Category: Core

It’s… this time this year is similar to this time last year. Looking forward to Jan 1, planning for Jan 1, thinking of how next year will be improved on.

Like, I’m going to write more.

Funny, though, writing more is not ne.. or should say posting more is not a great idea. Quantity is not the thing I want to bump up.

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Suicide Squad –

Why are all the superheroes in the movies spending so much time punching. If you’re truly an evil genius or god or mutant, you’re going to have such a great plan that your success/failure won’t come down to punching. These films were always tragically flawed, but at this point it’s unwatchable. I know, it has always been unwatchable. You’re right.

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I lost my Narrative Clip 2 camera a couple weeks back. So unless it turns up under the seat of my car, that project has come to an end. Much to the relief of Kyle Goon and others who were disturbed to find out that a device clipped to my shirt had been taking their photograph every ten seconds.

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Diane Rehm has broadcast her final radio show. It’s a serious loss to the world. There was no moderator of her calibre, who could keep things calm and reasoned and allow all voices to be heard with respect. This election and its special rancor was probably her biggest challenge, but I will definitely miss hearing her voice – I will subscribe to her new podcast, and hang on as long as she does.

Some of her final advice:

Rather than arguing your point, listen to the others’ perspective.

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My assignment last night was the Utah Democrats Election Night Party.

Not the happiest place.

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The coverage of the campaign has been atrocious – always falling back to the horse race rather than issues.

And how does the New York Times run the odds of Hilary winning (always over 85%) up until late last night when out of nowhere it reads Trump with 93% chance of victory?

How does the media, get it so wrong? So out of touch.

At our pre-election night photo dinner, a colleague couldn’t understand why anyone would vote for Trump, and why anyone didn’t like Hillary, that there was nothing to dislike.

But I’ve known people who have hated Hillary for twenty years. That’s beside the point. I was surprised that he gave no validity to anyone on the conservative side, that anyone opposed was simply a racist or misogynist.

They voted against Hillary because they don’t agree with a progressive agenda. I’ve kind of swerved here in my writing.

Back to the media – and more importantly the fake media, the partisan media – those outlets. The media world is so splintered into tiny outlets with little credibility.

But you know what? Readers don’t demand credibility any more. They just want to see what they agree with, or what outrages them.

It’s true in my own life – for a while this year I was looking at the Daily Mail everyday. I knew that the stories were all exaggerations and falsehoods and the most ridiculous stories. It didn’t matter, because that’s what I was looking for…

It was more fun to read the cartoon version of the news than the real news (which I read as well).

And I’ve stopped, so don’t judge.

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I’ve been saying this year that everyone always says Never Forget, and It Can Never Happen Again, and how we’ve learned so much from the Holocaust.

But really, in the future it will happen again, with much more precision and devastation. Humans have gotten better at everything – the next rise of fascism (whether or not it is Trump) will be exponentially worse.

Just back from a cold walk – with Ruby who was pinballing all around chasing sights sticks and smells.

Had someone reach out asking about the Short Creek zine I put out a while back. This was the push I needed to set up https://store.trent.photo.

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We had a great fovi8 meeting last night. I’ve pretty much finished with the back end and now the ideas are flowing from the team. It’s great to be involved with three brilliant people.

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It’s funny how you want things

Not going there.

With all of the recent hacks going on, it’s gotten to where you don’t really want to write anything down, especially in an email or text.

That’s definitely the direction I”m going. Why put anything down that reveals the a*shole that we all have inside of us? It’s not really who we are, but it comes out with quick expressions of opinion.

After watching a couple episodes of Black Mirror season 3 yesterday, I taped over all of the cameras on my devices. I don’t use them anyway, so why have an exposed window that is out of my control? Seriously.

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Eli told me that UNPA results are all finalized, but I”m still waiting on them arriving in my inbox. Yes, in November we still don’t have results from the contest. And we haven’t had a get-together to hand out the awards.

Big credit to Eli, though. He’s been handling a lot of contest work for a dozen years. He’s finally done after this one. I just need that email and he’s done.

I have moved the UNPA winners gallery site to https://unpa.trent.photo, which isn’t optimum. I don’t like having my name in the URL, but I’m no longer in the business of buying too many domains. At least, I hope those days are over.

Did I say something in the last post about taking my obsessions and doubling down on them?

I made a second PGO user and as of 16 hours later it’s at level 8. And a diff team than my main player.

On the walk this morning I realized why stop at two players? Why not a smurf of each team? If I can get them up to level 8 in less than a day…

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Double down.

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Fovi8 backend is going to go through a major testing phase when this writing session ends. New photos from a variety of users, entered into a contest, judged, and stats calc’d.

Major advances.

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Photographed a singer yesterday who has left the neighborhood meetings. He was still very raw over it, releasing a very emotional album that really puts himself out there.

Courageous, and at the same time I’m sure it will upset many of his fans still in the neighborhood.

He got choked up talking about parts of it, as he still hasn’t figured out what will replace the neighborhood in his life.

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A friend from the neighborhood: “I was wondering if you’d mind if we could grab some lunch or dinner this week someplace. i was hoping we could chat about where you are in relation to (neighborhood). I really miss seeing seeing (sic) you and your family there and know you’ve told me a little aboiut what’s going on but I wanted to just talk and get a better sense of it all if you don’t mind. If it’s too personal I understand and this isn’t like some well thought out discussion with an agenda. I honestly just think there are things you have to offer those (neighborhood) and vice versa.”

We had that dinner the other night.

My thoughts are, it’s interesting how the more progressive and open-minded people are curtailing their neighborhood involvement. This means the neighborhood meetings get less and less open minded.

The time we previously spent in the neighborhood meetings is now spent walking seven miles in City Creek Canyon together. It is breathtaking, and I am madly in love with L, 27 years on.

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The other day we had my little nephew over for the day. I tried to find kure kure takora on youtube, but it wasn’t there. So I found the greatest show for a little boy – MXC.

He was laughing at the people falling into the mud and getting crushed by giant boulders. I was laughing at the double entendre’s that give the show the added edge.

Then my other nephew showed up, who’s a teenager. And he laughed at the people falling into mud as well as the double entendre’s.

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Yesterday I published the ninth custom-design article for the main client.

Lots of thoughts on this, lots of frustration at the slow pace of improvement there.

The office is a place of silence, some of m

Focusing on the work. Photographing two soccer games today. Will be a good day to clear the mind.

P-GO – still playing, level 28. It seems to give me, I mean I’m doing so many things at once right now and pushing myself mentally. P-GO keeps the wheels spinning.

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Been building the back end of Fovi8, and it’s going to be killer. It’s the fifth time I’ve built the concept and the programming is better than ever, cleaner code, faster system, APIs, etc. Very excited to be coming to the end of the process and move into the next phase.

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Work is all about the philosophy WWJD? And it ain’t about Jesus, it’s about putting the focus on producing great photographs and getting them in faster and at higher quality than anyone else.

Sent a bunch from my phone from an assignment the other day, even with the knowledge that no one in the office was in any position to receive them, and the writer on the story would probably not have a story in until 4pm or so. Still, I was sending ready-to-publish images out of the D4 as the event was happening. Want to continue that all the time.

You’ve got to push yourself, and that’s been my thing this year. Oh, I’m getting overwhelmed with images out of the Narrative Clip that’s taking a shot every 30 seconds? The solution was obvious – triple the amount of photos it’s taking by lowering the interval to every 10 seconds.

Flood the system.

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Watched the third Presidential debate this morning, on youtube playing at 1.5x speed.

What a bizarre place we’ve all come to, where we yell at each other with such hatred and spite. It used to be all under the surface, and now people just throw it out there.

On my walk I found a sticker posted close to the ground (dog level) with Donald Trump’s face and the words “Please Pee on Me.”

Brilliant sticker work. **Not expressing an opinion on Trump**

Go through my posts and there is a long tradition of photographing street art of various positions, various statements, etc.

It’s about making a visual record of the world.

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Lately I feel like I’m living in the movie Groundhog Day. Every day seems the same, with the morning routine, the dog walk, working on code, photography, watching a show with my love.

It’s a great thing, and I go to sleep every night looking forward to it starting all over again. My love and I are alone in the house, having raised two of the most amazing children the world has ever known. We are so proud, and lucky to call them both dear friends.

.:.

And I always come back to the thought of these writings here in the Daybook. The thought of posting them, the pros and cons of such action.

I think as of today they will continue to remain offline.

The way the world is, with such a capacity for hate and shame and derision, I don’t see posting these at this point.

But I realize that eventually I will succumb and they will be out there.

Of course, there is no loss in delaying that action. This is for me not you.

This weekend is when the twice-yearly neighborhood meetings take place. They kicked off last weekend with a women-only event, where one speaker posited the idea that people in the neighborhood are being too sensitive to those with same-sex attraction, those who aren’t married, those who can’t have children.

It was nearly a year ago that the neighborhood organization came out with a hateful policy toward the LGBT community and their children.

I’ve rarely been prouder of my family – the four of us – than in our unity on this issue. Tolerance, love, understanding, hope.

Back from RNC – biggest memory I guess is that they used a wire photo on the front page instead of my photos. I had a great one, too. I got seriously f*cked by my own org. Thanks!

I’m really down on a lot of the major tech offerings. I’m completely off goo now. And as far as facb, it’s so dominant now that I need it for research/journalism purposes (but not going to post there anymore, or read).

Observation: there’s a group of PJs on facb that is always posting about copyright infringement, rights grabs, and generally judging everyone. It’s natural, as the money in pj has completely evaporated…

…but my main point about the facb pj group is this – > why are they on facb? of all places to talk about protecting your IP, controlling your destiny?

And why are so many others there? I think back to the 80s punk rock philosophies that defined me so much. DIY, own it, control it, don’t go in for these multinational corporations (who are always corrupted in the end).

Why are there huge groups of punk rockers (old school punk rockers) on facb.?

I need to go completely open web.

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I keep thinking about starting up a new WP blog at trent.photo. Somewhere I could throw all kinds of things that I collect along the way – photos, screenshots, stories.

I think WP is one of the tech companies who has not lost their way – still believes in the customer.

But I keep nearly pulling the trigger, because the people on this planet are all producing way too much content. For some reason people (including myself) think that they are being read, that their photos are being looked at, etc.

Junk content. I’ve done pretty well avoiding it lately. The worst app for it in my life is the web browser. I need to block some sites so that they are impossible to reach. I get nothing from them.

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The amount of data input is still too high. I need to spend more time and thought cycles with less content. I need to filter out the noise and gain better focus. It’s coming.

Also, I just finished Vanderpump Rules Season One. Wow. Junk food too tasty, apparently.

Being a dad – you get laughed at because you still haven’t fixed the rear view mirror of your car. But

This trip is about over. The sun is rising and I’m about to drive home.

For all of the homesickness I felt on the trip, the photos were good. Even the parade that I didn’t expect much from produced at least a couple of interesting photographs.

And Short Creek was a good time. Was able to connect with some good people and hear their amazing stories. They are so generous in sharing and I owe them a lot of gratitude.

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I’ve cut out a lot of junk food media, and spent the morning reading from The Digital Antiquarian, a blog collecting histories of the development of early computer games. Very fascinating, taking me back to my teenage years when I would spend hours glued to a screen absorbing these games.

In those days I had a focus so clear that I would nearly reverse engineer the games

Now my memory is more spongy – sucking in more data than ever imagined, yet a little sloppy recalling the details.

Maybe it’s age, but I think a big part of it is the amount of data consumed. It’s sunrise and I’ve already checked in with a variety of sources, reading dozens of headlines. It’s the kind of intake that would have been impossible without current technology and networks. And I don’t know that it’s terribly good practice. Something I’m working on -> consuming healthy, nutritious data.

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TV: Black Mirror Seasons 1 and 2. Episode 2 of Season 2 was 5 star. Wow. Truly disturbing and brilliant and bleakest of comedy.

Though I should say this is a trap I constantly fall into. When I’m alone on the road experiencing no social interaction, at my lowest, I find myself reading a book about prison or watching a show like Black Mirror.

Or maybe my media tastes are just always bleak.

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Driving back we listen to AM radio – fascinating. Did you know there’s a cure for cancer that’s just flaxseed oil and cottage cheese? Order now!

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4th of July.

It’s my third morning waking up alone in a hotel room. The sunrises are beautiful and I’ve made timelapses of a couple.

But being alone so much can crack you. I’ve been ready to go home for a while now.

Looking back, I came down … I mean I came down here for good reasons – the photos were there. But I need to be home now.

Today we are covering the parade in Hurricane, and then we’ll hit Short Creek for some of I don’t know what. That part doesn’t seem planned out. That’s why I came earlier.

There was a huge gathering in Short Creek on Saturday, and a small fledgling parade through town. I got some great photos.

As always I check in with myself – never mind.

Daybook posts are supposed to be where

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The big issue I’m dealing with

I’m taking in too much content. I’m too isolated. And when I’m around people my mind is busy computing all the data I’m taking in.

Inputs are -> web, podcasts, longform articles, ebooks, music, video.

I need to cut web drastically. I read so many articles and pages. But the same information comes to me in a better, nuanced way through podcasts and longform. Even books.

Podcasts? N asked me how many I listened to regularly. It was 38, and has grown since. I need to start weeding out the ones I don’t really care about. At least the episodes. No harm in subscribing…

So I can listen to more music. Because when I’m listening to music my mind is processing all the data it has taken in, and coming up with ideas.

As far as video, I’ve experimented with YouTube over the past week – it’s mostly garbage, at least the stuff in my feed. Nothing would be missed if app was deleted.

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Mostly I need to be writing here.

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Not sure when I’ll upload all these recent writings.

Because a few things – why the need to share? questioning that whole idea of social sharing.

Really the important thing is what you create as an artist. The behind the scenes, the thoughts and opinions? Not so important. The focus should be on the work.

Also, the way everything is recorded and tracked and monitored is on my mind. Considering the idea of simply posting the photographic work without words, a la Gilles Peress.

Words today seem like traps that you set for yourself, giving others a snare.

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Do need to start posting photographs.

Feel the need to get off Facebook, and disconnect from Google services.

Wondering why do many artists and punk rockers and iconoclasts are helping build up the world’s wealthiest men by posting on and using these company’s products.

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I’ve been listening to Tim Ferris’ podcast. Lots of interviews with people doing incredible things, pursuing a lot of ideas and goals similar to me.

Efficiency. Pure, cold efficiency.

Need to take an overview of everything I’m doing and trim a lot out.

Now, seemingly always, drowning in content.

Reading like three books, in the middle of a film I’ve seen before, and also now converting all the longform articles in my reading list to PDFs (400+ so far) so that I can read them.

Because I’ve now got two iPads – one for movies and one for books/PDFs.

It’s out of control, a race I’ll never win. If anything, it gives my brain a problem to work on – the cataloging and sorting of the content. I spend as much time on that as anything else.

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Over 10,000 photos from the Narrative Clip 2 so far, mostly all unusable. Still, another thing to keep the mind occupied.

Ideas about how to keyword those – timelapse, then I don’t know. Do I actually edit this stuff or just collect.

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Back on the idea of building a panoramic rig. I had this idea a couple of years ago, and the only problem was the cost. Now that two years have passed, maybe the gear I need for this project will be less expensive. Maybe.

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Sent out an e-mail yesterday about a project. No response from the team. I think that particular ship might have sunk.

And yet I spent an hour coding this morning. Probably time to put it on pause.

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New owner at the main client.

Much better transition than the previous new owner.

Then -> this newspaper was sh*t yesterday, but now that we own it it’s gold.
Translation: everyone who works here except us new owners is sh*t.

Now -> you’ve done a tremendous job throughout all of the previous drama.

I’m hoping that we can move ahead, lose the PTSD that a lot of us have from uncertainty and drama.

I’m hoping for new projects to spring up (including the ones I have pitched months ago).

I’m hoping for communication and accountability. Two things we are in desperate need of.

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Filling in at the office today.

First stop – sharpen three pencils, grab some index cards.
Now to see what’s on the schedule. It’s 9am.

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Scheduling takes seven minutes. One new assignment, one time change, a few switches to be made. Now 53 minutes until morning meeting.

One of the assignments simply reads:
Third south is not in compliance with fire code

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Out of meeting at 11:15 – it went long – chartbeat demo

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Meanwhile…

+ backing up photo archive to another external drive
+ downloading newsgroup materials
+ upload to overcast.fm/uploads
+ calibre: download metadata for ebooks
+ eat energy bar
+

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I thought my Meanwhile list would be a lot longer, but work was a full shift putting out fires and scheduling things. Everything on the Meanwhile list was pretty much background tasks.

But, there were some great moments.

+ Still on the budget of stories being worked on months later, the item “LDS Water Bottles.”
+ We sit through a demo of a new live tracking web stats system, which shows that our most popular piece of content today is a cake recipe.
+ I find a box of floppy disks, one labeled “Minority Job Fair.”