So I know I’m late to the game, but I have finally signed up for a twitter account. You can follow me at twitter.com/kristenrudd.
Also, thank you for all your comments, e-mails and phone calls. I feel very loved, and determined to get to the bottom of all this.
I’m blogging from the Bay Bridge. At 60 mph. Behind a wifi-enabled bus.
God, I love this town.
Okay, so if you know me, you know I’m technology-averse. Okay, so that’s not so much true as technology is averse to me. I live by the three-foot rule: so long as Joshua is within three feet of my computer, it works (I think it just likes boys, I’m just sayin’).
I could not care less about the latest you-know-what. When the Kim family got lost last year, I was amazed that James made a living reviewing gadgets and talking about them. I would rather be a customer service rep for an insurance agency (that probably won’t translate: CSR for big insurance = BAD) or be terminally pregnant or … something. If I had my husband’s job, I would kill myself. I HATE technology. Hate it. The only reason I have a blog is because Joshua set it up. Wi-fi? Joshua. Biz site? Joshua. Personalized ringtone? Joshua. God forbid he should ever die. I’d be screwed (please pause while I cross myself).
But this, THIS, I got hot about. I mean, this is right up there with learning to play Pole Position, with getting my first SLR, with, you know, itself.
Joshua gets downright giddy when he talks about it. We watched the video back when Steve Jobs introduced it and showed how to use it. Joshua turned to me, surely expecting me to be passed out on the couch and drooling from sheer boredom, and i was sitting completely erect, wide-eyed, staring at the computer screen and murmuring, “I want one…”
It comes out Friday. I’m not gonna stand in line or anything, and we’re not buying them right away - after all, we have perfectly good phones and computers (shift keys aside), but it will be likely our next tech purchase. And I CANNOT WAIT.
I’m FINALLY getting to my trip photos. I’ll probably post them to flickr once I get them all on here and edited. Joshua got a new MacBook Pro (wipe that drool off your mouth) so I got his “old” Powerbook G4, which has significantly more space than my iBook (which I am now in the market to sell.. hint, hint). As in, enough space to put Photoshop on it.
I, of course, am slow to adapt. I’ll let you know how it goes.
A good friend of mine learned something about the vulnerability of technology this week when her cell phone died after she cried into it.
“You’re kidding?!” I said incredulously as my friend Amy told me the reason I couldn’t reach her on the phone most of the week. Unlike some of her more effusive phone conversations, the call in question had lasted only around 10 minutes, with maybe five minutes of actual water flow, she said.
Amy knew something was wrong almost immediately–and this time it wasn’t her relationship.
“The keypad started to malfunction. I couldn’t hit the ’send’ button, and that was very sad,” she said. The next day the Sprint customer support people told her the phone had water corrosion.
“I was told I had one to two days to get my phone numbers off the (old) phone,” said Amy, who hurriedly transferred the data before it was lost. But she wasn’t able to save the 150-plus “supersweet” text messages from her boyfriend. That was “truly the worst thing” about the whole ordeal, Amy said.
The phone meltdown “was a big deal,” she said, with no small amount of anguish. “It affected several of my jobs and affected my relationship.”
But later her boyfriend laughed it off, even joking that he should get her a waterproof cover for her new cell phone.
via CNET.
Our friends Ryan and Holly had a cookout at their new place in San Francisco on Sunday and we took the munchkins. Judah is showing some classic signs of being a rock star - eating the microphone, and wearing a scarf around indoors. Now she just needs spikier hair and some black eyeliner and she’s good to go.
In other news, I tried to change my template to something different — the photo at the top of my blog isn’t mine, it came with the template I’m using. I liked it when I chose it, but now I’m kind of sick of having someone else’s photo on my blog when I could very well be using one of my own. The problem is that I don’t have a clue how to build a web page, so I tried to switch to another template. Well that left all my photos looking squished because the template’s columns were too narrow, so I switched back after a day. You may have noticed. Unfortunately, all the template options SUCK. and most are not wide enough. Anyone want to design me a blog for free? *cough cough* Michelle *cough cough* I’ll trade you some photo sessions…
I usually size my images to 500 pixels wide. I’m attempting to size my verticals to 500 pixels tall, so they are the same dimension as my horizontals. Mostly, because I can’t see the entire photo in my web browser when the verticals are sized 500 wide. Anyone else having this problem with my photos on my blog? It kind of defeats the purpose if you have to scroll to see the whole picture. So this is my first attempt at a smaller photo. Please let me know if it fits better on your screen than previous verticals. Thanks.
I came across two references to ethics and manipulation in photography this morning. I suppose that means I’m supposed to post about them. There’s a huge difference between journalistic photography and editorial photography and art photography. I’m not going to go into all the differences, but I will say I am glad to hear about the photogs who got fired for manipulating their images. They should have been.
It’s one thing to correct a journalistic image for exposure, etc. and quite another to add or take away elements from the image (don’t like the light pole in your photo? Just photoshop it away!), or correct too far - remember the OJ Simpson photos that ran on magazine covers several years ago? One was darkened so much to make him appear more ominous. Ethics in layout also should be mentioned as well - manipulation of an image, such as reversing it, to give an impression you want your reader/viewer to take away from the material. The question remains, how far is too far?
The tech to do this has gotten so good, it can be hard to tell when an image has been manipulated. Editorial, portraiture, personal, and art photography have a lot more leeway, but there are still limits. There’s a new program out that will remove unwanted items from your vacation photos, such as those pesky background tourists. This still rubs me the wrong way a little bit, due to the potential for abuse.
It’s harder and harder to trust the integrity of real news media when we can’t trust the image we are being shown is real. Not to mention the potential for slander and defamation that can result; or on the flip side, using manipulation of images to cause people to feel better or worse (to manipulate them) about someone or something when it’s not reality, as in political campaigns and the “war on terror,” where this stuff runs rampant.
From the New York Times, “Ease of Alteration Creates Woes for Picture Editors”, and from News.com, “Pictures that Lie.”
people linking here have been searching for:
38 weeks pregnant — this usually goes to the Bus Lady post - may you have better prenatal experiences than I, and a beautiful birth.
Is it a girl or boy by my belly — since I blogged about people always telling me I have a boy, I have only had ONE person tell me it’s a girl. Everyone else still tells me it’s a boy.
Drew Rice biker minister — I love Drew Rice! He IS in fact a biker minister in Austin. I got to attend his ordination and even took some pictures.
Left-handed men make more money — I heard that somewhere recently.
“kristen needs” — …to have this baby
blog awesomenet — my grandmother got an e-mail address at awesomenet.
moral values on television — i think the quote was “if people were interested in seeing moral values on television, then Joan of Arcadia would have way better ratings than CSI.” Speaking of TV moral values, isn’t ABC family supposed to be one of those “wholesome” channels? We’ve downloaded a couple of free shows from itunes off this channel, and I can’t even watch them, because the family dynamics are so screwed up. The parents are all self-absorbed and clueless, and the teenagers treat their parents like crap and are total brats and get away with total murder. If I had behaved the way these kids do, I would have never seen the light of day, other that through my bedroom window, I would have been SO GROUNDED. Of course, if my parents had been that ditzy, it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Trini people having sex — I’m a little creeped out by this one.
Lacey Treadwell — my sister-in-law, wife to Kyle, mother to Jacob, new teacher in Rockwall ISD. That’s all google will tell you, anyway.
where JFK was killed — psst. It was in Dallas.
A girl takes a picture of herself every day for three years and makes it into a video. Imagine what that would look like of your kids as they grow. Hmmm…
We put a new stats counter in place here at kristenrudd, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. It’s WAY easier to read than the last one, which focused on lots of geeky stuff for not-normal people.
The most popular searches directing people here are “Kristen Rudd,” (hi, you’ve found me!) “gardasil,” “pregnant,” and “it’s so hot,” which makes me want to go “how hot is it?” i think the answer, from this blog, is “hot enough to melt butter in my apartment.”
A few of the interesting ones are: “gogurt food activist,” “highland parkies,” “diapers under skirts,” (slightly creepy) and “explain a hairline fracture.” I also come out pretty high for other people I know, including my husband, local friends and certain youth pastor from Flower Mound.
Happy searching, internet. May you find what you’re looking for with your privacy intact. So long as you’re not doing anything illegal, mind you.