Saturday morning, 1:30 am. 

I wish I had a big black cat here to distract me from the computer and beg for pellets. Or its owner, to distract me from the computer and beg. But writing this post should do the trick and put me to sleep. The redesign is about complete and I should be going live tomorrow, hence today.

I’ve finished transferring files from one domain to the other, and thank god there will be less crap on the new site. The old one had become like a dark basement in which no one dares enter. I’ve gotten rid of my Viper Guestbook after reading that the project had been abandoned due to major security issues, and have installed a new, lighter script; adapting the database was a bit tricky and my old dates still aren’t sorted out but I’m working on it. The blog now resides at the new domain and if you are reading this, you have been redirected silently (look at the URL.) Time to update your bookmarks. All the photo galleries are online and duly managed via the SlideShowPro Director CMS. They still need tweaking and the most time-consuming task of writing captions has yet to be tackled.

But all and all, I’m just about there. I’ll finish adjusting everything once the site is up and running. There will be a lot of SEO left, and some cleaning up, and 301’s, and Google Analytics and Sitemaps, and Woopra. And then there will be time to think about a desert...

We are now in the final stages of a multiple countdown, the three main features of which being a trip (ours) to the antipodes, an interview (hers) with the foreign powers that be, and the launch of the (read « thee ») new-born web site (mine). The former is due in a few weeks, the latter might conclude as soon as this week-end, depending on how little sleep I get and how many bugs I manage to squash on my way there. And the middle one, more formidable still than its peers, will happen in between.

For the web site, a new domain has been registered, files are flying back and forth, settings are duplicated, the database soon will be transferred. Well no, in fact I hope to leave it as is, since I haven’t changed hosts. As soon as I can configure my silly ftp program to stop changing the capital letters in file names, I’ll be on my way to success.

As far as the trip goes, more about it later. Incredible generosity, much luck, hard work and sacrifices were involved into making it happen. Some extraordinary ideas are emerging and will be worth looking into.To be continued.

Of the third feature, I shall not say much, not wanting to jinx it. Let’s just admit fingers are crossed very hard, the odds are in our favor and it’s looking pretty good!

I once hated maths. I was so bad at it that I had to see a tutor outside of my school time. But time passed and I improved, having been given the lucky privilege of an extra school year while transiting from a country to another. College came and I juggled happily with the basics of trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, and other wonderful buggers. And then I forgot it all. Such is the usefulness of our school years. (Don’t get me started on that...)

However, maths is all around us and once in a while, as adults, we run into it and suddenly remember an old friend. It’s happened to me quite a few times recently and I’ve decided to write about it because, not so surprisingly, it was photography that yielded the happy encounter. As both a technical and artistic field, photography is a good breeding ground for numbers and rules.

The number 3 has always begged for rules. Maths has its Rule of Three. That much I have remembered and I use it all the time in high stress situations. « If one black cat eats 76.4 pellets in 55 seconds, how long would it take him to eat the standard 50 pellet ration? » Scuba divers too have a Rule of Thirds. One third of your air supply to go, one third to come back, one third as a reserve. Granted, that’s a worse-case scenario, for penetrations and deep dives.

So sure enough, photographers and artists came up with their own Rule of Thirds. It’s the mother of all composition rules. To be broken with moderation but enthusiasm. After all, as the crew of the Black Pearl would say of the « Code of Parlez », it’s a more of a guideline... Still. The Rule of Thirds... rules. If one divides a typical canvas or photographic composition in 9 rectangles formed by the intersection of two pairs of equally spaced vertical and horizontal lines, four focal points are obtained at the intersections, dividing the scene in three equal vertical segments and three horizontal ones.

The Rule of Thirds claims that a well balanced composition will place its main subject on one of the four focal points. In addition to making the image aesthetically pleasing, this method creates a virtual dynamic path by making our eyes travel from the opposite edge to the subject, and back. The Rule of Thirds is at the Composition 101 level. To the point that I think every digital camera should have an option to superimpose the lines on its LCD screen.

Then there is the much thicker Golden Ratio topic, referred to by the Greek letter phi (φ). Two numbers are said to be in the Golden Ratio if the sum of the two is to the larger what the larger is to the smaller. Got it? Come up, you gotta keep up, here!

(a + b) / a = a / b = φ = 1.618...

Ok, it’s harder to visualize and it involves maths more directly. But it’s an appealing ratio that suppresses one of the lines in the Rule of Thirds and brings the focal point of a photo slightly closer to the center, working well for scenes that lack an abandance of secondary subjects and/or depth of field. And more interestingly, it’s also closely associated with the Fibonacci Sequence. Ah-ah, now I can almost hear the crowd going « Oh » and « Ah » and « Of course, Fibonacci! ». Indeed. Hollywood has a curious manner of pulling obscure themes out of a geeky hat and throwing them out into the spotlight and popular knowledge overnight; so just as Lara Croft brought Leo Délibes’ Lakmé to the masses while dancing on a high wire, Robert Langdon introduced the world to the Fibonacci Sequence and hence, I just awoke you by finally mentioning a concept you’d heard before.

I very much doubt, however, that walking out of the theater you rushed to the public library to open an encyclopedia. So Fibonacci probably ended up in your mind alongside many Italian pasta names. Let me clarify, then. The Fibonacci Sequence isn’t a complicated notion - it’s the implications that are endless. The sequence in itself is a series of numbers, beginning with an arbitrary 0 and 1, and each following number being the sum of both previous numbers in the list. It goes like this, to infinity: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89, etc. That’s it.

Now let’s turn this into an image. Imagine that we draw an invisible square (it’s the 0, duh.) Then a visible one, one unit in side length. We draw another, same size, adjacent. Then we draw another with a side length equal to the 2 previous added, and we keep going, like this:

Above, the Fibonacci Sequence is represented graphically. So how are the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Sequence related? They both yield an approximately identical spiral. If we were to draw an arc in each square, corner to corner, starting with the second 1, we’d get a spiral such as this one:

This is called a Fibonacci Spiral and it is virtually identical to a Golden Spiral (obtained by a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor b is related to φ, the golden ratio - Wikipedia dixit, blah-blah-blah.) This is also where things become interesting from an artistic point of view. Let’s superimpose the Rule of Thirds and the Fibonacci Spiral. First of all, one of the focal points of the Rule of Thirds coincides almost exactly with the origin of the spiral:

Then we notice that the curve of our spiral manages to lead the eye through each of the Rule of Thirds’ 9 rectangles except the central one, which once again, doesn’t need the extra attention. There is a smooth transition from the outside edge, a quick exploration of the image and a final tightening of the focus into the main subject. Perfect. And the path can be followed back out, too.

Now the trick is to actually build a photographic composition according to these rules. It so happens that the shot below works pretty well, but it was a pure coincidence. Entering the scene from top right corner, the eye travels down taking in the tree and pond, finds the goose, leaves it attracted by the boots, starts inspecting the girl and finally centers onto her adorably focused expression.

Or at least, that’s my take on it. One is allowed to theorize, right?

Because I am neglecting this blog so badly and because hearing myself talk about it will encourage me to keep pushing forward, here’s a brief update on the site redesign process. I have just about completed the skeleton and will soon be addressing all galleries themselves (as in choosing which pictures make it to the limelight and which don’t.) The site still runs on a basic HTML structure in order for it to remain search-friendly, but the main gallery is ran by Flash and the main HTML text content is accessible through javascript.

Adapting Slideshowpro to suit my needs has proven to be quite an interesting task but I’ve finally got it to do what I want when I want where I want. Flash provides by far the most elegant, dynamic and interactive solution for photo slide shows. There are downsides, of course, and the next challenge will be SEO. But as it is, the gallery is fast, slick and I think it really serves its purpose as a showcase.

As I mentionned above, to retain some searchability, I’ve built the few text-based extra pages like  Bio, About, Contact and the like in classic HTML. But they are served via Shadowbox in an overlay window that avoids a full gallery reload on exit and features a very dark and minimalistic style intended to not steal the show away from the main gallery. Again, this has drawbacks, like for the user not to be able to bookmark one of those pages directly. But they are merely support pages and I really wanted the focus to be on the photography.

It’s the first time that I am designing a web site for a targeted audience and with very specific goals in mind. I find it refreshing and quite a relief to be voluntarily breaking the sacred rules of compatibility and accessibility. I wouldn’t go as far as claiming out loud « If you don’t have the tools to view my site, you’re unfit to do so. » I’d deserve a slap on the wrist and a wake up call. I will, however, offer my simple apologies and strongly suggest an upgrade. And I might even shrug my shoulders or sigh.

There seems to be a latent tendency in the web community to consider the web surfer as a king and the web designer as his slave; the slave must break his back to ensure the king’s enjoyment and safeguard his royal laziness. Everything must be done in order for the king to be able to access a site with the least effort possible, and while using as few brain cells as necessary. Content and design quality are sacrificed for this, and in the end, the king gets a more primitive product that is a brilliant compromise but does not necessarily yield a great experience. The king is unwilling to take his responsibilities and acknowledge the slave’s work by at least keeping his browser up-to-date and his plugins current.

I don’t think it has to be that way. I believe the public should be educated and shown that better browsers and a smarter understanding of the web will allow them a much better user experience and let them enjoy much more engaging web sites. The slaves spend hundreds of hours designing a site, the least we can do as web surfers is respect their work and accept to view it like it was meant to be seen, and used.

Just like one puts on reading glasses to enjoy a great book rather than complain that the font is too small or put the book down, one should address the web with interest and a willingness to learn and adjust. The web is an ever-changing medium with incredible capabilities that, according to Moore’s Law, are doubling every two years. Every web surfer is presented with a great challenge. A lot of people fall behind, or never even catch up in the first place. But that is not always the fault of web designers. They are the ones keeping up the pace. The public should, too.

If Picasso had publicly declared that his paintings were meant to be viewed upside down, wouldn’t people have stood on their heads? Granted, my web site won’t be a Picasso. Not even a Van Gogh. Surely nowhere near a Cezanne. But I’m not asking you to stand in precarious inverted balance with your feet trashing through the air and blood rushing to your head either. All you’ll need is a recent browser, Flash Player version 9 or above, javascript enabled and a screen with min. 1024x768 resolution. I believe that’s about 95% of people out there. Are you one of them?

If not, are you willing to change? I believe it will be worth it. No, not just to visit my amazing work of art. But to live here today and benefit from today’s wonders. As they unfold. It’s like magic. Except it’s not.

Update your browser. Get a new monitor. Enjoy the web. A lot of people are spending a lot of time designing it for you. Make their work easier. That’s my two cents anyway. Amen.

8:30 pm. People are cheering in the street! This is not even a US city, it’s Vancouver, Canada!

As per all major US networks, Mr. Obama has already won the race, and set many records. When the hang-over subsides, reality is going to kick in harder than ever. The man will have very small shoes to fill, but an immense load to carry. He is going to need a serious set of muscles, and a mind of steel.

But for the first time in a long time, it seems he, at least, can actually pull it off.

’nough said.

For now, I’ll just join the world and smile.

Update: And a very smart, impressive acceptance speech to top it all off. I love the way he brought the whole world into the equation. The man has such charisma he could be an actor. Damn I wish I hadn’t said that.

I don’t mean to jinx things down south and on the eve of one of the most critical US elections I can remember, I am, along with most of the world and a good part of the States, crossing my fingers and holding my breath, hoping for the Blues to win. So much can still go wrong. Polls are like politicians: they cheat and they lie and they deceive. But then again, we are cheering for one politician who, we hope, won’t do much of the above.

My biggest fear, considering who is running the country right now - and what they have to lose if Obama gets in - is for the elections to be rigged. My biggest worry, because I remain and always will be a skeptic when it comes to politics, is that Obama might be a better impersonator than we are keen to perceive. And my biggest hope, along with everybody else’s, is that my biggest fear and my biggest worry will soon be put behind, dismantled as if unnecessary weaponry, disarmed like antiquated nuclear weapons and forgotten among the many nightmares of the past.

Today’s post, however, will be red. It’s not my fault. The Republicans probably manipulated election dates to make them happen during the fall season, sending subliminal messages to all who live in forested States. But then again, maybe they didn’t. When Palin gets pranked on the phone by a fake Sarkozy, one can doubt anybody down there is actually using what’s called a brain.

In any case Vancouver’s Stanley Park is at its peak right now and after watching my ducks for a while on Saturday, I headed into the trees and was blown away by the reds.

With luck, the world tomorrow will be a slightly better place.

It would be much funnier if they were called Surf Scooters, but I didn’t name them. They arrived a few days ago, touching down in the water right next to the Sea Wall. From a distance, the flock looked like a long line of debris afloat on the calm surface of English Bay. But as I got nearer, activity became apparent and the line morphed into a shape-shifting congregation of thousands of birds.

Google revealed that most of them are Surf Scoters, a species of sea ducks. Among them cruise a few Barrow’s Goldeneyes. They seem to be spending most of their time feeding, diving in groups of 10 to 100 individuals for crustaceans and mollusks. Why they all dive together, I could not say. It appears to be triggered in a ripple effect similar to fish reacting to each other in a bait ball.

These photos were taken early Saturday morning on my way to the park for some fall colours and a new session of macro photography, but these will be the subject of another post. The light was low and the sky covered. Humidity thickened the air. People would pause in their stroll and watch the flock pulsate in all directions like a beating heart, a stone’s throw away from shore.

Even in the rain, Vancouver still manages to amaze me.

No, the blog isn’t dead. It hasn’t even gone into hibernation. The reason for such blatant blogging inactivity on my part is a rather productive one: I am redesigning the web site from scratch.

Ironically, Coriolistic Anachronisms isn’t being touched, having received a recent face lift which I’m still pretty content with. But everything else, especially the photo galleries, will morph. At the heart of the new site is a Flash-based set of galleries embedded into an HTML exoskeleton. I am using the brilliant SlideshowPro for this and have had to brush up on my Flash programming skills (but like bow hunting and biking skills, they never completely go away. )

The very slick Shadowbox remains both as this blog’s main slideshow engine and as the new site’s HTML page navigator. The guestbook, its script having been abandoned by the creator and criticized for its security flaws, will have to go or be replaced, I haven’t decided yet. Many new photos will populate the galleries and old ones will be removed.

Last but not least, the web site URL is going to change completely. I’ll take this in stages, using a redirect at first to allow for a seamless transition, and I will post many a reminder to upgrade your bookmarks. Photo-xposure.com has done its time, paid its dues and served its purpose. In comes the new king. It will probably simply be based on my name (boring I know, but logical as a portfolio tool.)

A new section will take advantage of my yet untapped SmugMug account and will offer options for buying digital photos and prints online.

This will be, all in all, a major upgrade. So please bare bear with me, arm yourselves with patience and watch for the announcement when I go live. It should be before Christmas. I hope.

I don’t know about you but I will be having a blast this week-end. Should your own outlook be bleak, you can watch the following very interesting videos from TED: Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other « Mathemagic » and Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen.

Oh but are you, maybe, unfamiliar with TED? It stand for Technology, Entertainment, Design and describes itself as « The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). »

It’s official. Having received unconditional support from my readers today (all three of you, thank you), I have decided to come forward and run. I want my entry into the political race to be a memorable event and I am confident you will all support me through to the finish line. I promise not to pace myself and will win this with hard work, honest sweat and a few energy bars. Here are, hence, my single-day campaign and a one-on-oneself debate while I run for Prime President of Canada as head of the New Maniac Party.

Dear fellow Canadians,

Together, we shall turn green.

On this day of National Elections and while ballots are still going into the urns, I urge you, as a nation and a responsible people, to urgently reject other candidates and previous votes accumulated today, and to elect me, Vincent Mounier, as Canada’s new Prime Minister. While my arguments will be powerful and my policies irresistible, should you find yourself wondering « Why must I vote for you? », I will first give you the short answer: because I, too, would do it for you.

Not convinced yet? Consider this: I have a bald head like Peter Garrett. I own a Canon Camera. My First Lady will be the prettiest and smartest ever to throne. I hate ticks and pigeons but love all other animals. It was my idea not yours. All of which are undeniable qualities for the above mentioned title. Furthermore, I can solemnly promise you, here and now, that I will never lie*, cheat or deceive you, and that I was rated by a local survey as the best candidate among those living on Harwood Street in Vancouver on an east facing 15th floor carpeted apartment, to run for such office.

Now that I have convinced you, let’s get down to business. The NMP party is the ultimate cure to our country’s (and the whole world’s, for that matter) existential crisis. I single-handedly will fix our environmental, economic and cultural issues. (By cultural issues, I am mostly referring to a national weakness towards Celine Dion, who must be silenced not only because of her obvious relation to my Liberal opponent but mostly to prevent additional rainy days in British Columbia.)

To achieve this, I have already drafted 156 laws that will become effective as soon as you eh-lect me tonight. Do not fear, laws are the skeleton of a country, they sharpen its justice system like a sword-maker his blade. Here is a non-exhaustive list of my pledges to you, Canadians and Canadians (this speech was written in French, the use of masculine and feminine being lost in our translation for the English-speaking minority):

• Anti-Tick-and-Pigeon Bill Number 13b: this project will outlaw pigeon and tick presence in public spaces, just like it was so successfully done with smoking. We will open a trade agreement with Italy and Vermont, shipping our surplus of the former to Venice and the latter to the Appalachians.

• Grouper, Wild Salmon, Killer Whale and Nudibranch Protection Act: This is just the right thing to do and take the word of someone who’s actually hugged a grouper, we will get plenty of affection and good vibes in return. (N.B. The nudibranch population hasn’t been reported as endangered yet but they are just too cute to resist and they might sell very well as an aphrodisiac to the Japanese, if we control the market.)

• Broccoli Incentive and Tax Adjustment 348.48: by lowering taxes for families of 4 and over who grow their own broccoli, we hope to convince most of the population to eat well and disregard rumours that the wonderful vegetable causes chronic shutter trigger, a rare photographer disease. This will obviously scratch two itches with the same nail and contribute to our relief efforts towards the on-going US Liberal invasion.

• Motor Vehicle Regulations Amendment, 2008c: SUV’s, trucks, planes, sports cars, gas lawn mowers and barbecues on wheels become the object of a special exponential tax. The more you use them, the harder you get nailed. Don’t think it’s unfair, I will be hit as hard as everyone else. I cut my grass at least twice a week, and I like to cut it under my opponent’s feet every other day. The tax money will be used for special research projects. While I am not at liberty to discuss the specifics, I can tell you that they will involve the application of quantum physics to Friday Night Pottery Classes, as well as an attempt to have the Bottlenose Dolphin genus and species changed from Tursiops troncatus to Molson inebriatus. We got a sponsor.

And the list goes on. But make no mistake about it, we are green. Our traffic laws will turn you green. Our party golf tournaments will aim for the green. Please send our headquarters a check for the amount of $CA15.95 when voting, and my staff will be delighted to send you my new eBook containing a complete list of these laws and their applications, as well as a 120-page brand new report on my favourite techniques for obtaining and retaining electors, and as a bonus, you will get, free of charge, a 10 page booklet on a secret technique to legally deduct the cost of this package from next year’s taxes.

Plus, if you vote within the next 30 minutes, you get, absolutely free, a signed copy of my soon-to-be bestseller « The power of Power, a Powerful Story of Power and How to Get, Keep and Sell It. » Green hardcover. 234 pages.

Don’t wait. Vote now. Vote Vince. Before it’s too late. Let’s show the world that Canada knows a good maniac when it sees one. Avoid turning the blue tide into a red one, jump to green. Vote NMP.

Addendum - Message from the First Cat, Don Estorbo de la Bodega Verde: We’ll also rid you of dogs and send them to Asia. People can eat them there, it won’t be a waste and they can come back as baby formula. (He has a big mouth but his heart is where that mouth is. A pellet bowl.)

* Promise not to lie exclusive of, and not limited to, political white lies, signature of International Treaties, meaningfully kissing babies, next campaign headlines and official party position on the use of unapproved electronics after plane take off.