I, Curtis

Fitting In, Moving Forward

This has been a somewhat turbulent and interesting week so far, and its only a little over half over.

First of all: at this point I am enrolled in no courses that are directly taught by the sociology department. I’m really not sure what to think about this. The course I was originally in wasn’t taught by sociology faculty, but was merely cross-listed with our department. The course originated in Religious Studies (Social Theory in Religious Studies was the course). I really have no strong academic interest in religion, except as a secondary factor of social status and the maintenance of hegemonic control over society. My coursework toward my degree this semester is a Survey Methods course taught by Educational Research, which I think will be extremely helpful in the construction of my thesis study, and Philosophical Methods which I am using as an elective. I don’t know if Philosophical Methods will help me a lot with things, but I feel like it might help me center myself academically by returning to the roots of where my academic curiosity began.

Second: I took an interesting dive this semester. I am enrolled in 6 hours in my secondary program (MS IT).

I started my week by going to the religious studies class. I decided after going into it that it really isn’t for me, it isn’t covering anything that will help toward my thesis or my greater academic understanding. I just am not academically curious about religion. The final stake in the heart of me taking that course was a single seat opening up in ITIS 6112, Software System Integration. I had considered the course before and the only thing stopping me from taking it was the religious studies course in the same time slot and my previous commitment to a cohort-mate to take the class with him. With the cohort-mate deciding that he would rather be in social stratification and the opening of the other class, I just had to take it.

On Tuesday I went to my first meeting of Philosophical Methods and Analysis. I was greeted by other members of the class who already knew me and the instructor who I had only met once also greeted me by name. I was very much at ease. The discussion for the class centered around the question “what is philosophy?”. Part of that discussion addressed the idea that philosophy is the origin of all other disciplines and that philosophy still functions as a medium between the disciplines. This is the sort of thought that reassures me that I am not as confused about what I want to do with my research (or life) as I thought, I just take a philosophical approach.

Wednesday was another one of those very unusual days. I started my third ever graduate-level class taught by CCI faculty. While most classes in sociology are taught close to the same way, CCI contains a mix of teaching methods by instructors with diverse backgrounds. I was somewhat anxious when reading the class roster because I was concerned about being a minority in the class. My previous CCI classes had been in flat classrooms not in lecture hall style arrangements or in a tiered lab setting like this one. Going to the class wasn’t bad at all and I actually felt like I fit in pretty well, as the class was fairly diverse. The subject matter of the class wasn’t unfamiliar either, it felt quite comforting to be back in IT for such an applied technical learning sort of way. Oddly, several sociological issues were raised during the class, such as unequal access to Internet connectivity and the role of privilege in how applications are designed.

Thursday evening my emotions and thoughts swung around the other way. I went to Survey Research Methods and found myself drawn back in to the possibilities for social research (even if this class is focused on the educational outcomes aspects of society). I can’t say that I am highly moved by the course, but I do believe it will be fun and might help get me back on track in my pursuit of sociology as well.

This week has been a battle between two parts of my intellectual curiosity trying to unify and become one. I do think that I will find a way to make it work, especially since my current course schedule has me doing equal work in both of my degree areas.

One thing I am realizing is that I do need to put my gender and sexuality academic interests aside when it comes to my degrees, but I need to do what I can to become professionally engaged with that side of sociology. The scope of sociology as a discipline is pretty wide, but each department takes its own corner of that larger discipline. Mine is pretty limited, but that won’t stop me from being engaged in both my own department and the wider discipline. The biggest thing I need to do is return to writing. I don’t write nearly enough for my own personal reflection or to articulate little thoughts that enter my mind that are of academic, ethical or philosophical importance.

So, next week I will begin my modified schedule which will have me directly alternating between social science/humanities and information technology courses each day:

Monday: Software Systems Design and Implementation
Tuesday: Philosophical Methods
Wednesday: Network Based Application Development
Thursday: Survey Research Methods

GITI v3

Working on GITI’s third version has been harder than any of the previous versions. V1 was an experiment that grew into a mostly-functional personal information manager. From the start is barely did anything beyond schedule items and some basic educational tracking stuff (assignment-level stuff). V2 grew out of V1 being structurally inadequate for the mission it was to take on. The change over to V2 was filled with struggles, but it wasn’t too bad because all of the V1 modules were mostly compatible with V2 except for some minor encapsulation changes. V3 presents more of a challenge.

Whereas for V1 and V2 I was the primary person responsible for writing “The Interface” (the back end that runs and “is” GITI), for V3 Chris has taken on the responsibility of writing that portion of the code, as well as some additional supporting frameworks. Chris has written an Interface that is drastically different than any of the previous versions of GITI and therefore all of the modules are completely incompatible and have to be adjusted or re-written to make them work. On the surface this is a pain and a problem, but in reality, it gives some much needed revitalization to code that in some cases may have not been changed in 10 years.

Earlier today I began reading the Wikipedia articles for Personal Information Management and Personal Information Manager. Reading those articles reminded me a lot of what GITI is supposed to be. GITI can’t be just a simple piece of software, it has to take on the personality of its users to be useful. The personal information manager article notes that one of the key problems facing PIMs is that they become a part of a fractured data ecosystem, which ultimately is against the goals of personal information management. GITI started off handling address books, schedules, todo lists, assignments, journals and a variety of other information. Since that time it has become more practical to keep address books in a cloud service like Google Contacts, same with schedule on Google Calendar. Journals have been moved to WordPress. The only thing remaining is the data that GITI stores on educational activity (assignments, class registration, etc) and a few other items that aren’t easily tracked through other tools (like footwear utilization). Some aspects of personal information management have passes beyond the scope of GITI’s usefulness and become a ubiquitous part of mobile computing (or ironically “ubiquitous computing” as it is being called recently). Address books and calendars have always shared a dual space between PIM and PDA tasks and now smart phones cross the bridge between the two, so perhaps those entities no longer need a home in GITI beyond a token level of access? I would love to be able to see my external calendars in GITI, but I don’t really have a need to manage all of that information from GITI. At some point trying to do everything in GITI is just reinventing the wheel and does not go anywhere productive. Some modules have outlived their useful lives and need to be retired instead of being brought into the new version, while other modules (new modules) need to be written to reflect the needs of the users.

While the old modules are being converted by Chris and myself, I am also working on writing a new module to handle domain names. I have had this “need” in a PIM for a while, but it was never really possible to practically implement a module to take care of some of this stuff until last year when I gained access to my registrar’s API. This is another situation where I really have to focus on the fundamentals and not reinventing what has already been done. The utility provided by my registrar to manage domains is great, but it is nice having access to that data inside GITI as well. I am sort of merging my previous host registry/WHOIS tool with the APIs to create a functional information source to take care of my needs.

V3 is far from complete and it is questionable whether or not it will be ready for the semester, even as a fully-functional experiment. There is much work to be done, but hopefully the inspiration will strike to put things in the right direction for an orderly transition to the new GITI.

Thinking About DNS

DNS servers are things we don’t like to think about, and as long as they are functioning we don’t tend to care to think about them. Every day we use DNS servers, whether to enact a query (to lookup a webpage) or to make domains accessible. This post will focus on the latter.

Most of us don’t really think about who provides DNS access to our domain names because we get DNS servers through our domain registrars as a “value added” service. When is that “value added” service not enough? I guess that has to be a personal decision based on your needs and desires for your domain.

For me personally, registrar-based services were no longer enough when I switched to OpenSRS and discovered that their DNS servers do not support Dynamic DNS, something I had gotten accustomed to having through eNom previously. For people like me who run our own web servers (or have our boyfriends manage one for us) on a dynamic IP address, this is a tiny problem. For this reason I had to weigh my options carefully when moving to OpenSRS. I could either suffer with eNom’s horrible support, impersonal treatment of customers and potential for foul occurrences and have kick-ass DNS servers, or I could have what I needed in a registrar and seek DNS somewhere else. Since the service I was seeking was a good quality registrar I went with OpenSRS and started seeking out other providers of DNS servers. I found what I was looking for in Zerigo. For less than the difference I was paying OpenSRS under eNom I could have professionally hosted DNS (with my own vanity DNS servers).

Everything was going well with Zerigo until a few months ago, when suddenly their servers were being attacked, making my domains inaccessible by the world. While Zerigo did what they could to mitigate the attacks and keep at least one of their servers online (1 is all you really need anyway), it didn’t always go so well and they lost service completely on and off for a few days. While I’m sure there are ways to fault Zerigo on their fault-tolerance policies, or some other technical issue, it still doesn’t solve the actual problem. Every individual DNS provider is vulnerable. Any DNS servers that share a common characteristic (owner, administrator, physical location, backbone connection, server software, etc) is vulnerable to attack or outage due to some issue or another. The flaw that myself and every other person who relies on a single set of DNS servers (such as those provider by a registrar) is that they can all be compromised at the same time. DNS is a very likely single point of failure for the Internet and as such, redundancy is important.

While redundancy is very important, I think I may have taken it too seriously when my problems with Zerigo came about. I now use Zerigo, XpertDNS and Hurricane Electric’s DNS. My primary domains are on all three providers (I have a total of 14 available individual DNS servers). Less important domains are running with Zerigo as primary and HE as a backup. On many of my domains I have filled all 13 available DNS server positions, giving me the highest level of redundancy allowed under the current DNS standards.

For people who are on their registrar’s DNS or have another single set of DNS servers I seriously recommend HE’s free DNS hosting (http://dns.he.net) as a backup DNS provider to supplement your primary servers.

On Registrars

I used to blog a good bit about domain names and registrars and such, but I haven’t done so much recently because in general life has settled down in that area.

A long time ago I recommended eNom as my preferred domain name registrar because they were relatively small and they had a great support department that it was possible to talk to at any time when you had problems. That was before they were a part of DemandMedia, which in my opinion is about as evil as Network Solutions. eNom has become bloated, costly and a haven for bad resellers and bad reseller support. eNom does not protect its customers in any way. I have heard many reports in domain forums regarding the awful way that customers of resellers get treated when something happens to their domains (such as a reseller changing the “owner” info to their own).

I used to be an eNom reseller. I was drawn in initially by good prices on domain names provided by being a member of the reseller program. At the time I was accidentally made a reseller because only resellers could add funds to their accounts by using a check and at the time I was not of age to have any sort of credit or debit card. This is an instance where the “accident” was eNom overlooking their own policies in an effort to help me out, to allow me to do what I needed to do to be a functional member of their system. I stayed with eNom for a long time, from December 2000 until October 2011. In October 2011 I became frustrated with some of the changes to the way domains were managed and with the increasing prices of domains (or more accurately, my diminishing discount).

Before eNom I was with Network Solutions and then GoDaddy. Network Solutions was always overpriced. GoDaddy always seemed a little too incompetent. From those two options, eNom was amazing at the time. Recently however, some of my opinions have changed, a lot. I used to believe that Network Solutions was simply overpriced, but was overall trustable, since they were the direct successor to InterNIC. My feelings are now that not only is Network Solutions overpriced, but they are also unable to be trusted. Just for fun I registered a domain with Network Solutions in their $0.50 domain promotion. I could not believe the amount of up-selling and junk mail that came to my inbox as a result. Also their domain management interface is difficult to use and their methods of assigning contacts is backward (or perhaps “legacy” would be a better way to state it). You have to create each “contact” before you can assign them to a domain, just like back in the early days when every person was assigned a “NIC Handle” (I was CMK72) by the registry (this was before the thin-registry model, so it was all one registry). I would not want to manage a domain name portfolio with them.

GoDaddy… what can I say about their changes? Well, when I was using GoDaddy for a little while they were not as misogynistic or sexualized as they are now. No race car drivers of superbowl ads. Fortunately that’s where the negative changes seem to stop. Off and on I still use GoDaddy for single-domain registrations or situations where they can give me a better initial price than OpenSRS. I have heard a few negative things regarding their transfer-out process, but as far as I can tell, that has not been an issue recently. I can get my EPP keys by myself, even before the transfer window is open. They do enforce ICANN’s 60-day hold, which is often a complaint of many GD customers. I believe the issue there is that GoDaddy makes the transfer date visible in the panel, even though others do not. GoDaddy’s management panel can be a bit cumbersome at times, but in general makes managing multiple domains very easy. I personally, as a total DNS geek, love the fact that if you are using their DNS servers you can download a copy of the Zone file. Even for domains not on their DNS they have a great diagnostic system that may help resolve a lot of beginner mistakes with domains.

My absolute worst domain registrar experience was Register.com. They practically held my domain name hostage and would not issue me an EPP (domain transfer key) without an escalation to their compliance department and multiple forms of identification, which is a violation of ICANN’s policies on transfers. I had to invoke that policy and contact ICANN’s compliance office to have the policy enforced before the domain was released to me. While I could go into the domain and edit my DNS servers as much as I wanted (a normal procedure), requesting my EPP key required further validation, which by ICANN Uniform Transfer policy is a violation of the domain owner’s rights. I think their case was simply that they wanted to verify that I was the owner, even though my EPP request came from the same IP as my initial registration.

Currently the registrar I use on a daily basis is OpenSRS. Just like with eNom, I am a reseller with OpenSRS. In October 2011 I was lured into trying OpenSRS by a discount on their registration fee. I had been aware of OpenSRS for a while, but I always thought of it as some elite club for people with 10,000 domains under their control, or “serious domainers”. Turns out its open to anyone who will pay their registration fee. At first this sounds sort of pretentious, but it really isn’t. All domain costs in OpenSRS are the base registry fee + $3.00 + ICANN tax ($0.18). The worst feature of OpenSRS is the control panel where all of the serious features (not the day-to-day features) are located looks like it was written in 1999. It isn’t sleek, it isn’t cool, it isn’t even that functional sometimes, but its for those little tasks you only need to do once in a while, such as registering DNS servers in a foreign registry or canceling (refunding) a domain. The newer management panel which OpenSRS is working to make feature-complete is really nice, kind of sleek and has features that make managing many domains a breeze. It works as well for 5 domains as it does for 5000 domains. Other than the $95 registration fee to join, OpenSRS is a great registrar to be with.

If you have 5 or more domains, I might suggest OpenSRS as a good place to start. There is a fee to become a reseller, but it will pay for itself in the first few domains. If you are just managing one or two domains (or have no idea what you are doing) I would suggest GoDaddy.

As a third option, if you want me to manage your domain, you can register it through http://domains.pcfire.net and it will be registered through OpenSRS under my purview. Even though the domains registered there are under my administrative authority, the domain is registered to the actual registrant and the registrant retains control of the domain through the management panel. Also, I promise to take good care of any domain under my control.

Recent website outages

Recently my DNS provider began experiencing a DNS amplification denial of service attack. This resulted in all of my websites being down for a period of about two days. In an attempt to prevent this type of problem from impacting my websites in the future I have now added two backup DNS providers. When a DNS server fails, the query is attempted on other servers on the list until one works. I am hopeful that this will reduce the impact of any future attacks.

As a general rule domains may utilize up to thirteenth servers, and as I was only using five there was plenty of room for improvement. The root zone uses twelve separate providers for its thirteen servers, and while my domains are not as critical there is technical advantage to removing all possible single points of failure. Perhaps having two backups is paranoid, but it will allow me to use all thirteenth name server spaces on my domains.

Advanced Digital and Pseudo-Digital Film Photography

Digital photography and film photography are different. This seems like a logical place to start, perhaps too basic, but logical. For me there are a lot of similarities between digital photography and film as well though because after the analog printing process the negatives are scanned and enter my digital image processing workflow. My digital photos are mostly complete before I can even touch them, the camera does a lot of the work, so it feels good to develop the film myself and know that I have a hand in the process, but there are things that film cannot do. Likewise there are things that digital is not well suited to.

For me, film is not a color process. As much fun as film developing is, I have no desire to learn the intricacies of C-41 to do things in color. This means that my tool for color has to be digital, and I am actually ok with that, digital is good with color, even if it does attempt to make things overly balanced, even and neat. While film is not so great at color, even for people who have the patience to deal with C-41, it is exceptionally good at delivering great tonal range. Film is also good at reacting to light and being responsive to optical filters applied when a photo is captured. I do enjoy playing with color, which is the reason I have an interest in HDR and tone mapping techniques.

The past two weeks I have worked on the thoughts I presented in my previous post. I have been shooting in RAW for digital and working with filters again in film. While thinking through the differences between the two mediums and how I apply them, I did begin to conceive of my film scanner a little differently. Before I was thinking of the film scanner as simply a method to move my analog negatives to a digital format. That simply cannot be the case. All of the documentation on scanning film considers the film scanner as an archival tool for preserving and fixing negatives that have aged. I am working with fresh film, but I still have all of the other tools available as well, so I have begun to think of the film scanner more like a photographic enlarger or other printing equipment in its optical properties. I can vary the brightness, amount to preserve the tonal range and how deep the shadows should be. This means that I have a good amount of control over each image, something that I was not taking advantage of before. From the digital side of things I have begun working with RAW files to allow me to do more work with the color depths, light levels and contrast of the images. One of the fun things I’ve been working with a lot is color subtraction. I have enjoyed removing certain colors from images for the purpose of making other colors stand out and producing a more dramatic image. This is similar to my filter techniques for film which allow me to emphasize certain colors (by filtering their wavelengths, or filtering their opposite).

I still have a lot to learn with both film and digital, but I feel like I’m gaining an awareness of the capabilities of each medium and I feel like the best thing for me to do as a creative photographer is to continue using both mediums, but to think carefully about the subject matter that is used with each to make the most interesting image.

Above are some examples of my work in both mediums. In my opinion the flower is better in digital (top left), where as the boots are more interesting and dramatic in film (bottom right). The flower was shot in both digital and film using a light green filter to reduce the impact of the foliage and emphasize the reds in the blossom (without overpower it). In digital I was able to further suppress the greens and bring out the reds, whereas in film all I was able to do was deepen the reds and slightly reduce the intensity of the green. The film boot photo was captured using an R25 (medium) red filter, the digital was captured without a filter. While I like both images, I find that the texture of the leather shows through more in the film version, which makes the boot appear soft, whereas the digital version shows the leather (of the brown boot) in a more harsh way, making the leather look more waxy and stiff than it appears in reality.

Posted from Bessemer City, North Carolina, United States.

An Update to My Developing Process

Over three years ago when I first dove into film photography and the related development process I wrote an article, The Developing Process. In that time I have adjusted some of the basic techniques a bit and have changed my materials as well.

Last time was just a list of steps, this is perhaps less useful as a guide to others getting started in film developing, so I will this time begin with materials.

Materials Needed

Developing Tank Kit (Tank, reel, light-proof funnel, lid)
Scissors and bottle opener
Weighted Film Hangars
Beakers (500mL is adequate for a single roll)
Mixed developer (I suggest Ilford ID-11 or another high-quality developer)
Fixer (I use Ilford’s Rapid Fix Non-Hardening)
Stop Bath (optional, but recommended, I use IlfoStop)
Wetting Agent (optional, but I use Kodak PhotoFlo)
Clock with seconds (or an iOS or Android device loaded with DigitalTruth’s Massive Dev Chart Timer)
Thermometer for developer

The Process

Step 1:

Set up tank (cleaned), reel, bottle opener, film and scissors in light-proof room
Turn off the lights
Open film canister and gently remove film roll
Cut off half-width leader on front of roll
Load film on to reel
Cut end of film off of the roll
Insert reel into tank
Insert center column and funnel
Lid tank tightly
Turn lights back on

Step 2:

Load the developer in the tank. Start developer timer.
Determine the developer time by a chart provided by the developer maker or film maker
Time the developer based on film type and temperature of the developer bath
At end of time, empty developer.

Pour in stop bath solution

Agitate for about 1 minute

Some guides suggest pre-rinsing film, I do not, as it saturates the film and may alter development times.

Step 3:

Pour in fixer (1:4 mix for Illford Rapid)
Fix for 5 – 10 minutes, agitate for 10 seconds every minute
Empty tank

Step 4:

Wash film for 5-10 minutes by allowing running water to flow into and out of the tank

A film washing hose can introduce pressure to the process and ensure a more thorough wash.

Mix a drop of wetting agent with enough water for the tank

Pour in wetting solution, agitate for 30 seconds, dump.

Step 5

Remove funnel from tank. Remove reel from tank.

Pull end of roll free from reel and attach the weighted hangar

Gently pull remainder of the roll free from the reel

Clamp non-weighted hangar to front of the roll

Hang to let dry (usually overnight works well)

At this point I typically make Chris cut my film into strips of 5, and then I scan them to digital, but more adventurous people are free to make contact sheets or produce enlargements.

About Reusing Chemicals

Most developers discourage reuse, so do I. Use it once, then toss it, its not worth it to have developer you can’t trust
Until recently I did not reuse fixer, but now I do. When developing multiple rolls close together (same day or few day period), I will reuse my working-strength fixer.
Stop Bath is usually “indicator stop bath”, if its yellow, you are good to go, if it starts to change colors, toss it. It dies with the absorption of developer, but it will let you know when.
Wetting Agent – it takes about an eye-dropper of wetting agent per roll. I toss used wetting agent mixtures.

Notes

Most fixers no longer contain “hypo”, and thus, there is no need for a hypo-clearing agent
Wetting agent is nice to help the film dry, but film isn’t ruined without it
Stop Bath completely stops development, I recommend it for beginners as it gives a measure of safety to the process
If using the DigtalTruth Massive Dev chart app, it will walk you through most of the steps, including when to agitate and when to not agitate.

Posted from Huntersville, North Carolina, United States.

Somewhere Between Film and Sensor

For the past two years a lot of my photography has been in the form of black and white film photography. I accepted film as a challenge: a new medium to explore and learn from. I have come to realize that I have taken film photography as far as I intended to take it and as such it would probably be in my best artistic/creative interest to file it away as a tool and a method, but not as my primary photographic medium.

I reached this conclusion after looking back over my HDR photos yesterday and realizing that I have missed my other techniques and that I have been too monotonous (through a monochromatic medium even). An issue I now face is how to gracefully re-enter my older digital style, while retaining what I have added to my style through the use of film.

First of all, I know that I am going to have to slow down my digital pace. Every exposure on film is special, it is recoded on a finite medium that will remain for as long as the medium is able to survive (a long time once properly developed and fixed). Digital is virtually infinite. The images are recorded, transferred and moved about. Each image is special but for an instant until it is quickly replaced by another special or great image. Digital sucks the art out of photography if you let it, it is too perfect, too stable, too reproducible.

Second, as an extension of a slower pace, I will need to learn to shoot in RAW. Or more importantly, I will have to learn to process in RAW. I am from an era in digital imaging where the JPEG is everything, its how images exist and are transferred, but it is a compressed form that is pre-manufactured… JPEG digital photography is functionally equivalent to shooting with a Polaroid. The camera makes certain decisions and those decisions are committed to the file. RAW is more like having a negative, it can be modified in various ways with various treatments. There is more sensor data available and a wider tonal range to interact with.

Finally, I need to spend more time with the photographs once I have taken them. This goes along with the previous point somewhat. Its not about getting the perfect exposure or the perfect color on a photo, it is about selecting the correct way to portray the subject, the best way to see something. While it may seem that realism is the way to go in photography, it is very boring and misses one of the key benefits of photography over real life, there are many ways to view something. Manipulating color spaces, adjusting contrasts in those spaces and expanding the tonal range of the images creates new ways to view things. For digital, I cannot allow myself to accept realism as the default state anymore.

As an extension of these three points of change, I have to start thinking in the physical. With the use of film there is always a physical copy, even if it is in inverse form. I probably should think about producing digital images with the intention of them eventually being printed and being physical pieces of work. It is not enough to have a massive collection of photos stored digitally, in reality that probably is nearly worthless from an artistic perspective. There needs to be a lot of photos, but they have to be individual works, not a collection of point and shoot frames without meaning and without some sense of individuality and personality.

ExIf 35 Build 20130520

ExIf 35 0.2.20130521
May 21, 2013
--------------------

Release Information:
	*Released as Windows Executable
	*Released as Windows Installer

System Requirements (PC):
	*Must be running Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
	*Supports Windows 2000 and higher
	*Software is developed and tested on Windows 7	
	
Changes:
	*Implemented the ability to import exposure data from the 'EXIF4FILM'
        Android application by CodeUnited. 
	*Added ability to edit data across multiple exposures at the same time
        (Additional Information > Add Information to Multiple)
	
Support:
	*Email EXIF35@PCFIRE.NET
	*Website: http://exif35.pcfire.net
	*SourceForge: http://sf.exif35.pcfire.net

Developed By:
	*Curtis M. Kularski

Informal Summer Goals

I have placed a few informal summer goals for myself in GITI to guide me toward being prepared to write and defend my thesis on time.