One gentleman was inquiring about how he might be able to preserve his record collection. The group seemed to think putting the records on to CD would be the best idea, since CD’s are the new big thing.

Another person brought up “those iPods” and how he should get one of those. That was quickly dismissed though because “those things are so small. They have tiny speakers, I won’t be able to hear anything”.

The task of cooking steaks on the grill seemed like way too much work. So, using my “make shit up as you go cooking skills” I went for the cast iron.

To prep I rubbed the steaks in a light olive oil, and then coated with ground peppercorn medly and garlic pepper.

After a few minutes on each side, over medium heat, they came out delicious. Not quite in comparison to a steak cooked on the grill, but easy. If there was a steak cooking battle between cast iron, and George Foreman, the cast iron would probably win first round hands down.

Leave George to the burgers and chicken. Steak needs it’s juices.

Especially when someone lays Biggie over something really contrasting like Miley and makes it sound pretty darn good.

I’m not. I think it is stupid, and lacks creativity.

If he added a bit more to it than just repeating pants on the ground pants on the ground maybe it would have appealed to me more. Or if it was on something other than the television show American Idol.

My roommate and I had a rather amusing back and forth tonight about the spreading of the song.

DP: “Brett Farve is even singing the song, did you see that video?!”

Me: “Yea, I heard about that, but I’m not going to watch it. It’s dumb”

DP: “OH YOU’LL WATCH A BITCH SHIT IN A HOT TUB, BUT YOU WONT WATCH THEM SING PANTS ON THE GROUND?!”

Me: “Hahahahahahahahahaha….. I forgot about that hot tub video.” {immediately searched youTube for the hot tub video, and had a good laugh}

Instead of putting the hot tub video here (if you really want to know what I’m talking about, just search for it) I’ll leave you with this gem that is immensely more entertaining and funnier than the Pants On The Ground Guy:

To get things rolling I headed out to the state park block house in North Muskegon. I armed myself with my 30d and the Canon A-1 film camera. While you’ll get to see the digital shots right away (see below) I’m more excited about the stuff on film. The A-1 is equipped with a buttery 50mm 1.4 lens, buttery referring to the feel of the focus on it. It’s got none of that fancy auto focus business going, and you’ve gotta use your eye and coordination to work it (My coordination is getting better… I think).

Since the film I’ve got stockpiled can’t be developed at the local hour lab developer I’m faced with two options. Dig out the developer tank and reels from photo classes, or find an online outfit to handle things. While developing it myself wouldn’t be that tough, I’d still probably want to get digital with it to put online, so I’m leaning to the outsourcing option.

If you’ve got any leads on good places that will develop, scan, and mail the negatives to me let me know.

Here are some shots from today I rather enjoyed.

I’m also going to be on the lookout for some FD mount wide angle lenses to take another stab at night photography with film. If you come across anything, or your uncle has a few old lenses collecting dust, please let me know.

Photographer: Lin Zhipeng

So are the rest of the 64 photos by 64 photographers.

Wow.

Look around. The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn’t make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world’s ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

-More at Newsweek

Seems we’ve gotten a little too comfortable in our success as of late. I think its time we bucked down as a country and stop being so lazy.

Word of mouth is casual, yet the active sharing of brand – positive or negative experience with a good or service. Virality is causal, yet the passive compound effect of interconnections being maxed out.

Word of mouth doesn’t scale. Virality does.

Read the rest of a great article about the difference between word of mouth and virality from Andrew Weissman’s blog.

A night shot from the archives. Look for more photography to come

Augmented Reality?? WTF?! Ya, same thing I thought. Until I figured out what it was all about. Yelp just updated their iPhone app with it, and now John Mayer is making a video with it.

The yelp execution is much more impressive as it can overlay reviews of places just by using the camera on your iphone.

It should be pretty interesting to see where this technology will bring us.