dangerousmeta > Archives
:: sun mar 05 00 ::
apologies ... to those of you running netscape. a couple of individuals (one from new zealand!) have informed me that my shenanigans here in preparation for a redesign rendered this page unreadable. i've restored the background image; you should be ok now. sorry! new design coming online in the next couple of days.
you may be violating a patent ... more patent brouhahah. human genome sciences is patenting genes. nytimes, registration required.
world war one ... at this base, they must have drafted the keystone kops ...
follow the tao ... this is possibly the first really good use of frames i've seen. learn chinese, read the tao te ching, and ponder the universe. for an express trip into the tao, i'd recommend a comic book ... zhuangzi speaks, the music of nature. from the princeton university press, of course. it makes the cryptic texts understandable and approachable.
flanders fields ... my father never forgot the raw effect of seeing the thousands of graves in flanders fields (wwI). he visited when the nazis were just beginning the arms buildup in germany (30's) ... and the poem in flanders fields had very real meaning for him. he felt that one view of flanders fields was the strongest anti-war statement one could ever experience. i wish they had a picture here to accompany this text. i'd like to see it.
thanks to david anderson in montana, i got on the track. i didn't find flanders fields, but i found a smaller cemetery at the argonne forest. still a powerful statement. scroll right for full effect.
hey ... does this picture mean they're 'dog-ma 2000' compatible? duck, quick ... can you tell i'm a big fan of detnyslexia?
jargon ... ever gone 'idsurfing'? check other up-and-coming terms on jargonscout.
dumas ... the man in the iron mask continues to mystify. has this author cracked the mystery? i can't tell, but since it's part of the 'ten cent pocket series,' it's certainly worthy of a look ... (grin)
dreams of hawks ... i really want a superhawk. the original 650 hawk was a great machine, albeit way too small for my 6-1 190 pound self. the combination of a v-twin with a sport chassis made it the supreme sunday backroads playtoy. not to big to be a pain, not underpowered. lots of low-end torque. this has a lot of plastic on it, may be too big ... but i'd like to try it out. then again, i need to go over and try test-riding the suzuki SV650. i prefer less 'plastic', and certainly the price is much better. now if it's big enough so my nose isn't IN FRONT of the headlight ... ah, weekends. can you tell some pressure is off this poor, beleagered cranium?
free and zesty ... zesty weasel has some textures and seamless background tiles for web use. she uses frames, so i can't take you there directly. look in the left side nav bar under "free web art 4 u" ...
a reflective, lonely sort of day ... it's grey here in santa fe, unusual. it's been thundering, raining, hailing, sleeting and snowing ... all in the last two hours. so i'm waxing philosophical here. noone else is interested in going out, so i'll talk to my somewhat captive audience here on etp. thanks for the ear!
pomo ... a discussion of postmodernism and christianity. is postmodernism the recognition that we make no true progress when the environment is despoiled and significant swaths of minorities are oppressed? yes. but then it's time to stop analysing the lint in our navels and DO something about it.
this is top of mind right now, as los alamos national labs announced yesterday they've potentially contaminated a large aquifer in northern new mexico with perchlorate, and in january announced that any well in the los alamos area could be radioactive. they detonate explosives on a regular basis. this follows on the heels of the admission that they've been leaking plutonium into the rio grande for years. we've been questioning lately the wisdom of staying in the northern new mexico area, the supposed 'land of enchantment.'
don't get me wrong; it's a beautiful area. i've never seen light like i've seen here, except for maybe block island off the coast of providence rhode island. but putting your head in the sand like an ostrich and ignoring the issues, assuming a large nuclear test facility could exist here for over fifty years and be 'miraculously clean' is so naive as to be just plain stupid. they don't just dabble in the nuclear ... gasses and other wonderfully friendly technologies as well. the winds here are predominantly from the west, in los alamos' direction. and they're only a short distance away as the crow flies. everything they do potentially affects santa fe.
i've been stupid and naive. but then, you never hear about all these local goings-on in the national media. one should ask 'why?' because this town lives off of tourism. any negatives cut the tourist trade by visible percentages.
anyone know of a great place to move to, that has lots of sunshine, water (PLEASE!), and fast net access? (grin) i'm starting to think about it ...
art critique ... a discussion of haider's austrian art perceptions, courtesy of the times. ... artists "behave like whores".
the horse in the wall ... netdyslexia's story of the horse image reminds me of the early days of video graphics. there were no cd-roms full of textures. for the most part, the only tools you had were similar to a reduced powerpoint feature set. but you could integrate live video and video stills.
i had hired a new assistant, robert. he was totally creative ... he taught me quite a lot. he treated his entire life, every single aspect as an element in the gigantic canvas that made up his life. we were working on a large pharmaceutical project, and we just couldn't get the right background to go behind the graphics. nothing really worked; we hadn't found the 'hook' yet.
robert went out at lunch and came back with all sorts of vacuum-packed lunch meats. olive loaf. bologna. a plastic-wrapped cube of head cheese! awful looking stuff. but when you put it under the camera, and took a still, colorized it ... it was like having kai's power tools in 1985! (an aside: the lunch meats were even more textural after they'd sat around awhile unrefrigerated) from that day forward, we ignored what we could create on the computer, and spent our time collecting junk. the office filled with mangled cans, building bolts, pieces of rug ... anything to get a particular texture. we began to win awards. noone ever figured out that we won by 'dumpster diving.' (robert actually was accosted once by a homeless individual asserting he was moving in on 'her' territory ...)
another lesson learned: an unwanted peanut butter sandwich is pornographic in the hands of a master animator. i had put the sandwich aside, because chinese food had been delivered for clients upstairs, so i'd already gone up to mooch what i could. paul, a leading polish animator and one of my mentors, was trying to make a point. he grabbed the sandwich and a piece of black duvateen, and began squeezing the sandwich into shapes below the live video camera we used for stills. i'd never seen anything like it. it looked like an orgy between three people under a blanket. we recorded it; everyone who saw it could not be convinced we hadn't been voyeurs.
there is a wealth of artistic potential around us, even in the most mundane objects. i'm a big fan of gestures; the shapes people unconsciously draw in the air. you'll be struck by the unknowing grace that surrounds you ...
redesign ... i'm in the process of redesigning this site, yet again. i've decided to chuck the rollover graphics and go for a more low-bandwidth, webloggish look. at least, i'll try it out for a while. but i'm having a bit of a puzzle at the moment. that left side pulldown of mine. it's both a pain, and convenient at the same time. i'd like to run it again, only this time (thanks to few graphics) i can make the sections much more comprehensive. it's a great way to pile a lot of links into a relatively small piece of real estate.
from a design aspect, however, it's a challenge. i'd like to run links behind it, and have css put a background behind the pulldown choices. ah, time to experiment, i guess. i'd prefer to have all the links here on the page with no pulldown, but i believe 'negative space' is just as important to a design. empty space leaves you room to reflect.
well, eventually you'll see what i decide.
