Monday, December 30, 2002

Funeral for punk hero Strummer. A private funeral for Clash star Joe Strummer, who died earlier this month aged 50, takes place in west London. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]. Its been a week now since Joe Strummer died. I've been looking for some time to get out my Clash records and listen through them, and also for some time to put away my Clash records and think about the man, the rude boy, rock star, balladeer of 70's anglia, mesqualito, everything he was. Fame means you get to mean something to many many people. Of course you will mean something somewhat different to each one of them, rarely more than a thin slice of yourself. The depth of your art - your talent will affect how much you mean and how much of your being is in it. The Clash, Joe Strummer in particular, meant a great deal to me. It could be, probably is, a case of a closely tuned string vibrating to a overarching harmonic. But it was in Joe's garage and on Joe's guitar that that string was plucked picking out guitars in many hands across England, the US, and elsewhere and turning them into bullshit detectors. A writers or singers words will echo back to them. Some will consider the line from Bankrobbers: someday you'll meet your rocking chair because that is where we're headed, what's the use to comb your hair when its grey and thinning as a sign that Joe Strummer subscribed to the live fast die young school of thought. The message was to live fully. To get into the moment with your feet on the ground and all the strength of your mind, your fingers, and your back while you can and to never let someone convince you to do otherwise, or trade lies for truth. His writing always showed his awareness of a larger world and a larger awareness of that world, which struck against the Orwellian citizenship favored by the modern corporate state. With songs like straight to hell, he showed that a true worldview was not the same thing a globalism. When my friend Robert lent me the Mesqualitos album last year I knew as I listened that he hadn't forgotten or forgotten how to tell it since the days of the Clash. To die at 50 is too young, at least for me he will be missed. Does the eagle know what is in the pit or wilt thou go ask the mole? Can wisdom be put in a silver rod or love in a golden bowl? -- William Blake Book of Thel I don't want to know what the rich are doing. I don't want to go to where the rich are going - they think they're so clever - they think they're so right, but the truth is only known by guttersnipes -- Joe Strummer Garageland -- the Clash 1977 4:12:45 PM    comment [];trackback []; An article in the New York Times on 3D photography caught my eye the other day. I've always liked 3D photography, would always stop and attempt to view any 3D photographs I came across. In the Navy I was an aerial photo interpreter and got to work with stereo images. I came to understand the power of the 3D image working that job. A flat photo will catch a great many details which your eye will process quickly to present your brain with a unified image of the scene - the big picture. A stereo picture puts you in the presence of all those details to consider their size shapes and textures separately. The Navy stuff involved an RA5c Vigilante and good behavior from the 18" pan camera to work right. A pricey approach, but before eBay that market aggregator of junk to junk-buyers it was hard to find equipment from previous eras of 3D enthusiasm. A year later my friend, George Springston, sent me a pack of photos (buildings and parking lots around the Clemson campus - I still have them) taken using a procedure he learned in a geography class. Using two short lengths of 2x4 and1x4 mounted at a right angle and given a threaded collar so it could be mounted to an ordinary tripod. He had a rig that would take passable stereo images with a single 35mm. He used a shutter trip and would take an exposure then slide the camera down the board to an indices 2.5 inches away and take another. Not great for sporting events or children but fine for landscapes. I took a number of pictures using that method myself throwing in the added measure of increased separation. The parallax that produces the stereo effect is minimal after about 100 ft, so to get strong stereo imagery in landscapes it's often advisable to increase the stereo separation. I found a simple formula in one of my Navy manuals for this. The general idea is 2.5" (normal separation) is to your desired apparent subject distance as the needed base separation is to the real subject distance. The only trick is to keep the axis of the camera parallel between shots. A stereo camera would make things a lot easier, and if rain drops were gumdrops there would be a range of them on the market. At least this way - the poor mans stereo-cam - a 3D pict is never out of your reach given a little forethought and finesse. 2:48:50 PM    comment [];trackback []; Who Owns the Internet? You and i Do. Joseph Turow has begun a crusade to de-capitalize the word Internet and, by extension, to acknowledge a deep shift in the way that we think about the online world. By John Schwartz. [New York Times: Technology] Good to see that somebody still thinks along these lines. 10:51:33 AM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2006 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 10/22/06; 11:50:44 PM.