Micah Walter

Hey everyone, I have been blogging for the most part over at my new social network called Entropy Art. This site was set up as a way to document the next two years of my life which will be spent mostly pursuing an MFA in Photographic and Electronic Media at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In Baltimore, Maryland.

Since most of my daily thoughts have been winding up on that page, I think I should just not blog here for a while and point you all to the new site. I may eventually start this one back up, but for now, this site will just be an access point to my work and archives, etc….

I will keep all the content up here for reference, and decide what to do with it al when the time comes…

Hope to see you over at Entropy Art. Be sure to sign up and participate in any way that you wish!

-m

I just wanted to throw this one up here as one of the coolest sites I have seen in a while. I love the layout of the video and photo, not to mention some really amazing photography.

Check it out for yourself here.

Ladies and gents, I have just launched a new website called Entropy Art. This site is actually based on the idea of a social networking website like Facebook or Myspace, and will be an online community centered on a long term art project I am working on.

I initially was going to either blog about this project here, or even launch a new separate blog, but the idea of creating a community based site was just too appealing. By using this website everyone can contribute in some way to the project.

Eventually I will post tools which will allow users to contribute their own photos and process them using the same software I will be developing for this project.

For now please sign up for the website. It only takes a few seconds. You can create your own page, link to friends, leave comments, upload photos and video and all sorts of cool things.

For now the site is located at entropyart.ning.com, but eventually it will be located at entropyart.org.

Stay tuned and SIGN UP NOW!!!

View my page on Entropy Art

Can you believe the kid on the left made it to 32?

Yes it is true, my website was hacked. Apparently there was a security hole in my installation of WordPress and some hacker was able to take over my website. I don’t really get it. Why not go for a bigger fish?

Anyway, after a short correspondence with my web hosting provider I was able to get most of it back online. And yes, I installed the newest version of WordPress which hopefully solves the security hole issue.

Here is a nice picture of what my site looked like for a few days! Sorry for the profanity.

Also, as you may have noticed I moved my site to the root URL. So if you have bookmarked things like the blog, please update them so they make more sense. I will try and forward the old RSS feeds as well.

And yes, I have been gone for a bit. I have been incredibly busy, working to roll out the latest version of ApertureToPictage. It is nearly read for release and I am proud to say that the improvements are pretty cool. I really learned allot and I owe plenty of thanks to all who helped me in my endeavors, especially Kendra, who helped me to realize that I would in fact do my work while she was having the time of her life on vacation with me in the States.

We did have a good time though in the end. I finally finished up the last pieces of code just as we were about to head back to Dominica, so we celebrated, Kendra and Micah style.

Being back in the States reminded me of a few things. Winter sucks, driving sucks, shopping sucks, and Starbucks may actually be a religion to some. Of course I missed the States before we left, and was really looking forward to Taco Bell and McD’s, but after a month it was back to the same old same old and I couldn’t wait to get back here.

Our apartment is simply amazing, and I have titled the window in our bedroom “The Painting.”

Now I am busy at work once again getting started on my next project for the same client. Things are already beginning to ramp up and we haven’t even released the last one yet!

And, on another note, I am also busy getting my application ready for Mica. So far I have secured two of three letters of recommendation, and I have begun to put together a portfolio of images. It is pretty hard trying to pick out 20 images that represent my artistic vision. I look at my journalism work and I don’t see “art.” I guess I have to get over that! We shall see how it develops. The deadline is February 15th, so I need to get crackin!

Well, thats about it for now. Sorry if there are any broken links in the site, I am still working on finding and fixing them all.

Ciao-fer-now…

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I have just been so busy with work and life. In fact I just moved into a new apartment and it is amazing. I think it may be the coolest place I have ever lived! I wish we could transport this apartment back to D.C., and the weather too.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few pictures of the new place. Here is one taken with the 70-200 off our back balcony, and below there is a link to a .Mac gallery of pictures of the entire place.

I’m considering setting up a “Be-jealous” webcam of our amazing view!

More pics on .Mac

All this giving back to the community is making me feel really good, and also full of Turkey. This weekend Kendra and I and her local chapter of Physicians for Human Rights brought a Thanksgiving feast to a local retirement/assisted living home in Portsmouth.

The event went off without a hitch and I think I got a new Dominoes partner out of the deal as well. When I return to the states next month I may make a photo album for them to keep, but for now, check out this small selection of pictures.

Click the photo to see more.

Also, check out Kendra’s post on the Physicians For Human Rights website.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 was released last week adding amongst other things an export API. This means that developers (myself included) can now create Lightroom export plugins. The Lightroom plugin architecture is written in Lua which is a scripting language that apparently much of Lightroom was written in.

Ian Lyans at Computer-Darkroom.com has a pretty good synopsis of all the new improvements and bug fixes in 1.3. It’s worth a read.

Link: Computer Darkroom

So I see that Mamiya and PhaseONE have joined together to create a new camera system which will be out early next year. No one knows what it will be as of yet, and what will happen to the Mamiya ZD back, but it is very exciting.

I have been interested in getting into medium format digital for a while now. If it weren’t for the insane price tags that most of these backs seems to cary I would be pretty inclined to jump on board. I have this feeling that I will be doing more work that will require something like a medium format system. But who knows. Until then, it is certainly interesting to learn about from afar.

Check out the PhaseONE press release here.

As well, I have added a new forums section, using a much better forum engine. So, if you want to school me in the ways of medium format digital, be sure to check out the starter thread I just put up by going here.

Madiastorm and the LA Times have produced a stunning multimedia piece. Be sure to check out all three parts, and grab a few Kleenex before you begin. PDN wrote up a small blog post about htis and they are absolutely right in how well it was produced. My favorite part is the lack of the Ken Burns effect, which has become way to overused these days. Nice hard cuts!