image done purely on a PC w/ XP. using port of panotools - i think - "hugin" and gimp an open source image editor.

why?

there's a reason, but it's unknown. in fact it is not capable of being known.

like an unknown lot of other things.

this one kept me going for awhile. done completely on pc using hugin and gimp. new territory. beats watching tv.

shot on tuesday's trip.

a favor: click to the right on modernpeasant gallery pic. once there click on image archive. this flasj based page takes about 6-7 seconds to load on my imac. using firefox and forever under opera. let me know loading time, i think i may have to redo to speed it up.

which of course will delay my long anticipated vacation from all things digital so i can get back to practicality, namely intrnse practice to become yoyo acrobat.

check it out.

Gigagalaxy Zoom

from yesterday, no the day before. craggy gardens, up from the picnic area. this area is called a "heath bald", reminds somehow of the "parks" out west where the mountain men would meet once a year to sell beaver and buy salt, nails. and ammo.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

a little something to amuse not amaze.

almost have everything fixed that broke during recent past when saturn retrograde squared with venus rising. or maybe it was those danged sunspots.

biggest success: lap guitar which required soldering microscopic wires. don't know how long it will last but it sounds pretty sweet.

a video i find inspiring.

my relationship with "tv" (as we used to call it) is pretty lackluster. i dumped cable well over 10 years ago, maybe 15. for the last decade i've had worn out rabbit ears that on a good day picked up 3 channels, 2 on a bad day. i went for the converter box and could watch the same channels as before. about 3 weeks ago the screen would go white once in awhile. then one day during the same week that almost all of the house thingys broke it exploded in slow motion, like a long drawn out fizz. must be where the word "fizzle" comes from.

the one thing that i have felt since it sailed out the door is more energy in the evening. my day lasts longer.

if this picture looks familiar it's because it is. still pushing pano and HDR, makng some progress: mainly gave up on g4 iMac, and deleted all the software. the same App, hugin, works under windows xp but there is a lot to figure out. one thing that has dawned on me is that in some ways the software emulates large format box camera, which, if you've ever used one, you know can do all sorts of perspective twists.

neither of my computers is working well, lots of trouble shooting ahead.

so i did the above and then brought it into the Gimp, an open source image editing app that runs on windows and has a pretty steep learning curve. meanwhile i'm using mac and dreamweaver and jalbum to tune up gallery pages. whenever i get these done i'm taking a 4 week break from computers, spend some time in the woods.

but big project lately has been dissassembling lap guiter and soldering the tiniest wires in the smallest space. it's back together no but i haven't tried it out tomorrow i'm going to practice relaxing, i'm afraid i've forgotten how.

pleasant holiday. never got in truck, never talked to anyone. worked. no, i mean puttered. (see above).

BuzzFlash.org | Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash:
"Okay, we've heard enough.

Just yesterday, the White House reluctantly released a partial log of who has visited with Obama's staff on so-called 'healthcare reform' and it reads like a who's who of Big Pharma and health insurance lobbyists.

Let's stop the pretense of Obama making some bold move here."

took this 4 or 5 hours ago. still fooling w/ hdr and panoramics open source software and don't know what's up - yet.

taken at small hike near montreat, good workout for me.

tomorrow: fix lap guitar by disassembly and fill out a medifkare form that will take some time. relax. walk around the block.

or not.

the above: still fooling w/ HDR and panorama. the tools are a whole new world.

addition to yesterday's post: the metamorphosis of the democratic party from "change it" to "change it back to where it was before the wreck so the same guys who wrecked it can do it again" should not have been a surprise (but it was of course). think of the bush years and how it seemed like the dems were being blackmailed, bought, or otherwise turned into deer staring at the money. both parties can now be called "corporation run". they represent money. big money. huge unprecedented concentrations of wealth and power.

blueberries. last sunday had an epic walk up to the pinnacle of craggy gardens (which was closed due to bear traffic) looking for blueberries.

in the meantime i have been groping for words to describe the freefall the culture is in and i haven't found them yet. not just the pathology of the USA, but the whole world. mercenary stumblebums, murder, torture, failed states, kidnappings, big money sloshing through and wrecking political discourse, pirates, bandits, a zillion lobbyists - or Congress members, they are the same - the propaganda for profit the news is, the dispossessed. you get the picture i hope not because i say so but because you are living it either consciously or not.

part of this picture is the dysfunction of institutions which no longer work. except maybe libraries.

the pervasive animus towards the institution of "government" is hard to avoid. i am especially troubled by the 2 part system in place right now in the USA. i worked hard for the democrats last election and did so because of promised change. but now i feel it was a classic case of bait and switch. after the debacle of the bush years, when the wreckage began to become visible to all, the mantra has devolved into "change it back to what it was", same people, same looting, same dismissal of we the people.

what to do? i don't know, but throwing out your tv would be a good idea right now.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3f8_1251526869

Bill Moyers With Bill Maher Aug 28, 2009
go ahead, click it and watch a discussion about healthcare reform. they actually talk without the spectical of talking points so it might shock the totally conditioned.

did this in a fit of i don't know what this morning. a beautiful morning. fall is in the air. thank You.

yesterday was a wierd one. lap guitar no longer works. saturday played a little crazy music with alex and he somehow pulled the input. he didn't do it intentionally, but that boy plays his instrument hard. then late in the day i managed finally to spill coffee on laptop so it is out of comission. did all the right things, disconnecting peripherals remove battery, and it is now resting 24 hours upside down. this evening i'll find out what shape it is in. it was not much of a spill so hopefully the motherboard and HD survived. maybe a few sticky keys is what i'm hoping for.

i can't believe that i spent all day doing the above. i shot it yesterday, doing the panorama thing. today i wondered into all kind of byways processing it, eg the gimp on intel PC, things i still don't know much about. course i was on the phone talking to a lot of my extended family, dumping trash and other assorted tasks at the same time.

Future wireless electricity
"Imagine a future where you don’t have to plug anything in. It all just works."
MIT demo.
took a walk yesterday w/ al who was looking to get fotos of blueberrys. they are located at the pennical of craggy gardens which is closed on account of bears who apparently like blueberrys and floridians.

for me it was a long hard slog, probably the 5th time this summer i have had that much excercise.

from thom hartman newsletter -

"Chris Broughton, who brought an assault rifle and a handgun to the Obama event in Phoenix last week, attended an anti-Obama sermon just a day before showing up. In the sermon Pastor Steven Anderson said he would "pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell", Anderson confirmed this to TPMmuckraker yesterday. The sermon was called "Why I Hate Barack Obama" and had hate-filled anti-gay themes. This is much like the atmosphere the seized America in the late 50s and early 60s as Brown vs Board of Education was being implemented by forced integration by bussing African American school children into white neighborhoods and visa versa. The consequence was a serious of bombings, lynching, murders and assassinations that ripped the at the heart and soul of this nation. If the Republican crazies like Sarah Palin and Glen Beck don't stop this hate speech - they will have blood on their hands."

while we wait for the other shoes to drop. going to a 10 AM rally for health which rumer has it is sponsered somehow by a stealth medical-indusrtrial group.

i am going to pull the plug on the blog and concentrate on multi media. so labor day or is it momorial day seems like a nice date to shut it down. before then i may attempt to describe in words why i am so out of words concerning the cultural anti cocoon slithering towards some black hole.

a redo of the first and only panorama i've taken. learning curve not real steep, but don't expect to get it right away. addendum: the print is CMYK 300DPI 19.11 wide and 4.5 inches tall. what this means is that i could print say a 3 foot long version and lose no resolution, could even change a lot of things.

but i'm going to take a nap.