Where I work, we have meeting rooms named after Ada Lovelace. Actually, all our meeting rooms are named after engineers. Ada gets three of them.

/random useless info

What, one of them is "Lady"?

I have seen it argued that a portrait can actually be more representative of a person than a photograph, since the artist can combine the different expressions and features in a way that the photographer cannot. ("Her nose crinkles up when she laughs, and when she's just stopping laughing her dimple fades, so I think I'll put in a little dimple and a little crinkle.")

I have seen it argued that a portrait can actually be more representative of a person than a photograph, since the artist can combine the different expressions and features in a way that the photographer cannot.

I've seen it argued, too, but I don't agree with the notion.

Though I'm more struck by photographs, and the people alive during the Regency era who survived long enough to have their pictures taken, or even such simple and silly things as knowing what Ava Lovelace looked like, when her father we know only from artist's renditions.

I was thinking about this the other day, believe it or not. If my family were to suddenly vanish (rapture, UFO abduction, free trip to Europe), this is the portrait record we would leave of ourselves as children:

My grandmother (mother's mother): a handful of black-and-white photos

My mother: black and white photos, some color ones when she was a teenager

Me: color slides until about 10, a handful of color photos after

Annabel: 1000+ digital images

When I was a little kid, every family gathering featured slides. I came to hate them, especially when my cousins Jennifer and Mary would get their three trays worth of them while I barely had enough to fill one. Guess who wasn't the favorite grandchild.

Whores! Whores for charity!

Colin Farrell helped raise $20,000 at an auction to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina - by selling himself on Friday. Miami Vice co-star Jamie Foxx took bids for a date with Farrell and when nervous women weren't forthcoming at the Delano Hotel charity bash in Miami Beach, Florida, decided to ask for group bids. One bunch of 10 friends bid $10,000 for a date with the Irishman, while another woman doubled the bid for her own one-night stand. And generous Farrell helped boost the fund too - he paid $50,000 for a portrait of Ray Charles. Meanwhile, fellow human auction item Paris Hilton was brought to tears when one fan bid $200,000 to spend New Year's Eve with the socialite. She said, "It's so generous. I'm crying right now."

Though I'm more struck by photographs, and the people alive during the Regency era who survived long enough to have their pictures taken

I just love the fact that a wife of a Founding Father, and a very cool one at that, lived long enough to be photographed--Dolley Madison.

Oh, for $200,000 and the dental skills to install a Denver boot on someone's jaw...

I have seen it argued that a portrait can actually be more representative of a person than a photograph, since the artist can combine the different expressions and features in a way that the photographer cannot.

I've seen it argued, too, but I don't agree with the notion.

I do agree--at least for 19th century portraiture and photography. With a few exceptions (Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee both among them, as it happens), I rarely get a strong sense of personality off a 19th century photograph, while in a good portrait you can get it in spades.

Betsy, no, it's just Ada A, B, and C. We also have Marconi, Tesla, Hopper (for Grace Murray Hopper), and Edison. But no Babbage.

Also, point of interest, David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, was born on this date in 1912.

/more random useless info

That final photograph of Lincoln (the one with the cracked plate) is an incredible example of what photographic portraiture can be--just an amazing picture.