It's in your head
Posted: Monday, September 11, 2006 10:50 PM by Will Femia
I don't have much to say about the 9/11 anniversary. I haven't watched any of the coverage because I don't want to contaminate any of my own memories with these ubiquitous slow motion puffs of dust on TV. I recognize that for many people, talking about it and watching it on TV is helpful, so I don't begrudge anyone doing so -not even the reporters reporting on their own reporting that day.
In that vein, a story that probably wasn't part of recent coverage is that of Ground Zeros biggest attraction (well, maybe second biggest after the cross.) It used to be that bound to the fence at Ground zero (on Church Street and Liberty Street) were pictures of the destruction that day and some old photos and diagrams of the days before the towers, as well as some construction shots. Those were interesting, but most people looked at them only briefly before stretching as tall as they could reach, pressing the lens of their camera against a hole in the fence, and trying to snap a shot into the hole.
One year they re-did all the displays and added a timeline of that morning with some pictures and diagrams of the planes' flight paths and just enough detail to cue the memory. On any given day at almost any given time there is a crowd staring up at that time line. Apparently the best exhibit for those visiting Ground Zero is the one that helps them revisit their own 9/11.
What I clicked:
World Trade Center Outline Project - You hold a tracing of the old skyline in the air against the current skyline. They're doing it all month if you're going to be in the city.
Weirdest 9/11 image... possibly ever.
Speaking of reasons to turn the TV off, details of the coming political campaign strategies are leaking out.
Amazon Spends Over A Year Developing Movie Download Service Then Shackles It With Absurd Restrictions - Sometimes you have to give thanks to the people who bother to read all the fine print.
Roller blade music - Looks like this is from David Letterman. I've often thought this would be fun to do with cars and textured pavement, though it would probably be pretty rough on the tires.
Your very own personal tank - The Hyanide is basically a motorcycle on a flexible tank track.
I found the Hyanide story through Google after playing a little bit with a beta site called Lavaswim.com from a reader named Dean. Check out the way he set up the navigation.
Remember the secret hold placed on a bill to make Congress more transparent? Bloggers were hunting down the senator who had placed the hold. After apparently winning the battle, the war still isn't over. Senators seem to think they can wait out the public attention span and keep the bill from going through. I guess they aren't familiar with the kind of focus bloggers can keep on an issue. I clicked Glenn's following of the story and the longer Muckracker item.
Lifehacker offers a link to some (mostly obvious) instruction on how to photograph moving objects, but check out that ad. It goes here. If you take HDR photos, Gawker is interested in using your work in its leftover ad space.
Since I'm mentioning it, I haven't followed through on this yet, but if you're interested in learning more about High Dynamic Range photography along with me, HDR master Jimmie Yoo wrote a piece for Popular Photography in which he mentions using a trial version of a software called Photomatix.
The final part in Aaron Swartz's comes this Thursday. Part 2, "Who writes Wikipedia?" appears to be on the one to draw the most attention. "[I]nsiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it's the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content." The conventional wisdom has been that a few people do the heavy lifting at Wikipedia and everyone else makes only small contributions.
If you're sick of summer re-runs and you're wondering when your new shows start, you can look them up easily here.
