On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, jeff covey wrote:
> you might try sane (http://www.mostang.com/sane/); it has drivers for
> a large number of devices now, including quickcams
> (http://www.mostang.com/sane/man/sane-qcam.5.html). don't know if
> this allows for video capture or just stills, though.
guess it does video capture:
<http://www.mostang.com/sane/xcam.html>
> coincidentally, i was thinking about something along these lines
> yesterday. i've been having leg problems (hmmmm... could have
> something to do with the fact that i spend all my time either sitting
> at a computer, sitting teaching guitar lessons, sitting in the car, or
> sitting zazen...), so i'm making myself get out and walk for a half
> hour or so each day, and i'm starting to see much more of my
> neighborhood.
scary, isn't it?
walking is good. though in many cities (such as where i live) it is more and
more an "unamerican activity" -- sport utility vehicles have become the
preferred mode of transportation...
incidentally, i thought that sitting zazen was generally *good* for you. i
haven't done it in a long time though. at least i am walking every day.
> there are stretches that are like a ghost town -- giant old buildings
> built over a hundred years ago that used to house factories and department
> stores and now sit empty or have the upstairs closed and the ground floor
> converted to a liquor store or laundromat. there's a boarded-up
> building around the corner advertises "carriages" in faded paint on
> its side. it's creepy sometimes to look at what used to be here and
> what's here now. this used to be a shopping district, and now it
> looks like a war zone. people talk in the abstract about the decay of
> the inner city, but it becomes a tangible reality that you can feel
> when you walk around here.
it is a sad world we live in. i hope that the free software movement will
catalyze the drastic changes that society needs -- the problems inherent in
our society, i think, are problems of design. and software is increasingly
becoming a part of it.
with the exception of technology and some of the indie explorations it has
enabled/inspired, i think we live in the worst of ages. due mainly to the
scourge of corporations:
<http://dsl.org/cgi-bin/display.pl/m/doc/11-rules-of-corporations> james
kunstler has written some good books on _why_ this has happened, and how to
identify it. but what we need is a book that tells you how to stop it.
those pictures of a gone world you see are ghosts all right. i've been
religiously photographing (analog camera, not digita) the ones i come
across. i agree, digital cameras are just too expensive -- for me it's
actually cheaper to shoot analog with a good camera and then get photocd
scans of the keepers than it would be to go 100% digital.
since i started this project a couple years ago, i've seen dozens of
places, signs, buildings, and people go, and then all that's left is this
photograph, and it makes me glad that i took it. i'm going out to the
seattle area in a week to be documenting remnants of the gone world out
there. and to capture remnants of another gone world: early 90s grunge.
i think you should try your digital camera experiment.
