Community journalism

I'm building a list of community journalism links here, as much for me as for you. But since there posted out here in the ether, we'll both be able to get to them as long as we can get online. These links cover everything from defining community journalism to tips on how to grow as a community journalist. Do you see a pattern here? I think I do. Maybe it has something to do with a little pet project of mine.

The list

• Center for Community Journalism at SUNY-Oswego
• About the impact of community journalism

It'll grow, especially if you add to it, but for now, I gotta git.

Patchouli warrior

According to Google, there are 427,000 web pages in the universe dedicated to patchouli. Damned spawn of Satan. What is it about patchouli that I so hate, you may ask? Go ahead. Ask. I dare you.

DO IT!

Fricking, stinking patchouli. Nasty Febreeze (only 5,970 links on Google) of the hippie-chic (again, according to Google, there are at least 8,169 bone-heads out there who need to pay more attention to their native language. I can tell this because they all have the nom-de-plume "hippie-chic" when what they really mean is "hippie-chick" [see definition number three]. There is one site out there that seems to sort of catch the subtle difference [one goes "peep," one goes "Praise Allah! {Did you know Allah has his own Web site? No kidding.}]. To bad it's

IMPOSSIBLE TO READ!

Anywho, I digress some. There's nothing inherently evil in patchouli. Just like a Glock. They're both just tools. One is used primarially to cover an individual's lack of showering skills; the other is used primarially to eradicate showering-skill-challeneged individuals, but only in Texas. The evil comes when someone misuses the tool. This begs the question: Are people inherently evil or are they basically good? Do they know when to apply the little pungent drops o rthe hot lead, or are they led into making poor choices by the (circle one: liberal | conservative) bias in today's (circle one: mainstream | alternative) media? Oh, drat. That whole let's-blame-it-on-the-media thing's already been done. I heard 24 times on NPR last Sunday morning. What ever will we do? Oh - I know! Let's take responsibility for making our own decisions.

Gotta love Photoshop

Now, I'm by no means a master of the computer. I like phutzing around, configuring things to my liking, getting work done. But I really, really like Photoshop CS. When I'm dealing with digital photos, I tend to deal with a whole lot at once. For instance, two weekends ago, I shot a wedding and took over 700 frames. I set up an action for batch processing, but I didn't do it quite the right way, so I wound up doing a lot of the siaing and selections by hand. But now, after last weekend I have things dialed in to the point where I only have touch each photo once to adjust the levels, then let the action run the rest of the show. My life is good!