I just upgraded my website to Wordpress 2.5. The administrative area is a lot nicer, though not much changes for my readers. The Printable View links aren’t working; let me know if you spot any other problems. Update: print versions are back, as the creator of the WP-Print module has updated for the changes in Wordpress. I added my modifications again; it’s the same as before except with an improvement: if I link to a URI twice, it’s only displayed in the endnotes once and referenced with the same number in the text, saving ink.

Also, I’ve added more …

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The profit police are as old as eternity, but insidious as the devil. They threaten to steal our happiness, to sour us with envy, hatred, and guilt. Their orthodoxy is codified in institutional policies all over the world. They kill everyone. They are us.

Profit is not just money. Profit is also prestige, notoriety, and mere exposure. The profit police take keeping up with the …

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A yellow grasshopper from my yard, with my attempt at isolating him. I did alright, so I’m releasing this as a resource to the world.

Buy a 4*6 copy for $0.95 (USA only). Glossy finish. After adding, go to your shopping cart.

To download, right-click the thumbnail and click “Save Link As” (Firefox) or “Save Target As” (Internet Explorer).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

You can download the source image (JPEG, 573KB) or the edited version in loseless PNG format instead of the JPEG above (1.4MB, make sure to use the sRGB color space). Both images are released under the same license. For editing, I added contrast and removed the background using the eraser brush in Adobe …

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I tried to register my name at blogger.com but got the error message above. Turns out someone’s swiped the name: http://richardxthripp.blogspot.com/ is just a parked spam blog, set up just over a month ago (2008-02-20). It’s about two thousand spam link ads.

One thing that I’ve always counted with my name (Richard X. Thripp a.k.a. richardxthripp), is that it is so unique that I can go to any website and register as richardxthripp with no fear of …

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Yellow flowers from an roofless flower shop; you can find good photos anywhere. I took this from a low angle, so you can’t see any people or products in the background; just the sky. There’s interesting stuff among the stems and flowers below, but most people just look at the flowers at the top.

I spent a while changing the colors; I was debating between cooler blue tones or warm red and yellow, finally choosing the latter after comparing. There was an out-of-focus flower that creeped into the bottom-right …

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An orange rose with water drops; I took this at a Lowe’s flower shop. The bubble in the center is a droplet that looks to be floating; I didn’t use a dropper as this was after a storm.

The flower is a red hybrid-tea rose; I made the color shift by changing the white-balance setting in-camera.

Buy a 4*6 copy for $0.95 (USA only). Lustre finish. After adding, go to your shopping cart.

Canon PowerShot A620, 1/15, F2.8, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2007-01-18T16:29:42-05, 2007-01-18_21h29m42

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

A bright-red leaf out-of-place in a field of sickly brown leaves. I happened upon this idea as I saw a red leaf amongst all the brown leaves in our yard, so then I went and found a better leaf and positioned it like this. It was rainy and overcast, so the lighting was lower contrast and a bit blue, which is fitting for this image.

This didn’t need much spot editing, but it did benefit from added contrast and a shift to cooler colors. I added red to …

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The Sacrificial Pepper: An Analysis of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Green Chile.”
Essay by Richard X. Thripp.
2008-03-25 — http://richardxthripp.thripp.com/essays
PDF version (70 KB).

Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Green Chile” is a poem of love and sacrifice, symbolized through two types of chile peppers. The author blandly states that his preference is for “red chile over my eggs / and potatoes for breakfast” (1-2), but his grandmother “loves green chile” (11), chopping one up with “mysterious passion on her face” (31). Baca says that “red chile ristras decorate my door, / dry on my roof, and hang from my eaves” (3-4), …

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Cherry tomatoes that I arranged in a line. The yellow table makes a great background for red-colored still life. They look good enough to eat!

I cloned out the dirt that was on the tomatoes and table, removed background reflections and distractions, brightened the image, and added contrast.

Buy a 4*6 copy for $0.95 (USA only). Lustre finish. After adding, go to your shopping cart.

Fujifilm FinePix A360, 1/74, F2.81, 5.8mm, ISO64, 2006-08-07T14:27:03-04, 2006-08-07_14h27m03

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

A thirty-second exposure of my house at night, with the lights on. Our house has creatively applied stucco that is painted yellow, so it makes an interesting and reflective texture, particularly with the yellowish indoor lights. The ghostly figures are of me standing next to two windows and in the light behind the house; I stood still in each spot for eight seconds to achieve the effect (took four tries). I don’t own a proper tripod, so I used a step-ladder; it does well in …

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