On the opening day of San Fermin (an old poem I wrote)

    On the opening day of San Fermin
    by Mike Fullerton, 1989

    I am leaning bent,
    a heavy wall pushing me upright
    in a flowing crowd.
    I drink from a cup as big and white
    as stacked toilet paper.
    My eyes fill with wine,
    lids floating shut.

    The charred and chipped
    building holding me
    sways
    threatening to fall with me into the square.

    It is soiled with moist shrapnel
    from a dirt bomb,
    splotches of brown merging
    and dripping down the walls
    into the hair of the partygoers.

    The crowd flows like a wine river
    around a tall fountain
    pointed blunt like a beer bottle.
    People swirl past me,
    laughing like vapor,
    all teeth and rapid blur.

    Wet from Champagne and urine,
    cobblestones float under my feet.
    I trap them down,
    the wall holding me
    and I holding the stones.

    Attention
    is turned from faces
    to the fountain.
    The wine river flows faster.
    Now back on itself
    as if from sudden tide.

    A man stands alone,
    conqueror of the fountain,
    above the crowd.
    His arms perpendicular like a cross
    he seems to meditate.
    Suddenly he is flying.
    The river shakes,
    boiling with tension.
    The man makes no splash;
    he is inhaled gracefully.

    Crawling unsteady
    another climbs
    like a spindly insect
    to the top.
    A momentary victor
    waving like a pond weed.
    But its as if a firm hand
    pushes him,
    he topples
    wrongly
    softly and slow,
    grinning
    down into cement.

    My cobblestones energize
    and escape
    in a sudden throb;
    my wall softens
    tilts
    releasing me
    to hold the soft cobblestones
    with my face,
    my cup drifting away.

    I see the river suddenly dry
    into grains of standing people
    as white hat men take the dead away.

    My first impressions of the iPad

    (Sigh, insert “pad” joke here – maybe something about Procter & Gamble’s stock price? Your call. )

    First off, I was immediately struck by how think the borders are around the device. Is this so I can race matchbox cars around it and pretend I’m Dale Earnhardt, Jr.? (Of course, this would be counter-clock wise only).

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    Maybe it’s for big greasy fingers to hold the thing? Or vise grip robotic arms to hold it (controlled by SkyNet)?

    Second off, people are blabbering on about how the Kindle is dead. Au contraire mon frere. Nay. Not. Nada.

    Here’s why.

    The Kindle uses the liquid ink technology which is easy on the eyes, like an actual book. The iPad is going to be bright and not well suited for sitting down and reading a novel for hours. Apples and Oranges (er, no pun intended) . Sure the technology is awesome, and I eagerly anticipate using it to read technical or photography books, but novels? Probably not.

    Also, regarding reading books. Content. Content. Content. Amazon is still the center of the book universe. If Apple locks out the Kindle app from the device, this will be a big problem. If not, it’s a non issue, and I’ll probably continue to buy my books from Amazon. Somehow I doubt I’ll be finding Neal Asher or Ian M. Banks novels on the Apple store.

    Also, as an aside, all the animation in the demos of the book reading app annoyed the poo out of me, and I haven’t even used it yet. I hope you can turn off all that fluffy demo chrome and just use it. The same goes with the rest of the device.

    By the way, I read a lot.

    Some omissions:

    1. no mention of Verizon.

    2. maybe I missed it, but no handwriting app? Maybe the whole stylus thing made it a non-starter. To Newton-esc?

    3. it would be nice if it had an iChat camera. But I can see why it doesn’t. Where to put it? Streaming video over At&t? Er, epic fail waiting to happen. Maybe v2 will have it.

    Other than that, as a iPhone developer, I’m super excited because of the product development possibilities. Especially for someone like me who specializes in photography and web services and all that kind of thing. Rubs his hands together and grins. Pinky, it’s time to take over the world!

    I’m glad it will be released in a few months, this gives me time to save my pennies to buy one. The 3g version of course.

    Apple’s iPad.

    Why I hate Wells Fargo Bank

    This is why I hate Wells Fargo Bank, in a nutshell. There are other reasons, but this drives me insane.

    I have several accounts with them, including a savings account. My saving account happened to have only a couple of dollars in it. They charged me a fee (perhaps for taking a walk on a nice sunny day, or eating a bagel) and it went negative.

    Then they started charging me five dollars a day for being overdrawn.

    This went on for like a week over the holidays when I wasn’t paying attention. Soon I owed like $35 to get it back in the positive again. I sent them an email asking them to consider removing the late fees and they sent me back an email with instructions on how to set up automatic transfers. That, my friends, is a big “eff you” from them to me. I’ve been a customer of Wells Fargo Bank since the mid eighties. That’s how you treat a long time customer?

    There are a few companies I despise, like Sony and Block Buster Video, and now I’m going to have to add Wells Fargo Bank to this list. This type of thing has been going on for years with them. I’ve put up with it, to my embarrassment. Can’t do it anymore.

    Time to try the new generation of banking. I want a try a more cutting edge bank or credit union that is more customer oriented and doesn’t stick sharp pointed fees in my eyeballs every-time I turn around.

    Any suggestions?

    Thoughts on District 9

    First, off no spoilers, I promise.

    District 9 is a fantastic movie but you might not enjoy it. You should see it anyway. I think this is an important movie.

    Now, those of you that know me know that I’m a big science fiction fan. I’ve read countless books and stories and watched everything. I’m a hard sell. I think this is one of those movies that truly transcends the genre. The thing about great sci-fi is that it is always about much more than is on the surface, it challenges you, it makes you think. But it’s not always fun.

    District 9 is a hard movie to watch because it really touches on significant and painful social issues. I think it hits a nerve. Or three. I understand why you may not enjoy it, but you can’t say isn’t a fantastic movie. Well, you could, but you’d be wrong. :-)

    I think that District 9 isn’t an enjoyable movie in the same way most enjoyable movies are enjoyable. It’s not really escapist entertainment. District 9 stabs you right in the eye with sharp scissors right out of the gate. The way it’s shot, with the flat colors, in hand-held documentary style, definitely didn’t produce a lot of eye candy. In fact, I was a bit off-put by this. At first.

    Right away it ripped me out of my comfort zone. It’s not pretty or glamorous. It’s not an idealized version of Hollywood reality. It says something about us, our fears, our flaws, our culture. It makes a painful point about who we are.

    This could really happen.

    That said (the part about it being harder to enjoy than a normal movie I mean) – I enjoyed the hell out of it. I enjoy a well crafted story. Great dialog. Great plot. I actually was surprised a few times by what happened (which, sadly for me, hardly ever happens). There was a couple of times I wanted to stand up and shout, did you see that? Did you? There’s actually a character arc in this movie, the main character learns, and changes, and surprises. He transforms. Don’t see that too often. The character even has a specific moment of epiphany. And I was loving it.

    The attention to detail was staggering. I wanted to rewind and watch some parts again. The special effects may be the best I’ve every seen. I forgot about them and just enjoyed the movie. I forgot that the aliens and spaceship were computer generated. Normally, in other movies where there are virtual characters, I never quite forget they’re computer generated. I did in this movie. Probably the only other time that’s happened for me is Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

    I’m still thinking about the movie. That never happens to me. (Nearly) ever.

    There’s my thoughts on it. So there.

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    iPhone, check. Margarita, check. Drinking the iPhone, and chatting on the Margarita? Check.

    Bunny with her brand new iPhone 3gs. Her iPhone 3g ate pavement big time at Miami International airport. Shattered.

    This is an awesome Mexican restaurant called El Rancho Grande. It was recommended by the Apple Store’s Luigi from Venezuela, as we swapped in a new, unshattered, iPhone.

    Our server made the guacamole right at the table. Possibly, the best I’ve ever had.

    The margarita’s were massive, tasty, and knife to the eyeball cold.

    What’s not to love? And, yes, there are many things to love in this photo.

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    The beach at midnight from, like, a light year away.

    I’m posting this with no processing at all to show how amazing the Nikon d700 is. When you look at the beach with just your eyes, it’s literally blackness. This is from the balcony on the 15th floor of the W Hotel in Miami’s South beach at 12:30am. It’s dark. Really dark. There’s a wee bit of moonlight, but nothing to steer your canoe by.

    You’ve got to undersand here – you can’t see the ocean, or ANYTHING, on the beach. I mean nothing. It’s a big black void. You can see the trees, where the lights are, but that’s it. The shot was practically a misfire I had so little expectation of anything at all coming out.

    In the picture, you can see the color of the water, the lifeguard stand, and people walking. Unbelievable.

    Truly, the d700 is mind boggling. Right when I was thinking of downgrading to something that doesn’t weight more than an Escalade, it goes and slaps me up the side of the head, and I’m like, oh yeah. THAT’S why I have this camera. :-)

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