Another Day in Paradise

Living in a little town might seem pretty lame to some people but it really suits me just fine.

Yankeetown has changed so little that a recent visit from the Model T Winter Tour gave me the opportunity to shoot about 80 cherry Model T cars in their "natural habitat".

Jawas … Never around when you need them.

This was a line by character Kyle Katarn in Star Wars .

BBC News reported today that "Space Junk is at a tipping point". article

Floating space garbage has been accumulating with every mission since the Mercury, Soyuz, Gemini & Apollo days. You would think that scientists and engineers would be bright enough to know you can't do good work in a messy lab or shop and you wouldn't want to drive on a highway covered with random junk cars and old parts strewn about.

But every bit of junk they've left lying around up there has finally accumulated to the point that they have to track and inventory all the debris -- over 500,000 bits of it -- and the problem gets amplified when the garbage collides. A recent collision with a Russian satellite created ANOTHER 2000 bits!

Which brings us to solutions - Where are the Jawas when you need them? "The
Jawas have a tendency to pick up anything that's not tied down, Luke" Owen Lars to Luke Skywalker

So some really bright individuals would do well to come up with the bright idea that makes space trash collection into a commercially viable enterprise. Design a self-feeding garbage collection/recyling unit that runs like a giant orbital Space-Roomba. Call it the "Junk Acquiring Waste Assembly" or JAWA.

Another Day in the Studio | Life as a freelance artist

Another Day in the Studio | Life as a freelance artist

Working with Ambient Design's ArtRage Studio Pro

I discovered ArtRage a few years ago when I tried out the free 2.5 version and was immediately impressed that such a light installation code-wise could produce such a fantastically real feel for the mediums it produces.

I bought myself a WACOM Bamboo graphics tablet a short time later and discovered its controls worked perfectly with the ArtRage interface.

A short time later I picked up a commission that required the nuances of airbrush and watercolors so I went ahead and bought the Studio 3.0 version so I could use all of the tools.


A couple of weeks ago I again found myself needing some features available in their newer StudioPro version 3.5 so got the inexpensive upgrade and again was super pleased with the quality of the tools. One of the things I find valuable in collaborating with designers and other artists is the ability to work on projects using ArtRage and Paint.Net.





Both applications have the capability of importing and exporting files in the .PSD Photoshop format, making it possible to use a wider variety of tools and to work with web designers more easily.






Whether painting in oil on rough canvas or inking with colors on an animation cel the feel is just like working with that medium itself.

Needless to say I find myself glued to my studio, excited with my projects and having so much fun that Celeste sort of interposes food between me and my drawing to coerce me to eat.

How to Control Your Privacy when Posting Photos online

Sharing photos via Facebook, Twitter and a host of other social media is popular, fun and probably one of the greatest things for people to enjoy.

There IS, however, a privacy issue that you should know about so you don't share personal information you might prefer to keep to yourself.

Before I go any further let's have a definition: "EXIF data" - "EXIF" stands for:EXchangeable Image File - Data that is stored in digital photos, such as camera shutter speed, date & time, focal length, exposure; AND NOW, IN NEWER CAMERAS - GPS location.

The video below covers the issues of unknowingly revealing your GPS location and how that can be dangerous - but doesn't explain HOW to handle the problem.

Which is the point of this article.

I'll show you how to easily edit or remove these detail from shots before posting them.



So there you go.

When posting an image online just decide whether publicizing the image's location carries any security or privacy concerns.

If it does, you can edit or remove that data in several ways.

Writer(and founder)Amit Agarwal at digital inspiration posted an excellent article giving all the different methods and tools for managing EXIF data.

While you'll want to see the full article, I find the simplest handling is as follows:

"Sometimes the Exif data of your photographs may reveal more than what you would expect. It may therefore sometimes sense to strip your images of all the meta information before uploading them to the web.

To remove all the metadata from a photograph, just right-click the files inside Windows Explorer and choose Properties. Now click the Details tab and select the option that says “Remove Properties and Personal Information.”

Choose “Remove the follow properties from this file” followed by “Select All” and click OK. All the private metadata tags are now erased from the photograph. Simple!"

For most of us this isn't too big an issue but help your friends out and make them aware and feel free to share this data.

Raoul

The Unseen War on American Family Farms

Kristin Canty is creating a documentary on the tactics being used to edge out and eradicate the small and independant farmer.

Farmageddon Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Why should anyone be concerned ? For years the FDA - supposedly there to ensure the health and safety of our food & drugs - has operated to attack sources of truly healthful foods and supplements, while green-lighting the way for junk industrialized factory-food and for dangerous & highly toxic (read profitable) Big Pharma drugs.

While you may possibly believe our government really has our health in its interest I for one object to losing the right to choose to eat untampered, whole foods.

This is one piece of the larger puzzle and might help people to rethink how many rights they are willing to relinquish to bureaucratic functionaries.

This product has a BRIGHT future !

I love people with bright ideas and the drive to make them reality.

Sam Goldman is one of these. He's creating a product that the world needs and a supply chain to take it there. I'd invest in this, and I think he'll change conditions across the world.



They're rolling them out in other countries but it's obviously a highly useable 'emergency' gear item so you can find them here.

Now THIS is smart

Some inventions are so smart & so simple they don't have to be 'sold'. You just make them available and they spread by word of mouth. This is one of them.



Thanks to the Packman for finding me this one !

Frank Frazetta - Painting With Fire

Frank Frazetta stands in the front rank with Titian, Caravaggio, Parrish & Rockwell. His work holds you emotionally and changes you.

This 2002 documentary is an excellent view of the greatest Modern Day illustrator there has been. Who of us have not been affected by at least one of his covers?

Urban Homesteaders - 'The Crazies on the Block'

Another piece on the Dervaes Family's Pasadena Home. If you've never heard of them before, they have a successful Farm - on 1/10th of an acre - in the midst of Pasadena!



I really really recommend looking over their website Path to Freedom and seeing whether some of their ideas don't spark off a bit of inspiration in your universe!

The Incredible Graphite art of Dalton Ghetti

Artist Dalton Ghetti transforms the common pencil stub into the sublime.

Spending weeks or months on each piece he works with 3 basic tools. Using an X-acto knife, sewing needle and a sculpting knife he doesn't use a magnifier. He also doesn't sell his work. He uses it to relax when he's not working! FULL STORY

photo:Carl David LaBianca

Facebook Gallery

The Brooklyn Space Program

Ever hear of "Urban Space Exploration" ? Me neither. Until now.

(Thanks to one of my favorite bloggers Guy Kawasaki for the heads up on this one. Guy's blog: "Holy Kaw!"
"All the topics that interest us" is always a treat and this time he's found some people doing - yes - Space
Exploration from their 'back yard'.)

Luke Geissbühler is a cinematographer (Borat, Independent Lens) and founder of The Brooklyn Space Project.

Together with his son Max they built a 'capsule' from take out containers, foam, hand warmers etc. and launched
an HD camera into space with an iPhone for GPS tracking and recovery (brilliant). Their resulting video below just speaks for itself.

And if you think that that's a pretty cool thing to do you can go to the official Brooklyn Space Project site where you can support "Urban Space Exploration" -- and get a tee shirt.

No, It ain't a new game or a Frog Mosaic

I've got a friend named Hans. ( He doesn't know it but he sort of acts as my de facto tech guru. ) I pick up new stuff pretty quickly but I think he's got his sensors out there a few miles ahead on the trail.

I'm taking my fast token scan through Facebook for the day to look over the adventures of all my compadres and run across this fairly ugly little square image he's just posted. There's about 11 comments on it and I've got to stare at it a bit to get just what significance this thing has.

I seem to have missed this so far because I don't carry a cell phone. I use my desktop for most all my communication and very rarely have need for a phone -- so I learn this stuff vicariously as the tech develops.

The image, quite simply, is an Asian bar code technology invented for the car industry several years ago which evolved and grew into advertising and pop culture.

It's called a QR Code. The QR stands for Quick Response. The really brilliant thing about it is that it's a two-dimensional symbology, meaning the code can carry information in 2 directions and carry significantly more information than the linear bar code we're familiar with.

Created in 1994 the Denso Wave technology would appear to be the new standard as the two-dimensionality allows 100 times more information to be carried. The code can be scanned with a smart phone, putting its use into an absolute stratospere of new applications, from pop art to advertising and even - somewhat bizarrely - the cemetary .

You'll begin to notice these popping up in magazine ads, billboards -- basically anywhere you could point a cell phone and anywhere someone is wanting to transfer a large chunk of information.

... Like we don't all have enough information already.

Pure Fun

Become a Strategist – Learn Chess!

Become a Strategist – Learn Chess!

Waiting for a Google Wave

Back in June Google announced the Wave at their IO conference and I put in for an invitation to get on Wave.

It's truly been a while since I've anticipated something like Christmas to hurry up and get here.

So - while I've been waiting I've been thinking of Linux and Firefox and riding the new wave.

So the following image is my idea of waiting for the wave to come !



Who knows - Maybe the developers will send me an invite today !?

I've been closely watching the buzz on Google's nearing release of Wave and speculating aloud at just how it may be received.

It seems right now that it is both very exciting and - surprisingly as yet unnoticed by the world at large. But for how long is anyone's guess.

On Twitter today a number of people retweeted today's article by Ben Parr of Mashable which questioned whether or not the current beta is close enough for them to really succeed with their scheduled release two weeks from now.

My own prediction for this one is that it's going to be a real sleeper. On release it's going to get the most attention from the truly geek-at-heart. This crowd will all bandy their praise and criticisms and bug complaints and generally flog the blogosphere.

Give that a few weeks while it makes the rounds of all the computing user magazines and technical reviews on computing advice websites.

Next will be some initial notice among moderately alert ( as Google will no doubt have created introductory links and pages to introduce Wave as they've done with other Google Labs releases in the past with their products such as Gmail and Picasa ).

Twitter spent a little time being just sort of an in-thing amongst campuses before it finally reached publications like Time & Newsweek. A surprisingly large number of people I know right now are still at: "Twitter, yeah, I've heard about it. - Uh, what is it ??" ! But e-mail, yeah, they know email. So I'll give it a little more time.

Meanwhile - ( I'm going to call this The Mozilla Factor ) is the in-between part where Google's brilliance in keeping this project open-source is taking effect -- developers with great imagination continue to create applications for use in the Wave and begin to get a feel for what works, how it works and how to use the Wave. Just look at the Mozilla project, the GNU project, the Open Source Initiative, OpenOffice - and get the idea of the creativity that's out there.

The really useful ones are going to make the rounds in widening circles and create their own applications to somewhat automate the creation of their mashups.

The number and variety of applications will increase to a point where several are not only stable but of obviously high value and at that point we'll see the larger effect. But -- unlike Twitter, which still seems to be seeking the grail of how to really monetize itself, I believe Google's Wave is going to find it's groove at a much faster rate.

Why ? Because Wave is about communication & collaboration, and while Twitter has been described variously as sort of a haiku and poetry - very popular and engaging - it's not ESSENTIAL. The Wave facilitates doingness. It brings together the use of tools people already use and understand the value of.

When I can use The Wave to live chat with a client (or multiple clients) on a project, retain a running record of how it develops over time, exchange thumbnail sketches on a shared whiteboard in real-time, I'll have a tool that effectively simplifies and refines what I already do.
I'm no ultra-geek, but that's obviously going to be possible and I can see it will get there.

Get there it will. A few days following Google's spring IO conference where they gave the presentation and demonstration someone blogged that Wave will be a Tsunami. That's my take on it as well.

Tommy Kane

Find your Images Anywhere

I was rummaging around on the Web the other day & looking for new stuff on Delicious when I ran across mention of a new search engine called TinEye.



As an artist, or web designer you may have an interest in finding where your images appear on the Web.

The demo clip pretty much speaks for itself. All I might add is my experience trying it out for the first time.

Several months ago I'd found and saved a great Anime character that I admired for its style and I haven't been able to rediscover the site where I'd found it.

Enter TinEye.

I uploaded the image to TinEye's Search field and hit Enter. AMAZING response - The original website instantly appeared at the top of the search results, together with all of the other instances of it, or a part of it on the web. 1.09 Billion images searched in 1.something seconds.

Prognosis: TinEye rocks.

Have the Web be what you want

I'm a sucker for new knowledge.

Finding new tools, new ways to work. So I spend some time each day studying and that usually includes technology & the web.

As I've mentioned before, I'm certainly no geek by far. But by golly if I keep up at this rate I'll eventually -- still be years behind!

Nevertheless here's my latest find. A recent project beta release from the Mozilla Labs called Ubiquity.

ubiquity ▸ noun: the state of being everywhere at once (or seeming to be everywhere at once)

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

At this juncture it's a bit steep for us most, but not too hard to see where it's going to take us in a very very short time.  I'm getting to the point where I enjoy being able to merge the use of various applications and always pleased to discover moments when an intuitive guess as to what may happen with a new one is rewarded by success.

I truly admire and applaud the developers in the Open Source community.  (If the people that currently consider themselves to be our government could remotely approach the group competence and cooperation level of the guys working with Mozilla, Linux, Google & all the rest we'd be experiencing all of the freedoms we desire !)

I've been using the new Firefox 3.5 for a little bit here and ran across this one today when I decided to foray in search of any other recent goodies.

Google's Wave is going to be shattering with its use of open-source code that allows anyone with an idea for an application to create an interface to incorporate it into and with other applications.

Similarly this Ubiquity will shortly enable us non-geeks to create "Mashups" with our own work ( In web development, a mashup
is "a web page or application that combines data or functionality from
two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs
and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason
for producing the raw source data. An example of a mashup is the use of
cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct Web service that was not originally provided by either source. - wikipedia )

I tried this out today.  Went to Mozilla's Firefox addons and found the latest version, installed the addon and walked through the intro.  Granted, I didn't start flowing maps into my Gmail or move like Aza Raskin but I discovered I can begin to learn it and who knows where that will take me next.

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