Sep 24, 1998, 5:30am

Hey just a few changes around here. I guess the most noticeable is the one above. One cool thing the local newspaper has been doing lately is putting up big panoramas on their front page and the front page of the second section. Usually there's only a few words description if any, but the idea is the picture itself tells a story. I'm going to try to do this each new rant as well, featuring a picture taken the same day I write this darned thing. Hope you like it. Maybe I'll actually be able take some cool pictures. I also plan to do real panoramas - on some days I'll use my tripod and take a full 360 or 180 degree picture and I'll use my PhotoVista software to stitch it together. Sure it's a bit of work, but I get a bit of a kick out of putting up these "up to the minute" pictures.

In other news, it looks like the move to Ditchmond is happening. Sigh. I'm not looking forward to moving out to the suburbs, but the significant other wants it for a lot of personal and professional reasons, so I'm willing to put up with the sacrifice, if only for a trial basis.

I'm making some wine and beer as you might know, and I'm only days away from the bottling session with the beer. The wine is a longer process, but it should be in bottles by mid October, with a Christmas arrival for some good drinking times. Guess what my friends are getting for Christmas this year! :-)

A lot of other stuff is going on with me, but I don't really want to bore you with the details (read into this: I don't want to talk about it!), so let's get into today's therapy session, shall we?

I've been noticing this certain trend around the Net more and more these days: People creeping commercialism into their personal sites. By "commercialism" I mean using their personal site to make money. It's something I don't have a few issues with. And since this is my own website, I get to tell you all about those issues!

Using a personal site to promote your abilities, your art, your writing, or what have you is one thing - if you can make money off of that, hey, more power to you - I admit I've made a few bucks from commercial clients because they first found out about me through this site right here. There is only one advertisement on this entire site - one for my own business, which happens to be web development. It's not something I force down people's throats - it's at the very bottom of this page in 1 sized lettering.

It used to be most of the "good" personal and non-commercial sites on the Net were along the same vein - people who designed good shit usually benefited financially through that if their job involved any aspect of what they did on their personal site. Some still practice this - Derek over at the Fray is a prime example - have you ever seen any advertisements at his sites? Sure, he has "advertisements" at Kvetch, but those are ads for the personal sites of Fray contributing writers. Nothing wrong with that.

Elsewhere on the Net things are not so cool. Sites that used to be banner and commercial free now feature gobs of little banners and icons for this service, that product, this company, and that thing. A year ago the biggest blight on personal sites, as far as I was concerned, were those crappy, slow loading Link Exchange banners. It seems these days they've been replaced by Amazon.com.

If you don't know the deal behind one of Amazon's promotion things, lemme fill you in - basically you list your fave books at your site, and you put a hyperlink on them to amazon.com. If a person clicks that hyperlink and ends up buying the book, the person who had that hyperlink gets a few pennies or whatever. Or you can simply have an "Amazon.Com" graphic on your site, and when people click that and buy books, you get a commission for any of those sales.

More and more around the net I've been seeing these things - at diary sites, at "art" sites and at writing sites. I've always had issues with combining one's personal "art" with rank commercialism. It's kind of like putting a coke can in Mona Lisa's lap or even product placement in movies.

And yes I know some artists made art out of commercialism. Andy Warhol comes to mind. But I doubt very much if Warhol ever got one red dime from Campbell's Soups. If he did, then someone please correct me.

I view personal sites, no matter what category they fit in, as art. Even when it's a first time web page builder who wants to get his or her little writings out into the public. A lot of sites I like are turning their own art into some sort of commercial gain machine, and I don't like the trend.

The issue isn't really black and white either. I'm sure some of you think I'm quite the hypocrite when I talk about mixing commercialism with art. After all, a few paragraphs back I tried to justify my own inclusion of my business name into this very personal web site. I'll admit there are some days where I really consider using HomeSite's global search and replace to strip any mention of WebMotif outta here. It's an issue I do take to heart, but in the end something my friend Jeff said to me comes to mind

Hey man, you're only promoting yourself. To not do it is ridiculous.

He's right. After all, even though its lofty to think of major artists as doing their art for art's sake, you cannot convince me Monet wasn't doing stuff to make a living. And I know for a fact he was. Towards the end of his life, Picasso was more famous for having a production line of paintings than for his paintings themselves. Warhol enjoyed the subculture he created and he lived life to the hilt, spending money faster than he was taking it in.

And don't get me wrong - I don't think what artists like Picasso did was right - but they were making money off their own art and ability - not through the posting of advertisements and making money from third parties for things that have nothing to do with their sites.

I dunno. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm not. All I know is I don't like the increasing banner-creep I'm witnessing all over the Net. It belittles the efforts of those creating art for art's sake. It also makes me think what I'm visiting most days maybe isn't worth visiting as much anymore.

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Mixelania

Photos from Algonquin Park
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Burundi and Beyond - NY Times
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St. Petersburg Times
Side mention in an article about good machines

AP Story on Espresso
Background and information provided

NY Times - Grinders Article
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Globe and Mail
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The Olympian, WA
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Seattle Times - Clover
Interviewed for comments on the Clover brewer

NY Times - How it Works
Background and information for various espresso machines

Time Mag Article
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NY Times
Front page article about consumers getting into specialty coffee.

Washington Monthly
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USA Today - Barista Jam
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CoffeeGeek
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enGadget
Great gadget site run by the guy who used to do Gizmodo.

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MoCo Loco
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Riddla on Flickr
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Canon EF 24-105 f4 L Lens
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Canon 5D
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Alzo Digital Lights
Some amazing florescent cold lights for product photography

Canon Xsi dSLR
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Canon 40D
Latest prosumer camera from Canon - a much better upgrade than the 30D

Fujitsu P1610
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28mm f1.8 Lens
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Foodsaver Advanced
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Canon 50mm 1.4
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Canon 10-22mm
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