Sunday, December 14, 2008

Technical Hiccups




Cooooooold snowy day -- 27 degrees and windy. Whitecaps on the bay. Best gas price $1.67. Got let down by technology twice today... I have pretty snow pix to upload to my Facebook account, but all attempts at uploading have failed. On a lower-tech front, I have some sewing to do, but I seem to have bobbin issues today. Bobbin wants to tie knots under the fabric. Arg. Well, could be worse. Just found out another friend has been without power for 4 days... while my lights are on and my heat works! So not so terribly miserable. I'm wondering about motivation these days. So much I want to do, and don't. I think it's partly being lazy and partly being overwhelmed! Really do need to chomp things into smaller pieces and have some small successes, I think. Let's see if the Blog will let me upload some pix!! ***

Well, yes, there they are. Not gonna to the right-side align next time; it's not great. Pix are taken December 14 around March's Point. I dunno what the seagulls were excited about but they look good in the photo.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Holiday Music. Yech.

Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Filled up the truck for $1.79/gallon. Love the price drop, but hate what it's taken to get it.

On my mind now -- Christmas music. Ug. My graphics dept. is upstairs from a retail shop, and we have a holiday radio station playing non-stop. Does anyone really need to hear "Jingle Bell Rock" again in their lifetime? One of the gals downstairs really likes it. I, on the other hand, think it's some of the lamest music that could be foisted on us. I wouldn't object if there were some really grand music like Handel's "Messiah" or maybe Benjamin Britton's "Ceremony of Carols" -- but no, that sort of thing isn't anything that you can play at a retail shop, I suppose. Maybe if I had a passel of little kids that I adored coming to visit every Christmas, I'd have a different attitude toward this genre, but I don't... so it just makes me grinchy. Wasn't that how they forced Noriega out of hiding... by playing music at him that he didn't like, all the time?

Where in the world are my headphones...

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Dream Teams

Tuesday nite, crazy windy. Best gas price $2.15 (!!).

I've been watching the "extras" on the Star Wars DVDs over the last few days. There's a running theme on the "making-of" featurettes included with a lot of the most amazing films (LOTR trilogy and Serenity are two more that come to mind) -- and it's how mindful each person in the production is of the vital contributions of the rest of the team. There's a huge amount of appreciation and respect shared among the crew members, particularly when they are working on a project that they are outrageously passionate about, and which is almost too doggone hard for them! It's wonderful to watch the special effects guys raving over the composer, the producer gushing about the costume designer, the director thrilled over the prop makers... all of them saying pretty much the same things: couldn't do my job without those guys ... exhausted but excited... wouldn't miss this for anything...

This looks like creativity at its absolute best. What a pleasure to be a part of that sort of team! And yet I hear and experience a much different thing back here in the real world -- many more stories of frustration and friction than camaraderie and mutual inspiration. What might the elements be which change a work environment from a dehumanizing place into an exhilarating one?

The first thing that comes to mind is a leader for whom everyone concerned has huge trust and respect (George Lucas, Pete Jackson, Joss Whedon... yeah, those would be folks you could probably trust to get it right...). Another thing is a project that's truly worth doing (will there EVER be another Tolkien?). And another thing would be a team of folks who know their job so well that they can work with confidence (as opposed to ego, which I think is a fraud's way of faking confidence). Must be a tough collection of things to put together. I wonder how rare it really is?

Well, as they say on the LOLcats web site... "want."

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P.S. Happy Birthday, mom...
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Thursday, November 6, 2008

If we know history...

Quote: "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." (Edmund Burke)
Another one: "History repeats itself."
Hmmm. What if we do know history? Even if we don't repeat it, will history take care of the repetition itself? Why am I asking this?

I'm nervous about something. I'm thrilled that the country has actually progressed to the point of electing a mixed-race man with a non Anglo-Saxon name into office. I have read so much positive reaction, not just from around the country but from around the globe (obviously, with some exceptions) -- overall it's such an attitude of optimism and hope. That's good. That's wonderful. It's so lovely to hope again.

But... someone who was aware of things in 1962, tell me if this feels familiar? I was two when JFK was shot, so I don't have a personal experience of it. But I've read about it. So much optimism stacked up around one man, and one idiot (or a consortium of twits, depending on your beliefs) who decided to put an end to it. There is certainly no shortage of idiocy in the world. I still can't believe the news clip showing McCain having to insist on claiming his mic back from a woman who was commenting during the campaign that it was just too scary, the idea of Obama becoming president because he was an Arab.... jeez. (Bravo to Colin Powell who made the perfect response to THAT sort ignorant goofball comment.) I just don't want to see stories like the deaths of JFK & Bobbie, MLK (or even John Lennon, for pete's sake) repeated. I don't know if the country could stand another heartbreak right now.
OK, next post will be cheerful. Promise.

Carefully wading into Web 2.0

Widget check: rain today, tomorrow & Saturday. Best gas price holding at $2.39.

Yesterday I got an email from one of my regular customers at work; she had just joined "Facebook" and put me on a list of folks she invited to join with her. I had read that Facebook was a bit less of a high school hangout than MySpace, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Maybe I'm a late adopter, but here I am with a blog and a social network page, taking a few curious steps into the current incarnation of the web. I feel like I'm standing exactly between two camps; one one hand the teens/tweens/treens (there's a new word) who have already plowed this path thoroughly (and who will probably snicker at what a newb I am ... ), and on the other hand many of my clients who are retired folks, thinking I'm the consumate computer expert. I'm somewhere in the middle.

[[[Hey sis, this is the new Middle Class. I found it!!!]]]

The next thing I need to do is get this silly blog customized. I don't mind the simplicity of the generic header, but I guess it's irresponsible as a designer not to put up one of my own. The difficulty is in wanting it to be PERFECT instead of just different. I've been going over ideas on updating my brand (I know, lingospeak... how boring). For the last couple of years, my home page has featured 4 window panes with a view of a dandelion and lots of blue sky. Not that the dandelion is particularly iconic for me; I just really liked the image. It was mostly about there being a view through the windows, and being able to choose which window to go through (click) to get someplace else. That's pretty telling about my own life; seems I've spent more than a couple of decades looking for a portal to go through, trying to get where I want to be. (Wow, my home page was more profound than I had originally planned. A little subliminal design action, I guess). Maybe that's a springboard for planning the next incarnation. But don't want to do it until I can use it to showcase some new skills, and before that I need to finish getting a good handle on the new software I've acquired... Achh. Where's the first domino??

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

History just got made

Tuesday, November 4, the night of election day. Gas down to $2.39.

The wait is over! History just got made: Barack Obama just made his acceptance speech as President Elect. -- cool, huh? I'm relieved. It feels so optimistic. Maybe I'm just tired of overly-rich old white guys in power. I am looking forward to seeing what the international reaction is to this result. I hope Obama finds a way to stay close to the ground and attached to reality; not allow himself to be stuck up on a pedestal or pushed by the political machine into some false illusion of what's actually going on. He's sure got his work cut out for him over the next few years. Could the country possibly have come to him in a bigger mess? (Previous administration doesn't get their cleaning deposit back.)

The bummer difficulty has been trying to find a way to watch the return results -- no cable TV in my place, and no broadcast reception, so I've been trying to watch the MSNBC live feed online, over a not-wide-enough-band connection. Hic-cup-spit! Very intermittent audio and video; the speech made NO sense! I hunted for an audio-only feed with no success, and finally found a plain ole radio doing a simulcast and caught most of the speech. Hmmm. Most of the time I don't really miss having TV reception. But every once in a while...

One other sort of whiny-poor-us bummer -- for any of us out here on Nowheresville Island, where our votes are submitted in a drop box which isn't even picked up until 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time-- our votes were sort of moot. I mean, they will be counted, and the numbers will be part of the history of the election and all, but it was all over before any of us had anything to say about it. Like I said, it's whiny. I guess the same could be said for any of the "still gray" states in the middle though. I didn't quite understand how it worked, truth be told, I had the results map in front of me, and you could mouse-over any state to see how things stood there. So many states were just assuming the votes would go a certain way. With 0 precincts reporting, Washington was already counted as blue, for instance. I guess some states it IS a foregone conclusion, but... well, it just seems sort of crass. Gee, I just said politics can seem crass, aren't I making a profound observation?

In the meantime... we have a re-run of the governor's race from last time -- the same two candidates facing off -- last time was, according to the Seattle newspaper, the closest governor's race in American history. It's now 9:30, and I just checked the most recent results online -- the incumbent had a "razor's edge lead." So could go either way again.

Soooooo onward through the proverbial fog. Hope for the light.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Sunday, rainy. Best gas price $2.45 and holding. Been a veg all morning.

Sometime in February all the TV signals will be digital. Analog TVs will need a converter or a replacement. I'm not fretting too much; I haven't bothered to sign up for cable in years, and the only broadcast signal that shows up in this remote area is so intermittent as to be unwatchable. My TV gets used for DVDs and tapes, that's all. Some folks may be in for a confusing time though. Check this out.



Friday, October 31, 2008

Baby Birdie


You know how usually critters are sooooo cute when they're tiny... even the ones that grow up to be sorta awful? Well, some of 'em just don't even get the chance to be a cute baby. Somehow that just ain't right.

I don't know if this has anything to do with Design. Certainly with Offensive Aesthetics.

Lots more on Freaky Martin's blog.
(Dude. Nice collection).

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Rhyme Find

I just love my "Stumble Upon" browser plug-in. It's entirely too much fun. Here's where it pointed me today:
Writer Rhymes.com
It's such a simple, elegant page, and it works -- even on my Mac! Type a word, option-click it and it gives a list of words that rhyme, divided up into 1, 2, and 3-syllable groups. Yes, I know there's a rhyming guide in the back of my dictionary, but it's not COOL like this.

Monday, October 27, 2008

!DOCTYPE heckidunno transitional

Monday: end of sunny; nastytackysoggy by the weekend. Drip-dry trick-or-treaters. Best gas price $2.53 and holding. Just finished playing: DVD "Stardust" -- Robert DeNiro as a "whoopsie" pirate captain, cool!

[[[ Hi Sees... we're first to comment on each other's brand new blogs! Let's see which one of us has an "Oh, Horrors, Child" post first. Got any upcoming misbehavior on schedule? ]]]

Just did a snoop of the source code for another designer's web site. I've been randomly checking to see who is using Doctype declarations. Not as many as I'd expect, but the transition is definitely underway. My own site is still just html, not xhtml, although I do at least have some style sheets in place. I haven't decided what the next incarnation of my site should look like yet. And now I don't get to just think about the design... I have to showcase some more sophisticated coding. I'm not sure why learning to do that is less exciting this time than it was the first time ... back in the previous century when there was no such thing as Flash, or DreamWeaver, or even PageMill yet, I tracked down a web site with a rudimentary tutorial on html that some programmer had been kind enough to post, and started to figure out how to make a web page. It was fun -- like hacking through the jungle, trying to make a way. Now it's more like being lost in a strange city, filled with too many signs and a zillion people who already know where they're going and don't have time to give directions. I don't speak the language and the mountains are in the wrong direction.

I hear there are brilliant programmers out there who really don't like to design. I need to meet these people. I'll bet we could help make each other's lives more fun.



Sunday, October 26, 2008

Whose market AM I, anyhow?

Closing of the weekend. Best gas price $2.53. Now playing, "Space Lion" by Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts.

My iTunes "Genius Sidebar" has no idea who Seatbelts are and has nothing similar to offer me... but wonders if I'd be interested in its best sellers, including Beyonce, Britney Spears, P!nk and a few others. Well, no, thank you. Frankly I don't know who else I'd suggest to myself to complement Seatbelts, but it certainly isn't Britney Spears or any of the other folks on the best seller list. I bet they won't have any suggestions to go with E.S. Posthumus either. I just don't like what the industry is trying to pass off as my best options. I think that's OK with them; I'm not their market.

However... every once in a while, I come across something I really, really enjoy. There are folks putting this stuff out there, and folks besides myself who buy it. So I don't have absolutely, completely unique and unmatchable preferences. There are others. We must be a market. I wonder... whose market are we? And how do we find each other?

The massive maintstream entertainment industry here in the states pretty thoroughly overshadows everything else... formulas exist to make big sales in music, movies, books... original ideas too risky to be picked up by a major studio or publisher have to find their own outlets, and their voices are harder to hear than the cacophony of the big boys. There are a lot of ho-hum small voices, but every once in a while there's something astonishing. Probably more than every once in a while, if I knew more where to listen.

This is a good spot to say THANKS TONS to the Live 365 radio stations "Imagine Avenue" (I have now greatly expanded my collection of movie sound tracks) and "The Anime Radio Nook" (found several real gems -- I'm now a Yoko Kanno fan).

Oddball note -- first response I got on this blog was from the automated Blogger spam-sniffer, telling me that there were "elements of spam" on this blog, and apologizing since obviously there was a real person reading their letter but I needed to verify that I wasn't a spam-bot anyhow so they could remove the warning... I wonder what it was about that first post that set their spam sniffers off? I don't see anything to make into a nasty sandwich, but who knows. Maybe the gas price note. I did that because it makes a sort of interesting time reference for looking back, sort of like using stamp prices to put a date on something. Oh well. Maybe my opinions are spamesque? Awk. I sure hope I'm not spam's market.

Just to tie things together -- the Seatbelts music I'm listening to is from the sound track to the Cowboy Bebop anime series that I was watching during the last post. Japanese jazz. And iTunes still wants to sell me Britney Spears.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

What's in a blog?

Middle of October, best gas price $2.64. Now playing: Cowboy Bebop: Pierrot LeFou. Japanese audio, English subtitles.

"Hello World" -- that's how the computer programmers start, isn't it?

I'm a graphics geek with really annoying timing (I finished my degree in 1983. The Mac was launched the NEXT year). Now I've got over 2-1/2 decades of print graphics experience, but what's needed now are web developers. Fine, I learned html before there were any WYSIWYG apps; I think I can take on XHTML. Actionscript may take a bit longer. Funny; I spent all that time getting a fine arts degree ("emphasis advertising" -- that's what they called it), and now I get to learn to close all my brackets. This SO wasn't in the brochure.

Discovered an artist today -- Eyvind Earle. I picked up a DVD of Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" and watched the 2nd DVD of extras. Earle was the key to the amazing graphic style of this film. The backgrounds are so beautiful; not the usual 50s Disney fare. I searched his name out on Ebay; his prints are quite the hot ticket. I will have to try his technique for doing trees. The style may be half a century old but it's still wonderful.

Pierrot has just run amok.