Henrik Lantz

I would like to invite you all to visit Pixamatic, a multi-user collaborative photo blog, me being one of the users in question. See it as visual documentation, a showcase, a portfolio, an expression of exhibitionism, or whatever else you feel like; but please visit it. Regularly.

There’s three of us taking part; me in Amsterdam, Freddie in Stockholm, and Eva (on Fallfrukt) in Bromölla in southern Sweden. We have different levels of experience and various types of equipment, but what we share is an enthusiasm for photography. This seems like a good way for us to keep the habit of photographing up, and to hopefully inspire us to Take New Pictures every once in a while. Any feedback you may have is highly appreciated!

British broadcasters BBC’s morning news show Breakfast’s top story today is that Australian singer Kylie Minogue has successfully undergone surgery for the breast cancer with which she was diagnosed earlier in the week. (This story narrowly beats the Man U-Arsenal FA Cup final and the humiliating pictures of Saddam Hussein published by the tabloids yesterday.)

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against Kylie; in fact I kind of like her, and I wish her all the strength and luck in her recovery. But in all fairness, shouldn’t people like the BBC perhaps focus on the people that are NOT as lucky as Kylie?

Since the question has been raised by some people: Since I, like a lot of WordPress users all over the world, started receiving large amounts of comment spam (people posting poker ads in my comments) I had to take some counter measures.

The technique I opted for uses comment moderation; meaning that when someone posts a comment, an email is sent to the poster and to myself, requesting the comment to be approved before it becomes visible to all users. Since the Evil Spammers hardly ever use real email addresses, they will not be approved by them, and I will delete them as soon as I see them. This is to keep the blog clean and ad-free (at least free of any ads that I didn’t put there!), and generally make the Internet a nicer place to be.

I was on the phone to Freddie just now, and this is the conversation that took place:

(me) - I’m watching the most interesting and fun movie at the moment.
(her) - Hmm… I doubt it?
- It’s called Schindler’s List.
- Oh, that one. Yeah, very fun movie.
- Mm.
- Can I ask you something?
- What?
- Could you tell them apart?

…at which I point I burst out in relieved laughter. I thought I was the only one who could watch a movie for two hours, without realizing that Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes are actually two different persons! His character didn’t make any sense - one second he’s a really nice bloke, ok - he’s generally only after making money but at least he’s kind to people, and the next he’s shooting people left, right and center.

Not until a scene in which the two characters actually meet did it start to make sense. Too bad it’s on TV, otherwise I would have rewinded it and started all over. (Yeah, right!)