The Jack Noodle Journal

Heeelooo there.

Yeah I guess it would be the doldrums. Maybe that’s it. It has been sunny a couple of times here this week and that’s good. It hasn’t seemed very cold yet this season either has it? Oh man, why did I just jinx it?

In an interesting juxtaposition yesterday (well, maybe for the nerd set), the Apple keynote was yesterday and so was Obama’s first State of the Union speech. The Twitter universe was a buzz.

I had to watch both the next day since I didn’t see either one on the day they happened.

I do try and catch Apple’s keynote most every year. Try to make an event of it. I’m not sure why. Remember 2007’s keynote and how excited I was. Introduction of the iPhone. I wonder if you can still watch that one. Yep. Now that was an entertaining keynote.

This year we have the introduction of the iPad. Yeah, I don’t know. Looks pretty cool. I won’t be running right out and buying one though. It took me a couple of years to get an iPod. I still don’t have an iPhone. I think I might have a touch of Apple cynicism. iCynic. I will be pretty excited to check it out at the Apple store.

After using my Droid so much for internet surfing and using my laptop less now, I can see that the iPad would be all one would need for computing at home really. That’s kind of weird. Keeping your monster powerful desktop at the office and keeping your dinky iPad for home computing. This guy I follow on Twitter pondered it well in this blog post I thought. Oh this one looks pretty good too.

I am a firm believer of not buying the first generation of anything. Wait, I did buy the first gen Droid though didn’t I. hmmm… Well I don’t buy the first generation of anything starting… now!

The State of the Union Address was fine. Overall it was pretty much a downer. I am still glad Obama is at the helm a year into it. Some people aren’t. I don’t know if he is going to be able to do anything he’s talking about, but I am more comfortable thinking of him in the White house than I was with W.

He said some good stuff. The parts at the end where he talked about people’s cynicism (hey iCynic again) and change was fairly encouraging.

I am sick to death of politics and politicians though, that’s for sure. Both sides of the aisle. I wish everybody would shut up. Bunch of smarmy assholes! If I may be so blunt. These long drawn out hard times have really sucked out whatever charm, humor and interest politics ever held for me and left a screen of static. Makes me sick.

I wish, I wish things would hurry up and get better in the economy, the country and job markets. There’s some folks out there in need of flip offs not possible to give in this climate of hunkering down. Wha…?

In more positive news: I am taking some free poetry courses online. Check out the classes at The Open University. Awesome stuff. I have been enjoying my poetry making. I’m working on getting educated on how it really works so I can get some solid stuff pumped out.

Hmmm… A grammar class would be a good investment.

In “oh yeah that website” news, a coworker reminded me about this website. The Hype Machine’s top 50 albums of 2009! You can listen to entire albums! Lots of things I had been curious about hearing and other stuff I didn’t even know about.

Great site to help with doldrums combat.

Oh yes! What about next Tuesday? The final season of LOST starts up with a two hour season premiere! I can’t wait for that. I think I need to watch the last 3 episodes of last season between now and then to get prepared.

New episodes of LOST will shake off some of the winter blues and keep us a little bit warmer.

One hundred please.
He colors in the circles.
Rows and rows of circles.
He says they are apples,
but the crayon is
purple.

One hundred rotations.
Passing by with
a click and a thump and a click.
click, thump, click
click, thump, click
He adjusts the rollers,
pours some fluid on them.

The machine is a massive giant
crouching down.
One hundred tons ready to pounce.
Iron jaws fall open and
one hundred burning babies run out.
Dance about and struggle
to keep their flames.

Bounce up in time with
one hundred beating hearts.
click, thump, click
click, thump, click

Ninety-nine slashes
on the side of his tank.
Into the camera smiling,
pixelated grin.
Say hello to folks back home.
He doesn’t get what you’re trying,
just knows it’s not rhyming.

One hundred thunder claps,
Desires punch holes in the sky.
Makes Earth shake quakes.
Takes more man than me
to run this machine.
This is the year we will get
One hundred of these.

Oh dear Joe Wheeler,
Show stopper, the deft scene stealer.
I hope, I hope I can remember the lines.
Only now do I understand the signs.
Veteran, master, mentor, sage.
A mystic meant for a different age.

Bearded massage parlors of dissonance.
Whittle away hours for a few dollars and cents.
How’s Donna? Say hello to Terry.
Carpool miles jammed traffic will bury.
Talks of rebellion ride in the patrol.
Sit at our stations as the work day takes it’s toll.

Oh come now drunken Santa, make merry rhyme.
Fumbling the muse, I’m the poet this time.
Now on the stage of my history,
You kept the spinning of words a mystery.
Irradiated poet nuclear poems you make,
But now from you the words I will take.

I do like to spend a bit of time changing up my profile picture every once and a while. It’s kind of what it would be like in the olden days to draw or paint ones self portrait me thinks. I just love staring at photos of myself you know. I like to do weird and interesting things in the profile picture usually involving some sort of Photoshop stunt.

I saw this article in Wired magazine a while back and I really liked the photos in it of David Byrne and Thom Yorke. Looks like the article (good read) is a couple of years old. I feel like I had actually held a real life copy of the magazine in my hands and not just the internet version.

James Day is the name of the guy who took the photos of Byrne and Yorke. Here’s another one of Thom.

Yeah, so that’s a pretty popular look that people are using all over the place. A photographer at work called it the Business Journal look. I kind of get what he’s saying. Hyper sharp. Grainy sort of. High detail. Lots of contrast. I kind of thought the Byrne and Yorke photos looked metallic somehow. Its probably not too many steps to getting a “Book of Eli” or “Terminator: Salvation” post apocalyptic look. Those are pretty desaturated though.

Being a professional at a photography studio makes it pretty easy for me to get answers on how to do things in Photoshop. I showed a couple of my colleagues the photo of Byrne and Yorke and we worked out a recipe to get the look. It’s really not too tough. A mix of the high pass filter, a shadow / highlights adjustment and some other tweaks.

For starters, as is most always the case, the better the quality of the photograph you begin with, the more likely your Photoshop spell will take effect. To get the most out the high pass filter it is best to have an image that is evenly lit. A mid range shot with not too much contrast. I would imagine that one could even bring down the contrast a bit using the brightness / contrast adjustment if the photo wasn’t optimum.

You will be creating the drama with your filters, adjustments and tweaks, so mellow drama to begin with is good.

Do all of your retouching first. There will be more retouching at the end once blemishes and splotches come more into focus. Good to start clean.

Duplicate your background layer. You will be doing your manipulating to this layer. I often work on various duplicate layers so that it is easier to adjust the effects or even pull it back a bit by lowering the opacity of different layers.

While on your new layer copy, go to your filter menu > other > high pass. This puts you in the high pass filter.

Everything turns grey and strange looking now. You can adjust the radius of the pixels and then hit OK. For my mugshot examples I had it at 50.3 pixels. I’m not sure what’s going on here. Maybe I should go to the Adobe site and actually get a definition of the high pass filter before doing a tutorial on it. Hmmmm?

Next turn the layer into an overlay blending layer (pull down next to opacity in Layers palette). I think you could also use the soft light or hard light blending mode as well.

Now the image will appear darker and oily.

From here go to image menu > adjustments > shadow / highlights. This is where things really start to pop. Here are the settings for what I did with my photo but you should adjust and try different things out.

Shadows: Amount: 60%, Tonal Width: 30%, Radius: 80 px.
Highlights: Amount: 60%, Tonal Width:15%, Radius: 45 px.
Adjustments: Color Correction: -60, Midtone Contrast: +45.
I left the Black and White Clip settings at: 0.01%.

All the pores in the skin pop out. Pimples turn into mountains. Craters and blemishes come alive on the crisp new leathery skin. I really like how wiry and steel brush like the strands of hair get.

You can now go back and forth adjusting the levels, curves, and brightness / contrast of the image to dial it in better.

From the tweaking a light halo appears around the head so you can get rid of that and clean up the background.

To better match the Bryrne Yorke photo I went to the image menu > adjustments > photo filter > cooling filter to cool down the photo. The portrait is fairly icy.

A few more tweaks and I pretty much had it. I was satisfied with being able to mimic the look.

The comments on my new profile picture were pretty funny. Apparently people weren’t as enamored with my crazy wrinkly, sharp, leathery skin and wiry hair as I was. They said it looked like I had a rash and they were sure it was my scary mugshot from my time in prison.

No. Now this one is a scary mugshot:

Interesting lesson learned. Apparently the huge pores, wrinkles, leathery, aged, cold mugshot look only works if you are a celebrity like Thom Yorke who can make that look charming, alternative and hip.

I didn’t spend too much time on my photo but I could see being able to dial it back a bit to get some softer more non-mugshot results.

When I was done with my experimenting, I said, “Hey, I should Google: Photoshop high pass filter and see what I get”.

Yeah, turns out there are quite a few tutorials on it. I don’t know. I guess it’s not really a “thing”. More of a method and technique of sharpening. I am definitely keeping it in my tool box for future image manipulations.

I finished typing this post before reading any of the other tutorials on it just to see how close I got. Not bad.

Here is a tutorial on advanced sharpening techniques from the Adobe site.

This site here is pretty good and this one has some nice explanations and definitions on what is going in.

Playtime.
We play.
Stacking blocks.
Action figures.
You take that one.
I’ll play with him.
Set up trains.
Build the tracks.
Work on our words.
Make sound effects.

No news.
No radio.
No television set.

Outside it crumbles.
Forest fires burn.
Planes crash.
Earthquakes that flatten.
Flood waters rising.
Buildings topple.
Car wreck killings.
Heart attack.
Hundreds died.
Bomb blast.

No calls.
No computers.
No way of knowing.

Bouncing ball off wall.
Running.
Play hide and seek.
Read me a story.
Learn the alphabet.
Watching him smile.
Laughing.
Today we will be OK.
Unaware.
Not up to date.

He yawned. Took a sip of coffee.

“Sundays were pretty good”.

That’s how he would start his epic poem.

He was feeling pretty good that morning. Only a slight hint of last night’s drinking was still with him. A touch of a headache.

He was sitting outside on the balcony/porch.

It was cool outside, but surely warm for a January morning he thought.

The sun was shining causing steam to rise from the recently rain soaked pavement of the street below. A slight crinkling hiss sound whispered up from the street as the moisture evaporated in the sunlight.

Everything was coming into a strange super-focus.

He concentrated intensely on his surroundings.

A slight breeze was coming from the east.

He closed his eyes.

A dog was barking about a block away. He could hear the traffic rumbling down 12th. Further on he heard the low growling of downtown.

Water was running down the roof above him trickling into the rain gutters.

The earth worms were crawling up out of the wet ground gasping for air.

He could feel the top of his head all the way down to the tips of his toes. He sensed the ends of his left fingers and stretched through to the fingers on the right.

Then he heard a voice in his head.
No, maybe it was coming from around the corner?

Who’s voice was that? Was it his own voice? What was he saying?

“Yes.”

“This is the moment.”

“This one.” “Right here.”

“Now.”

“The Moment.”

“Remember.”

He opened his eyes.

“Crazy”, He said out loud to himself. That time it was definitely his voice.

He felt a peaceful calm.

He took another sip of coffee and then heard her car coming down the block.

It was usually difficult to find parking on his street Sunday mornings. His neighborhood wasn’t really a church going neighborhood and stayed home Sunday mornings sleeping in instead of attending services. Maybe sleeping off Saturday night.

She didn’t have any trouble this morning though and found a spot right in front of the house. He watched her parallel park the white Toyota from his balcony perch above.

He headed back inside.

The house he lived in was a big house. It was up off of the street on a hill that made it look even larger. It was broken up into two seperate apartments. One on the first floor, one on the second.

She clunked loudly up the steps. The stairwell up to the second floor had quite an echo that made everyone’s footsteps boom dramatically.

He met her at the top of the stairs and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Do you want some coffee?”

He spied the kitchen sink piled high with dirty dishes and grabbed a coffee cup off of the top. He washed it out and poured her some coffee.

She took the cup, thanked him, found a sugar bowl under a newspaper on the counter, and poured in some cream from the fridge.

“Where did you guys go last night?” He asked. “I didn’t see you leave.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was getting tired. Plus I had to work today,” She took a sip of her coffee. “It looked like it was starting to get lame anyway.”

She was dressed in her work clothes. White button up shirt, black cardigan sweater, black skirt, black leggings, black shoes. She was obviously on her way there.

“Yeah. It was fine.”

He started looking through some papers that were laying on the floor in the room next to the living room. His computer was in there. They called it the computer room.

“I’ve decided to become a poet.” He told her. “I am going to write a book of poetry.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Poets are so cool.”

“Who do you know that is a poet?”

“Well,” He stopped for a second and read something that was written on a slip of paper. “Okay, I don’t know any poet, poets. I mean the idea of being a poet, writing poetry seems cool.”

She sat on the couch.

“I’m going to get some books at the library and read up on how one goes about writing poetry. I don’t know much about it. I’m going to figure out what the deal is with those poems that don’t rhyme. Learn what they are doing.”

He found a black notebook under a stack of books.

“I think there’s this thing called iambic pentameter that I should probably get the definition of. Maybe I should sign up for a class.”

She groaned.

“What?”

“I just can’t keep up anymore.” She said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You. You are all over the place. I can’t keep up with you. You have so many different interests and activities going on. You don’t stick to one thing. You were going to be a photographer earlier this month. Then an actor. Then a professional skateboarder. Now a poet?”

“Uh, okay.” He was a bit befuddled. “I’m sorry I like so many different things?”

“It’s just that I would like to support you and take an interest in things you like to do, but I’m not sure what we are into from day to day. It keeps changing and it’s getting annoying.”

He sat down next to her and didn’t say anything.

“I thought you were going to be a novelist and write the great American novel?”

“Well a book of poetry is still writing a book even though it’s not technically a novel,” He said. “I think I am more suited to writing a bunch of little bursts like poems and sticking them all together rather than writing one long chunk like a novel would be. I don’t think I have the patience anymore.”

He looked at her and shook his head. She didn’t notice.

“Hey, I’m going to come in and see you guys at work today.” He said.

“Okay.” She drank more coffee.

“What time were you supposed to go in today anyway?”

She looked at her watch and quickly jumped up, “Oh crap!”

How long will we be counting G man’s age in months? Probably just until 2 right? At 28 months we’ll just be calling him 2 years old.

The little pooper continues to grow and grow. I think his hair is starting to fill in more in the front. He has a very impressive mullet now. Long flowing hippy hair. I am jealous.

It has been fun hearing him slowly figure out how to talk and communicate.

He can say Abby now.
Sort of says puppies.
Go.
Mommy. Daddy. Hi. Hi mommy. Hi daddy. Apple. Eat. Bottle. Kind of has something that sounds like milk.
Poppy. Bath. Bubbles. Baby. Bye bye. Bye bye daddy. Ball. Car.
Mine. Me. Amy. GG.
Beach. Ocean. Night night.
Down. Dude. Up. Book.
He says “move” to the dogs.

Makes the “I don’t know” sound and holds his hands up when he doesn’t know where something is.

He says more. It’s getting harder to keep count because it seems like he can try to say most things if you ask him.

Oh yes, he says NO now. Yesterday he hold me “no” (repeatedly after I reacted… doh!) when I told him to eat his banana.

Already a defiant one!

I started writing poetry when I was 37 years old.

Today I am 37.
This is the very first one.

The very first poem.

I don’t know what I am doing.
I don’t think that it matters.

Last night I watched a movie about Patti Smith. She writes poetry. In the movie she reads hers and others.

It seemed important.

I have heard others read poetry and talk about the Poets.

It seemed important.

I don’t know what I am doing.
I have not read many poems.
I don’t know much about the Poets.

This is not important.

Elementary. Naivety. Simplistic. Untrained.

Grotesque.

Perhaps one day I will learn about rhyme, rhythm, meter, the forms.

For now not.

I should become a poet.

I no longer feel like a young man.
Today I don’t feel like an old man.
I am not a middle aged man.

I feel like this is important.

Though it’s probably not.

I feel… something.

“Maybe you should keep that to yourself.”

“A bit too personal.”

This may be silly.
Ridiculous. Embarrassing.

But…

This is the very first one.

The first 2010 album I am excited about the release of has manifest itself before my eyes. The new Massive Attack album is going to be out in February! Woo Hoo. Very exciting. I think this is the perfect time in my life to fall in love with another Massive Attack CD. Gosh, not to put too many expectations on it huh? Looks like the EP they released is available for listen on their MySpace.

OoH! A new Liars album as well this year? Awesome.

The lovely man Trent Reznor, from the darling band Nine Inch Nails, released a concert DVD called “Another Version of the Truth” and he gave it away for free on the internets over the holidays as a gift to the fans. It’s a pretty cool project. Concert goers during the “Lights in the Sky” tour were allowed to bring their HD cameras into the concert so they filmed all of this great footage. NIN put all of the video submitted up on their website with some clean, straight from the mics audio and let the fans take it and edit together the final product. Some of the footage was from the Portland show in which I was in attendance. You can read about the project here.

Yeah, I’m trying to download it. How do you kids do it? Doesn’t this seem like a lot of work? It’s taking me forever. The free site I am downloading from only allows freebees to download one file per half an hour. This NIN DVD is broken up into 60 files! On man.

I guess I can just go ahead and watch it on the YouTube feed.

I have been getting back to listening to lots of NPR programs while working. I have been tuning in to some good stuff. One of the programs I follow is Studio 360. It’s pretty good. I listen to the podcasts. Last week (oh wait… oh yeah, I think it was Sunday) I listened to the episode about time travel. You should check it out here. It was pretty interesting.

One of the things they talked about briefly that blew my mind was this thing called the Large Hadron Collider. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t. Here’s it’s wikipedia link. I’ll have to read about it when I get a spare moment. Mountains over my head of course. What I thought was crazy was this collider keeps having all of these strange malfunctions and problems during tests that are keeping it from function properly, and one of the theories that is being talked about is something from THE FUTURE is causing these malfunctions in the hopes of stopping the Large Hadron Collider from working. Yeah, I know, right! That is some pretty awesome real life sci-fi there. Read about it here or see what the New York Times said about it here.

Uh oh. I have to go. I think future me is coming to tell me something…

Hey hey! 2010 is here! Can you believe it?

This is my first post of 2010. I know, I know, what took so long? I’ve been struggling with a cold here to start out 2010 and it has taken the typing wind out of my sails.

I want to write about firmness of purpose and it’s hard to sound convincing with the sniffles.

Well, hold on a second. Let me get it together and come back when I’m feeling a bit better…

—

January is a great time for fresh starts and contemplative plannings. I really enjoy taking stock and forming new year’s resolutions. I’m looking forward to getting some stuff going for 2010.

I went back in the journal and found that I had a pretty good list of resolutions for 2009. I was actually pretty good last year about keeping most of my resolutions. Some of them like “Act more like an adult” and “Go see the doctor for a check up” are ones that I will be adding to 2010’s list.

So yeah:

I’m going to act more like an adult.
I’m going to read and write more in 2010.
We’re going to have a good yard and garden year.
I’m going to try and not get angry as easily.
I’m going to take a closer look at my career paths.
I’m going in to see a doctor for a check up (I haven’t been since ‘94).

I’m going to actually read our bills in 2010 and get some sort of responsible budget going with the cash.

Those leftovers are a pretty good start to get the ball rolling.

I think my number one goal for 2010 is to work harder than I have ever worked before. Sure I mean at the office on worky work but also with non-work items. I really want to be a good worker this year. I want to get serious. No more lazing about and being a crybaby grumpy pants. Hard work time!

One thing that we will work hard on again this year that I brought over from last year’s list is getting our finances in order. I would love to be smarter with our money this year. K and I act like high school kids with our cash, I swear! We both should have married spouses who would take care of the numbers for us but didn’t.

Before I get too far into it here (and sound even more cocky) let me just say that I am well aware of how blessed (oh that word) and lucky (I don’t know if luck has anything to with it) we are to still have jobs in today’s horrible economic climate. I am going to try and be thankful for that in 2010 and not take it for granted.

We are going to try and figure out our housing situation this year (and again thankful to have a house of course). The Noodle’s are running out of space here at the compound and in 2010 we need to figure out if we are going to remodel or sell the house and buy a bigger one. For those of you that need a reminder of the whole story, you can get all the details here.

Yeah, I don’t know. We will get the actual facts about remodeling versus selling. For starters on Monday I got all of friend Mathew’s drawings of the remodel out and gave them a good looking over again. That would truly be the dreamiest of the options. I have a couple of web pages nearly completed that have all of the remodel schemes and dreams laid out on that I might start sharing with construction dudes and remodel wizards soon to see what they think.

Then again, maybe moving to a different house is the better, easier and less expensive option? I’m not sure. What is the housing market like now in 2010? Is it going to improve ever? I think it’s a good time to be a buyer but not as great if you are a seller, right? We’ll see. I have some people I am thinking of enlisting the help of.

Whatever the case I think we should at the very least refinance and get a lower interest rate on our mortgage while they are still low. People are getting like 4.75 now, right? Again… something we need to look at get get the facts about.

Who knows. Maybe the banks won’t think we are as clever as we think we are. Come on guys let’s play ball. It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.

I have a number of smaller projects on the burner also that I would like to complete in 2010.

I would love to get this here journal in order. It’s a bit messy. I never finished the redesign that I started a year or so ago. Yeah, that header image up there still says “tester”. I need to get into my server space, clean house there and then get my wordpress themes in order.

Yesterday I loaded the mobilepress plugin for wordpress and that’s pretty cool. Now a mobile version of this journal automatically loads up when you look at the site using your cellphone or web enabled mobile device (pictured above).

This year I really need to get a new portfolio up and running. I also need to get a resume up to date. Just saying… Better safe than sorry.

Oh yes there’s always the traditional new year’s resolution of “get more organized”. I’ll take that one too.

Write more posts.

Well that’s a good start for now. I’ll continue writing about resolutions, plans, and diabolical schemes for 2010 during the rest of January.