Yet another move.

So the site has moved yet again. New domain, new host, new features. So, if you find yourself here for some reason, the rambling continues at Think on the Clock.

Update

To anyone who may still read this space or check it on the regular, I've moved over to www.mattmacintyre.ca, and am currently designing and posting over there.

Cheers!

on inspiration (why staying up late and getting up early is still the best combination).

last night after work, some friends and i watched a few movies. aferward, i walked home, enjoying what was a pretty warm night for this time of year (read: 0 degrees, celsius). half an hour later - just before bed, home and warm in my room - i drew the blind and saw a blizzard, well underway.

now i've long been a fan of night photography for quite some time, long exposure particularly. i leaned back in my chair, looked to the camera, then out the window, then back to the camera.. you see the pattern developing here. to make a long story short, bed was far too appealing and my camera never moved from the desk. i woke up after a great sleep, somewhat regretful that i didn't take advantage of the opportunity of what could be (ha..?) the last storm of the season, let alone one at night.

thankfully, it snowed again tonight. i got some shots (here's hoping they turn out!) and am really excited to see the results. i picked up some ridiculously cheap film a few days ago and am anxious to see whether it's diamonds in the rough, or.. just rough.

i can't be alone in feeling like too many ideas have just slipped away due to circumstance.. time to make an effort to act upon inspiration.

was that me or did i get a bit cheesy there at the end?

here's something of whimsy to go with that, via the google lat long blog.

No Photo

now that the weekend is almost over, i find myself looking headlong into another wintry week here in nova scotia. the weather has gotten warmer by a small margin, and i've stuck to my resolution to take my camera everywhere. there's a roll in the camera that i plan to finish today and develop either tomorrow or tuesday -being my next day off- and pack up my canon for send-off at the same time.

the most fun part is the complete lack of an actual viewfinder on the camera. the detachable fisheye on top serves as an aid in estimation, but is by no means a true preview.

a topic that i've often discussed with people in person, but haven't talked about much on here is knowing your rights as a photographer. as a person that used to live in a city with a subway system and no shortage of police officers, i often questioned where i was and was not allowed to take photos. rumors flew about everything from people being arrested for taking photos in stations down to a simple request for the photographer to delete the items from said camera. on the contrary, i had also heard about people that stood up to this kind of bullying when taking photos in certain places was obviously a-ok.

here's a story about new york resident robert taylor's experience with the NYPD.
No Photo Ban in Subways, Yet an Arrest.
via [New York Times]

and for internet / obama geeks like myself, here's a bit of amusement.



via [BoingBoing]

let me hear your balalaikas ringing out...

while browsing through my last post, i noticed the fact that i wrote the word area way too many times.

in other news, i developed a fresh roll of film from the trusty fisheye this afternoon. initially i was kind of displeased because a number of the shots were too dark to be used at all, but then when i got them home i was a bit happier. if you ever get the chance to take some photos with a lomo camera of any kind, i highly recommend it. very fun.





so i believe, now that my digital is going to be fixed for free (thanks, Canon!), i'm going to start the infamous project 365. once the digi comes back, it's game on. i guess the goal is to ultimately implement the philosophy into your life in a broader sense - so hopefully all things bloom.

i've got 2 asides today. one is that i've been particularly enamored with back in the u.s.s.r. lately, and today when i opened youtube, i was presented with this little gem - from the movie heartbreakers - in my recommended section.

the second aside is to say that it's impossible to be creative without inspiration, and i'm going to start using this as a space to promote other creative people i know. recently i had a talk with my friend clayton about his new business card. he got a pretty cool one done, and in light of my most recent business trip to halifax, where we got to see the facilities of bounty print, i've been inspired to design my own and get a bunch printed.

while browsing through the flickr blog this afternoon, i came across a post about a fire that ripped through one of my favorite areas of toronto.

having lived in the city from the summer of 2006 until the fall of 2007, i was continually reading about the battle between citizens of the area and various city-side housing commissions over this beloved area (read: exploitable area for the city) on queen street. it was, and is (for who knows how long), known for its independent shops, high artist population, quirky nightlife and overall thriving culture.

as a conspiracy theorist (read: someone who's always trying to figure out what the government is up to, since they usually don't have our best interests in mind), i immediately thought back to this ongoing trouble between the people and the politicos upon reading of the fire and the inability to discover its nature. is this a ploy by government to oust the artist population and make way for the big box stores and condos that they'd like to see lining the streets? this article supports the theory, but i don't want to put much stock in anything yet.

as an artist (ha), amateur historian, and man who simply enjoys culture, i mourn for the loss of some of the city's architecture and for the homes of the residents.

hack the planet.

i always enjoy the opportunity to catch up with my other tech savvy friends and see what they're up to, what portables they're sporting, and what approaches they're taking to hacking their lives. last night, i got to do some long overdue catching up with my friend t, who just happens to be one of the savviest of the bunch.

for all those of you who don't speak geek, here we go. portables could be a myriad of things. in my case, my portables are my mp3 player, my cell phone (pictured above, it's a moto w385 if you're curious), and my digital camera. i also have another camera (this one doesn't come with as much, although it should).

as you may be able to tell by the ghosties chasing pac-man across my phone's lcd, i like to customize my gadgets. i carry these things pretty much everywhere, why not make them mine? this may not necessarily increase functionality of the phone, but the fact that i can now store data on the phone certainly does. i guess i should also take steps to point out that these were most certainly not out of the box features. the lcd originally read out the name of my cellular carrier, and the thing didn't even come with a usb cable. i also crammed a gps program on there as well as a few other little goodies.

here comes the really impressive part. one of my friend t's main portables is a nintendo DS, among a few others. he also recently got a nice new digicam, but we'll save that for another day. like me, t likes to customize said portables, and has done so with his DS. after installing a shell on it, he loaded a VoIP client and was well on his way to free long distance phone calls.

had you asked me 10 (or so, i lost count) years ago, upon my first viewing of one of my favorite movies if i thought i'd be taking part in digital phreaking and hacking of my own, i'd have called you crazy, then asked you to pass the popcorn.