Mike Hicks

iPhoto

I played around with some CD cases the other day. I was trying to figure out an interesting angle to use to make a nice picture, and I happened to move a stack past a light and noticed how in shined through. Eventually, I set up a little photography stand with a lamp placed right behind the CD pile. Yay for total internal reflection, the same thing that makes fiber optics possible:

Here are some other interesting photos I've made lately:

I went to Proex at Rosedale and had them make some prints, but I wasn't really happy with the way they turned out. Well, I wasn't expecting a whole lot. The contrast went up in most of my photos, making dark areas black and light ones nearly white. I have enough trouble with that in the first place, so I wasn't happy to see that the printing process (at least at this particular place) made it even worse. Other images had significant color shifts, which annoyed me quite a bit. But it might just be that my monitor and editing software isn't calibrated (and, well, it can't be calibrated because all of that stuff is proprietary whatzits purveyed on non-Linux platforms).

Oh well, I might try somewhere else, but I guess the whole digital to photo print business is a crapshoot at best...

Four Letters

It just feels like there should be snow.

Turn Turn Turn

Ugh, the clothes driers didn't dry. Not enough, anyway. Everything is slightly wet. Not just some things like what happens to me most of the time. Everything is slightly wet. I'm unlikely to remember all of the places I hung stuff to dry.

.snap

A quick attempt at collating results of staff picks for top albums of the year at the Current yields the following short list. The big favorite is At War with the Mystics by The Flaming Lips. Of course, a few staffers picked favorite songs rather than favorite albums. Some of them ranked their choices, and others didn't. We'll have to see how the listener-selected Top 89 of 2006 turns out.

Albums with at least three mentions

• The Flaming Lips – At War with the Mystics (own it)
• P.O.S. – Audition (hip hop isn't my thing)
• The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America (own it, ranked my first pick so far this year)
• Band of Horses – Everything All the Time
• Belle and Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
• Goldfrapp – Supernature
• Mates of State – Bring It Back (own it)
• TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain
• Thom Yorke – The Eraser
• The Black Angels &ndash Passover
• Bob Dylan – Modern Times
• James Hunter – People Gonna Talk
• Camera Obscura – Lets Get out of this Country
• Tim O'Reagan – Tim O'Reagan (local)
• The TeddyBears – Soft Machine
• M. Ward – Post War (this one got a few honorable mentions too)
• Wolfmother – Wolfmother (own it, wasn't too thrilled)

Well, if anyone wants to influence the "Top 89", balloting will end on December 15th (any in-progress ballots will be automatically closed and submitted, according to the site).