May 29, 2017 photography

Europeana Photography

Source

Explore a wealth of vintage photographs with Europeana Photography

Today, we’re proud to launch Europeana Photography, our latest thematic collection. Photography lovers and researchers can explore more than 2 million historical photographs, contributed by over 50 European institutions in 34 countries. Europeana Photography presents images from the first 100 years …

November 13, 2016 editor

Adobe brackets on GitHub

Welcome to Brackets! Build Status

Brackets is a modern open-source code editor for HTML, CSS and JavaScript that’s built in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

What makes Brackets different from other web code editors?

  • Tools shouldn’t get in your way. Instead of cluttering up your coding environment with lots of panels and icons, the Quick Edit UI in Brackets puts context-specific code and tools inline.
  • Brackets is in sync with your browser. With Live Preview, Brackets works directly with your browser to push code edits instantly and jump back and forth between your real source code and the browser view.
  • Do it yourself. Because Brackets is open source, and built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you can help build the best code editor for the web.

Brackets may have reached version 1, but we’re not stopping there. We have many feature ideas on our trello board that we’re anxious to add and other innovative web development workflows that we’re planning to build into Brackets. So take Brackets out for a spin and let us know how we can make it your favorite editor.

You can see some screenshots of Brackets on the wiki, intro videos on YouTube, and news on the Brackets blog.

How to install and run Brackets

Download

Installers for the latest stable build for Mac, Windows and Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) can be downloaded here.

The Linux version has most of the features of the Mac and Windows versions, but is still missing a few things. See the Linux wiki page for a list of known issues and to find out how you can help.

Usage

By default, Brackets opens a folder containing some simple Getting Started” content. You can choose a different folder to edit using File > Open Folder.

Most of Brackets should be pretty self-explanatory, but for information on how to use its unique features, like Quick Edit and Live Preview, please read How to Use Brackets. Also, see the release notes for a list of new features and known issues in each build.

In addition to the core features built into Brackets, there is a large and growing community of developers building extensions that add all sorts of useful functionality. See the Brackets Extension Registry for a list of available extensions. For installation instructions, see the extensions wiki page.

Need help?

Having problems starting Brackets the first time, or not sure how to use Brackets? Please review Troubleshooting, which helps you to fix common problems and find extra help if needed.

For a list of common Linux issues and workarounds you can visit this guide.

Helping Brackets

I found a bug!

If you found a repeatable bug, and troubleshooting tips didn’t help, then be sure to search existing issues first. Include steps to consistently reproduce the problem, actual vs. expected results, screenshots, and your OS and Brackets version number. Disable all extensions to verify the issue is a core Brackets bug. Read more guidelines for filing good bugs.

I have a new suggestion, but don’t know how to program!

For feature requests please first check our Trello board to see if it’s already there; you can upvote it if so. If not, feel free to file it as an issue as above; we’ll move it to the feature backlog for you.

I want to help with the code!

Awesome! There are lots of ways you can help. First read CONTRIBUTING.md, then learn how to pull the repo and hack on Brackets.

The text editor inside Brackets is based on CodeMirror—thanks to Marijn for taking our pull requests, implementing feature requests and fixing bugs! See Notes on CodeMirror for info on how we’re using CodeMirror.

Although Brackets is built in HTML/CSS/JS, it currently runs as a desktop application in a thin native shell, so that it can access your local files. (If you just try to open the index.html file in a browser, it won’t work yet.) The native shell for Brackets lives in a separate repo, adobe/brackets-shell.

I want to keep track of how Brackets is doing!

Not sure you needed the exclamation point there, but we like your enthusiasm.

What’s Brackets working on next?

Contact info

November 6, 2016 opensource

US Government Launches Code.gov To Showcase Its Open Source Software

Source

An anonymous reader shares a VentureBeat report:_ The White House has announced the launch of Code.gov, a website that shows off U.S. government open-source projects and offers relevant resources for government agencies. By launching this site the White House is hoping to improve public access to the government’s software and encourage the reuse of software across government agencies. The launch comes four months after the White House introduced the Federal Source Code policy, which specifically mandates that government agencies make custom-developed code available for Government-wide reuse and make their code inventories discoverable” at Code.gov, with certain exceptions. The new site already has almost 50 code repositories from more than 10 agencies, U.S. chief information officer Tony Scott wrote in a blog post._

October 30, 2016 spreadsheets database

Object Spreadsheets

Source

Object Spreadsheets (formerly Relational Spreadsheets) is an enhanced spreadsheet tool with support for storing and manipulating structured data. End-user developers can use it directly to work with a data set, or to build a web application that offers constrained view and update access to a larger population of users.

As of December 2015, we have a prototype of the spreadsheet tool that we believe demonstrates the basic vision pretty compellingly, though it is missing developer aids for formula building and many other smaller features that would improve its usability. Completely missing at this point are (1) the ability to edit stored procedures via the spreadsheet UI and (2) integration with a UI builder to design the application UI. To demonstrate the applicability of the tool, we have built several example applications, writing the procedures and the application UI by hand; these are included with the prototype.

We would welcome your feedback on this work, and we’ll provide support for the prototype subject to our research priorities; in either case, please email us.

Available materials

  • Our Onward 2016 paper with more information about the problem, design, evaluation, and related work.
  • Matt’s master’s thesis: the main attraction here is a rigorous specification of the data model and computation semantics.
  • The prototype implementation, which includes a start page with demos, basic usage instructions, and links to reference materials:
    • Public hosted instance (updated 2016-10-12). Notice: This site has no access control, so please use discretion in what data you enter. Also, we may delete your data at any time. If the site is broken or contains inappropriate content, please email us.
    • Source repository.
  • A video demonstrating how to build a small example application (9 minutes), which is also linked from the start page of the prototype.

Acknowledgments

This project is supported by a grant from Wistron Corporation as part of a collaboration between Wistron and MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This project also received partial support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CCF-1438982.

October 6, 2016 markdown

TableFlip: the cure for Markdown table editing

Source

I was a beta tester for TableFlip, an app for editing Markdown (MultiMarkdown) tables painlessly, and I’ve been waiting excitedly to talk about it for quite some time.

The table format that showed up early in MultiMarkdown was very effective for adding HTML tables to documents. All of the pipes and dashes were a pain to type out, though, and if the table got large enough, it got difficult to edit and update. This led to a lot of solutions and text-based utilities, but nothing that made it truly simple.

TableFlip gives you a spreadsheet interface for quickly creating and editing tables in Markdown documents. You can open the file you’re currently editing in a text or Markdown editor and add or modify tables, or create new ones and copy them to the clipboard. Much like Marked, it will make the changes live in the document, and update if the document does. In fact, you can use it with Marked to add advanced capabilities to any text editor.

The output from TableFlip is clean and well-aligned. Table cleanup” scripts can do this, but with this workflow you don’t have to worry that making changes will mess up all that carefully added whitespace.

I believe that TableFlip is a game changer for anyone who uses tables in their Markdown writing. The current price is $18.99 US, but there’s a Launch Celebration” sale running until October 15th that will give you an instant 20% discount. The developer is also running a Share-for-discount” campaign that can earn you 80% off by getting the word out on social media.

TableFlip requires macOS 10.10 or newer. Find more info at the TableFlip website, and see the roadmap for upcoming features.

October 6, 2016 photography photographers

Annie Leibovitz’s Work on Women’ Is Never Done

Source

The intimate picture of Ms. Steinem was the first of dozens of new images of female leaders — in politics, sports, business and culture — that Ms. Leibovitz, 67, began taking last year to update her 1999 project Women,” a book collaboration with her partner of 15 years, Susan Sontag, who died in 2004. It really resonated,” Ms. Leibovitz said, but the project was never done.

Seventeen years down the line, with Women: New Portraits,” she is adding to history, with a new mentor, Ms. Steinem; a new generation of viewers to reach; and a new format beyond the printed page. Since January, Ms. Leibovitz has been on a 10-city international tour, appearing not in museums or shopping malls but in historically rich pop-up” sites where the audience is invited to join her in talking circles,” led by Ms. Steinem. They have focused on issues that range from sexual violence against women in Mexico City to women’s experiences in the technology world in San Francisco.

Talking in groups like that, it brings me to tears that we can do this sort of work within the show,” said Ms. Leibovitz, who added that the new work is more democratic” — more personal, more satisfying, more concerned with what someone does (like Andréa Medina Rosas, a human rights lawyer working with women on the United States-Mexico border) rather than how they look.

Photo

Serena and Venus Williams, Palm Beach, Florida, 2016” Credit Annie Leibovitz

And being there with Gloria and talking in groups like that,” she said. God, is it possible it could be like this? I like this life.”

Plausibly the leading celebrity photographer in the world, Ms. Leibovitz has been shooting women as personalities for 45 years, in the glossy pages of Rolling Stone,” Vanity Fair” and Vogue,” earning what was once reported to be $5 million annually, and up to $250,000 for advertising clients.

Continue reading the main story

With her strong, opinionated voice, she has done much to define the canon of contemporary portraiture, producing indelible and provocative images that included a nude John Lennon huddled against his clothed wife, Yoko Ono; the partly clad Disney star Miley Cyrus at 15; the very pregnant and very nude Demi Moore; and Ms. Ono after her husband’s death — her tears” courtesy of a Vaseline camera trick (though Ms. Ono told others that Ms. Leibovitz never explained why she was being daubed with Vaseline).

We were looking hard in 1999 for women C.E.O.s and women who ran companies — we shot Carly Fiorina,” Ms. Leibovitz said, comparing the two projects. Now, it seems that there really are many more women in high positions. It seemed like issues were more in the forefront.”

There is nary a nude among the rows of portraits pinned to the studio wall behind her, sponsored by a carte blanche commission, valued in the millions of dollars, from UBS, the financial services company — though one could hardly imagine asking the singer Adele at her piano, the television producer Shonda Rhimes on set, the Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai in a classroom, the primatologist Jane Goodall, or the senator Elizabeth Warren to disrobe. Caitlyn Jenner is the most scantily clad of the group.

Photo

Gloria Steinem, left, and Annie Leibovitz in the photographer’s studio. Credit Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

Revisiting the 1999 project, she said: I wanted to see Gloria Steinem older. I wanted Misty Copeland, the first black prima ballerina of a company that’s been in existence for 75 years.” And no one knew Lena Dunham. Ms. Leibovitz is working hard to get a few minutes alone with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who doesn’t like to be photographed, before the show’s opening on Oct. 14 in Frankfurt.

You can’t look at all those images without seeing the true human diversity of women, not characterized by whatever feminine idea or roles of who we’re supposed to be,” said Ms. Steinem, who helped compile the list.

The age-old format of sharing stories in the circle is activism 101,” she added. A circle of chairs is placed in the center of each installation, flanked by the new portraits on a long bulletin board; two large monitors project a slide-show of Ms. Leibovitz’s earlier pictures. The tour began in London last January at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, and freshly shot portraits have been added in each city.

When you’re a photographer, you work in a vacuum,” Ms. Leibovitz said. You take a picture, it gets published. You don’t really hear from people. This kind of thing, where you get to see people looking, it makes me want to do more of it and be more engaged like that.”

On Nov. 18, the exhibition will open in New York in the gymnasium of the old Bayview Correctional Facility, a former women’s prison on West 20th Street and 11th Avenue that closed after damage from Hurricane Sandy. After the exhibition finishes there on Dec. 11, Deborah Berke Partners and the NoVo Foundation will begin transforming the Art Deco structure into the Women’s Building, a future hub for women’s groups and services. When it opens in 2020, its forlorn cells will be gone and its terra-cotta facade and colorful wall mosaics restored.

Photo

Misty Copeland, New York City, 2015” Credit Annie Leibovitz

It’s a harmonic convergence,” Ms. Steinem said of the alignment between the empowering message of the exhibition and how the building is being reimagined.

Continue reading the main story

Ms. Steinem said she has been tap-dancing hard” to help get the plans for the women’s center through bureaucratic approvals and steered Ms. Leibovitz to the space. They have invited formerly incarcerated women from Bayview to be docents and will lead a discussion on women’s rights and female incarceration in a public gathering on Nov. 16.

The initial idea for a book of photographs about women was Ms. Sontag’s, whom Ms. Leibovitz met in 1989 while taking her photograph. She described prepping for her first dinner date with the formidable writer by reading two of Ms. Sontag’s books and The New York Times front to back. I wanted to take note cards with me,” she laughed, adding that Ms. Sontag was so charming and so nice.”

Their relationship began during the throes of Ms. Leibovitz’s work at Vanity Fair, for which she famously shot Whoopi Goldberg submerged in a bath of milk. (A prolific researcher, Ms. Leibovitz was referencing one of the comedian’s stage personas — that of a black girl who uses bleach to scrub her skin in an attempt to look white.)

Ms. Sontag encouraged her to tackle a complicated and personal series. I knew that if I was going to be involved with Susan Sontag, I was going to have to be better — be a better photographer, be a better person,” Ms. Leibovitz said. She used as her template the photographer August Sander’sconcept of documenting all walks of life” and went out to find schoolteachers, astronauts, Supreme Court justices, farmers, socialites, prostitutes, the first lady, coal miners, athletes.

Photo

Gloria Steinem, New York City, 2015” Credit Annie Leibovitz

The book defied the tradition, Ms. Sontag wrote, of photographing women for their beauty rather than their character. The new project advances this idea. The imagery of women has to catch up with the imagery of men,” Ms. Leibovitz said. I don’t know if I ever succeeded for Susan on some level, which is why it is quite beautiful to go back into this project.”

The biggest difference she’s found between 1999 and today is the self-confidence she sees in the women she’s photographing.

Eva Respini, the chief curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, who hasn’t worked directly with Ms. Leibovitz, finds the project striking for the implicit collaboration” between the photographer and the sitters. Because of Annie’s own power, she’s able to get her subjects to reveal something of themselves, subjects that I would imagine are usually pretty guarded,” she said. Oftentimes, when you have a male photographer and a female sitter, there is a kind of imbalance of power to start with. What I see in these photos is a leveling of the playing field.”

The New York exhibition will introduce Ms. Leibovitz’s new portrait of Serena and Venus Williams, shot in September after Serena’s unexpected defeat in the semifinals of the United States Open and the loss of her No. 1 ranking. In the portrait, the sisters are locked in an embrace, with the older, taller Venus like a protective wrapper around a more vulnerable-looking Serena.

Continue reading the main story

It was a tough shoot,” Ms. Leibovitz said. It’s a real thing how they take care of each other and hold each other up.” After Venus lost to Serena in last year’s United States Open, Ms. Leibovitz was inspired by a full-page picture in The Times of the sisters hugging that she ripped it from the paper and stuck on her refrigerator for her three adolescent daughters — Sarah, born in 2001, and the twins Susan and Samuelle, in 2005. I said, They are sisters.’” She worked for a year to schedule the last shoot.

Photo

Ms. Leibovitz in 1999, preparing for her exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. Credit Khue Bui/Associated Press

A sitting is very psychological,” said Ms. Leibovitz, who spent a day in Virginia with the photographer Sally Mann, by the river where Ms. Mann had photographed her own children. Because she’s a photographer, she knows what you want, or wish you could have, and there was a kind of resistance initially to giving that. Then, partway through, there was a moment — you could almost see it happen. She gave me those pictures.”

Yet Ms. Leibovitz was clearly uncomfortable with the reversal of roles when a photographer arrived at her Chelsea studio to shoot her and Ms. Steinem. Ms. Leibovitz interrogated the man on how he positioned them, the angle he was shooting from, and his choice of lighting, at one point leaping up to inspect how it looked on the screen at the rear of his camera. I can’t help myself, I’m sorry,” she said. I’m such a control freak.” (She later invited him back for another photo session.)

Ms. Leibovitz has kept a tight rein artistically but not always business-wise. She faced well-publicized financial problems in 2009 after taking ill-advised loans of millions of dollars and using her homes and rights to her photographs as collateral. She has spoken of the many stresses she faced, from existing mortgages on her homes to federal and state tax liens, to lawsuits, to expenses associated with the deaths of Ms. Sontag and her own parents, and the birth of three children.

I kept waiting for a knight in armor to come save the day, but the only answer to it was just for me to work hard,” Ms. Leibovitz said recently. She refinanced the loans in 2010 and said she repaid the outstanding balances by 2011. (In 2014, she sold her West Village townhouse complex for $28.5 million and downsized” to an $11 million apartment on the Upper West Side.)

It’s always a kind of tortuous thing between art and commerce — how we make a living,” she said. She calls assignment work for magazines a great highway,” even if the pictures that get published aren’t always her favorites.

Photo

Alexandra Fuller, Wyoming, 2016” Credit Annie Leibovitz

Her association with UBS began in 2014, when she was hired to shoot an advertising campaign. When UBS asked if there was something she was interested in doing for herself, she proposed the series of new women portraits. It harkens back to being commissioned in the Renaissance,” she said.

The bank agreed to her fee but would not discuss details.

According to Johan Jervoe, the chief marketing officer at UBS, it has made the exhibitions free for the public and sponsored educational programs and workshops for art students with Ms. Leibovitz at each space. UBS gets a set of prints at the end to add to its corporate collection of 35,000 artworks and the association of Ms. Leibovitz’s high-profile tour to burnish its brand.

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This is a dream assignment for me,” Ms. Leibovitz said. Not enough people talk about how great it is to get older and some of the cool stuff you get to do.”

That can mean jumping into the pool, as she did recently to photograph the Olympic swimming champion Katie Ledecky underwater, pushing off from the side as though in a trance. Ms. Leibovitz is confident she will be photographing Hillary Clinton in the White House. This is her time,” she said.

When will she consider the project complete? Susan herself said this was always a work in progress,” Ms. Leibovitz said. Women are a work in progress. To my dying day, I’ll be doing these photographs.”

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