steve cross loves music and science

The blog Nashville’s Dead has been kicking ass overall lately, as chronicled by the Scene in their People Issue from a few weeks back. I want to take a moment, however, to specifically point out the photography work of their main shuttergirl Bekah Cope. The photo to the left is of Turbo Fruits on Saturday night of SXSW at the Mohawk Patio. Not only was it an insane performance, as evidenced by the fact that Jonas is hanging upside-down from the rafters, but it’s the perfect shot to capture the essence of that particular show. Bekah shoots all shows with film and a simple on-camera flash in a way that most professionals try to avoid at all costs. But she fearlessly challenges the norm and as a result, her work has an entirely different aesthetic than what the more seasoned professionals go for. It’s good in a completely different way. Her perspective and style is refreshing and fits perfectly with DIY feel of Nashville’s Dead and the music they cover (a good majority of it is house shows). At times some of her photos almost hit the same spot on my visual palate as William Eggleston’s work does. Check out her SXSW photos at Nashville’s Dead and more of her stuff on her flickr.

I’ll take just a moment to express my opinions about the recent rumors of a Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile iPhone coming soon. A Wall Street Journal article earlier this week mentioned that the iPhone will likely be opened up to other carriers as early as this summer. While has long been a matter of “when,” not “if,” I’m certainly excited that this is finally happening. I’m very skeptical, however, that a Verizon version of the phone will be on the market before 2011 or even later. Currently there are two main protocols for 3G (3rd generation) wireless networks: GSM and CDMA. I won’t get into the technical details, but basically T-Mobile and AT&T both use the GSM standard, while Sprint and Verizon use the CDMA standard. Obviously the iPhone is a GSM device since it’s currently only on AT&T, thus it would be relatively easy to make one for T-Mobile since they’re GSM as well. Building an iPhone for Verizon and Sprint, however, is a different ballgame because many of the components have to be different. This is why I think it may be a little longer before we see a CDMA iPhone. Though the report did mention that some companies are already building the components for CDMA iPhone, there’s a lot more to it than just building the device. Verizon is known to be cranky about the content delivered through their network, and while I have no idea what they have up their sleeve in regards to iPhone content, I have to say it’ll probably be different than it is on the AT&T network. I hope I’m wrong about that though. Furthermore, Verizon is supposedly going to unveil their new 4G network sometime next year, which will use the new LTE standard, which will supposedly become the universal standard for all wireless networks. So why are they building a CDMA phone in the first place when it’ll just be replaced in a couple of years? The reason this matters to me is that I’m one of the people who would love to have an iPhone, but refuse to switch to AT&T. This is because I constantly see people on AT&T having signal coverage issues. Case in point: the entire floor on which I work which is just slightly below street level is a total dead zone for ALL other carriers except Verizon. If I didn’t have Verizon, I would have no phone service ALL DAY LONG. I’ve seen the same thing happen in other buildings as well. Not to mention Verizon is way ahead of the rest of the pack in customer service ratings. Sorry for the rant.