Sledding In The Shadow of Abandonment
March 4th, 2010
Cincinnati is full of abandonments, most of the time you drive right past them without knowing their history. Many people take the presence of these historical treasures for granted, some call them blight, but their significance in Cincinnati’s history remains strong. They are an ever present reminder of Cincinnati’s past, and in some cases, a beacon for Cincinnati’s future; but more than likely they’re just a playground for explorers like me.
Nota Bene: you can click these and see the full resolution versions on My Flickr, or view a slideshow of all 4 photos.
Standing quitely behind a snow-blind sledder in Mt. Echo Park, the Crosley Building was once home of WLW radio (better known today as 700WLW.) The radio tye-in doesn’t stop there though, previously Crosley Radio Corporation used the building to manufacture low-cost table top radios until 1942 when World War II operations within the Crosley Building demanded that manufacturing operations be moved elsewhere.

Autocentric Development Was A Mistake, Let’s Fix It.
March 2nd, 2010
I took the bold move when I was living downtown to ride my bike and/or public transport to get back and forth to work. It saved me time not having to find a parking space and I got some fantastic exercise riding around Cincinnati and felt great doing it. Then the derailer failed on my bike — I’d better to something about that.
The Hive13 Hackerspace
February 23rd, 2010
I am proud to say I’m a member of the Hive13 Hackerspace and this video should clue you in as to why. Tinkering with hardware is a ton of fun, and even without any real active projects going the Hive is a great resource for minds, ideas, and a great space to work on electronic projects of all shapes and sizes. Everything I need has always been there, though some of it was (of course) stuff I donated from my personal collection.
Hive13 from Soapboxmedia.com on Vimeo.
Carnivolution 2009
January 3rd, 2010
The KOI Burners couldn’t have picked a better venue than the Mockbee for Carnivolution, a heady mix of sensual and exhilarating performance (including Dante’s Gypsy Circus) , outrageous costumes, classic midway games and fantastmagorical persons of all shapes and sizes. KOI (Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana) Burners, a local arts group and appendage of the larger Burning Man collective located a few blocks away from the Mockbee building at 2008 Freeman Avenue hand built carnival games and much more. The Burners slaved for weeks to perfect their costumes for the carnival and burnt the midnight oil polishing the experience of the Midway for Carnivolution. The C.M. Mockbee Building, the crumbling industrial former home of a hardware company, refuses the be relegated to abandonment like so many others of it’s kind. For Carnivolution it is reborn a third time as a venue for experiencing the fantastic.
Nota Bene: you can click these and see the full resolution versions on My Flickr, or view a slideshow of all 55 photos.
Now she’s out of the straight jacket

Roxanne in Hookah Lounge Wonderland

The Fred Astaire of Practice Poi

Feathers (Oh how I love feathers)

Want More?
Nota Bene: you can click these and see the full resolution versions on My Flickr, or view a slideshow of all 55 photos.
Or simply watch the slideshow in your browser now:
Nonsense and scribbles scratched on the wall in crayon, pencil, dirt. Names and geometric patterns drilled into the wood work. Floors covered in hay. Mary, Richard, Seth, Sue. I know there were children here before this house became, like so many in rural farming areas in America, storage for hay. Dated February 7th, 1974, the Centre Daily Times (or as I like to call it the Centre Daily Misprint) contains a piece “Weighing the risk Of an impeachment” doing exactly that in reference to a post-watergate Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon. This is a fantastic parcel of land, and the house is still quite solid save for a crumbling foundation in one corner and a mushy floor on the back porch. There is another house just up the private road. Perhaps they just moved, electing to use their prior residence as storage for hay?
Nota Bene: you can click these and see the full resolution versions on My Flickr, or view a Slideshow of all 32 photos.
Weighing The Risk Of An Impeachment – 3 photos

View all 32 photos.
Location: near State College, PA
I went home to Montoursville, Pennsylvania for the Thanksgiving holiday. This was my first time home since my father’s death, and I had my doubts about how well I was going to take seeing the house again. Thankfully I was wrong — the work my Mom did is absolutely amazing. As far as the upstairs bathroom and master bedroom are concerned, I might as well have been coming home to boutique hotel. With a 50 gallon bath tub, no less.
View a slide show of all 16 photos
The bathroom is warm and inviting and features radiant floor heating, towel warmer, fifty gallon cast-iron bath tub, and airy glass shower. I’d say the icing on the cake is the HDTV on the swing arm above the bath tub.

The bedroom is the perfect place to crash after a wonderful day, or just to take a nap. My father always said that my mother was a fantastic napper. Our first dog, Boris, would run up the stairs to the bedroom if you asked him “Where’s Mommy?!” Why? because that’s usually where she was!

I love you Mom, you did a wonderful job… and you’re not even done yet!
A year is a long time, and in the space of that year I feel like I’ve really grown as a photographer. Oddly enough, this meant not only bettering my skills behind the camera, but facing fears. I was afraid to explore, because I didn’t want to go to jail. In actual fact, the Cincinnati Police Department seems to have a lot better things to do with their time. I was uneasy around people. Viewing the world through the viewfinder, the “real” world seems to fall away, and with it the anxiety. All that’s left is the image, the concentrated essence of the moment, and off we go…
Nota Bene: you can click these and see the full resolution versions on My Flickr, or view a Slideshow of all 37 photos.
You, You’re Awesome at the Southgate House

You, You’re Awesome at Northside Tavern

Abandoned Loch #5, Bowling Green, KY

Arsclan Jesus Respawns 9 Mug Shots

Sunset over Louisville,KY Rail Bridge

Unammed Boy, Sedamsville, Cincinnati, OH

And that’s just the beginning, trust me. I’ve come this far in a year, and the next year will be even more of the same. More shots, more exploring, more photowalks with those near and dear in Goettaville, Cincinnati, OH. I look forward to getting into my visual groove, feeling the world fall away, and creating wonderful pictures.
Much Love,
–Matt
My New Fictional Hire, An Entry-Level Technician
July 26th, 2009
My friend Eric asked me to write up a list of skills that I thought I an entry level tech should have. I’m writing it from the point of just having hired said entry-level technician position. The “guy” I just hired has the following skills, and I am VERY happy with him:
- Basic knowledge of DNS, how to add/change/delete A/CNAME/RREF records in a generic point and click environment like Windows DNS or a DNS appliance
- Knowledge of DHCP, leases, static DHCP, adding/change/delete leases
- Basic DOS/*nix command line navigation (cd, type, less/more, etc.)
- OS installation, install all drivers, patch system
- Basic virtual machine knowledge, installing OSs inside VMs, cloning VMs, re-IP & re-SID clones, etc.
- Disk drive imaging like ghost
- Network connection troubleshooting knowledge, finding whether problem is local to PC, segment, etc.
- IP subnetting
- Basic Office suite use
- Printer Drivers (enhanced vs os-built in)
- Identifying unknown hardware by reading device IDs, using www.pcidatabase.com or search engine
- Web Browser issues/compatability
That’s it for now — but I’m about to get in the truck for the seven hour drive back to Cincinnati from St. Louis. I may edit this post an add to it when I return, or not. Good luck Aryc!
Oh how I wish this would happen to me…
May 15th, 2009
Yes. I am such a girl when it comes to things romantic.
Using Expect and Cadaver to automate WebDAV uploads (w\ example script)
February 13th, 2009

DISCLAIMER: I still hate windows.
I spent a decent portion of today hunting around for a way to script or otherwise automate (at the command line) uploading a file to one of $wageslavery’s external vendors. After diddling with curl -T only to find that it only works if the destination file doesn’t exist, I finally bit the bullet and installed Cygwin. Cygwin provides a win32 version of expect, the command line automation tool and cadaver, the command line WebDAV utility, basically smbclient for WebDAV. Working example code after the break!
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