This Just In: Condos at Ipswich...

I've got a big old can of I-told-you-so to open up...The City of Chesapeake is reviewing plans for "Southern Ridge," a 216-unit condominium development on 18 acres of land that abuts Indian River Park.

For the better part of two decades local citizens have developed bike trails and dirt jumps on this parcel of land. It's a shame that it wasn't incorporated into Indian River Park from the start.

So here's the $64,000 question: what's that land worth, and what's it gonna take for cyclists in Southside Hampton Roads to preserve the only singletrack park left?

First Blog of the New Year

I've been struggling to blog efficiently with my new Palm Pre- thumb-typing through a mobile-unfriendly website isn't the most productive or rewarding use of my time. (Hyperlinks are a horror.) And I haven't carved out a new time to sit with a laptop or desktop to type & blog.

I have, however, become a satisfied user of FaceBook Mobile: I can shoot a picture on my Palm Pre smartphone, email it to FaceBook, and it's automatically posted to my mobile upload album. I no longer have to download pix from a camera, process them through Lightroom, export, upload & publish them. My FaceBook Mobile Upload album has become a photo journal.

I've been subscribing to the Photojojo for at least a year now, inspired by new techniques & equipment. In no small measure, Photojojo has fueled my love affair with the LensBaby. So I was stoked when I received the latest email newsletter with a link to my favorite philosopher of photographer, Roland Barthes:

" A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see."


You're not looking at the pixels or silver crystals or toner dots.
You contemplate the message, not the messenger.
We watch what's on TV, not the television set itself.