In speech, to signify that a sentence is actually a question, we give the very last sound an upward vocal lift. Isn’t that right? But we don’t often think of commas or periods as having similar properties. The sonic difference between the “pre-comma” words in a spoken list is different if it’s “pre-period”. Listen to how the word apple sounds in the following sentence: “I went to the store to buy an apple, a peach, and a deep fried Twinkie.” Compare how the same word sounds in, “I went to the store to buy an apple.” The difference is hard to articulate. This might help: how would you vocalize the sentence, “I went to the store to buy an apple,”? Try it out loud. There’s hardly a discernable tonal shift. Now replace the comma with a period. Hear it? It sounds like the period is distinguished from the comma by actually falling in key at the last moment.

When language is looked at in this way, it brings us outside our habit of automatic association and into the raw meaning of sounds themselves. It allows us that interesting state of confusion that emerges when we repeat a word until it loses its meaning. We can then appreciate the sound in itself. (Any way to do it with vision?) But in reality, an encompassing awareness of the intrinsic meaning of sound can only be found by listening to foreign speech.

Cantonese is a language known for having “nine tongues.” That is, speakers are sensitized to distinguish nine separate meanings from the same basic sound depending on the envelope of rising and falling intonations or lack thereof. Likewise, Chinese and Japanese words change meaning depending on the key. A sound in B flat can mean something altogether different than the same in C. I’ve been kind of sad at the English language because it often sounds monotonous to me. In English, the way inflection changes meaning is emotional and helps to conveys mood. But most of the variation is so unconscious that most don’t realize how lively it is. I’ve heard that foreign speakers are attracted to English because it sounds like a joyful, musical language. They say it sounds like we are laughing. It’s a nice perspective.

If anyone is interested in learning more about the subleties of vocal inflections, I have a piece from NPR that I've saved for years. Streaming m3u here or mp3 heeyah.

Spring Break (I think it deserves capitals) has officially vanished, and hopefully the snow that's been deposited will as well. I'm sitting in class, being inattentive to the lecture. It's actually harder than I thought to juggle this. The tap of the keys is making me feel I'm going to get caught. I'll make this quick, pictures from fetish night at Area 51 are available below.

My "Sociology of Terrorism" professor is a 3rd grader when it comes to making an argument. I understand that you can't agree with everyone in the world, but when those people are in the position to make or break your grade, it's not exactly pleasant. I got a B on our midterm assignment because I disagreed with the book author, and used my own sources to my case. For example, the professor asked a question (worded in a way that you had to be a moron to miss his bias) which essentially sought to debunk the "terrorists hate us because we are mean to their countries" myth. His questions are set up in a way that all you have to do is nod your head, but that would make me feel incredibly bovine. My response, which showed how suicide terrorism incidents were correlated to the presence of foreign troops rather than the professor's assertion that they are "radicalized nihilists nutballs" was marked down, with the comment, "Hardly."

Here are pictures from a kegger last night work. Tadaa!

So, I am a complete and utter loser.

After 8 years of raving I still can't even find the afterparty. I went to a SLC rave this weekend to do a participant observation for my anthropology class, craftily merging leisure with my scholarly responsibilities. My main intention, however, was to find people new to the scene to get a few interviews out of. I've been interviewing people that have been going to parties for scores of years, and I think there's a limitation: they don't see raves as being unusual whatsoever. I've been trying to identify taboos in a scene that normally considers itself open to all ideologies, anything goes. I think that oldschool ravers forget how unusual the scene actually is.

I went to the party with two intents: to take photos and to make connections for afterparties (hard to conduct an interview above the usual rave roar). However, I wanted to go somewhere that I didn't know anyone so I could try to find some younger, newer kids. I got nine phone numbers of people that were recently introduced to the scene as well as interested in an afterparty.

After the show was over I went to my car and started dialing, notebook at hand. First was a girl who I'd had a conversation with that was so close that we were kissing more than talking. It seemed that her tactics had brought her plenty of attention. Every few sentences during our phone conversations was interrupted; she'd either say she had to call me back, that I should call her in five minutes, or the line would disconnect and she'd call back a few minutes later. There was definitely something crazy happening over in that universe. I gave up quick. Going down the list netted me the address of a hotel party, a party at an apartment, voice mails, and news that people were winding down with acetylcholine surges (the neurotransmitter that makes the body cozy and sleepy after eating). We (my friend Jennifer and myself) drove to the hotel to see about that. People were stuck in an elevator after ignoring the recommended maximum person limit of seven. When we got to the room the four people who actually had purchased the hotel were more interested in having sex with each other than partying, and so politely kicked everyone out.

I turned meagerly to my other option, but the apartment party was just a goose chase. Maybe I'm horrible at directions, but I don't think the place existed. So instead, we drove through a snowy blizzard southbound at 35 mph on the freeway, visited Betos, friends, and then bed at 7:30 AM. At least I got some pics:

I've bene doing research on how various cultures cultivate fear. I'm, of course, especially interested in my own. I ordered the books, Age of Anxiety and The Culture of Fear to try and get a handle on the phenomena. Talking about "fear" maturely is difficult to do because alarm, anxiety, and aprehension are the three A's of just about any argument. To simply write about the "culture of fear" is to argue that people should be frightened about it (or that there is nothing to be afraid of). All persuasive writing seeks to arouse at least a small degree of panic. It seems that the language of fear increases proportionally to the importance of persuasion.

Here's some images from last night, hanging out at the Grotto in downtown SLC.

I ranted a few weeks ago about a new health program at UVSC, and refined it into an opinion piece that ran in the school newspaper. Read it! Also, I'm doing an Anthropology project on SLC Rave Culture, and my friend Lauren came down to do an interview. It was a great perspective. The rave scene really is a fully developed social world with hierarchies, social status symbols, customs, etc. After the interview we decided to do some photos, and so here are our results.
Branding Ambiguity

Short concepts are easier to accept. Advertisers have known this, the military uses this knowledge in naming operations, books do it, film does it. An article in last week’s paper described a new Wellness Education program that helps you “Break Free” from smoking. This shows that health professionals, too, are in on the game. The branding of new programs isn’t a completely recent phenomenon, but the trend seems to be getting more pervasive as it seeks concision. The goal: two words packed with fire, to be never forgotten.

But the constant search of the succinct verse can have consequences. As words get shorter, they tend to be less articulate and have multiple meanings. Sometimes those alternate meanings speak a deeper truth. The military realized that naming military operations can be the first strike in winning public support, so they dubbed an operation the high-sounding “Just Cause.” But these two words can also indicate casual flippancy: “I did it just ‘cuz, ma.” The recent operation, “Enduring Freedom,” in Iraq makes some wonder if freedom is something that has to be endured, although it may be better than the coronation of a Desert Storm operation: “Desert Freedom.”

This brings me back to “Break Free.” Read another way, it could be a way to disengage a more honorable aspect of smokers: their vociferous defense of the ten-minute smoke break. While non-smokers are pressured to work eight-hour non-stop shifts, smokers never miss a break—if they don’t get their nicotine they’ll raise havoc. This gives legitimacy to others in demanding proper breaks. So who really drafted the slogan? Concerned health care workers, or was it our capitalistic overlords?

Labels: Modeling, Photos

I spent the week in salt lake trying to find interviews for an anthropology project, but ended up getting distracted by photography. My friend Cassie just got a camera job at a modeling agency, but she doesn't have as much experience with lighting as she probably should. We spent friday night and most of saturday talking about what the job would entail, finding outfits, creating backgrounds, setting up lighting, posing, and clicking shutters. You can click the image below to see results. I got to be in front of the lens instead of behind it! (Jk, I am FOREVER a camera whore.)

Photoshop's Web Photo Gallery is a powerful tool with endless possibilities--despite its benign appearance. On the most basic level, it allows a user to import selected images to be resized, thumbnailed, and embedded into a html gallery. Each image gets its very own html page, navigation, and more. Once this is created, a user can upload the entire directory to the web and they'll have a webpage. It is a suprisingly unused tool, and almost undocumented on the web. Only a hardful of sites talk about it, but nothing that I've seen really explores what you can do with the tool. I think the reason is that it seems, on the surface, to be almost uncustomizeable. The built in templates are interesting to look through, but no self-respecting web designer would be satisfied using someone else's design.

Where it gets interesting is when you explore how the templates are put together. It's actually just simple html! The information that photoshop uses are located in /[photoshop directory]/presets/web photo gallery/. Here you can see how the structure within the program mirrors your hard drive:


There's nothing tricky or hidden. It's all simply files and images that photoshop uses to generate full html pages out of. This means that if you have any understanding of html you have complete control. If you want to call your own custom images, simply put them in the /images/ directory. The .html pages are easily managed with any editor (including textpad if you've got the guts). Here's an example of how the file structure looks:



For integration with photoshop, Adobe has developed special codes that you can place in the html files that they call "tokens." These tokens allow for variables within the"Web Photo Gallery." For example, a token $BGCOLOR$ would allow you to set the background color within in the photoshop appletinstead of having to go through thecode and changing it, like this:



This means that once you have your templateset up, simple maintanence and color customization can all be done from photoshop without the hassle of html editing.

A useful photoshop token is called %NEXTIMAGE%, which generates a unique html address when it is called on within a subpage (the page you get to once you click on a specific thumbnail). So, for the html page looking at photo1.jpg, the %NEXTIMAGE% token would generate something like, "http://webaddress.edu/pages/photo2.html" after photoshop operated. Note that it generates a link to an html file, not an actual .jpg. Whiih brings me to:

Limitations - There is nothing built into the token code to generate a link to the image url in the next image. This proved to be quite a headache for me because I was interested in 'preloading.' Preloading images speeds up navigation for other people by calling up the file that you think a viewer will click to next. It loads in the background as your viewer is looking at what is already on screen. Hopefully, when they click to look at the next page the image will have already been loaded in the background, and then the browser covertly load the next file. But, without a way to call up the address to the next .jpg, navigation would be a bit groggy.

I tried to figure this out all last week. It may be that the solution is so simple that it's a given for most, but it was tough for me to figure out.

Since we have a code which will give us the address to the next html page, it is only a directory and an extention away from the address wanted. We want the address:

[rootdir]/pages/image_xx.html
to switch to
[rootdir]/images/image_xx.jpg

Here is where javascript can be a real help. Javascript allows you to set up variables, and then you can operate on those variables. We are going to make the html data be a variable, use the .indexOf operator to find where to cut, and then the .substring command to snip. As you can see, Photoshop's token %NEXTIMAGE_CIRCULAR%' is set up as the variable: "nxtimg." The variable "bad_ext" finds that offending .htm and stores the position as a number. This means that we can use the number of where the charater starts when we write the html, and snip appropriately.

This is where the document.write command comes in. It writes a simple <img src code, with the new /images/ directory, and then snips the filename from the zeroth position to the extention. Tadaa! If you add a css classification to make it hidden, you then have an image that loads, but is not seen.

<script type="text/javascript"> var nxtimg = '%NEXTIMAGE_CIRCULAR%'; var bad_ext = nxtimg.indexOf(".htm"); document.write ('<img src="../images/' + (nxtimg.substring(1,bad_ext)) + 'jpg" class="hiddenPic">' ); </script>

And there you have it. The solution that I wish had already existed last week. What's nice is that with this code you could expand it with an <a href=%NEXTIMAGE%... or <a href="PREVIMAGE%... tocreate the popular effect of having thumbnails of the 'next image' and the 'previous image' on each sub page. If you have any questions on specific implementations, don't hesitate to email.

Labels: Tutorials, Writing

I've been working all weekend (it's 4:33 in the morning right now) on an integrated image gallery system. I finally got it kind of done, even though I'm sure that in my dreams tonight I'll be pissed that I didn't do more. Here is a series of images from about a week ago, a going away party for my sister (and I think a birthday of someone I know not). Now that Rachel is in Mexico, the internet is the closest link.

Would you look at that hair!? Fire, passion, the color that women would, as I never believed as a child as I was taunted and teased for the color of mine, kill for. Alright, so I must confess that I am searching the internet for the name of the party that I am posting pictures for. What does THAT tell you about how things have changed? Oh well, no time for melodrama or nostalgia, who I was yesterday is dead today. Here's the pics of some event featuring SLC's brand new laser light endowed visual company, Exile Events. My love affair with laser light continues.

Ok, that's the end of that. I'm trying to do a new project based on one of my own curiosities. It seems that many people's faith that a god exists comes from a few personal experiences. I've heard many people say that they believe due to some type of witnessing of god, or a very intense spiritual experience. If anyone bases their faith on an experience like this, I would LOVE to interview you. I'm very curious about the whole thing. If you know of people, please let me know. I'll track 'em down somehow.

Labels: Clubs, Photos