December 8 , 2002
Winter in Boston, snow everywhere. I've been neglecting the site. Partially, that's because I've been doing a lot of writing work for various clients, including Massachusetts insurer SBLI, and Intel. Fun, fun. The other part was that my laptop's motherboard fried. Well, partially -- just partially enough so that the PC card slot didn't work, which meant my wireless connection didn't work, which meant that it was tough to make site changes and not go dial-up-modem-speed crazy. Just figuring out it was the motherboard, and not a software problem -- ah, that was the fun part. That's all fixed; now I'm the WiFi kid.

So this is the perfect time to catch up on my photo-uploading backlog. In October, I did photographs for Basil Tree, a local catering company (check out its Web site, here) at the annual Don't Dessert Us! fundraiser. Community Services runs the event and uses the funds to home-deliver meals for people ill with AIDS, and their families.

In July, I got together with Somerville, Mass.-based rockers The Tardy, a.k.a. Jef Czekaj and Steph Operator, for a Tardy photo shoot. (You can check out The Tardy Web site too; buy merch ... Jef is a great cartoonist/illustrator.) Ah, the fruits of our endeavors. We have all sorts of themes: tight, white, '70s-style tennis clothes (ooh-la-la) -- in case a synthesizer-and drums-based band doesn't appear retro enough; boxing gloves (or, "hey, what's around Jef's house that we can use?" ... though I don't think Jef even boxes); fluffy, furry animal hats (reminiscent of The Cure's "Hot, Hot, Hot" video) which made Steph look rather dangerous and Jef, curiously silly; plus my favorite series, the walkie-talkie photos.

In May, I was in New York ... and I finally uploaded a couple of NYC photographs, taken with the go-ahead-and-steal-it-I-don't-care Holga. Here's one, at right, about 10:30AM on Sunday -- brunch in Brooklyn. I'm amazed; no one was queuing when we hit the restaurant at 10AM, a greasy eggs and great coffee joint that rocked. In Boston, the line for a table would already have been out the door by 10. Funny, the eating patterns of different cities. I could move to New York and be the Free Table King; only then I'd probably stay out later (the subway closes down in Boston at 12:45AM if you haven't heard; most bars by 1AM) and end up in sync with everyone else. Alas.

That's enough brunch paradox and excess hyphenation. Soon, I hope to upload photos from the Bazaar Bizarre on Friday, December 6 -- "a punk rock craft fair for you" -- at the stunning "Dilboy" VFW Hall in Somerville.

November 3, 2002
Two articles of mine just came out in the November issue of Enterprise Systems. The first is my monthly security column; this particular one's on securing instant messaging. The other is a case study of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and its use of peer-to-peer (P2P) software for sharing data with partners.

Unfortunately, Enterprise Systems is ceasing publication with the November issue. I'm looking for a new home for my security writing ...

October 29, 2002
A selection of my Tardy band photos are now up on The Tardy's brand-new site. I still need to organize/upload them for my site.

Added team photo for my Buda Ultimate team, "Jabba the Huck." (Theme for team names this season: outer space. Kudos to the "Wicked Smaaht Mahshins" team for the local/outer space crossover.)

September 25, 2002
The Cambridge College Report on the Year 2001-2002 has just been released, featuring seven of my written profiles and six of my photographs. The project, which began in April, had me interviewing and going on site with various Cambridge College graduates. Perhaps my favorite story was the aged-50-something cytologist who decided she'd rather be a counseling psychologist. Several years and two degrees later, she is.

When/if a PDF of the report gets posted online at the college I'll link to that. Physically, the report looks stunning, with wonderful graphic design and six-color printing, including a mid-gray that really zings the black & white photos.

September 9 , 2002
Monday, making site changes ... Added my latest security column for Enterprise Systems on securing the test bed. Am getting close to wrapping up my work for the Cambridge College annual report. I profiled and photographed a diverse selection of the college's graduates. Fun stuff. Target publication date is next month.

Also, just to be social (and fair to all of the friends I plaster so mercilessly across my site), I added a head shot to my "About" page, taken this past fall at an Internet cafe in Bar Harbor, Maine.

August 19 , 2002
Just making the first August update to the site. The crazy Boston heat (90+° and humid days) over the past couple of weeks has scuttled my brain. I've just added a couple of new articles, including my latest Enterprise Systems security column on (the lack of) wireless network security, including lots of how-to advice from security gurus. We try to be topical.

I also get to revisit the ever-fun Web site makeover field with a Computerworld feature story on freshening up corporate Web sites, with advice from Fidelity, Intuit/Quicken, Priceline, Discovercard, Jared Spool and others. (Unfortunately the online Computerworld design makes it, erm, hard to spot the two online sidebars: Helping Online Users Stay on Course, Persona Grata.)

Yes, it's a makeover, but in the Web design sense, kids.

July 17, 2002
Another month goes by! Just added links to my two most recent stories: "Securing Web Services" and a case study on Office Depot and business analysis software called "Getting IT Out of the Loop."

Lately I've also verged into band photography! Fun fun fun. Just did a session with Jef Czekaj and Steph Operator, the two halves of the band The Tardy. Ideas going in involved "70s-style tennis clothing" (i.e. short, and bleached white), but along the way came to include "fluffy animal hats." More photos to come just as soon as I get them scanned ...

June 4, 2002
I blink and months go by ... (Though to be fair, I just wrapped up a month-long freelance editing gig for Hurwitz Group, a technology analyst firm.) Summer has just about made it to Boston and I've been experimenting with iced coffee. (One shot of espresso to 1 liter of ice-cold Trader Joe's French roast coffee seems to do the trick. I haven't gone so far as to make coffee ice cubes yet but the season is young.)

With the beginning of June comes -- finally! -- some updates to the site and my latest round of articles, including a column on forensics in computer security. Not to steal from my lead, but if you're a fan of C.S.I. (now) or Quincy (then), and you know about computer security, it all starts to make sense. Sans the grained-out color shots of Vegas and the cool, cockroach-racing boss, of course.

Speaking of bosses, I also added finally added a link to a full-page article from the most recent issue of e-Securities on managing well when the economy is off; i.e., now ("Downturn Means Tough Choices ..."). As with anyone who's ever managed, or been managed, I have strong feelings about what is right, and wrong, and of course I managed to work some of that latent urge to "manage up" into what is partially (I hope) a primer for bosses who've survived the downturn (e.g. The Great Layoff/Purge of 2001-200? -- I know too many people out of work to say we're out of the recession yet).

On the horizon: printing and scanning more of my Holga photos, this time from a mid-May trip to New York City where I also caught two fabulous exhibits at the International Center of Photography in Midtown. The W. Eugene Smith exhibit of 1950s Pittsburgh is bizarre. While visually stunning -- with the 17,000 negatives Smith made of the city, you'd hope so -- the work, when married with Smith's torrid prose, is also a reminder of the dangers of that most Modernist (or "absolutist"?) attempt to localize "the themes of humanity" upon one small group of people. He was trying to twist his subjects into his preconceived vision of the world, the universe, and everything; a misguided photographer-cum-anthropologist of the 1950s. (Also it's an impulse most of us expunge while still students; not Smith.) Also, the unifying glue of it all for him to spell out what it all means -- his writing -- is so bad you'll laugh in pain. But the project as a whole is fascinating and highly recommended. The other exhibit, "Rise of the Picture Press (1918-1939)," and its sampling of early reportage and propaganda, succeeds wonderfully as it charts the beginnings of mass-market photojournalism. Very cool.

In addition, over the last couple of months I've been writing profiles and taking photos of Cambridge College graduates in their respective workplaces for the forthcoming 2002 Cambridge College annual print report. I'll use that project to kick off my "PenandCamera" section (i.e., where I get to wear both writing and image-making hats) just as soon as I gather up the scans and get the profilees all signed off on the profiles. I photographed the five graduates profiled who lived in Massachusetts, and the excellent, San Diego-based photographer Frank Rogozienski caught the profilee in California. More soon.

Also to come: a "friends" section. Since I have a million photos, and since a lot of my friends have very cool Web sites, why not combine them into brilliant Web eye candy? Yes ...

April 19, 2002
After several years of contemplation, I finally got a dedicated section up for cityscapes at night. Originally, it was a private joke along the lines of those old postcards that say "Houston at night" or "Chicago at night" and the front of the postcard is a rich, glossy black. Fun for a second, when you're 12. Anyway, after experimenting with some high-speed black & white film in 1996, I figured out that I could get funky, available light pictures handheld -- no cumbersome tripod. That is, as long as I was in a sufficiently well-lit environment. That led to a mini-obsession period of my life that involved lots of lots of photographs as well as experimenting with video and color films. Hence the new Cities at Night section. It's a start ... currently I have one photo from Edinburgh, one from Cambridge, Mass., and the rest are from Dublin. I still have a bunch to add from Boston, Cambridge, plus some others from Chicago and Las Vegas, for starters.

Also, I finally redesigned the homepage today to make the photo section look a little more appealing. I still need to create mini-galleries out of HTML. Currently the photo database is great for regurgitating images, but it doesn't let things get so textual. I need to provide more context, and marry images I have with writing I've done that's meant to go with them. Hence the "PenandCamera" designation -- projects that simultaneously encapsulate both. In progress ...

April 18, 2002
Finally put up link to my April security column and added a new main photo on the homepage.

March 25, 2002
Added link to new CIO Insight magazine article nominally on peer-to-peer computing, more on corporate use of instant messaging. Also came out in their March print issue.

March 11, 2002
Added link to new Computerworld article (part of the Computerworld Premier 100 conference coverage).

March 7, 2002
More tweaks to every section. For someone who used to be a copyeditor, or maybe because of it, I tweak an awful lot.

March 6, 2002
More changes to site -- further updated look of homepage. Also broke the long, long, long "About" page up into multiple pages -- this one (updates), writing samples, and resume & biography. Carried through the top yellow navigation bar onto all content pages. (It's not yet on the photo database pages as that requires altering some code.)

March 5, 2002
Updated look of homepage and added most recent Enterprise Systems security column and an Enterprise Systems case study from February.

February 5, 2002
Added photos of a summer beach trip. Memories of summer in the winter, I suppose. (I have so much backlog on my "fun" black & white photos that I haven't had time to print everything in the darkroom yet.) Also finally added publicity photos made for Cristi Catt and friends in March 2001. (Like I said, I'm not quite caught up on uploading stuff.)

Also, updated list of clips -- E-Securities, February ESJ security column, some older Computerworld stuff.

January 28, 2002
Added photos from a recent dinner party. They were taken with a cheap ($20), plastic ("toy") Holga camera and a rather expensive flash. I'd read that a flash could overcome some of the limitations of the camera (plastic lens, light leaks, shoddy film transport and not keeping the film flat). All in all, fun stuff.

Also added an Events section. I'm no information architect; coming up with section names that let people navigate different classes of photos top-down (instead of using search words, which is problematic since I haven't captioned every photo), in a useful manner, is difficult. Of course, if I added more images, a better structure might become evident.

January 15, 2002
First changes in the new year! One of my pictures of Pagan Kennedy got run on the New York Times review of her new book (which I haven't had a chance to read yet ...).

Added link to that as well as a couple of new articles.

Still behind on adding travelogues ...

December 17, 2001
Added link to the full-page Boston Globe article I wrote, which ran on Nov. 28, 2001. Forthcoming: copy of Pagan's book jacket and travelogues, which I've been working on in my spare time.

August 27, 2001
Changed agentprovocateur.org to point to a domain I just registered, penandcamera.com. Goal as I move to freelancing is to have a professional-sounding Web site that describes what I do at first glance. (Hats off to Emily Yacus for coming up with the name!) Also parked mathewschwartz.com here. One site, three links.

August 15, 2001
Updated or added captions for many photos -- especially travel ones. Also expanded this About section.

July 31, 2001
Just added photos of Pagan Kennedy from a July 4 photo shoot (see publicity section of my photo database). Photos were shot for her new book, Black Livingstone : A True Tale of African Adventure, due out in February 2002 on Viking.

I still have to upload the June cross-country road trip, assorted publicity work and Ireland color shots from the fall. Also, the panoramas from Ireland that I have up now are too dark and have to be fixed but am trying to find decent monitor calibration software first and rebuild the computer since the hard disk died earlier this month. Oh, the pain.

June 6, 2001
Added panoramic photos from Ireland, trip in November 2000.

January 18, 2001
Just fixed photo database. Trying to migrate from text-driven to database-driven site, but still learning PHP and MySQL ...

November 28, 2000
All dreams and no execution ... Am switching over to new server and it's bolloxed up the photo links. Working on it and the New Aesthetic.

July 31, 2000
As you can probably tell, this is a site under progress. I'm transitioning from my old homepage at TIAC to this one. (If I could figure out how to still access it via FTP, I'd update it, but I think that several acquisitions of my ISP have left the page frozen. And now, gone.) New features include a photographic database, since all of that hand-coding of HTML was driving me nuts. I'm also going to be designing using Dreamweaver and coming up with some kind of overall aesthetic.

In the meantime, photographs (sans captions) are available in the photo section. Soon, I'll be adding Beaulieu 4008 movie camera information too, and some movie clips. Writing samples forthcoming.