Notes on Hyper-V
29/12/08 23:37 Filed in: BitDepth+
Read the BitDepth story on the event here... Read More...
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BitDepth 660 posted
29/12/08 23:37 Filed in: Website
Updates
Editorial for December 30
29/12/08 23:36 Filed in: Editorials
"Next year's Carnival is shaping up to be a guava season for stakeholder representatives anticipating the kind of generous handouts that have floated the Carnivals of the last three years past the ruin of the Grandstand and a sharply felt lack of planning for an entirely predictable festival." Read More...
Editorial for December 29
29/12/08 23:36 Filed in: Editorials
"Carnival band and party brand loyalty will be tested in 2009 by even the most enthusiastic of Carnival supporters and cost constraints will challenge promoters and bandleaders to provide more with a reduced profit margin." Read More...
Editorial for December 23
29/12/08 23:36 Filed in: Editorials
"The fugitive nature of these flavivirus serotypes have made it possible for successive Ministers of Health to argue with passion that dengue is not a problem in Trinidad and Tobago.
Those who have suffered the ravages of an illness known as "bonebreak" and "bonecrusher" fever would beg to differ." Read More...
Editorial for December 22
29/12/08 23:36 Filed in: Editorials
"There seems to be a fair amount of fuzziness in the police accounting of missing persons in Trinidad and Tobago, and a review of the reality of existing police reports and the actual standing of missing persons in this country would seem to be not just in order, but a matter that should be a routine part of the statistical analysis of police reports." Read More...
Editorial for December 16
29/12/08 23:27 Filed in: Editorials
"Until this country can find a way to reconcile its enthusiasm for celebrating beauty with tangible returns on the investments that are necessary for success in the business, local franchise holders will remain doomed to a cycle of accolade and abnegation in their efforts to build a business that many desire but nobody seems to want." Read More...
Editorial for December 15
29/12/08 23:19 Filed in: Editorials
"There have been some concerns about the PM's decision to pursue this surgery in Cuba, bypassing the possibility of having the procedure done in this country, but it is, ultimately is one of those decisions that a man must make for himself in his best interests." Read More...
BitDepth 657, 658, 659 posted
22/12/08 20:26 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth
657 on the value proposition of HDTV is
posted here...
BitDepth 658, the annual gift guide for tech lovers is posted here...
BitDepth 659, a look at Quantum of Solace and The Day the Earth stood still is posted here...
BitDepth 658, the annual gift guide for tech lovers is posted here...
BitDepth 659, a look at Quantum of Solace and The Day the Earth stood still is posted here...
BitDepth 656 posted
01/12/08 21:01 Filed in: Website
Updates
Notes on the 2008 ICT Symposium
25/11/08 00:19 Filed in: BitDepth+
Related: BitDepth 655... Read More...
McNally talk posted
25/11/08 00:11 Filed in: Photography
BitDepth 655 posted
25/11/08 00:08 Filed in: Website
Updates
Remembering Bheem Singh
17/11/08 21:32 Filed in: Photography
Bheem was always kind to strangers but he doted on his children and their children. Photo by Mark Lyndersay.
Bheem Singh died on November 09 and was buried on November 12 in a quiet ceremony at St Mary's Church in St James.
In one of those curious turns that makes Trinidad and Tobago such a unique and intriguing nation, the man who returned Divali, a Hindu festival to St James with a street display outside his home at Ethel Street, was buried under Christian rites.
Bheem Singh was always kind and generous to me and his tireless patience with my efforts to photograph his work for the festival, so he was, after a fashion, the first of my Local Lives subjects.
I first photographed the work he was doing with his sons on Ethel Street for The Wire, but the photos weren't published. When I came by to apologise for wasting his time, he berated me instead for not visiting on Divali night to share in the food his family generously served to anyone who visited their home.
This year, neither Bheem nor I were at the family's celebrations. He was in hospital while the family bravely carried on with the celebrations and I was was in New York, having carelessly failed to factor in the overlap with my travel.
He was a generous, kind and cheerful man, a great neighbour in St James. He will be missed, particularly when the lights of the deyas are lit each year.
I've finally posted the last three of the published Local Lives essays, including A Light in the West.
BitDepth 654 posted
17/11/08 21:27 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 653 posted
10/11/08 19:05 Filed in: Website
Updates
David De Caires, fondly remembered
04/11/08 10:18 Filed in: Musing
As I mentioned in a note to David's son, Brendan, his father always recognised me wherever we met with a kindness and generosity that was always touching.
David De Caires was a man of some intensity, but he had no airs and I count myself fortunate to have met him through my friendship with Brendan. Read More...
Mass updates
04/11/08 09:43 Filed in: Website
Updates
Fortunately, I'm working from copious notes from the show floor at PhotoPlus Expo 2008, so the assortment of drugs and remedies I've been ingesting hasn't quite succeeded in wiping my brain pan clean of what I encountered over the three days of Expo.
Herewith, a roundup of all the new postings to the site...
BitDepth 651 covers a panel at PhotoPlus on the way Microstock has changed the face of not just stock photography sales but the profile of contributors.
There are additional notes from that panel posted to my Photo Blog here.
BitDepth 652 covers the panel of winners of this year's All Roads Project. Just one of the winners was able to make it, and his story is a remarkable one.
Day One of my PhotoPlus expo blog coverage covers the hunt for a new sling bag.
Blogging the show floor
22/10/08 16:48 Filed in: BitDepth+
You'll find that coverage posted on my photoblog here...
BitDepth 650 posted
22/10/08 16:47 Filed in: Website
Updates
Future talk
13/10/08 10:50 Filed in: BitDepth+
BitDepth 649 posted
13/10/08 10:38 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 648 posted
03/10/08 13:32 Filed in: BitDepth+
A farewell to testosterone
29/09/08 21:20 Filed in: Comics
Y:
The last man
By Brian K Vaughn and Pia Guerra
"In the end, it's not important what killed the men, only what the rest of us are going to do now that they're gone." - Beth DeVille
Y: The Last Man, beginnings and endings, book one and book ten.
There's a film in the works based on this book by Brian K Vaughn and Pia Guerra, but I have no idea how they are going to pull it off.
Watchmen was always going to be possible (if far less impressively detailed) if you yank out the backstory about the early heroes and the pirate parable, but hacking Vaughn and Guerra's ten volume story down to the size of a film is going to require some criminal cutting and devastating character losses.
I've had an up and down relationship with the book, picking up each volume as it came out and there are undeniably some slow passages in the middle of the work that could do with some trimming, but it would be so easy to leave out everything that gives the book its heart. Rumours suggest a trilogy of films, but the work doesn't seem epic enough to draw people to the cinema for three outings.
The book has a high concept beginning, three incidents seem to point to the same climactic moment on July 17, 2002, the sudden deaths of every man on planet Earth, an epic genocide of men, gagging on their blood filled throats, collapsing with threads of read running out of their eyes and noses.
This is the stuff of Hollywood pitchmen, the kind of high concept story point that gets films green lit before anyone has given a moment's thought to what happens next.
What happens next takes five years in the arc of the book, a long meandering quest through the American countryside, to Australia, then Japan and China as Yorick Brown, literature student and amateur escape artist, his Capuchin monkey Ampersand, the deadly Agent 355 and Dr Allison Mann seek the answer to why the young, often quite silly Mr Brown is the last man left alive on the planet.
Along the way, the find other men alive, but they don't stay that way for long, and women coping with life sans the male gender in many intriguing ways. The sanest town the find has been established by women from a nearby prison, rampaging Amazons roam the countryside, one breast removed, with hate in their heart for any reminders of the old patriarchy.
The reason for the mass patricide is eventually revealed, and the rationale is no better or worse than George Lucas' convoluted explanation of midichlorians as the source of Force control.
As Yorick put it, "As far as answers go, it was...vaguely unsatisfying."
By the end of the book, it's so transparently a useless deus ex machina that it's dealt with in two pages as we get on with more critical issues. Indeed, the reason offered at the end of the story is as plausible as any of the others that are hinted at throughout the book, but the real story of Y isn't what happened to the men, but what happened afterward.
Beyond the story of Yorick Brown, 355, and Dr Mann is a richer tapestry of women's many reactions, responses and readjustments after Le Grand Dpart. Vaughn's examination of this remarkable alternative future, the conspiracies that thread through it and the power brokers that emerge from it constitute a moving, elegaic story that really only surfaces when you read the entire book from beginning to end. I freely confess that it wasn't this powerful when I read it in monthly sittings.
The peaks that Vaughn builds into keep things moving along at a crisp clip, but they are also a bit irritating when you've got to wait months between episodes. The tiny interlocking arcs and references only become apparent when you read it, well, like a book, not like a serial.
That may have been why the series seemed to be getting a little...annoying, but Vaughn wraps up the story with a powerhouse arc that ends with the finale, "Alas..."
That storyline is one of the most remarkable feats of the book, closing the story with the same impact that it began with, and it's a payoff that's earned with strong storytelling, steady characterisation and a ruthless eye on playing straight and true with the premise he sets up in the first book.
Yorick is at the heart of this story, but what keeps it moving are the women who decide to reshape and destroy the world after all the men are gone.
I’ve made much of Vaughn’s writing, but Guerra’s elegant art, rich with nuance and emotion, adds a subtle richness to the storytelling. There’s a moment right at the end of the story, when Yorick suffers his greatest loss and you can see in Yorick’s rueful smile the dawn of his adulthood.
Some of Vaughn's ideas seem unlikely and pretty out there, but who knows what would happen in a world of women.
The success of Y is the courage he brings to executing the enormity of the concept.
Download a PDF of the first issue at Vertigo Comics here...
By Brian K Vaughn and Pia Guerra
"In the end, it's not important what killed the men, only what the rest of us are going to do now that they're gone." - Beth DeVille
Y: The Last Man, beginnings and endings, book one and book ten.
There's a film in the works based on this book by Brian K Vaughn and Pia Guerra, but I have no idea how they are going to pull it off.
Watchmen was always going to be possible (if far less impressively detailed) if you yank out the backstory about the early heroes and the pirate parable, but hacking Vaughn and Guerra's ten volume story down to the size of a film is going to require some criminal cutting and devastating character losses.
I've had an up and down relationship with the book, picking up each volume as it came out and there are undeniably some slow passages in the middle of the work that could do with some trimming, but it would be so easy to leave out everything that gives the book its heart. Rumours suggest a trilogy of films, but the work doesn't seem epic enough to draw people to the cinema for three outings.
The book has a high concept beginning, three incidents seem to point to the same climactic moment on July 17, 2002, the sudden deaths of every man on planet Earth, an epic genocide of men, gagging on their blood filled throats, collapsing with threads of read running out of their eyes and noses.
This is the stuff of Hollywood pitchmen, the kind of high concept story point that gets films green lit before anyone has given a moment's thought to what happens next.
What happens next takes five years in the arc of the book, a long meandering quest through the American countryside, to Australia, then Japan and China as Yorick Brown, literature student and amateur escape artist, his Capuchin monkey Ampersand, the deadly Agent 355 and Dr Allison Mann seek the answer to why the young, often quite silly Mr Brown is the last man left alive on the planet.
Along the way, the find other men alive, but they don't stay that way for long, and women coping with life sans the male gender in many intriguing ways. The sanest town the find has been established by women from a nearby prison, rampaging Amazons roam the countryside, one breast removed, with hate in their heart for any reminders of the old patriarchy.
The reason for the mass patricide is eventually revealed, and the rationale is no better or worse than George Lucas' convoluted explanation of midichlorians as the source of Force control.
As Yorick put it, "As far as answers go, it was...vaguely unsatisfying."
By the end of the book, it's so transparently a useless deus ex machina that it's dealt with in two pages as we get on with more critical issues. Indeed, the reason offered at the end of the story is as plausible as any of the others that are hinted at throughout the book, but the real story of Y isn't what happened to the men, but what happened afterward.
Beyond the story of Yorick Brown, 355, and Dr Mann is a richer tapestry of women's many reactions, responses and readjustments after Le Grand Dpart. Vaughn's examination of this remarkable alternative future, the conspiracies that thread through it and the power brokers that emerge from it constitute a moving, elegaic story that really only surfaces when you read the entire book from beginning to end. I freely confess that it wasn't this powerful when I read it in monthly sittings.
The peaks that Vaughn builds into keep things moving along at a crisp clip, but they are also a bit irritating when you've got to wait months between episodes. The tiny interlocking arcs and references only become apparent when you read it, well, like a book, not like a serial.
That may have been why the series seemed to be getting a little...annoying, but Vaughn wraps up the story with a powerhouse arc that ends with the finale, "Alas..."
That storyline is one of the most remarkable feats of the book, closing the story with the same impact that it began with, and it's a payoff that's earned with strong storytelling, steady characterisation and a ruthless eye on playing straight and true with the premise he sets up in the first book.
Yorick is at the heart of this story, but what keeps it moving are the women who decide to reshape and destroy the world after all the men are gone.
I’ve made much of Vaughn’s writing, but Guerra’s elegant art, rich with nuance and emotion, adds a subtle richness to the storytelling. There’s a moment right at the end of the story, when Yorick suffers his greatest loss and you can see in Yorick’s rueful smile the dawn of his adulthood.
Some of Vaughn's ideas seem unlikely and pretty out there, but who knows what would happen in a world of women.
The success of Y is the courage he brings to executing the enormity of the concept.
Download a PDF of the first issue at Vertigo Comics here...
BitDepth 647 Posted
29/09/08 20:51 Filed in: Website
Updates
Fundraisers for Jeffrey Chock annoucned
22/09/08 21:15 Filed in: Photography
PhotoBlog: Lenses, not cameras
22/09/08 21:11 Filed in: Photography
BitDepth 645 & 646 posted
22/09/08 20:40 Filed in: Website
Updates
Four colour heroics in black and white
20/09/08 14:02 Filed in: Comics
A review of four novels about comics
and the beginning of my coverage of comics on the blog.
Read More...
Chock fundraising
08/09/08 23:09 Filed in: Photography
Virtual exhibit hall
08/09/08 23:09 Filed in: Photography
This new section offers images in much higher than normal resolution (images will be 1200 pixels wide or 1024 pixels high on their long side, depending on orientation) and will fit nicely on a screen that’s 17 inches or larger.
The display is roughly equivalent to viewing an 8 x 10 inch print.
This runs counter to the traditional thinking on web reproduction, these larger files being easy targets for theft. But there’s also a very valuable counter movement, exemplified by the Boston Globe’s take on photography on the web. Which is, in summary, so what?
I’ve had exhibitions of my work in the past and I still haven’t recovered from the experience 25 years later. I’d rather risk some petty theft and display some of my collections properly than massage my ego with another show in a hurry.
Let me know what you think about the first collection. I have another, much larger “show” waiting in the wings.
To assist you in viewing the images on your screen with greater accuracy, I’ve included these colour bars. Most modern monitors offer some colour controls that will eliminate particularly obvious colour casts.
The blocks in the bar are from left to right, 100 percent of blue, green, red and black, 50 percent gray, 25 percent gray and 100 percent white (that block should disappear on this page).
PhotoBlog: Portrait with a single light
08/09/08 21:10 Filed in: Photography
Dreamscape goes nuts
08/09/08 20:19 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 644 posted
08/09/08 20:14 Filed in: Website
Updates
MacBlog: Think
01/09/08 21:59 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 643 posted
01/09/08 21:58 Filed in: Website
Updates
Posted CRB Reviews
31/08/08 09:59 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 642 posted
31/08/08 09:14 Filed in: Website
Updates
Norton website launched
23/08/08 00:10 Filed in: Photography
Kelly's surreal Tales
22/08/08 23:59 Filed in: Movies
Like Darko, there's an interesting science fiction underpinning to all the goings on, but it's almost irrelevant to the political intrigue of a US Government that has taken homeland security to its logical conclusion and the personal peccadillos of Dwayne Johnson's Boxer Santaros.
The star power that's brought to bear on this story is impressive, inclusive of Sarah Michelle Gellar, John Laroquette, Miranda Richardson, Justin Timberlake and Seann William Scott, but what's lacking is a sense of restraint and service to the story. Kelly's tale wanders off on odd little tangents that ultimately amount to very little and nudge the story forward imperceptibly.
It's not hard to see why the film failed so completely to find an audience. The comedy is so black as to stifle even the most hard earned laugh, the science fiction is almost marginal and the action is so brief that it could qualify as punctuation.
Add to this Mr Timberlake's surreal little song and dance number and you have a cinematic pelau so varied that it's sure to be inedible to all but the most refined of palates.
What Southland Tales is, though, is a very personal piece of work that feels a lot like the work of a post-Matrix Robert Altman-esque director, one whose passions are involving enough to draw intriguing performances from a strong cast but so undiluted that they alienate all but the most committed of audiences.
If you like your movies odd and quirky, then give Southland Tales a look.
PhotoBlog: Photographing a CD cover
22/08/08 23:51 Filed in: Photography
BitDepth 641 posted
22/08/08 23:44 Filed in: Website
Updates
MacBlog: Homemade coolpad
12/08/08 23:01 Filed in: Hardware
PhotoBlog: I hate shooting tethered
12/08/08 22:59 Filed in: Photography
MacBlog: Backup software I find useful
12/08/08 22:58 Filed in: Software
BitDepth 640 posted
12/08/08 21:08 Filed in: Website
Updates
Transcript of TATT response to BitDepth 638
04/08/08 23:38 Filed in: Reader
Response
TATT has chosen not to make any changes to the copy, which I reproduce with only a few additional page breaks for web readability. Read More...
Notes on TATT's response
04/08/08 23:35 Filed in: Musing
BitDepth 639 posted
04/08/08 23:32 Filed in: Website
Updates
Beat Big Up for La Fleur Morte
28/07/08 22:09 Filed in: Photography
The story by journalist James Fuller offers some kind words about my work and manages to date me quite nicely.
I'm not so ancient, however, that I'm likely to be doddering about humming Neil Diamond songs for inspiration, so please note that James misheard me and the quote that he cites is by Neil Gaiman, not the composer of the film Jonathan Livingston Seagull that some folks consider to be quite inspirational.
You can view the story online here...
You can also access many stories from the current issue of Caribbean Beat as well as archives of the magazine by signing up for a free subscription here...
There's a blog posting on my website and links to other material about the project here...
Interview with Magella Moreau and Dennis McComie of Gayelle TV's Cock a Doodle Doo.
Slideshow movie that I prepared for that appearance.
Download the interview here and the slideshow here.
BitDepth 638 posted
28/07/08 22:07 Filed in: Website
Updates
Remembering 1990
28/07/08 20:47 Filed in: Photography
1990, enriching the narrative
28/07/08 20:40 Filed in: Editorials
Happening for the birds
22/07/08 09:23 Filed in: Movies
BitDepth 637 posted
22/07/08 09:17 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth #637, a look at a new report
from the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago is
posted here...
Mac Blog Posting: Software updates
15/07/08 16:08 Filed in: Website
Updates
RBTT becomes RBC
15/07/08 11:23 Filed in: Musing
BitDepth 636 posted
15/07/08 11:20 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 635 posted
08/07/08 13:37 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 634 posted
30/06/08 21:17 Filed in: Website
Updates
Mac Blog Posting: FTP on the Mac
24/06/08 12:18 Filed in: Website
Updates
Photo Blog Posting: Pixels are Not free
24/06/08 12:15 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 633 posted
23/06/08 22:46 Filed in: Website
Updates
Stock photography section
16/06/08 23:11 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 632 posted
16/06/08 23:11 Filed in: Website
Updates
New photography blog added
16/06/08 23:08 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 631 posted
14/06/08 14:01 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 630 posted
02/06/08 18:38 Filed in: Website
Updates
More on Vista adoption...
26/05/08 21:06 Filed in: BitDepth+
BitDepth 629 posted
26/05/08 21:06 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 629, a look at Vista's adoption is posted A slyph of a star
26/05/08 20:42 Filed in: Cable Guys
Cold Comfort
19/05/08 20:53 Filed in: Cable Guys
BitDepth 628 posted
19/05/08 19:43 Filed in: Website
Updates
Mac word processing tools
14/05/08 22:25 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 627 posted
12/05/08 23:46 Filed in: Website
Updates
BitDepth 626 posted
05/05/08 20:22 Filed in: Website
Updates
