Month: July 2009

Categories
Glot-glot

This Ol’ Twitter

And that's the l'il page...

Because it took me  long time, because I’ve not seen it before, because I can, I’ll tell you all about this:

Orin Zebest’s permanent Twitter archive for his Twitter account, @Orinz on Twitter

Yes, that’s right, it’s a collection of every tweet (Twitter update) I’ve ever Twitterered. Because who knows? Twitter.com could be bought by Fox News Corp., or explode, or any number of unfortunate things. Or perhaps it’s just a pain in the ass to search through 120 pages for one interesting thing. So, through the miraculous process of tedious copying and pasting, I’ve made myself a good, everlasting monument.

Course, I still have to maintain it. And I couldn’t actually fit it all on one page, since after about 2000 updates the code gets so large my web server can’t handle it all in one chunk (I split it into three, there’s one for 2008 and 2007).  But it still looks nice; like my real Twitter page just much, much longer. It was a labor of love. I’m pretty amusing, it turns out (to me).

That picture on the right is a screencap of my whole first year, the shortest (!).

Categories
Optiglot

Seeing Up Close in Black and White

It’s fun to experiment. I got a most wonderful doodad the other day, a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens, and I was promptly forced at gunpoint to start taking pictures of friends and loved ones nearby. The results have been quite good so far, and Lynae’s merch should start looking better than ever. Parenthetically, that is to say that, yes—there was a good reason for this indulgence. And hey, tax-deductible business expense!

Anyways, the pictures I shot were good, but lacked that little something that makes ’em special. Fiddling around in Lightroom I loaded up a bunch of presets designed to imitate old black and white film. This was a curious move. I mean, I’ve dabbled before, who hasn’t? But black and white pictures… they’re nice, I suppose… I understand why the form continues to thrive… just… does this look like a website for someone who shoots photos with no color? Really now.

Yet despite my completely natural disinclination, I think I made some spiffy pics. They have some real character. Here are the magnificent seven, from my lens to yours:

Talk Into the Hand (by Orin Zebest)

She's a Smirker (by Orin Zebest)

Sherilyn's Dye Job (by Orin Zebest)

Girl with Glasses Black and White (by Orin Zebest)

Morningtime Squished Face (by Orin Zebest)

Fine Hairs Around Ears (by Orin Zebest)

Fine Hairs Around Eyes (by Orin Zebest)

Categories
Glot

A Strange Thing Happened on the Road to Married

My fiancée, Lynae Gladys Straw, is a ceramicist. More than just a ceramicist, she started her own small business around ceramics. She sells her stuff on Etsy and makes a pretty decent living (for a 23 year-old that started her own business).

Me, I’ve come from a series of bad work situations. I went from one job I was unhappy at that paid me little to a job that made me very happy but paid me nothing. Then I had a few jobs where I was relatively happy, and where I was decently paid, but the bosses were either incompetent or incomprehensible, sometimes both, never neither. I stopped wanting to work at places that believed looking up information on how better to do one’s work somehow counted as play. I got kicked around and more than a little disillusioned.

Everyone should know by now that I do a lot of work for the little lady. Specifically, I do almost all her packaging and all her product photos—two things which are rather important for an online business. So I kind of ended up working for her (that’s what I like to tell people at parties, anyway). But it’s a little more complicated. Y’see, for everything but tax purposes, I’ve started to see it as our business. She makes the stuff; I’m the one that gets rid of it.

That’s fine in most ways. I’m happy. There are some ways which don’t seem to work as well, though. I’m still operating within her big shiny creative orbit, no matter how many sunbeams I bounce off into the far reaches of space. What I need, what I’m thinking, what she agrees, is that I oughta have my own thing too.

Real soon I’ll be stocking my own Etsy store. The refined talents of the but-for-a-moment-still Ms. Straw should come in handy there. Keep an eye on the GLOT, too, as I’ve got many plans in store for it. Wish I could reveal more, but I’ve revealed enough. Accelerate it, baby.