Day: February 19, 2003

ClubPhoto.Com

Back in December, Seth Dillingham posted about his experiences with SnapFish.Com on his web site. I’d never really looked seriously at businesses such as this which develop film, produce prints, and post scans on the web, but Seth’s post piqued my interest.

I finally settled on giving ClubPhoto.Com a try for a number of reasons — the major one being that I wasn’t really interested in prints of my film, and ClubPhoto.Com seemed to have the cheapest rates for simply processing and posting high quality scans (they then snail mail me back the negatives).

Overall, I am satisfied with the service I’ve received from ClubPhoto.Com. As Seth noted, these sorts of shops are obviously using automated processes and the developing quality you’ll find here is comparable to what you’d get if you drop your film off at the local drugstore or supermarket.

On the positive side, the turnaround for film processing is very quick even via snail mail. When I mail the photos from my office in Kalamazoo it usually takes only about 4 business days before ClubPhoto.Com (which is headquartered in Texas) has scans of the photos posted.

The only negative is that ClubPhoto.Com’s idea of a high quality scan usually ends up being a 400kb JPEG. My idea of a high quality scan is a 17mb TIFF file. But then, I guess they wouldn’t be able to offer their service that cheaply if they had to absorb the bandwidth charges that would accompany files that large.

But the service is otherwise almost perfect for people like me who don’t want to deal with (and pay for) prints, but aren’t quite ready to ditch their film camera for a digital model either.

HP ScanJet 5500c

One of the many projects I’ve been working on is converting all of the pieces of paper I have hanging around into digital versions (and then safely hiding the paper versions away). A couple years ago I tried using a cheap film scanner to take care of the thousands of pictures I’ve accumulated, but ran into a number of problems (the operative word turning out to be cheap film scanner).

I’m having a bit more luck with HP’s ScanJet 5500c. The ScanJet 5500c has a photo document feeder — essentially a document feeder that is designed to accommodate stacks of photographs up to 4×6″.

Over the last two months I’ve scanned in about 2,000 photographs and so far have few complaints. I have run into some problems with jams, but for the most part those involved either a) photographs that were somewhat warped or b) photographs that were not cleanly cut during developing.

I generally scan the photos at 600 DPI and the highest color setting, which usually results in TIFF files of 17mb to 20mb. I use those files to generate smaller JPEGS for my web site and then archive the TIFF files on CD-R (still waiting to buy a larger hard drive to store all of the photos in one place).

All Your Bonsai Kittens Are Belong To Us

One of the things that fascinates me — largely because I don’t understand the process at all — is how some hoaxes and memes spread like wildfire throughout the Internet, while others just crash and burn.

I cannot understand, for example, why BonsaiKitten.Com still attracts such outrage among people almost three years after it first appeared on the web.

The first time I saw it I thought it was somewhat clever, but assumed that it is so obviously a hoax that the furor over it would soon die down. Apparently I vastly overestimated the general level of knowledge about mammalian physiology.

So as maintainer of a site about the animal rights movement I receive about 6 or 7 emails a week asking me to spread the word about this horrible site. Several times a week, people forward me one of a number of petitions against the site. For the most part I ignore these e-mails because of the odd responses I would get from people after I told them the site was a hoax — many of my correspondents simply refused to believe the site was a hoax. Look, you can see the pictures there for yourself, they would write back.

I’ve come to have a grudging admiration for whomever is actually behind the BonsaiKitten.Com site for their ability to really strike a nerve. Connie Bloom, a writer for Ohio’s The Beacon Journal, recently devoted a long column to what she calls this “disgusting work of a former student at [MIT].”

And like a lot of people, Bloom on the one hand understands why the site exists, but on the other hand, can’t help but herself in giving the author of the site what he or she was looking for. Early in her column, Bloom notes that back in 2000 BonsaiKitten.Com had to jump from provider to provider after getting kicked off various ISPs, but “the student was encouraged by all the negative attention and has continued to promote it on a series of Web hosts, one after another, citing his right to free speech.”

But she ends her column with a flourish noting that even the Humane Society of the United States recognizes that BonsaiKitten.Com is protected speech but, Bloom adds, “That doesn’t make it any less offensive or infuriating.”

Infuriating and offensive enough to devote 900 words to it in a newspaper column three years after it was obvious the site was a hoax? Again, I’ve got some grudging admiration whose rather tame satire is so successful at getting underneath people’s skin.

Source:

‘Bonsai Kittens’ in jars cause stir with pet lovers. Connie Bloom, Beacon Journal (Ohio), Feb. 15, 2003.

Canadian Voice for Animals' Anti-Leno Petition

Animal rights activist Earle Bingley, who lists himself as the president of Canadian Voice for Animals, posted an amusing petition calling for a boycott of the Tonight Show because of host Jay Leno’s insistence at garnering laughs “at the expense of animals.”

According to Bingley’s petition,

On February 10th, Leno made fun of the state of Colorado that passed an ordinance that would recognize dogs and cats as companion animals. Leno?s punch line was, and this may not be word perfect: ?Yeah, and the companion animals of Korea are now appetizers.?

On February 11th, Leno had a skit of a game show that he called: NAME THAT SOUND?One of the fake contestants was the president of North Korea?The sound was that of a barking dog. The correct answer was: ?That?s the sound of my dinner.?

For the past 50 plus years, I and countless others have worked tirelessly for the betterment of our four-legged relatives. When someone like Leno, who has a large audience, makes statements like this, it make me for one, sick to the stomach, and it countermines the advances we have made in animal welfare. If you agree with me, please sign this petition which will be sent to the president of NBC, letting him know that the general public will not tolerate this kind of abuse from late night talk shows.

Almost 500 people have shown up at PetitionOnline.Com to sign Bingley’s petition — by now, The Tonight Show must be fearing the viewer backlash. Well, at least the endless train of pointless petitions does keep these folks occupied.

Source:

Boycott The Tonight Show on NBC; Watch Letterman. Earle Bingley, PetitionOnline.Com, Accessed Feb. 17, 2003.

An Animal Rights Activist Against the War

Anti-factory farm advocate and Global Hunger Alliance coordinator Pattrice Le-Muire Jones recently posted an article to an animal rights e-mail list offering reasons “Why Animal Liberation Activists Must Join the Peace Movement” and oppose any war against Iraq.

The article includes a top ten list of reasons why animal rights activists should join the peace movement which give a nice insight into the bizarre way that some animal rights activists see the world. Here are reasons 1 through 4 that Le-Muire Jones offers (emphasis added),

4. Because military attacks on urban spaces terrify, kill, injure, displace, and bereave companion animals.

3. Because military attacks on rural locations terrify, ill, and bereave farmed animals.

2. Because bombs and biological weapons destroy habitats and poison the environment upon which all animals depend for sustenance.

1. Because bullets, bombs, and biological weapons don’t distinguish between human and non-human animals.

What Le-Muire Jones means by “bereav[ing] animals” is anybody’s guess, but it is interesting that if there were a way for weapons to distinguish between human and non-human animals that Le-Muire Jones might have a different view of war.

It is telling that in a long list of “Do’s and Don’ts” for activists, Le-Muire Jones has to remind activist “Don’t forget to include humans when discussing the innocents who will be hurt in the course of warfare.” Presumably Le-Muire Jones is a student of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals view of warfare in which a terrorist attack using a donkey as a bomb is reprehensible simply because a donkey is injured in the effort.

Source:

Why animal liberation activists must join the peace movement. Pattrice Le-Muire Jones, February 2003.