I worked 14 hours yesterday. Not a double, but nearly. I work non-profit and at 12:15am when I’m leaving the office and going down into the subway, the last thing I’m expecting is for there to be no N or W train service to Queens.

In fact, I went down the subway at Canal Street, and like a responsible straphanger, I read all the posted signage. there was NO MENTION of cancelled N or W service past 57 Street.

I got on the first train to arrive, an N local to Astoria. Just before 8 Street, the conductor announces that this N train terminates at 57 Street. Okay, I’ll just transfer there to the next Queens-bound train I think to myself. Then he announces, in fact there’s NO Queens local trains to Astoria tonight. No explanation why. He recommends transferring at 42 Street/Times Square for the 7 train to Queensboro Plaza, where shuttle buses are running to Astoria.

Ahhhhhh fuck!

About 80% of the train empties at Times Square, and we don’t really need to rush to the 7 platform for fear of it being packed, because it already is! Hundreds and hundreds of hot sweaty subway commuters are standing shoulder to shoulder, mere inches from the platform edge because it’s so crowded. When the first 7 train arrives, it’s difficult for the people already on the train to get off because everybody fears not being able to get on - people push, shove and shout, and there’s no official staff present to assist boarding the subway. This author and many others wouldn’t even dare, it almost seemed dangerous to attempt.

And even once the second 7 train of my journey home arrived, the travel time home was obviously delayed due to signal issues, and the train crawled along. I didn’t get home until after 2am (I live off 40 Street/Lowery Street stop in Sunnyside).

Thank you MTA for the perfect cap to an already grueling and unforgettable day.

decision? I vote for the white guy!

…

but not in November I don’t!

(from Amelia’s facebook)

Amelia was a terribly smart individual, who on a personal level always managed to poke fun at me in a way few others could or would even dare! hah! Her intellect however was usurped by her inclination and ability to enjoy life and have fun, and she loved to have fun! It’s hard to find an image of Amelia on her own, as she was always giving - even in the photographic sense - to those around her. Unfortunately I don’t think I have any photos of Amelia myself. She always managed to elude me.

What’s worse is I had an offer to party with Amelia this past Wednesday evening, and passed because I had awoke at 5:30am that morning and traveled back to NYC from the Catskill Mountains, and was exhausted. Before then it was over a month since I’d seen her.

I intend to ghost bike her accident site.

Updates:

Amelia at 1:22am during the Everything Must Go closing party. Is there a photo of this girl not having fun? I very much doubt it.

AMELIA’S WAKE will take place at

Grammercy Park Memorial Chapel
353 2nd Ave
Btwn 21st and 22nd

google map link

Wed July 16th and Thurs July 17th
Showing times: 2pm-5pm and 7pm-9pm

note: this is going to be a traditional wake, there will be other opportunities to bring Amelia Memorabilia.

UPDATES:

Her family requests that everyone come THURS at 7pm. (There will be speaking and remembering of her life)

If you can’t make it Thursday come either day at anytime.

The family is planning Amelia’s Ghost Bike. I will post more details of that as they emerge, and do what I can to inform people of how to contribute.

Update:

Amelia’s ghostbike has been installed at 49th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan. The bike has the baby seat Amelia used to ride on as a child. Feel free to stop by the site and leave a little something for Amelia.

via ghostbikes.org

Okay so here we go:

Brooklyn Museum and the Flickr Commons

some pretty exciting things going on over at the Brooklyn Museum, including their consigning to the Flickr Commons, which is less about taking photography in the museum and more about sharing their image archives (as well as images taken documenting recent events, openings, etc.). That’s great, just great. Good for them! Brooklyn Museum Flickr sets

Firestats, for WordPress

Firestats is a great, simple, web statistics system that can be easily integrated with WordPress (which runs this site). It’s smooth, consise and pretty darned comprehensive:

fresh install - 0 statistics

Firestats automatically refreshes! 5 minutes after install, already 5 visitors. That’s cool! (Further down the page you get referrers, countries, search terms, the lot… I hate having to open another tab for my webhost to view urchin stats - Firestats is easily accessible from within the WordPress dashboard!)

Firestats - hello to my Ukrainian and Chinese blogcomradesurfers! all 11.11% of you! Canada… eh.

PicLens for Firefox 3

Following on from the success of over 8 million downloads of Firefox 3 on its launch day, new extensions and add-ons are emerging at an alarming rate, and most of them are pretty top-notch! Furthermore, at least on my system, memory hogging doesn’t seem to be as much of a burden anymore, even with 20+ add-ons running! One of my new-found favorites is PicLens:

PicLens google image search for “nick normal” - an image I’ve never seen before, but I recognize it to be by Lance Wakeling of artmini acclaim! to the right of his image, me and Ashley at the Steinway Street stop in Queens (photo by Josh Picker); below that an image from Peekskill NY, at bookworm or whatever that fantastic bookstore is called, from a trip taken by Kerry, Sarah, Jamil and myself; above the photo of me and Ashley an image of me taken by Cassie Thornton!

Huh? same google image search for “nick normal”. I definitely don’t recognize this photo, but wish I was there! That hexagonal game board with topographic layers! brilliant! (and that orc is soooooo dead! unles… he has… mithril!)

PicLens is quick to browse Flickr too. not sure if it browses titles, tags, or description, but it’s pretty fast! That’s sweet!

So yeah, get PicLens!

and lastly…

Note to self:

FIX YOUR FUCKING BLOG CODE!

i’m on it!

be sure to get your certificate too!! DORKS!

love ya Dude!

(and thanks to the future post function of WordPress, even if I forget to call, I’ll have published this post as proof that I was thinking about you! ahhhhh open source technology used to express one’s affection!)

(and thanks Henry for your original drawing!)

big trucks

from 2008 Feb 24 in the NYTimes, this graphic shows the vehicle power needed to move (and to protect, I assume) American troops in the world’s contemporary battlefields. My favorite is the Force Protection Buffalo Category III MRAP, a 20+ tonne vehicle that can carry 6 individuals the distance of St. Louis to Chicago for what would cost at consumer-rates $400-a-tank (not to mention the money needed to get the diesel to the battlefield!)

[via NYTimes - unknown article (or I'm too lazy to search)]

treehug the aristocracy

HRH Prince Charles is the owner of an amazing 37-acre garden known as Highgrove Garden. I’m not too keen on the British royal family, especially their acquisition of land and wealth - and they have a LOT of it - but this place looks pretty spectacular. Too bad I can’t take my non-existing girlfriend there for a stroll.

[via treehugger - A Visit to Highgrove Garden]

you gotta love him!

Martin Creed’s work #701. Creed’s numbering sequence makes for archiving art a really simple task! No flamboyant or wordy titles, and everything simply falls in order, this one, then that one, and so forth.

bike pr0n

[via moyercycles Flickr]

something I’m terrible at

is making business cards. there are some really good ones out there, and I just never follow through with producing them. Are they, the secret ticket to success?

[via fubiz.net]

continuing from my paper-art-is-all-the-craze (see DIY Architecture), click here for some PDF-downloadable Japanese paperbots. You’ll have to figure out the assembly yourself - I only understand the visual language: I click the icon, get the respective robot page, eventually find the PDF, download, cutout, robotparty!

this bot, with the six-shooter extendo-arm reminds me a bit of the gun-slinger from Westworld:

(which is supposed to have a remake in 2009 - me, I hate remakes, I can’t stand the push to make re-hits out of already spectacular older hits, trying to capitalize on current expanded markets. the original Westworld was Awesome - no need to call remake)

Have Fun Crafting!

Shanghai has a model of its city that may very well rival that of the Panorama of New York City at the Queens Museum.

Panoramas and city-models are amazing things, in that they attempt to capture the spread and density of a city in a moment. But how do you capture a city whose construction projects are so voluminous that it is rumored to have possession of one-fifth of the world’s building cranes!? How do you capture a city that is constantly being destroyed, rebuilt, constructed, condensed, expanded, designed, populated?

from Shanghai Megacities pof104art02_11776241_en (PDF 550k)

from Jello Biafra and the Politics of Punk at The Morning News

first week of july sometime. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Amazing! go go go!!!

Giglio Festival

free plastic bags are banned in China! of course they will still get bought, used, collected, and thrown away, but not for free anymore. passed earlier this year, it went into effect yesterday.

commentary-less news from CNN:

in other news, conservative new Mayor of London Boris Johnston maintains a blog, powered by WordPress. shows that even conservative twats appreciate free software. oh and love the hair.

from a recent bike trip to Far Rockaway and Rockaway Park and Breezy Point, hope to elaborate further soon. meanwhile view the whole photo set on my Flickr.

Katamari and Shadow of the Colossus:

I can’t honestly say who would win. All those colossi could be formidable.

[from pixeljoint]

ghost cars of the world

way cooler than my cars of Budapest, check out these Ghost Cars of the World.

PRESS IT ALREADY!:

some image resting on the nytimes server - not sure where from, what article, but i like it.

DIY Pet Architecture

paper work, paper cutting, printed art to play with, etc., it’s been in discussion a lot lately, on many peoples’ tongues. not sure where it’s going, but this is called DIY Pet Architecture, and is a current craze in Japan.

[via SuperColossal]

gif of me with my mates Richard Zimmerman and Cassie Thornton, not only two of my favorite people in the whole wide world, but whom I both met while living in London - us few Americans enjoying time away from GWBushland - and now we each live in, around, and through NYC.

I’m lost, tell me. Oh wait, nothing.

Google have implemented an ‘artist themes’ capability for your iGoogle home page, which doesn’t really skin your page so much as simply replace the negative white space surrounding the iGoogle banner with a background image of your choice. It’s not terribly original, and the text can become difficult to read without the ability to modify (and save to profile) the CSS. The range of options include Jeff Koons and BAPE designer NIGO, as well as “artists” Dolce & Gabbana (and links to all their respective websites, so this is proper!). And perhaps most entertainingly, a theme for the band Coldplay which is actually perhaps the best-known painting by Delacroix, google’s version sans exposed breasts. A little confusing, a little useless, but if you’re the kind of person who likes every possible page for all your logins, accounts, profiles, etc. skinned to your flavor, then have at it! If not, keep reading!

forget Dublin or Boston - they’re soooooooo November 2007 - if you happen to be in London on 15 June be sure to swing by the Tate Modern on the south bank of the Thames and see Tony Conrad in conversation, followed by a screening of DreaMinimalist by my friend and artist extraordinaire Marie Losier.

More on the event on the Tate website, more on Marie Losier at marielosier.net

It’s unfortunate I don’t not know English, else this looks like it would be a lot of fun to play. However I do still have and treasure my copy of Typing of the Dead (bought at a GAME store in London for $1!), which like other users I rate easily above an 8.0. This game was especially instrumental in getting me to memorize my keyboard’s special character layout, type “%@!!#” or get cut in the face by some sickle thrown at you by a flying lizard, or full sentences “No finance charges will be incurred” or get chainsawed to pieces, those kinds of moments.

And I love Japanese sensibilities towards commercials, they’re fast-layered environments with lots of color, sound effects, speech, and text, and they rarely manage to “sell” you, but you find yourself hooked, even for 3:45 minutes! You’ll see:

However I admit I haven’t tried Typing of the Dead on my DVORAK layout TypeMatrix 2030. Perhaps some zombie hunting is in order!

(seb introduced me to it)

(word is Phunquey is King of this Art. as you can see, he’s pretty effing good at it!)

(nice tongue Sarah!)

(Stefany jowling)

(Jean the Jowler)

(Oleg jowls while playing dominoes)

(and me jowling. and yes that’s my evening outfit!)

(more about jowling? click here!)

Still, an article on artnet mentioning my work is something to rave about, no? More important than my mention in the article, it is really just a fine piece of writing by Ben Davis and I think really does justice to the Flux Factory living-collaborative environment, and understands the space quite well (while the following quote might be seen as a smack on the face, I think it more a really really fair assessment):

I haven’t always loved everything they’ve done; sometimes it has seemed too precious, or only partially thought through.

But read the article for yourself. Like I say it’s lovely, well-written, good images, and I’m thankful.

(this makes me think I need a ‘press’ type of section. Actually I need to re-think the whole frickin’ scheme around here! Bleh - blooooooooogs!)

The closing party for the Everything Must Go show is this Saturday. Come and shake yo booty if you can! And praise the Zigg!

and speaks his mind, citing the situation in Iraq thanks to last year’s troop deployment as a society resembling “something approaching normal”. Full story here.

THEY. FREAK. ME. OUT!

this is where I’ve been for the past week: after the opening of don’t poke out my iBall, I woke up the following morning and started laying the masonry (milk crates) for the Ziggurat Viscose, a monument to monuments, and an embrace of the experiences and material collection of my past three years at the Flux Factory:

(this is an ongoing post, and will be updated continually over the next week until the opening. here I want to show the process. I plan on publishing a text later, maybe in time for the opening. but for here, images…)

posts posts posts coming soon, tonight, i hope. In the meantime, check out what’s opening TOMORROW NIGHT in my studio-bedroom-loft-garden-gallery, the Normal Space!

Enjoy!

I walk out of work one day and then BAM the new billboard had already begun!

Crews work long and late.

They finished the dude’s face and began the info below the mugshot.

I didn’t work down in SoHo for two days, then it was finished. This photo is from Saturday 8 March.

This photo from this afternoon, Monday 10 March, shows the billboard in exactly the same state as it was on Saturday. Odd, the crew haven’t removed the scaffolding equipment, hopefully tomorrow I can get a full shot (with blue sky?) without any hardware in the way!

p.s. - maaaaaaaaaan that dude looks TOUGH! 

link: CNN article

the image below shows an American soldier during the Vietnam War assisting the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese POW:

this detail shows his emotive state:

and a detail of President Bush’s face from Nov 2007 when he discussed terrorism and torture techniques to a crowd of Heritage Foundation supporters:

read more about waterboarding.

Golden Staircase, opening next week, 14 March 2008, at ABC No Rio as part of the Ides of March exhibition.

movies, tacos and collage-making party tonight. exhibition later. stay tuned over at Normal Space blog.

life, wrapped up. hopefully more coming soon.

it’s true. Facebook said so.

speaking of faces, books, and lists of names, check out the Virtual Museum of Deathmasks, featuring a collection of mostly Russian and Ukranian historical figures as sculpted by Sergey Merkurov. 59 of his masks are on display in the real-world museum, including the only original Lenin death mask, but you can see all of the masks in the virtual museum. Looking at photographs of historical figures is one thing, and while these are merely 2D representations of 3D objects, getting to see these masks is revealing: Alexander Blok’s features are slender yet stoic, and one can almost sense his suspected death from starvation; or the collection of wrinkles that developed on the face of Boris Pasternak:

Here is an image of my rooftop from this morning. It’s a really nice snow, at least 4″ thick so far, steadily approaching more! I was supposed to go upstate this weekend. I’ve only had two Saturdays off since Thanksgiving, tomorrow being the second, and was hoping to get a weekend in the Catskills. Unfortunately my ride couldn’t make it into the city for obvious reasons. I could take a bus, but end up having to pay $40 and probably be delayed 2-4 hours because of the weather. Additionally, I’m starting to come down with something, illness. Nearly everybody I live with has gotten sick over the past 6 weeks, so it’s no surprise, but I haven’t gotten sick in over 10 months so I’m hoping it’s just a slight sore throat (woke up with) and a mild headache (came on one hour ago). Hopefully it’ll pass. If I wind up not being able to travel upstate, I guess it’s best to beef up my immunity now, when going outside would prove exhaustive at best. Still, a friend said he has a stack of sleds…

still worked up by those Steelworks ads, then I remembered this ad from the NYTimes Magazine from a couple weeks back: an 8000+ square foot residencies available on Fifth Avenue - ‘the finest on fifth’. Only $31 million. I currently live in an 8000 sq. ft. loft space, albeit with 17 people! We live in rooms the size of these walk-in-closets. And they have 9 bathrooms - we have 3! My main concern however isn’t the division of wealth inherent in this ad, but the layout, the architecture! The place looks terribly organized! If you’re in the Library and want to get to the Wet Bar (an activity I frequently engage in), you have to walk approximately 150 feet! I couldn’t be bothered - I’d have to design a ‘wet bar cart’ to tow around with me!

view larger image on my Flickr

as if it isn’t already conflicting enough going to Chelsea for exhibition openings, where one (as in me) is surrounded by bougie types and people of a distinctly higher class who have (nor want) no relation to the world I live in or come from, then to stumble upon a poster advertising condos and lofts in Williamsburg (hipster heaven) for prices starting in the $560k range, and that for only a studio (not even a 1 bedroom!). it’s sickening, and maddening! to add insult to injury the poster proclaims, “THEY WORK HARDER, SO YOU CAN LIVE BETTER” with sepia-tone images of a welder next to a lady reminiscent of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn circa the end of the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913.

(screengrab from website)

They, the anonymous Us. As in Me. Normal. and You. Whoever. We Work Harder So They Can Live Better.

FUCK THEM.

it’s disgusting when capitalism can be so frank, so in-your-face-and-not-give-a-shit, and society is so complacent, so happy. well as long as a couple million people up top are happy! but are they really? Frankly I like working, and struggling. It forces one to think. But if society isn’t already divided enough, I don’t want it shoved in my face, plastered onto billboards in my city. Every square foot - of floor, wall, side of building, subway platform - here is real estate, another opportunity to sell you something ’so you can live better’. It’s a bloody joke people, Handcrafted Living. BOLLOCKS!

Learn how to set a screw into a piece of wood you wankers. I join one thing to another and call it art, and I call you wankers. Wankers.

Issue #2 of Private Circulation has been released, a “bulletin for proposals” including failed or unrealized artworks.

this second issue includes some scans of my plastic bag archive, the hard drive which contains this project failed last spring before it could be published. the PDF includes a text, ghost-written by “The Editors” (I don’t know them, although I have my suspicions) from some notes of mine I forwarded them.

Issue #2 also includes the first installment of their “Animated GIF Issue Addendum” - I like that wee Lenin guarding over my digital-plastic data!

download: Private Circulation 04-12

most content wins

discussions with some people about primaries, caucuses and (especially) exit polls reveal that some people form their ideologies based on suspicions or heresay, rather than experience or hope. One person told me that because their aging aunt (I forget where from) voted for Clinton recently in a primary, that all “old people” (a demographic I didn’t know existed) invariably lean towards Clinton - this was a counter-argument to my thesis that ‘the most content wins‘, where I am arguing that whoever develops the most online content (which spills over into the real world, of course) will win the Democratic nomination, and eventually the Presidency. They suggest that older people do not engage the internet, but rather television (not even newspapers), and so will not be swayed by content developed online; and that young voters do not account for a large voter base needed to gain victories. This, of course, was before Barack swept - and I mean fucking SWEPT - Clinton, winning the last eight competitions! And in doing so provided evidence to disprove their theory: Obama wins among older voters in Maryland, Virginia. Their thesis is also racially biased: their aunt is Caucasian, and so they believe all older voters from all races are in the same boat as them. Meanwhile exit poll data in Georgia and Missouri showed African-Americans over 40 casting landslide victories - over 80% - in favor of Obama. Other states may be of smaller margins, but no where did Clinton win such landslide numbers among white voters.

But my initial argument was that content developed online will be responsible for building momentum and eventually a win. It isn’t as if voters simply sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for their day to vote and then simply shuffle off to the polling station and drop a slip into a box. The democratic process is about debate, discussion, and emotion. I’ve seen people at polling stations (or online in blog comments) arguing over policies, laws enacted, and reforms - while admitting they’re not sure who to vote for, it’s all about feeling!

and young people are responsible for galvanizing other voter demographics, by spearheading meetings, marches, rallies, sign-making parties, events, etc., assisted by technologies, which eventually encourages “old people” and others to vote for whoever they then believe in, and a lot of people are saying, Yes We Can.

web 2.0 concerns

another argument reflecting on elements of web 2.0 life, was I had someone recently suggest that I should email them images, images which are already freely available on my Flickr account. Additionally, as I am not a Press Secretary, I couldn’t possibly know exactly which images they are interested in. One point of Flickr is that it is remote and accessible by all browsers, there is no password, so people are freely able to search my content and find what they want. Of course I appreciate to know when people are using my images, but I haven’t turned down a request to date.

Two weeks ago, this person told me that their time was too valuable to “troll through” all of my images, and that rather I should spend my time to send them what they want. Again, I couldn’t possibly know what they want, and by no means am I going to send even a single 5 megabyte jpeg through email, let alone gigabytes worth of images, some from events that took place over 12 months ago!

Then this past week they requested that I point them in the direction of a specific photo they want, for their own purposes. Their time is too valuable, but mine is at their dispense?

I guess the point here is I’m interested in how web 2.0 philosophies expose bureaucratic tendencies: I am by no means obligated to process even 1 jpeg for the benefit of a non-profit which I volunteer for; the person who cuts a monthly check nearly equivalent to my rent is obligated. I have already done the work - free of charge - by taking the photo, uploading it, tagging it, bunching them into sets and collections, etc. What more could they ask for, really!?

jobby job

then recently I had my stable job of two and half years presented on a platter and told to think about it. the argument here is that I am currently employed part-time (a year ago I was full-time) and my employer “found out” (for lack of a better term) that I work odd freelance jobs on the side to gain some extra income. By no means are my freelance jobs stable, or enough to subsist on. I was told that the terms of our agreement should have provided me with enough to “survive on”. To survive. Yes, to pay rent, transport and food, nothing more. I may not work the other 4 days a week, but pick up jobs which net me some extra money to buy supplies, materials, a pair of socks, carry a cellphone, things above and beyond survival which I believe I need “to survive” in this hyper-consumerist society.

It appalled me to think that someone thinks because we agreed to work together, part-time on my clock, that that means I can’t find financial assistance elsewhere. As if they have that right, legally or ethically!

year of the rat

all of the above makes sense, of course. it’s Year of the Rat. changes are ahead. I saw a spokesman for the Chinese government talking on CNN (I think) about how the rat signifies buildings falling down & crop failure, but that it would also be a glorious year with Beijing hosting the 2008 summer games! That kind of weirded me out.

sometime next week, or later this week, or sometime eventually, I’ll have some sort of interview, Q&A, and images regarding my ‘BAGS’ book that I was hoping would have been published sometime mid-last year.

For those who don’t know, the book had gotten up to around 430 pages, and then the hard drive which stored all of the digital files (high-res 300dpi TIFF files, and converted PDF files, around 50Gigs of data) failed suddenly, just before I left for Budapest last summer. Since then, I haven’t had the funds to recover the data - OnTrack Data Recovery, one of the world’s leading specialists, has quoted me $800, or more than one month’s rent!

But word of the book and my obsessive collections has gotten around, as well as word of the failed hard drive and thus the failed work (for now), and so The Editors of Private Circulation, an e-zine that seems to have just started up, sent me some questions ranging from my archive aspirations to my emotions regarding digital death. Their intentions are stated on their blog:

THE IDEA is to collect and distribute proposals for texts and artworks that, for various reasons, cannot be realized—or were never meant to be.

They requested some new scans of the bags which will hopefully be published in the next issue, alongside some of my answers to their questions. They maintain a blog but don’t publish online, so the only way to receive the bulletin is via email (subscribe here). I’m not sure what to make of it all really, but I like zines, e-zines, PDFs and circulations, oh and it will feature some of my work! I guess that’s worthy of a blog post!

Other bags yet to be realized:

and if you’re interested to help me recover the data from this failed hard drive, so that some day soon I might be able to self-publish this book, I’d be more than happy to accept some donations at this point! I’d go so far as to offer a deduction from the cost of the book equal to the value of your donation! Cmon people I’m desperate for this data already!

donate $5!

donate $20! schweeet!

Two weeks back I quickly mentioned that I found it difficult to imagine heaps of e-waste being worked into contemporary art. Then just last week, inhabitat reported on the “Beauty From E-Waste” photography of Chris Jordan. So it seems you can create beautiful contemporary art from e-waste. But this isn’t exactly what I was talking about, and feel the need to defend this a little further.

I pointed to Kurt Schwiters as a prime example of an artist who recycled the world around him. From detritus found in urban areas to objects scavenged from walks on beaches, once you breach the levees of his popular work you find out just how prolific he was in producing thousands upon thousands of smaller works constituted from included-found objects and materials. Chris Jordan’s work on the other hand is one of the seductions of photography: a beautiful image yes, but ultimately only concerned with the composition and array of objects and colors, and less worried about that object’s transition in the world or its ultimate fate, as I’m sure he discards the objects used to create his own work once he is done photographing them.

Of course on that note I admit what I’m asking for is probably impossible, as by no means do I expect any artist to have the capacity to work 426,000 discarded cell phones a day (in the US alone) into their artwork. However maybe China has the right idea.

One reason I find this topic so pressing is because I am constantly struggling with my own work, regarding the sheer volume of materials and objects in the world, and more importantly for me when I let go of a material into an artwork, and how I collect and supply my practice; or what do I choose to include and exclude. I’m a pack-rat yes but I know that ultimately I have to let it all go, install it or construct it into something.

WE <3 U GIBSON!

BOOYA!

Florida, the Carnival!

Yahoo quotes Clinton:

“I will try to persuade my delegates to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida,” said Clinton. “Democrats have to win Michigan and have to try to win Florida and I intend to do that. The people of Florida deserve to be represented in the process of picking a candidate for president of the United States.”

It’s lines like this that make me realize (or at the very least suspicious of the fact) that I’m not involved in the democratic process! I mean, what does “pursuade my delegates to seat the delegates” even mean!? Actually, don’t bother. I know what it means. It means people who call the shots call on people they trust to call the shots. And that last comment, that’s the one I really can’t help but be a little suspicious of: “deserve to be represented”. Is she talking about herself popularly representing the people of Florida, or is she talking about the delegate votes she believes she is entitled to, as a stand-in for their voice? Is a gambit in the political arena about to be played, as Clinton urges her own party for additional delegate votes in a state otherwise refused them. Is “representation” in America merely a guise for participation? In that case, save the fucking TEA for me, I’ll drink it all up!

And lastly for your amusement:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign trail haven’t updated their Flickr account for nearly 10 days now. what this tells me is they’re on vacation.

I don’t watch news television (too media-controlled), I don’t listen to news radio about the current election campaigns (too sound-bitey), and I merely glance at articles in the New York Times about them (they look nice though). I consume most of my content via the nets. Clinton and Obama (the two major contenders are all that matters now really) are both in my feed aggregator. I get their Flickr feeds and watch their YouTube videos.

but like I say, Clinton hasn’t updated her Flickr in nearly 10 days.

so I’m going to make a prediction here: the contender with the most content WINS. simple.

no political insight, no analysis, no “deep” dialogue here folks. the MOST content WINS.

here are the current stats:

Hillary Clinton
YouTube videos: 223
Flickr photos: 3,081
facebook supporters: 82,139
myspace friends: 169,914

Barack Obama
YouTube videos: 523
Flickr photos: 14,032
facebook supporters: 285,634
myspace friends: 238,459

per my analysis my decision is obvious. but this is only a prediction!

(I will commend Clinton’s website designers though. they make the links to her external media very big, colorful and obvious, albeit at the bottom. Obama’s links are on the sidebar, way down, small and greyed out, not so easy to find. See for yourself: Clinton v Obama)

Related websites:
Clinton’s Flickr
Obama’s Flickr

this was how Melody got introduced to Brian. and yes, this is standard kitchen activity.

what I’m talking about: today I sent off my Canon G7 to be serviced, under warranty. The lens mechanism needs a good cleaning, as some dust found its way into the housing unit and occasionally distorts images with specks and spots; actually the dust is most-noticeable in movies taken with the camera, for some reason. the CCD, the device that renders the world digitally, seems to be able to compensate somewhat for still images, but for movies the dust becomes more-than-apparent.

so I’ll be without a camera for at least a week, if not 10 days. that means my Flickr account will be abandoned for the time being. still, I’ll have plenty to look at! Since my memory card last week passed the barrier by which the digital filing system can no longer count any higher, and it resets to 1. that’s right, I’ve taken over 10,000 photos with my G7, in under 7 months. That’s as many photos in the last 7 months as in the three years before that! Don’t ask me how that’s even possible, but the numbers aren’t too far-fetched: 10,000 images in 7 months would require 48 images/day. and there were some days where I was easily shooting over 100 images/day (such as here or here or here) and other days where even with only 3 or 4 images a day, I was shooting spaces worth mentioning (here or here or here). Point is, shit adds up. 10,000 photos. simple.

My barrier-mark photos were nothing special either:

img_9998 - 9999 actually was the same image, but not as sharp.

img_0001 - nearly the same as 9998, but with flash obviously.

ordinary photos. nothing special, but I like the ordinary. photos that record and track my time and space.

In the meantime, though, while I wait for my G7 to return, I have my previous 10,000+ (actually my archives number over 25,000) shots to peruse. so I thought I’d continue with my ‘a year ago today‘ format and present you with an intersection in Queens, 365 days past:

perhaps top on my list at the moment of things to deal with is I need a new phone plan. The Verizon account I’ve had for 3 1/2 years now expires in 8 days. I’m sick of Verizon. I’m sick of their $40/month-is-the-cheapest-we-offer plan that doesn’t even come with a basic text service - you pay extra for that or a premium (10c/text) just to type 30 characters! I’m sick of their automated billing that sometimes works, most times doesn’t - then I get stuck with a $15 reactivation fee, which they normally wipe once I talk to them on the phone and they investigate, but which then takes time away from my other more-pressing concerns. I’m sick of a company that in the month before my account expires calls my house landline three times a day instead of my mobile phone which still works, to press me to renew my service.

I need a new plan. I’ve been watching my own mobile phone usage for several months now. At least 12 out of the 24 hours in a day I’m at work or home, and both places have WiFi networks. The idea is to pay out for a WiFi enabled phone and to cut down on monthly cellular charges. I sleep for 6 hours and eat for say 2, so that already brings us up to 20 of 24 hours a day where I either have service or don’t want to be bothered with it (i.e. digesting and REM sleep). the other 4 hours I could care less about, I’m definitely not of the persuasion that I must always be contact-able by the rest of the world. And in that case the phone would still operate like a phone!

I’ve been eyeing the openmoko project for some time now, and hoping their development would move a little faster than it has. Unfortunately the phone is really only encouraged for developers at the moment, not end-users; but when it hits I think it’ll make a big splash:

Perhaps the openmoko will one day run on Verizon, but frankly I think it’s too late to consider.

wordpress and xampp lite

I’ve been doing a fare bit of WordPress developing lately, testing new plugins, keeping them in mind, and generally toying with the software. Remotely you still have to upload (FTP), wait, talk over congested networks, etc. Installing locally however, now there’s an idea! Run everything: php, MySQL and WordPress locally using these instructions from [geeks are sexy]. Then you can test everything before launch.

sooooooo simple!

dancing ascii kitten

50 greatest fictional weapons

Old news I’m just now finding out about (don’t think there would be anything recent to re-write this top list), Wizard Entertainment Group late last year compiled a list of the 50 greatest fictional weapons. Weapons for good or evil (or both, as in lightsabers, it’s all in who you wield them at!) that have opened up my imagination for whatever reasons.

Perhaps the oldest one from my memory would be the spread gun from the NES side-and-front-scroller game Contra - and just to prove my geekdom, I’d like to point out how disappointed I am in the image Wizard chose, which shows player 1 at the end of the first level, with spread gun, and only one reserve life left! Shameful! With your first life you should nearly be able to complete the entire game! I distinctly remember achieving this at least a dozen times.

a potential tie for oldest memory fictional weapon is the Star Trek phaser, albeit for me the version from The Next Generation (with my blankets huddled over the television monitor so as to stop the light spilling through my door’s lites and into the hallway, I watched TNG from 11p-1a nearly every night, you never knew that one did ya mom!).

but definitely my personal favorite from the list is Cloud’s Sword Buster from Final Fantasy VII, more specifically the version from FF VII Advent Children when you wonder how the EFF is Cloud going to take on Sephiroth, who is obviously possessed and seemingly unstoppable, and suddenly Cloud’s sword becomes not two or even three but SIX swords:

SCHWEEET!

tea standards

and in closing perhaps something more geek-homely, ISO 3103 refers to a standard method for the brewing of tea as set forth by the International Organization for Standardization. I’ve always appreciated talking with people about their teas and the ways they brew them, their preparations, tea-as-ritual, (also the art of Bobby Baker) so I was delighted to find a standards for this (less a concern with the actual ‘rule’ as in the mere novelty of such a rule!).