more pictures, and blathering

I made a page comparing all the cameras I've ever seriously used.
One film, three digital. Four digital.
That's here:
http://www.bridget.kelly.name/Pictures/cameracomparison/

And it was delightful to make the pages for that. I love my old photos, and my new ones too. It's like... I think for me, playing with and looking at my photos has sort of always been like it would be for the average miser to take a big old pile of money and throw it on the ground and roll around in it naked.
I just feel like I'm surrounded by friends, beautiful old friends, beautiful little miniature stories, when I look at my old photos. I tell you, part of my nostalgia in that ridiculous rambling post the other night (about William Blake and running away to Europe) was inspired by going through my old pictures from the Fujica ST-705. I mean...
I just love light. I love light. And the quality of the light in the arches of the Alhambra still gives me little thrills. And this picture, with its moody and indirect light (it was taken obliquely into a mirror, lit by only a desk lamp, and I can remember how I coveted that tin cup of Gail's, and that the comforter on my bed was scratchy) makes me miss people and the place I was, even though I hated it there.

Sigh. Nothing makes me happier than looking at and making pictures. I need pretty things to take pictures of.
This weekend I'll go visit my parents. There are 50 beautiful acres there, people I love, and of course a cute puppy. I'll get pictures then and that ought to make me a great deal happier.

(Aside. Cruel irony: When I am elsewhere, I am homesick for Melrose, but I am no longer at home there. To all of you who no longer live in your childhood home: Does that ever stop happening?
I'm dubious. Just before my grandmother's interment we stopped by Dad's childhood home in Bayside, Queens, with the urn in the backseat, and we got out of the car and stood outside looking at the old house. Dad moved out of that house when he went to Vietnam in 1969. Grandma sold that house in the mid 1970s.)

stats

It's a while since I've looked at my webserver usage stats or server logs. So i was poking through the stat pages my host provides. Those things are such a riot. One of my favorite things to do is to see what search term people used to find my site.
For August, one of the top ten was (no quotes): "I heart boobs."
Nice.

Interestingly, for the month of September (thusfar), I've much higher stats than average, and for the first time in the history of my personal site (not livejournal, but my own url-- bridget.kelly.name), it seems that the traffic from people who actually know me or know of me by reputation is higher than the traffic from random searchers. Just going by the referrers. And a lot of my top search strings actually include my name, my handle (I use dragonlady7 on a lot of web communities), or various other search terms indicating that I am indeed the person that the searcher was hoping to find. There's even a search of my site.

The sheer quanitity of people who are finding me on irrelevant search terms just goes to remind me that I really ought to reorganize my site. Also, I ought to come up with a consistent navigation and actually apply it-- I have all these lovely photo galleries that have no site navigation on them, and so you can get *to* them from my site but you can't get back to my site *from* them, unless you're good at URL truncation and guess lucky.

I've been meaning to redesign the site since I put it up in November. Sigh.

I'd do it today, but I think I'm going to be trying to find a job today, don't you think?

Well. Who's all grown up now?

Someone has just purchased herself her first independent auto insurance policy.
From an excessively chatty Texan. (My bank, USAA, is located in San Antonio. I'm in it through my dad-- it's the bank that the U.S. Armed Forces uses. So my banking brochures (you know how they send you stuff about investments and insurance and getting loans and stuff) is all a little weird in tone-- containing FAQs on preparing for deployment, and instead of having carefully-multiethnic yuppies in the ad photos, I have carefully-multiethnic... Soldiers. I kind of like it.)

Anyhow. I am now insured. And feeling... poor. $88 a month just to make sure I don't wind up in jail! What a racket. (At least it was cheaper than the quote had been.)

Yup, i'se all growed up. And broke.

too much McSweeney's

Dear Officials of the United States Government,

I thought I would just get in touch and let you know what is going on in my reproductive system and general private area lately. You seem really interested, and I wouldn't want to put you to the trouble of subpoenaing my medical records just to find out what's happening in my uterus.

An Open Letter to Officials of the United States Government Regarding What's New in My Reproductive Area.
BY EMILY WEINSTEIN

lies on floor in puddle of incompetence

Let me tell you a secret about myself, that since many of you have never met me in person you may not know:

I have
absolutely
NO
fashion sense.

(More: anecdotal support to prove I'm not just saying that, and a chance for you to help me! Yes, i'm for real. Shh.)

( Read more... )