RandySmiley.COM ???

Yes, it’s the right place! I’m still here. I just changed the theme, and did some polish to some articles (so make sure to read them all, even the really, really old ones- ha, ha!). That’s right, nothing here is carved in stone!

Those who know me, know that sooner or later, I’ll have a fit of neatness, and chop these posting down to just the best 25 or so. So if you’re soaking me in, do it fast, or slow- you know I love to procrastinate.

To find Venus, and who’s not looking for her? You’ll have to work your way to the bottom. I got a comment on ‘Stones of Years’, in my spam filter, that made no sense as so much spam doesn’t. It was just very strange that it would have been posted from such a lost and lonely page?

This isn’t my particular favorite theme, it needs some work. But it was the best one I found at dynamically sizing itself to the articles and the screen size. Of coarse, to be honest, I haven’t given that a good test yet, either. But at my get a microscope to read this screen resolution, it looks good, as long as nobody bumps my elbow, to make the slide skip, that is. Dumb dog!

Lately, I have been on a kick about Natural Selection, which we know is so very popular with all of you (not). But it’s a topic that’s just been on my mind a lot, lately, just because it keeps coming up, even though it bores most of you to death.

I want to talk about the Hitch Hiker’s Guide, and DNA (Douglas Adams), and that stupid Disney Movie. I’ve have quite a rant built up on that. It is strange that one of the world funniest writers ever, would have written so many stories that just don’t have much longevity to them, due to no fault of their own. Just ever changing technology, and let’s face it, Hollywood rip offs. Anyway, that’s on mind, but you know how well these things make it to my blogs… so pardon me if I get side tracked, and forget.

My lost point; as if that’s unusual, is that I was going to add a category called “Life, the Universe, and Everything”, which will not be about Douglas Adams or his works. But rather, things I find interesting about Life, the Universe, and Everything (…there in, both physical and theoretical). The boring stuff!

I have changed something you might not notice here. The ‘Recent Posts’ on the right, now list 10 articles, rather than 5. It didn’t make sense to me, to list what shows up on just the first page, particularly since the second page often has my own personal favorite observations that have scrolled away to never, never land.

This is not a response article to anything, I’ve had no complaints at all. It’s just something that has been on my mind for a long while, that I’d like you to understand about me.

I love Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, because it is nearly 600 years old, and it’s been a poke in the eye the whole time! And Big Red is HOT! And the fact that she’s being handed off to those sexually repressive humans that want to cover her up, cracks me up too.

I love the pinup girls, from the Farah (Sex hair) poster, to classics (airbrush masters), to even the Nude Center Fold models, because of their playful fun sexuality. I don’t showcase them because I’m some kind of a pervert (but maybe a little of that too), I do it because we are still on the wrong track emotionally.

When you look at the history of art (REALLY LOOK AT IT) and western civilization, it’s exactly where Christianity went wrong!!! Demonizing natural urges, really? What many of you may not realize is the Christian Church was founded on the belief that they were the very last generation, and you shouldn’t be pregnant when all hell breaks loose- which is totally laughable still! Sell everything, and give it to the poor, because you don’t need it, was the message for several generations. So while the pagan was out having fun… How did we survive 2000 years?

Many people fall in love with the Greek Myths even to this day, because of the joyous nudity of the art left behind. The Myths survived, because it was hard to repress it, and hide it, when it was so graphic on every broken pot found in your backyard!

Even the Renaissance was a dark age for art. It wasn’t until the rebellion of French in the 1860s, and their flailing around to compete with the new art of photography, that humans truly were reborn, and completely liberated in Western Culture. That’s why the cliché is a French Nude Painting over the bar in the western saloon.

Yet many of you “GOOD PEOPLE” are still repressed by silly superstition. I ask you one favor; Respect my lack of it, because I don’t believe for even one moment that God is the Cosmic NONSEXUAL Killjoy! This is not how he wanted you to be. Do you need a lesson in the birds and the bees now, as proof?

I showcase them (the flirty pinup girls), because they make me happy and they make my laugh, they remind me what being a man is all about. Repress my vulgar outspoken finger and wicked tongue, but not my love of femininity and joyous playfulness of sexuality. Twisted logic and truth is the real perversion. However, there is no excuse for being a predator, and committing crimes against others (don’t take license with me). But repress not the flirts between adults engaged in the fine art of being human. I am so sick of the total criminalization of just being male! And that’s why the pinups, they are a celebration of freedom, and just being happy.

PS: The real reason Man put on clothes was not because he was aware he was naked, but because Eve was cold! The pinup girls are a part of the Venus Shop (see She’s here!).

Nikon COOLPIX L100

This looks like one HECK of a bargain!
I own a Kodak EasyShare Z712 IS, which it looks a lot like. Clearly it’s to compete with my Z series, and frankly, I’m not sure why you would ever buy digital SLR, when these offer better zoom lenses (28-420mm). Anyway, this is 10 Megapixels, when I got 7.2. My complaint about the Kodak is that it’s slow at figuring out what you want to focus on, and sometimes will not figure it out at all. I hope that’s just a Kodak quirk! I’m not a Megapixels freak, and you really shouldn’t be either. Anything above 7 megapixels will take super GREAT 8×10 pictures, so it all comes down to price and features. This is loaded with many great features. I want one, myself!

The ‘camera picture’ is a link that will take you right to the L100 Tiger Direct page. The banner (top) will take you to their main home page. Merry Christmas to some lucky person!

Wait there’s more, the Canon Powershot SX20 IS

You want something even more Top Ended, and even a tick more professional. There’s the Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. x20 Zoom (28-560mm), and HD video at 30fps (normal TV speed), in Apple’s MOV format. It seems a little wimpy on highspeed ISO, so it will need a flash more often, but offers a real Hot Shoe for professional flash equipment, or the built-in flash. Take 4 batteries, which should mean longer life, than two or three battery cameras. However it’s the only camera I’ve seen with stereo microphones built in. Of coarse the Powershot is a little more expensive than the Nikon, but still in a $400 price range.

Why a point and shoot, over an SLR?
Bottom line, price vs. performance. The salesmen try to shit you into thinking it’s about the Lens. But a clear picture is a clear picture. There are more liabilities that go with interchangeable lenses, like a darker image, and therefor slow processing speeds. Never hear them talk about that now do you? And then there is the fumbling around of swapping out lenses, and the praying that you didn’t break or loose a $400 lens. The big reason; 6% commission on the $1000+ camera, only 2% on the under $400′s. Hmm?

Fact is that the digital SLR’s are a ripoff! We’re back to the same old PC problem, next year’s model will be twice as fast, even more pixels, more “photoshopping” built in, etc. And you want to lock yourself in with a $1000 at a time on that, for a camera you will be lucky to recover $200 on used, in two years? Digital SLR are a total ripoff for your average consumer. Special needs are about the only thing that should force you into a digital SLR, like attaching to a telescope or microscope, and that’s it! A good 12 megapixel picture is a good picture, no matter what machine took the shot. The old argument was about filter effects, but you can do ALL THAT with software these days.

28mm wide angle to 560mm Telephoto, is mind blowing. Try and get that in a single lens SLR, they’ll laugh you out of the building. Most SLR have only a 300mm lens for telephoto. I was always taught that normal human vision matches closest to 52mm, which is why most cameras came with 55mm lenses. Today, it’s normally a 28mm to 80mm zoom lens that comes on the SLR (if any at all). Explaining lenses, and image expansion and compression is beyond what I want to address. But, from the bleachers at a football game, you aren’t going to get a Sports Illustrated Quality close-up of your kid with anything less than a 900mm lens (which is a telescope); Unlike the impression they give you from TV ads. Mind you the one’s the real pros at sports events use, are so expensive, they’re all rented by the hour from the manufactures.

Why IS cameras?
Most all point-n-shoots are IS cameras. IS is Image Stabilization. In other words they know how much your shaking them, and try to correct for it. The more Zoomed in you are, the more SHAKE matters. This is why so many SLR cut off at 300mm lens. That about the max you can handle handheld, without some major image stabilization- the best being from a Tripod, even with IS. But read the specs, and most digitals are IS cameras today.

The best CHEAP accessories for any camera are…
#1 A good WIDE camera strap!
#2 Tall Tripod
#3 SD cards (2 gb, unless your making videos)
#4 Rechargeable batteries- (there are no rechargeable batteries- yeah right: Made by them!)

POWER TIP:
Use PowerPoint or a Paint program to make full page print out, name and address and phone number. Take your memory card out of your new camera, so it has to use internal storage. And make the very first picture in your camera, your address. So, if you ever loose your camera, it knows how to find it’s way home. Believe it or not; 98% of the time, it will! Putting your own picture on it, is a good idea too, to convince those people that think they are more honest than everybody else- they mean well!

I suddenly realized that I really, really, have to preface this: This blog is driven by WordPress, and you are looking at one of the “Themes” right now, that I’m about to complain about. I know; Bitch, bitch, bitch! I try not to, but sometimes they make it too hard.

WordPress Themes are frustrating and annoying.  I have yet to install a theme that worked perfect right off the download.  This is a HUGE SETBACK, to a really great blog system!  It’s not the blogs fault, it’s the  independent theme makers.  How can I recommend this for you, when I as a programmer have to dig in elbow deep, and fix every (theme) I download?

Here we are in heart of the holidays, and most of the best themes for Christmas don’t even show up.   How do you find them then?  I found most of them searching for ‘Red’ themes- no kidding Red themes.

The one I settled on here, is a Victorian Christmas Theme.  Still though, I had to get rid of the code that pulls up TAGS (at the top of the page), one of the most useless features of WordPress, once they are rarely used.  Categories are far more important, and Pages even more so.  To converting that box area for those was going to take some research time, I just was not willing to invest right now, so I just did away with all that code.  Just deleted it.  Then the description of the blog was in the body of the blog, and that’s just so wrong, I had to move it up into the header where it belongs, which took a lot of tweaking.  Half these themes leave it completely out, which is even more annoying.  Next Pages can have comments, but not the way the theme was written, so that had to be tweaked too.  This is far from a perfect theme.  I see that the side-bar is screwin the pooch too, and basically ignoring my setup, but I just don’t have time to learn everything about WordPress right now, so I can live with it.

Well, if it’s so screwed up, then why am I using it?  Because it was the best looking one I found, in spite of it’s faults.  Still I will be happy to get back to my altered version of Redline again.  Redline was almost perfect, but needed to be widened.   It’s just not the most stylish theme, I’ve ever seen.  But it is the one, that seems to understand the engine software best, and takes as much advantage of it as it should.

I think what it is that really grinds my bones is that it’s like; Merry Forkin Christmas to you hack!  I ain’t Jesus, you gotta earn it.  Oh, just so fitting to the season in this age, ya know? And it’s way to girly, but what you gonna do for something seasonal?

UPDATE: When I noticed my Donate button was gone, that was the last straw! Maybe Christmas week, you’ll see that theme again- not before!

Alright, alright, alright! This is part of my on going series about blogging. And making your own good blogs, that people will want to visit and read.

Every professional cartoonist complains, that the very hardest thing to teach students is the most important thing to teach art students- damnit! You must convey character. Take for example a role call. Everybody stands up right, while one guys must lean on a stick, while another is late to get in line, another crosses his feet and dips his head. A prime example is Disney’s Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, where each dwarf had a personality to match their name. Doing this visually, is actually easier than doing it with words. Still it is a GRAND ART that you must master for your entertainment to be, well, er, ah, pardon the redundancy, entertaining.

Saturday Night Live, spends a lot of time on stupid recurrent character development, and formula time fillers, before you get to the bands, and Weekend Update- the only real reason you watch. Ironically the Blues Brothers were not a feature, but a pre-show warm up act, that they made a movie about, which then became a feature to promote the movie. This was the foundation of the Saturday Night Live formula, along with Rosanna Rosanna Danna, and the Coneheads.

You must bring this same sort of thing to your Blogging. Your opinions are not that interesting, without some pizzazz! Here before the world at large, you must be a showman. So the very fist thing to remember is that pure YOU is dull boring stuff. That doesn’t mean that you have to be disingenuous to your reader, and totally fake it all. It just means that you must make it it it it it it, ah, colorful.

There are some people who just don’t get it, on why what I say in one blog might not even be close to what I actually believe. It’s about writing in character. Creating a personality and a persona. And wearing another’s lice infested hat for a while. Here at RandySmiley.com, I’m a nice guy, that I’m certainly not in person. I don’t know why, but I like to trip young athletic guys with my cane? However on my political blog, I let it rip, and let evil Randy tear it up, with fighting words not fit to print. It’s all in the hat your wearing at the time.

Class? Class! Now that we are done ignoring my lecture, here’s your assignment: First write a couple of paragraphs exaggerating your own shyness and fear of speaking in pub-blic! Then, do it again as the extrovert class clown- you know, like that’s going to happen? That’s your assignment in becoming a better blogger this week. Who are you, and what are your really trying to say, when and where? Now does any body know where I left my damn reading glasses, so I can proof read this before postering-ating-ating? Oh silly me, here they are on the top of my head.

So what happened to Software and Services, that I promised you? Frankly, this was more important at the moment. I get the feeling that Software and Services is still 2 lectures off, but we’ll see? Do your assignment, and think about how to exaggerate who and what you are, to be MORE entertaining. Be expressive. Be SOMEBODY!