Two Cents and a Thousand Words

I went downtown to see the reenactment of the Al Brady gang shootout this afternoon. It made me realize how much I take the skill and devotion of event organizers for granted.

For those unfamiliar with Central Street in downtown Bangor, it’s a narrow street that directs one-way traffic from Harlow Street to the intersection of Main and Hammond around a pretty sharp curve. It’s lined with businesses in three- and four-story buildings, and the visibility isn’t all that great under normal conditions.

Now try packing a thousand people onto the sidewalks. Without any barricades or direction, they’ll naturally try to overflow into the closed street. When they did this, the people who had been “waiting all day”* would jeer, shout, and scream that they couldn’t see. This did, of course, result in entertaining cheers and applause as organizers and police cleared the street later on.

The big appeal of reenactments is the authenticity of the presentation. With signs and cars placed specially for this event, Central Street looked great – and the actors did a great job portraying an important piece of Bangor history seventy years after it happened. It wouldn’t have been as authentic without the true setting of the incident, but the natural configuration of the street made the presentation less than ideal. Combined with a less-than-authentic script and numerous delays due to movement of the spectators, it left something to be desired.

I hope that it’s done again under better conditions, and I hope that I can see the video of the presentation at some point. I was very impressed by the turnout, and I learned a lot about that fateful event seventy years ago. And, of course, I managed to take some pictures of my favorite part of the day Central Street went back to 1937.

* The “waiting all day” crowd was mysteriously absent when I was at Bagel Central three hours before the event. If they really want to know about “waiting all day”, they should talk to some of the people who waited for the iPhone.

UPDATE: The Bangor Daily has a recap and a highlight video. The video is a good compilation of what happened, and there are some interesting reader comments about whether the event was worth commemorating or not. BDN photojournalist Bridget Brown continues to deliver some great photos, too.

I’ll be straightforward with you all: I haven’t been doing very well lately. I’ve been feeling burnt out, run down, and just generally uncreative – and that’s the worst thing that could happen to me. With that in mind, I’ve decided after a lot of thought to change a lot of the things that I do in order to jump start my motivation and creativity as we wind our way into th winter. Partially as an apology for the sparseness of my posts here and partially as a simple heads up about what’s going on, I’m going to outline a few of the biggest changes I plan to make over the next couple of months.

Two Cents and a Thousand Words
I’ve been blogging in some form or another since 2001. I love my blog. Lately, though, I haven’t quite figured out what to do with it. Over the years it’s basically grown into a random collection of my thoughts and life events, and I’ve let it go by the wayside as I’ve explored other ways to keep my family, friends, and followers (heh, like there are any followers) in the know. If you don’t know by now, my collage is probably a better way to keep informed about what I’m doing and thinking, but I think my blog still has a place.

Unfortunately, blogging comes at a cost these days. The cost, quite simply, is in the currency of comment spam. I recently installed the latest version of WordPress for 2C&1000W, and (after some pressure from my hosting company) I also installed the spam blocker Akismet. All new comments run through it now, and it seems to be doing its job; it’s blocked 13,369 spam comments since I installed it… yesterday afternoon. If by any chance one of your comments doesn’t appear, it may have gotten blocked; please let me know.

Photography
I have this little site called Pine Tree Photography. It’s a great gallery, but I want to take it to the next level. Over the next couple of months, I plan to work diligently to make it my first venture into e-commerce; if all goes well, you’ll be able to buy my photos by the end of the year. I don’t expect it to be a huge revenue stream or anything, but I’ve always dreamed of having a store online. This just seems perfect.

Semsym
Ah, Semsym. I started Semsym as M@ineSites almost ten years ago (November 22… wow). Since then I’ve launched about a dozen sites and services under its combined umbrella, and it’s kept me inspired to develop more (not to mention the file I have with about 150 other ideas for sites). I’ve had some great experiences with the sites of the Semsym Network.

Well, I’ve decided to stop developing the network. I may go back and do improvements on the existing sites, or I may launch an occasional new site or service under the Justin Russell name, but I won’t be devoting time building Semsym for a while. To be honest I don’t have much interest in doing development right now; the amount I do at work combined with the pressure I put on myself to work on other sites has just been too much for me lately. Instead I’m going to diversify and concentrate my efforts on other (not entirely computer based) interests.

My other (not entirely computer based) interests
Since I’ve been focusing so much on development (and photography) lately, a couple other interests of mine have been ignored. I intend to fix this over the next couple of months.

My friend Kelley (along with C.C. and Matthew and Mitch) has convinced me to come to PodCamp Boston at the end of the month. PodCamp’s a lot like BarCamp but with an added emphasis on podcasting, multimedia, and other stuff.

I can’t very well go to PodCamp without trying this podcasting thing out myself, though. By the time I leave for Boston, I hope to brush off my environmental interest and have at least one episode of my new Small Steps Podcast out the door.

But that’s not all. I also want to jump-start my interest in writing. To help satisfy my desire for a more focused blog, I plan to start a new site having to do with practical, everyday design. I have lots of ideas, but we’ll see what happens with it.

The challenge of it all
If you don’t already see, my brain is pretty scattered. It always has been, actually. My new challenge is to find a way to combine my interests – photography, writing, environmentalism, and design – under some sort of unifying vision. I already have three business cards, and I could easily have five by the end of this new page. I’d love to hear any feedback about how I can tie all of these interests together… or if I should even try.

Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for staying in touch, and thanks for reading this novel. Hopefully it made at least a little sense to you.

Anyone else think that Apple’s a little fed up with the music industry?

They could have just said “which songs are available.”

I get frustrated when customer service isn’t very friendly. Over the past couple of months I’ve received two responses that I want to point out.

I sent a notice to MySpace that the link to retrieve a blog’s RSS feed wasn’t working. True to MySpace’s form, they sent back a form response having to do with general blog questions (“What is a blog?”, “How do I get started with my own Blog?”, etc.). Totally irrelevant to my inquiry.

My favorite, though, comes from the company that does Rite Aid’s online photo service (full disclosure: I own a little bit of Rite Aid stock, but that won’t stop me from trashing them in this particular instance). After sending them a note that I would not use their service unless it was made Mac-compatible, I received this:

Unfortunately, at this time, the One-Hour Photo Online service only supports Internet Explorer and ActiveX. However, you can use Virtual PC to run Windows on your system and then submit your order to the Rite Aid service via Internet Explorer.

That’s right. Buy a $200 program in order to use our photo processing service. (And they didn’t even mention Boot Camp!)

*sigh*

I just had a sundae with Apple Pie ice cream and hot apple topping and whipped cream. I believe this marks the first time in my history of going to Gifford’s that I ordered something that contained no chocolate at all.

If you know me well, you probably agree that it’s worthy of a blog post. It’s a big day for me.