his way through the small apartment, nabbing a backpack in order to throw the laptop and a digital camera into. On his way through, he spots Kim's vintage cookie jar with "Munchies" painted on the side in old 70's style. He snags a chocolate bar and takes a bite of it. Upon realizing its baker's chocolate, he abandons the unsweetened bar and proceeds to grab Kevin's screwdriver in order to hit up the next door neighbors' apartment. (They had fortunately moved out the week before). The police made their stop at the apartment and went through the protocols but the forsenic inspector found the best fingerprints, nonetheless, on the abandoned candy bar in the kitchen. If this guy has every had his prints logged before, an arrest can be made on account of a CANDY BAR.

Meanwhile in other news, that same night, the lights were stolen off my bike. This is very unfortunate for me because if I get anywhere, its on bike. However, the situation is almost laughable.

Meanwhile today, two more people reported stolen laptops. What kind of country are we living in?

The best part about living in economic decline is seeing your friends on the daily news – alone sitting at a bar, as was the case with a co-worker friend of mine. The story was about how not as many people are going out to eat or drink in this past few weeks. I'm going to vote that drinking has not been affected.

But there's hope!
Get out and vote!

Posted in: chaosgurl, portland, technology, united states on September 28, 2008 at at 9:47:00 PM 0 comments    

I saw on the news the other day that the US Mint is planning to introduce new designs for the penny in 2009 to celebrate the bicentenary of President Lincoln's birth. I have a better idea - get rid of the useless things.

Coming from a country that discontinued use of its one cent coin in 1991 (the year after I left high school!), the use of the penny here shocks and astounds me. If I get one in change, I just don't take it. I see no reason to clog my wallet/pocket/house up with a coin that I'll never actually be able to use as a meaningful piece of money. The sooner the Australian system of rounding purchases to the nearest five cents happens, the better!

On a side note, one bank here does do rounding up to the nearest five cents - but on electronic purchases. Let's say, you spend $24.43 on something and pay for it with your debit card. The bank extracts $24.45 from your checking account, but puts the extra two cents into your linked savings account! Clever! One could imagine that all your transactions over a given period of time might add up to a considerable boost to your savings.

On a further note, when the designs for the new penny were unveiled, certain conservative members of the community worked themselves into a lather. According to them, the words "In God We Trust" had been removed from the penny – a sure sign that atheists and communists were running the country and the end of the world wasn't far away.

What they were (conveniently?) forgetting was that all the images of the new coin designs are only showing the obverse of the coin. The reverse of the coin is remaining the same, and on that side of the coin is Lincoln's head... and the words "In God We Trust".

Posted in: chaosboy, united states on September 25, 2008 at at 8:25:00 AM 0 comments    

I was a little surprised the other day when Christine brought home a new computer game for us to play. Christine's not much of a gamer, thinking that everything since Super Mario Bros 3 has been unworthy of her efforts. However, the concept and potential of this new game had her itching to try it out. The game? Spore.

The only way you couldn't have heard of Spore is if you've been hiding under a rock or have negative interest in games, your brain actively repelling all the hype that's been thrown at you about it. Basically, it's the ultimate God game - in the vein of, but far surpassing, all the "Sim"-type games that have been around since Populous and the original Sim City. You start the game with a single celled creature and evolve it all the way into a space-conquering civilisation.

The game isn't perfect by any means - it's more like five completely separate yet increasingly complex mini-games than a continuous narrative, and a lot of the gameplay is either far too simple or repetitive. I'm not even going to get into the whole storm about copy-protection that's blown up around the game's release, as it hasn't affected me at all. Where the game really shines is in its total customisation abilities. You get to shape pretty much everything about your creature (and later on, their cities, vehicles, planes, ships and spaceships). Think your creature would look good with five heads? Maybe eyes on its knees? Eight legs? Whatever you can think of, it's possible. There's something strangely addictive about creating your own monsters and then watching them interact with other strange beasts, all of which have been created by other people around the world.

So while Spore isn't a multi-player game as such (there's no direct head-to-head competition with other human players), the game is a veritable menagerie of creatures, constantly changing as new creations are uploaded by players around the world. That's what keeps it interesting and fresh - getting to see what other people are doing with the amazing God-like tools contained within the game.

Here's a couple of our creatures as a sample. We've only been playing for a week or so and still have so much to learn about how to make truly unique creatures, but at least we've gotten past our initial, "oh look, I've made a dinosaur!" phase.

Posted in: chaosboy, computers, games on September 24, 2008 at at 8:41:00 PM 0 comments    

Tired of being stuck here in Portland all the dang time (one of the few disadvantages of not owning our own car!), Christine and I resolved to take advantage of a small gap in my work schedule and get the heck out of town for a few days.

So we rented a car and drove on down to Crater Lake, an enormous clear blue lake that is entirely within the enormous (6 miles by 4 miles) caldera of a volcano that blew itself apart a mere 7,700 years ago - a mere blip in time geologically speaking. In a few weeks' time, the area around the lake will be covered in snow that will last until June next year, so this was probably our last chance to see it for a while. The drive down was fairly uneventful and quick - the I-5 corridor may be dull, but it does get you places quickly!

We entered the National Park from the north and soon achieved our first view of the lake. It certainly didn't disappoint!

No photograph can possibly do justice to the scale and majestic grandeur of this remarkable place (although that didn't stop me taking almost 200 shots over the next couple of days!), with sheer, soaring cliffs over 700 feet tall surrounding the bluest of blue waters that you have ever seen.

After soaking in the view from this initial view point, we quickly headed down to the campground, 7 miles south of the rim and set up our tent for the night. We were warned that bears frequented the campground and took all necessary precautions to secure our food in the provided bear-proof lockers before heading back to the Rim Village to view a beautiful clear sunset over the lake.

The small island is known as Wizard's Island, supposedly because of it's resemblance to a wizard's hat. It is a small volcanic cinder cone that rises from the lake's floor, and has a small crater of its own on top - a crater within a crater!

The next day, we drove a complete loop around the crater rim, stopping often for photographs. Our main goal was to walk to the top of Mount Scott, the highest point within the National Park at 8,929 feet (2,721 metres). The trail itself rises 1,200 feet over its 2.5 mile length, making it a pretty strenuous climb, especially for those unaccustomed to exercising at higher altitudes (i.e., me!). However, we made it to the top in just over an hour and were rewarded with absolutely spectacular 360 degree views, including the whole enormous lake laid out before us. Totally worth the effort!

(Our car is parked on the road at the absolute bottom right of the picture, just to give you some idea of where the trail has come from!)

In the evening, we climbed to the top of Watchman Peak on the exact opposite side of the lake (it's just to the right of my hat) to view another sunset - this one completely different to the previous night. Forest fires were raging to the south and the north of the park and had covered large parts of the sky with a thick pall of smoke. So where there had been crystal clear blue skies, there was haze and smoke, which was spectacular in its own (slightly eerie) way.


After the sun sank under the horizon in a blood-red blaze, we descended the mountain ( much easier path than Mount Scott) and retired to our campsite for a very well-earned beverage and meal. We left pretty early the next morning, as we were unable to secure seats for the boat cruises around the lake itself (curse you, large tour groups, for booking out all the early cruises!).

Posted in: chaosboy, oregon, photography, travel on September 9, 2008 at at 9:52:00 PM 0 comments    

Last Sunday night, Colin Lake and Wellbottom played their first gig at one of Portland's main music venues, the Crystal Ballroom, as a support act to the Bodeans.

What made this show different from the usual old Colin gig was that he asked Christine to bring our video camera along to see if we could get some footage for a demo reel. Colin had been in contact with some people who are trying to organise bands for the 2010 World Expo – in Shanghai! Needless to say, Colin jumped at the opportunity to apply, but it meant that he had to get a press kit – complete with a live performance DVD – together in less than a week! And while he could rely on me for all his graphic design needs, he was getting a little desperate regarding the video. Christine had done a great job just the other week with an impromptu video for Kevin's benefit shows, so Colin turned to her in his hour of need.

We turned up at the show early and got some footage at the soundcheck, then hung out in the green room with the band - playing at being groupies - until it was time for the band to go on stage. It was Kevin's first gig back with the band after his recent illness and everyone was raring to go. Christine spent the entire show getting footage from every angle, climbing all over the stage, yet aiming to be unobtrusive for the appreciative crowd. Because, quite unusually, the crowd responded very warmly to the mere support act and gave them their full attention. I tried to help out by shooting some video on Christine's new little Olympus camera, but the format ended up being tiny and pretty much useless.

Christine worked hard in tandem with Colin over the next couple of days to produce the demo DVD, or - in essence - a music video for one of their songs. The audio captured by our little camera was pretty sketchy, so Christine ended up having to meld audio from a live track recorded on Wellbottom's Spring tour with the video from the show, and she did a pretty good job of matching elements up to give the illusion that they came from the one and same event.

In the end, Colin met his deadline and everyone loved the finished product - I think it's amazing, especially considering the timeframe it was produced in. I'm in awe of Christine's ability to work with time, something that this little print designer still has trouble wrapping his head around. So without further ado, I present Colin Lake and Wellbottom, through the lens of Christine:

Posted in: chaosboy, music, portland on August 21, 2008 at at 8:39:00 PM 2 comments    

Adobe has just released version 2 of Lightroom, their photography management/development application, and all I can say is that it is amazing. There are so many enhancements and upgrades that it's hard to know where to start. It's probably best to say that unless I actually want to do a whole heap of tricky retouching, I'm hardly going to fire up Photoshop at all anymore.

It's not perfect, however: a rather nasty bug in v2.0 stops all your old keywords from v1.4 from exporting with your photos, although a very simple SQL command (so simple, even I could do it!) fixes that problem. There have also been reports of Lightroom being everything from somewhat sluggish to completely glacial in performance, although my Mac Pro makes light work of just about anything, so I can't really comment on this!

Of all the tools, the selective adjustment brush was the most touted. With it, you can now mask areas and apply exposure, sharpness, colour, clariry (and more!) edits to specific areas of your photos without having to hand the image over to Photoshop. All your edits are non-destructive - just as in the previous version of Lightroom, all your edits are simply saved as instructions that are applied in real time to your image. The interface takes a little getting used to, especially for us Photoshop mavens, but once you've got the hang of it, it really is intuitive and extremely powerful.

However, my favourite tool is the adjustment brush's poorer, less glitzy cousin, the graduated filter. As its name suggests, this tool emulates the coloured or neutral density filters that you can physically place in front of your camera lens to achieve certain effects. My use for this tool so far is extremely prosaic - I use it to fix overexposed areas of sky.

We've all taken photos like this. While the foreground is fairly well exposed and detailed, the sky is completely blown out. If I had shot this picture in JPG, that would be pretty much the end of things - an 8-bit image simply wouldn't contain enough information for me to be able to regain all that lost detail in the sky. White is white, and would always remain so.

But when you shoot RAW, there is a ridiculous amount of information contained in the file (4,096 levels as opposed to JPG's 256 levels). And the important thing to realise is that most of this information is in the lighter areas of any image. As explained in this excellent article at Luminous Landscape, exactly half of the 4,096 levels of information are contained in the brightest fifth of the image, while there's a mere 128 levels of information in the darkest areas, the shadows.

What this means is that it's very possible to restore missing detail from overexposed areas when you shoot RAW. However, this was kind of a painful process before the new tools in Lightroom. To retain the properly exposed foreground but also get the corrected sky, I would have to export two versions of the file to Photoshop (one exposed for the foreground, the other for the backgroun) and then use layer masks to blend the two versions together. It's not something I'd do except for a photo I really thought was worth it.

With the new graduated filter tool, all I have to do is specify my exposure adjustment for the sky (around -2.0 to -3.0 stops, depending on how blown out things are) and drag out my gradient from top to bottom. The gradient is fully adjustable to taste after it's been applied, both in location and intensity. The results are nearly instantaneous and it's ridiculously easy to apply. Here's a before and after of the shot above, just so you can see how much detail can be regained using this technique.

This is an extreme example, requiring a full -3.0 stops to regain the detail in the clouds - probably about the absolute limit of this technique. But just think - there is that amount of information and detail just hiding in that brightest part of your image, and you have to shoot RAW if you want to be able to release it.

Posted in: adobe lightroom, chaosboy, photography on August 8, 2008 at at 9:42:00 AM 0 comments