macblaze.ca

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