I so want to build one of these. It would amuse me for hours and hours.

Interactive Topographic

Apparently its based on a Kinnect and Xbox. Here are the instructions to build your own!

See this one as well:

So cool!

I had (have had, and will likely continue to have) a discussion about what makes a writer, or a singer or a photographer. An -er of some sort. While my views have refined themselves over the years I still hold (mostly) to a definition I came up with in University. An -er is someone who not only produces something, but also maintains a relationship — of a two-way sort — with an audience. There are all sorts of quibbles, exceptions, misunderstandings and outright illogic about it, especially when you talk about/add in things like ego, volume vs quality, the difference between art and craft and what makes a teacher a teacher and not just a teacher. But mostly I stick to it. As Mssr. Henderson of Chilliwack put it, “…if there’s no audience, there just-a ain’t no show. Whoa, whoa.”

By this definitions Emily Dickinson was not a poet (or poeter as I like to call them). When I repeat that, it generally makes Leslie cringe.

Banksy, on the other hand, is all sorts of -er. I don’t know what other people think about that.

In memory of the recent passing of Leonard Nimoy I present my favourite Star Trek memory. Actually it isn’t about the show at all. When we were kids (probably Grades 5 or 6) we got these Star Trek guns that shot tiny disks and we spent hour upon hour pelting each other and ourselves with them. One of the good things about 3 boys all within a year or two of each other. It was war and there were no unfair advantages, there was only cunning and the killer instinct.

  

I had started this post almost two years ago when something reminded me of those guns but I didn’t look too hard and just saved it as a draft for later. The final death of Spock reminded me I had it in the to-do pile so I dug it up and started anew. Googling didn’t bring up much (even in Wikipedia there was hardly anything), but I did come across this blog post that sums up a lot of my feelings:

One of the best memories of my young childhood was playing a game that we simply called “guns.” The battlefield was the whole suburban neighborhood … every yard, half-built new house, vacant lot and wooded lot … and we’d play for hours at a time. Liberals and other peace nits are going to send me hate mail now. Yes, I grew up playing with toy guns, pretending to “kill” my friends and … surprise! I’ve never shot or killed anyone in real life, I’ve never robbed a liquor store with a toy gun and I don’t have the urge to wail and cry my heart out over a tree that’s just been cut down so I believe that I grew up (reasonably) normal.

…

The Tracer Gun was a simple though novel idea, load a toy gun with twenty flat aerodynamic plastic discs, squeeze the trigger and a spring loaded flicker arm (kind of like a clay pigeon thrower) would be pulled back to a certain point and then released with a violence all of its own. This flicker arm would be flung forward striking the first plastic aerodynamic disc off the top of the spring loaded 20 disc magazine. When the spring arm made contact with the aerodynamic disc, it would send it spinning down the flat tracks inside the round barrel. The aerodynamic disc was basically an air foil and would leave the barrel like a Frisbee, buzzing towards your intended target and floating through the air at a speed that was, generally, a little faster than any but the fastest kids could outrun or dodge. Fat kids went down without a hitch and you didn’t have to lead them as much as you did the quicker, more agile skinny kids.

—Angst & Speed

Man, we must of killed each other a bajillion times with those things. Until I did some research for this post I hadn’t ever realized there were non-Star Trek versions, so to me, the basement slaughters have always been associated with the TV show. There was even a rifle version. And (as I recall) it was a self-cleaning toy, as you needed to collect all the disks so you had more ammo for more mayhem. No mess for Mom.

 

I guess a lot of the Star Trek purists might be mildly appalled that Star Trek to me is about guns and slaughter, but then I was always a Kirk boy; I never could understand why they gave Picard a ship. 🙂

 

There are still some of these guns around — toy collectors and such — many, as you can see from the pictures, still in their original packaging. Not ours. Ours were well loved and well-abused. And we never did put anyone’s eye out.

 

 

 

A few years back C came across a website called The Aesthetics of Joy. It is a ongoing project from a woman named Ingrid Fetell.

This is the bio from her website:

ingrid fetell

My work explores the emotional relationships between people and things, particularly the basic objects we interact with every day. Many of these interactions are unthinking—the way we sink into a chair or grasp a cup—and my goal is simply to expose the emotionality inherent in the material action. On a deeper level, I’m interested in the dialogue between objects and our long-term emotional well-being. Much has been said about the unhealthy culture of consumption in modern life, and I believe part of the solution lies in designing products that are emotionally satisfying in a more durable way

Just the name delights me. Life should be about joy and, as a visual person, the idea of joy having an aesthetic should have been a foregone conclusion, yet I never thought of it that way. I discovered her site about the same time that Sony Bravia released their commercial/short film with 250,000 colourful balls bouncing down the streets and hills of San Francisco. It’s delightful if you’ve never seen it.

I am not sure of the cause and effect relationship between Aesthetics of Joy and the Sony commercial — I may have just seen it on her site or C may have pointed them both out to me at the same time — but they are now both inextricably linked to my mental images of joy. So take some time and watch the video and wander through her site. And check out the making of video too.

And embrace the joy.

.

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is the most common format for text files in computers and on the Internet. In an ASCII file, each alphabetic, numeric, or special character is represented with a 7-bit binary number (a string of seven 0s or 1s). 128 possible characters are defined. It is what is often refereed to as text (as opposed to code) when referring to email or file types.

Back in the late 60s people started to use the symbols to make drawings. These eventually evolved into high art.

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ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, as on a traditional typewriter) such as Courier for presentation.
—Wikipedia

A lot of us will remember these from the local carnival (The Calgary Stampede in my case) booths that took your picture then printed it out using text.

This is not me. I can’t find mine.

But there are tons of great images out there and you can do all sorts of weird things with them. For example if you want see a nekkid lady you can find one buried in the source code of this post. (See here if you don’t know how.)

The possibilities are endless. See Chris.com’s ASCII Art page for literally hundreds of cool drawings.

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The latest issue is out!

I’m kinda proud of this one. It shows great gains in all sorts of places. Unfortunately for me the print copies are still driving around in the boss’s car. If I’m luck I will see one before half of St Albert.

My ex-wife used to say tongue firmly in cheek “Life is a bitch… and then you marry one.” She was never a bitch, but she used it to try and get away with outrageous things. Life is Life: one of my favourite 80s songs. Tim reminded me yesterday the “Life is short…and unpredictable.”

Que sera, sera… Ironically I first heard that one, and the song (the version by the Raes), when I was 13 or 14 (Grade 8 anyway). Carlton Hughes and I were over at Cheryl Hutch’s house ‘hanging out’ in her basement. I remember having to beg for my parent’s permission to be out that night. Carleton was ever the mover and shaker and had set up that he, I, Sue-Ellen Ingram and of course Cheryl would hang. Cheryl and Sue were best friends and Carlton had his eye on Cheryl, so we all know how that was supposed to go. As it was, I considered 14-year-old Sue stunningly beautiful — and I still do I suppose. She had the greatest nose, lovely eyes, and oh, those 1970s jeans… The two best looking girls ever had invited us over…good times. So I wasn’t in any way opposed to the plan.

I remember very little of the evening except the moments approaching the climax as it were. Carlton and Cheryl had left the main room. The lights were down low and Sue was sitting in my lap. Que Sera Sera was playing on the stereo and I was having a long and drawn out internal argument about whether or not Sue wanted me to kiss her or, at the very least, wouldn’t freak out if I did. As C would say, “Boys are stupid.”

And I never did kiss her.  We eventually said our goodbyes and I never again found myself in that intimate a situation with the best looking girl in school. Carlton moved away the next year and my ‘adventures’  shifted to a different course. Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. My 14-year-old self really was a bit of an idiot, but then I’ve had a fear-based personality most of these 50-some-odd years and I guess I can’t fault the little moron. But I’ve tried to use that little ‘mistake’ as a reminder ever since: always kiss the girl! I don’t always manage to do it  and it’s just funny that it never gets easier 😉

Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenes dum sumus: Let us rejoice, while we are young. I’ve used it as a personal motto since I first heard it in University. It’s seemed more appropriate than my previous motto — care of Rob Dyck: Give ‘er till ya puke. But the sentiment remains the same.

So ya. Life. Huh.

For those who wonder, the whole verse is:

Gaudeamus igitur,
Juvenes dum sumus;
Post icundum iuventutem,
Post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus.

Let us rejoice while we are young
After our youth,
After a troublesome old age
The ground will hold us.

Way back when, when I broke down and joined Facebook, it asked me to state my Political Views. So I wrote “Irresolute Left-wing Libertarian.” And now whenever I come across that tidbit, I still smile and nod in agreement. If I am forced to think about politics or, more accurately, social policies, I generally come down on the left side of the spectrum. I remember having arguments with my older brother when I was still in Grade 2 or 3 where my position was that money was bad and a ridiculous way to do things. As I got older though, I have come to the conclusion that people are at once too stubborn and too independent, and too herd-like and too mindlessly drone-ish for any sort of socialism to work very well. In addition I also personally don’t ‘like’ people all that much and would generally prefer to get my own way too much for me to sign up for the Marxist wagon. Ask me about switchbacks someday. All that and the concept of class warfare is a bit of an odd duck to me.

And later, in my late teens, I read a bunch of what I now know to be ‘libertarian’ novels. And I liked them. Look after yourself and others look after themselves and we will all get along. Shit’ll get done and idiots’ll get shoved off to the side. Seemed simple and pretty darn sensible. I still carry a lot of that. Of course your average libertarian these days seems to be a gun-toting, anti-government paranoid. That’s so not me… And healthcare is a good thing.

I think, when, as I said, I am forced to, I come down as a believer in Benevolent Totalitarianism with an armed populace and very, very harsh violence laws. Checks and balances people… it’s all about checks and balances.

That said I am not yet crazy nor arrogant enough to believe my views are any more sane than a confirmed Marxist’s or those of the Staunchest Libertarian. So I like to work in the system I have and believe in it as much as I can. So far it hovers relatively close to the ‘least harm’ zone. And I don’t think about it overly much. That makes it all better.

But still,  I follow along with people of all stripes (still have a soft spot for the gun-toting libertarians…at least in a book) and live with one of those aforementioned Marxists, so I do find myself reluctantly contemplating the dangers of complacency more often than I would really like. And so when I was reading an interview lately with author Stephen Brust — a confirmed, card carrying, left of left, worker’s part socialist — just check out tidbits like this from his site for confirmation — and I come across the following question & answer, it really makes me smile.

VENTRELLA: Do you think there is a place for a third party in America?

BRUST: I don’t know. I’d like to start with a second party and see what happens after that.

— An Interview with MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA 

I know here in Canada we technically have a 3 (or more)-party system but really, the moment an NDP government gets elected they start racing to the center, and the Conservatives aren’t much better. And, when I (reluctantly still) think about it, the U.S. is worse. The party differences are so small in actual policy as to be almost impossible to explain to any non-American (when was the last time that either party spent less than 500 billion on defense?). So when I read a quick quip like Brust’s, I laugh first, think about a bit and then share it with my friends as a bit of reality check. And to remind myself that thinking isn’t such a bad thing.

For fun:

—pgpf.org

—Wikipedia

Besides the snow, cold rains, distance from the mountains, distance from the ocean, and weird roads, there isn’t much I regret about moving to Edmonton all those years ago. But one of the reasons I chose Edmonton over, say, Calgary was the arts and culture scene. And over the years big oil in C-town and a general malaise in the E-town scene has slowly eroded the benefit of Edmonton over other locales.

Be that as it may, it is always so tempting to play the grass is greener game when you read about art etc. in the big big-cities. I mean why don’t we have an exhibit of 16th-19th century cat art? Huh! Why!

This is so awesome! The Japanese Society gallery in NYC (333 East 47th Street New York, NY) is hosting the following exhibit of woodblock prints this spring:

LIFE OF CATS: SELECTIONS FROM THE HIRAKI UKIYO-E COLLECTION

Fri, Mar 13 – Sun, Jun 7, 2015
Since arriving in Japan aboard Japanese ships transporting sacred Buddhist scriptures from China in the mid-sixth century, cats have proceeded to purr and paw their way into the heart of Japanese life, folklore, and art. Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection illustrates the depth of this mutual attraction by mining the wealth of bravura depictions of cats to be found in ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Edo Period (1615-1867).

You can see how this would be cause for jealousy in any lover of art/cats/woodblock printing.

Be sure to visit the Gallery site and flip through the whimsical and amusing prints; you just won’t have that many chances in life to empathize with a 19th century Japanese dude like this.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror the other day and liked my hair. Now before you go thinking I was all vain and stuff, those of you acquainted with me long-term know I generally get my hair cut once, maybe twice, a year. During that time there are 4 or 5 points (lengths really) that I usually say to myself, “Hmmmmm, I like that look, I should remember it.” So since it was one of those moments and I had my cellphone in hand, I thought Why not a selfie for posterity and to show my stylist next time I get a cut. Simple right?

So here’s the deal. It turns out that the fact that your eyes only point one direction and maintain a constant relationship with your mirror self means that your everyday ‘self-view’ as seen in the mirror isn’t at all related to how you actually look. How do I know this? Because I took like 30 pictures from a million angles and none of them look like me. None. They are all pictures of some other guy with bad hair. In the end I could only assume that the only way the picture would turn out the way it actually was (i.e. the way I saw it), was if I held the camera right in front of my face, lining up the lens exactly with my eyes and using the obviously correct pov. So I did. Life is weird.

I don’t look like this

This is what I look like