Screaming Monkey Research Laboratories

Seen on Fanball.com …

THE NEWS
In a move that seems to be only cash related, the Minnesota Timberwolves drafted Washington guard Brandon Roy with the sixth pick and then traded him to the Trailblazers for Villanova guard Randy Foye who had been selected seventh.

Our View
It seems somewhat confusing that the Wolves would essentially move down a spot for only a finacial consideration. However, after watching GM Kevin McHale’s body of work, nothing would surprise us at this point. Both players are offensive minded guards, but most experts agree that Brandon Roy is more polished than Randy Foye at this point.

I’m happier with this pick (actually either Roy or Foye) than I expected to be. I’m hoping they can get Dee Brown or Lowry in the second.

Woo! I like the reaction to the Knicks’ pick. Man Isiah can still show McHale a thing or two about being a bad GM.

I’m going with Rick Majerus’ pick Kyle Lowry. They could use a real point.

It just had too much software that I had to check for updates and whatnot.  So I pulled it down.  The gallery is still there (under the Old Site link on the left) for now but I’ll probably be moving that at some point in the future.

Whitewater State Park in the rain.

BTW this looks much better at a bigger size.  Click the image to see the 1024 wide version.

I saw an interesting post on internet photo critiques over at The Online Photographer. Max (the gentleman quoted by Mike Johnston below) pretty much sums up why I don’t like submitting photos to the local photography club.

Here is an overly large cut of that post…

Constructively, now: my fear is that what these sites are encouraging is not open dialogue, but rather a consensus protocol for acceptable and unacceptable ways of talking about pictures—mostly defining, by omission, what can’t be said. Consider this comment, from a reader named Max:

“One thing I believe makes a world of difference. If I knew I was looking at a master’s work, I would have no doubt that that cropping that annoys me is exactly what the author intended, and that annoyment (though ‘tension’ would probably be what the author was thinking of) is the desired result. But combine all our educated prejudices and a lot of amateur artwork being displayed for criticism these days, we get this, the eager need to make ‘corrections.’ I’m just an amateur photographer, but I noticed that when I asked for critics [critiques?] online for pictures I liked a lot, when I got them I found the whole thing pointless, because I had already thought about all that was being said and I still intended the photo to look exactly as it did. May be it sounds awfully arrogant, but if you love your art as it is, don’t go asking for critics [critiques] unless you have a carbon copy of yourself to do it.”

Max is on to something here. The internet is in danger of becoming one great big photography club—which often act as arbiters of oppressive group standards, almost always superficial ones. We need to take artists at their word. You can certainly decide for yourself whether you are, or are not, convinced, but suggesting different equipment isn’t criticism; neither is suggestions for cropping or the notion that the photographer should have moved and changed his or her standpoint a bit. It is certainly not the enforcement of lowbrow ideas of perfectionism, like touching out a wayward branch or hair or getting rid of a fold in a backdrop or a crease in a dress. Where all that leads is to pictures that are purely and perfectly dull, is all.

Read the full post here.

Seen at cnnsi.com …

Hubie Brown wants to return as ABC’s lead NBA analyst. But will he be invited back? The informative Brown’s contract ended after the just-concluded Finals. While he looks at himself as a “teacher,” people close to the NBA think the league may want more of an entertainer to appeal to the casual fan.
— New York Post

I went on a minor art buying binge the other day. I have three pictures I’d like framed. I’d also like to frame some of my own images.

The net of this is that I’m looking for a reasonably priced source of frames and mats. (Preferably custom sized.)

From what I can tell American Frame is the way to go. At least price wise. The fact that they include a custom mat with each frame makes them worth trying.

The other interesting thing is that they have an art shop. You can load up images and direct people there to buy. They handle the printing, matting, framing, billing and shipping. “Giclee” prints and all that. (Yeah, that’s bullshit but people actually look for the word “Giclee” so there you go.) You can specify the mat and frame or let the buyer have at it.
If the frames and mats look good I may put a page up in their Art Gallery. Once someone lets me know that they actually pay the artists.

The backup plan is Light Impressions. (For mats and frames.) Excellent products but more expensive than American Frame. Clearly I’m trying to be cheap.

I want to take down my old site. So I’m running a web page grabber (WinHTTrack) to pull all my old content down. This is a program that runs through all the links and creates a local copy of each page.

I think it would have gone better if I had turned off unregistered pages, email and print links. But it isn’t bad. It has been running forever, tho. If dreamhost doesn’t cut me off for abuse I should have the whole site.

Anywho. This is kinda cool since I really would like to keep all that stuff. (Not exactly a great journal but it is the closest thing I have to one.) Even so there really is very little content. Of course the relative lack of actual content is why I decided that a CMS (Content Management System) wasn’t particularly appropriate. You kind of need content. It is the “C” in CMS.  With a blog you can write “I like ice cream.” And if it gets lost sometime that is fine. It isn’t like losing Da Vinci’s notebooks.

Thus the blog.  (The actual useful content will be added to the current blog.  I think there was one entry about Wasia that people seemed to like.)

But man is this taking a long time.

I might load up all this on my linux box in my basement. Get Joomla running. Copy the SQL database. Load Gallery. Then run WinHTTrack. Should be worlds faster.

So, how many total pages do you think it will download?

Clearly Dwayne Wade is the second coming of Jordan. Miami was absolutely dead right up until he took over the series.

Amazing.

Some NBA finals observations.

• I think the Don, I mean David Stern, decided that he didn’t want to hand that trophy over to Cuban. I mean if you drive a lot you get fouls. That’s a given. But that Phoenix Suns style off arm pushoff that Wade has perfected probably should be called once or twice a game.
• Did GP have anything left? Glad to see he finally got a title. But this should put to rest the notion that you need a title to be a hall of fame player. He played the same role Anthony Carter played on the Wolves. No one is mistaking Carter for a hall of famer.
• Does Shaq still play in the NBA?
• How come the Wolves can’t find players like Posey, Haslem or half of the Mavericks? They seem to be available.
• It really looked like Mourning wanted to barf with about 1 minute left in the game. I wonder if he’ll come back next year. He should probably give his kidneys a rest.
• I wonder what the Hedgehog, I mean Stan Van Gundy, thinks of this.
• Great great playoffs this year.