A long while back I was having a discussion with a fellow photographer about these annoying things called cameras that got in the way of our picture taking. The statement sounds absurd, but bare with me a minute. My friend and I had put in enough time shooting that we had crossed the creative bridge to find ourselves much more concerned with the concept and story of image than the way the image was captured.

I’m waiting for the onslaught from the tech heads who are going to argue that part of executing an image is in the tools a photographer uses, and yes there is some truth to that. But when a camera operates so flawlessly that it feels more like an appendage than a device, your work reflects the freedom you feel.

Similarly, after writing steadily for almost three years for fun and profit, I’ve had the same creative bridge crossing with a piece of software. It seems preposterous to speak about software in this way I know. But writing, like any creative pursuit in which there is an anticipating audience and a paycheck waiting, is a psychotic endeavor in which the process is much more enjoyable as a memory. When you cease to notice the tools, it’s a much nicer way to work.

Such is the case with Nisus Writer Pro. It took me a about an hour to learn and customize it to my liking. Since then I’ve totally forgotten that I put any effort into setting it up at all. It wasn’t until I wrote my fifteenth article with Nisus that I noticed that I never notice the software. It has never crashed, it’s features are easy to find and it saves files in the RTF format so I have yet to have a compatibility problem with any of my magazine editors.

Now before you go off half cocked that this is some sort of shill for Nisus Writer Pro, it is. I was so damned pleased with how good this word processor is, I was inspired to send them a thank you email. They were very kind, and responded by sending a gorgeous call girl and a kilo of cocaine to my office. Okay I’m kidding about the call girl.

I went through a phase of purchasing licenses for almost every writing software available. It is bizarre how much of a learning curve there is to the electronic equivalent of putting pen to paper. I just can’t imagine Hemingway dividing his writing surface into three panes. It would leave little room for his cocktail.

Nisus is as simple or powerful as you need it to be with a leaning curve that makes sharpening a pencil seem complicated. Not that I have a pencil sharpener or anything.

Apparently I’m in good company in my passion for Nisus’ word processor. I read somewhere that Michael Chabon gave Nisus a mention in the acknowledgments of his latest book. Since I’m not nearly as famous as that dude, I decided to write a little more than a mention. It’s a brilliant product, developed and maintained by good people who have been around with their company since the genesis of MACs.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to check out Newscorp’s (FOX) and NBC’s joint venture HULU, I recommend it. It is a wonderfully well thought out and elegant execution of what web TV should be.

I was hardly concerned that my current work deadline was going to keep me from the TV and my Olympics obsession. I was sure that NBC was going to make a killing in additional advertising revenue by utilizing HULU or NBCOlympics.com with Olympic broadcasts affording me access to Beijing from my office computer. Not so.

What NBC did do is offer DVDs of the Olympics that could be purchased online at the end of each event day. My guess is that they assumed that potential customers would lock themselves in some sort solitary confinement to avoid exposure to any news sources that inconveniently report Olympic highlights until the DVD arrived.

I’m not disappointed, I ‘m pissed. How could a network that gets online video so right, get the most prestigious event in their broadcast calendar, so wrong. It’s sort of like owning a Lear Jet and driving it on the freeway.

Apparently I’m not the only one who noticed. From a Wall Street Journal article today.

NBC’s decision to limit the amount of Olympics footage on its Web site has ticked off sports fans. But that decision could also dog the network in another way: NBCOlympics.com will generate just $5.75 million in video-ad revenue from the Games, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer Inc.

At a time when video ads are starting to catch on, analysts say NBC had an opportunity to make a lot more money had it offered more online content during the Games. CBS Sports, by contrast, streamed all of the NCAA’s March Madness basketball-tournament games live earlier this year and made $23 million in ad revenue, the CBS Corp. network says. (The basketball tournament lasted three weeks, while the Olympics runs over two weeks.)

I suppose it could be worse, I could be a NBC stock holder.

No, my absence from posting has not been a thinly veiled ploy to give myself lots of air time on my own blog. But just in case you missed the video of me scroll down. Enough about me. I want to talk to you about sheep.

The primary reason for my blog absence was a genuine fear to open my computer on my maiden voyage to the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. Black Hat is a computer hackers conference. And ding dong network security neophytes like myself are easy prey to being hacked. Which is kind of the idea. Learning from experiencing.

Along with nefarious hackers, the benevolent hackers that run Black Hat sniff the wi-fi and wired networks to search for anyone who has unwittingly compromised their own computer security by sending a login and password in the clear. This can happen when logging into an email, facebook or any other online account. The plain as day transmission is captured and placed on the wall of sheep. It is a way of publicly embarrassing you into smarter security practices. If your name ends up on the wall of sheep, there are a room full of seasoned hackers available to teach you how to secure your network practices and your computer.

The social scene at Black Hat is antithetical to what I’m used to in Hollywood. No-one talks about what they do. Conversely, as I found out, asking people what they do is a brilliant way to get a fish eye look and to lose 30 points from your credit rating.

Black Hat attracts hackers of all levels and genres. At any time you could be chatting with a notorious computer criminal or a patriotic counter terrorism expert. No one ever knows. And it is that adherence and respect for anonymity that makes Black Hat so amazing. Everyone there is talking and sharing information.

I lost count of the different languages I heard. And I’m still trying to absorb all the information I was exposed to. But thanks to many of the folks there who regard no question as stupid I learned and incredible amount that has already benefitted me and my company. I also made some brilliant new friends. Although I couldn’t tell you what any of them do.

You know those voice over announcers you hear the at tail end of pharmaceutical commercials telling you about all the dreadful things that the advertised drug can do to your body? I hit those verbal Autobahn speeds a couple times in this interview. Me nervous?

My most profound thanks to Nic Fillingham. Brilliant, engaging and one of the best interviewers I’ve encountered. The only thing I hold against him is my girlfriend thinks his accent is hot.

Also a very large style thank you to Rob Mackie, the man behind the camera. Amazing in his ability to run two cameras at the same time. I hung out and watched Mr. Mackie film a few other interviews for the sheer joy of watching a master at work.

This is a great post that supports much of what is written by Matt Mason in his fabulous book The Pirates Dilemma. I highly recommend reading both.

Thanks to Charlotte Barry for bringing the Reg Braithwaite post to my attention.

From the Polaroid site;

Due to marketplace conditions, Polaroid has discontinued almost all of its instant analog hardware products. Polaroid has also made the difficult decision to cease manufacturing of instant film products in 2008

Jason Santa Maria offers a brilliant perspective here.

This is so good it is useless to say anything except I implore you to take the time to watch.

Today I received an email from Brent Hatton;

Hi Lou, my names Brent, 20 years young from Perth, Australia. I work in a camera shop, and while sitting in the loo at work today I read an article about you in an old ProPhoto magazine. Flattered?

Hell yes I’m flattered. There something regal about being the subject of preferred reading in the throne room. A room where one can sit comfortably and have a cogitate in the miasma of yesterdays supper.

Lavatorial reading is a decidedly male pursuit. True there are a few female followers of the ritual, but they are a minority to their gender. Taking a few moments quiet time at home or at work should be taken seriously with the following comforts considered;

• Lighting: a well lit reading space is a happy reading space. Sadly most bathrooms have awful lighting. Consider the purchase of soft style light bulbs.
• Library: a healthy selection of reading material organized in a magazine rack can make your visit to the loo diverse and interesting by catering to your mood of the moment.
• Seating: although a seemingly innocuous activity, reading in the can is rough on the back and butt muscles. Assign the same considerations to choosing your toilet seat that you do when choosing a couch.
• Supplies: the calming effect of concluding a novel can be shattered by having to yell to someone outside your sanctuary to toss you a roll of toilette paper. Avoid this unfortunate circumstance by checking the roll before dropping your pants.

Finally, practice good hygiene by shutting the lid before flushing. Tests have shown that flushing without a lid sends up a cloud of spray, invisible to the naked eye, a considerable distance away from the toilet (easily filling the volume of an average bathroom). The spray has the potential to contain a variety of viruses and bacteria, which will happily eke out a wretched existence on anything it can in your bathroom.

Many thanks to Brent for inspiring this post by taking the time to write to me.

I learned two very valuable things at the Microsoft Pro Photography Summit.

1. Type written notes shrink to the point of being unreadable as soon as you walk on a stage.
2. I should drink a martini before speaking to a large group of people about a highly controversial subject.

The Microsoft Pro Photography Summit revealed some extraordinary technologies that are currently evolving for photographers. When I wasn’t on stage I sat next to uber shooter Brian Smith and we calmly and collectively wet our pants over some of the things we saw.

To give you and idea of the level of genius, there is software that uses GPS data to map the positions of buildings in cityscape so that it can remove the haze from a photograph shot on a less than ideal day. By knowing the position of the buildings the software can effectively discern noise particles from particles that lend themselves to the the image.

Another speaker who I found captivating was Miss Aniela. A girl from Brighton, England who started shooting self portraiture and placing the images on photo sharing site flickr. She has parlayed a hobby into a full blown career that has resulted in, so far, two international gallery openings. All the exposure came as a result of being involved in an online community.

The event was highly successful and interesting. I’ll post a summary of my presentation next week as soon as I can secure some video and we get the infrastructure in place to commence the grand experiment that I promised to the audience.

“They might as well raise the overall fare, so at least you know what you’re paying,” said Renata Wasserman, who was flying to Krakow, Poland. “Pretty soon they’ll be making us pay to go to the toilet on the plane.” (by)

My first year of college I used ride with friend who would frequently drive from Southern to Northern California. The gas was generously paid for by her father until he hit a financial rough patch and asked for his gas card back. She asked if I wouldn’t mind chipping in for the fuel. Why would I, she let me put my suitcase in her trunk for free.