my first car

1959 Edsel Ranger, two-door hardtop. This is the only surviving picture, as far as I know.

That car was a blast. It was big. Roomy inside. Swimming pool blue, with a brown/white/beige interior. It had a V8 (262 cid, maybe?) and a two-speed automatic transmission. I still have the owners manual. It shows all of the available options, and this car had five of them - side view mirror (driver's side), chrome wheel covers, sun visors, AM radio (tube style)... I forget the other one. I don't remember if it had seat belts. The windshield wipers were run by vacuum, so the faster the car went, the slower the wipers went.

It was in horrible shape. The entire bottom half of the body was Bondo. The frame was rusted out. The transmission leaked fluid. The engine wasn't quite right either.

I still have the grille.

( Here's a pic of someone else's. )

to webmasters

If your website tells somebody that their password is incorrect, provide the link to reset it right there. Don't make them search for it. If you display a message that they're locked out of their account, and they need to call tech support, please provide the phone number. Don't make them search for it. And most important, if you tell them they need to call tech support to reactivate their account, tell tech support not to tell them to go to the part of the website that told them to call tech support.

Shitheads.

photography crititque

There are some popular photography editing techniques that I don't care for.

Like that thing where they desaturate a picture, and then have one thing in color, like the flower or the eyes.

And when they whiten up the whites of the eyes. Brightening the eyes (and teeth) a little is fine, but I often see it overdone, where the whites are really white.

And some HDR. I've seen some really great shots where it was used to blend different areas of lighting at night, and also some where it was used for pure artistic effect. But when it's just used to tweak brightness and contrast, it bugs me a little - if I can tell. I use curves. And I imagine some people look at my shots and can tell what I did and don't like it. So I'm not going to hold it against you - I'm just saying what I like and don't like. Either way, it's better than burning and dodging.

For me, it's all about keeping the techniques invisible. And when I can see that something was done, but I'm not sure what it was, that's usually cool. So as I become better versed with imaging techniques, I'm going to be harder to impress. But that's the case with everyone, I think.

Now if I can just figure out how to get richer color.

Oh, and vignetting. I don't like vignetting. So you can keep your Holgas.

still sick

I went to the doctor yesterday, just in case. I hate being that guy who goes to the doc when there's no reason to. I did rule out an ear infection, so that was good, but I hate paying that kind of money just for that. And I hate answering "no" to all of the doc's questions, and being told it's just a virus, so drink lots of fluids and get some rest.

Insomnia's interfering with the rest, though.

And I actually felt worse today than I did yesterday. I figured I had plateaued.