Some ingenious temporary sculpture work at a home improvement store in Paris. (Galleries are to be found by clicking on “Résidences“.)
Such fun, and genius work. Thanks to we-make-money-not-art, which has been slower lately, don’t know if the contemporary art + tech world has been slow or just the bloggers there…
Ah, a return to heaven on earth. This trip (May 17-24, 2009) we again took advantage of a special where we don’t reserve a particular hale and we get automatically upgraded. Well, the first night we spent in one hale that was nice but while sitting on the deck I could hear the whine of an electrical transformer. I mentioned it to the main office staff and they moved us to another hale (a much nicer hale) but under the condition that we had to move to another hale on Thursday. Heck, three different hales in one visit, we like variety!
Of course, first thing we did was get sunburns, but they weren’t bad and we remained conservative. The wife, unluckily, is quite allergic to mosquito bites so she was not terribly happy getting bit, but I don’t seem to react much so I didn’t notice.
Food was amazing again, probably a notch better than last time. Butterfish over kalua pork and bean stew was probably the best, with lamb chops a close second. The Wednesday luau was a hoot and the food was amazing (I’ve never had better turkey in my life.)
Almost every morning I would snorkel from ~6am to ~8:30am. Saturday, I even tried it with my iPhone in a dive bag (a super-secure version of a ziplock bag.) Pics came out great!
Tangs, wrasses, cornet fish, trumpet fish, eels, needlefish, turtles, lots and lots of coral (amazing amounts of coral). Even a barracuda visiting a cleaner wrasse, plus a close-up visit with a flying/helmeted gurnard, apparently a rare fish in the reefs. I almost touched him, and he displayed his warning behavior, then returned to the bizarre scoot/brush/scoot feeding pattern. Paul was at the beach shack on Saturday (and was around but busy other days) and it was cool to chat about the invertebrates.
Really enjoyed seeing Rusty again. What better way to enjoy the afternoon breeze than at the shipwreck bar. Great drinks, great conversation.
Tear down blocks of houses and convert into a park. Use eminent domain, and/or upgrade everyone to a nicer house nearby that is also empty on a nearby block. Hire the folks out of work in the neighborhood to do the demolition.
Credit where credit is due, they’re already thinking about doing this in Detroit. (Yeah, NYTimes, register.)
WPA for the arts - public art has, in many cities, been relegated to crappy sculptures forced into existance by the planning commission. many cities have a “must set aside space for a public art piece”, much of which ends up being relegated to a mediocre sculpture for folks to laugh at. Instead of painting over tags (bad graffiti) and leaving the wall blank (inviting more tagging on the wonderfully blank canvas) strongly encourage folks to invite artists to create murals. Split the cost for the murals (city, county, state, fed) so everyone has a stake.
Glad to hear that the White House is thinking outside the box with regards to public and graffiti art. (And grats to Wooster Collective for being invited to the WH to chat.)
Oh, and if you think graffiti art is a nuisance or not art, you might find it interesting to know that Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat (and I’m sure many other contemporary artists) started out as graffiti artists. The stories of Haring being known by the police on a first-name basis, many of whom arrested him just for a chance to have coffee and chat are amazing. (Where I heard this, I don’t know…some NPR interview talking about the life of Haring.) Too bad I don’t find Haring or Basquiat to my personal liking, but given the amount of money their gallery pieces go for, I’m sure the art world finds their contributions important.
Amazing feather sculptures. Prepare to be dazzled! Thanks to Drawn.ca for pointing her work out.
Nice piece on Spark, gettin’ some respect. Local graffiti artist, collaborator with Boyles.
Yeah I should have probably posted this much earlier. I’ve loved his and his friends’ work on his Double Fine site (the comics are great, sublime, funny, and nice art.) Well, “Scott C.” has a one-man show in LA and I just couldn’t pass up buying an original of his work (plus the painting of the exterior, what a great diptych!) Whee! Art collecting is fun! Watch out, or I’ll start rolling some commissioned works…Yikes.
Now I’m thinking, “I can show this in my office.” But then I’m thinking maybe the visitor center might be a good place to show NASA-related artwork. Wonder if they’ll bite.
So I finally convinced the wife to take a train trip up to Seattle. I booked Amtrak, a “City Pass” package of tickets to the local sights, and a stay at the Hotel Ändra near the train station. Not a lot of planning, but everything worked out well, except it was far colder (near/below freezing at least one day and close to that the others) than I had expected so we had to scramble from building to building to keep out of the cold. I wished I had brought my heavy down jacket and some gloves, but at least one day I doubled up my shirts and survived.
We booked a full bedroom in a sleeper car for travel both directions, which meant we had a private room with its own shower and toilet. Traveling via sleeper car also includes meals in the dining car and other amenities.
Departed San Jose Amtrak station around 8:30pm on Saturday, March 7, we shared dessert and drinks in the dining car after settling into our room and chatted with two gentlemen who were traveling around the country from one meeting (one of the couple worked for a law firm specializing in international corporate law) to another on a rail pass. What a great way to do business travel, I’m envious!
Sleep the first night was spotty, the tracks through the Sacramento area were rough and bumpy. Once we started our way through the mountains, the train slowed considerably and the ride was smooth and relaxing. A lovely breakfast an hour or so before we pulled into Klamath Falls, and another enjoyable conversation with a woman who traveled by train to visit her sister.
Lunchtime on the train was probably our best meal on the way north, chicken ragu over rice which was perfectly prepared and delicious and we chatted with a librarian and her former law enforcement husband about our respective jobs. Dinner near Tacoma was shared with a lovely couple from the great plains in Canada who regaled us with their tales of their cruise that they were returning from by rail.
We arrived in Seattle on time, around 8:30pm on Sunday, and took a short cab ride to our hotel for the week. We wandered around the block before settling in for the night, dropping into a “Ralph’s Deli” and bought a snack of halva and chinotto sodas for later.
Monday morning started off great, we wandered into a local northern French bistro and shared a plate of sliced sausages and a couple eggs broiled over ham with gruyere cheese while the two college-aged kids danced and joked behind the bar. Orange juice was being squeezed (my wife later said it was very very good orange juice, she even liked the pulp, which she usually doesn’t) as we watched and I couldn’t help but sneak some of the dijon from the dish at the table on my bread. Then we wandering around the waterfront to find our way to the Seattle Aquarium, first going through the Pike Place Market (and avoiding the tourists taking photos and buying seafood).
Getting to the aquarium, our intended destination, seemed straightforward but was not. We must have gone down 3-4 flights of stairs, took two elevators, and crossed a number of streets and parking lots to get to the aquarium but boy was it worth the trip. The aquarium focused primarily on local sea life, particularly as they cycled fresh sea water from immediately below the aquarium, it being located on a wharf, so the cost of operating the aquarium and the quality of life for the fish and myriad corals (so many invertebrates!) must be greatly improved. Everything about the aquarium was top-notch and well managed.
After the aquarium, we hopped on a harbor tour boat and enjoyed a quick jaunt around the local harbor. Heavy snow on the water certainly was picturesque, good thing we were inside an enclosed boat.
We stopped by a local furniture store, McKinnon Furniture. We had seen ads previously, they specialize in hand-made (build-to-order) arts-and-crafts and shaker furniture; very high quality furniture at high (but not outlandish) prices; too bad we had already finished most of our furniture buying with the completion of our master bedroom.
An early evening snack of ramen and sushi, then back to the hotel and a wonderful fine dining dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, Lola. The high-cuisine take on Greek was delicious, I had the “tastes of Seattle” prix-fix dinner of fresh-baked pita with a number of spreads (olive and fig, pepper and tomato, and cauliflower and anchovy added on), coffee-infused goat (yum yum!) and baklava and ice cream for dessert. Also had my first taste of ouzo with some suggestions by the waiter, many thanks. The wife had lamb kababs and lamb meat balls, plus a trio of caramel ice cream, spiced chocolate ice cream, and bitter orange sorbet for dessert.
Tuesday, after a breakfast at Lola, we jumped on the historic monorail and rode it to the park by the space needle to visit the Sci Fi Museum and the Science Center. The Sci Fi Museum was a real highlight, quite a nice collection that was well organized and curated, alternating between different eras of the genre and between different social issues raised by the authors and film makers. It was nice to see a lot of effort paid to the often un-sung authors who provide the foundation on which the genre rests, comfortably. The Experience Music Project was not our cup of tea, and was surprisingly sparse, but the exhibit of block-print signs used by musical acts, county fairs, and the like was enjoyable.
The Science Center visit started with a brief snack and a viewing of their infotainment “Under the Sea” IMax film; I’m always happy when 3-d movies are shown and it was standard IMax fare. The rest of the museum was interesting but a little run down, but we still had a lot of fun until closing time (watching the naked mole rats, toying with their scale model of the Puget Sound, etc), when we returned back via the monorail for a touch of shopping and a decent dinner at an Italian restaurant adjacent to our hotel.
Wednesday was our trip to the zoo. The bus service in Seattle is incredibly confusing (pay when you get on if you’re heading in to town, pay when you get off if you’re going out of town, differing rates depending on how far you go and the time of day, etc.) But it was frequent and we just paid more than we had to at least once just so we didn’t have to figure out what we owed. The zoo was nice, although many of their larger animals were kept indoors due to the cold weather; we had a great deal of fun in the rain forest exhibit, particularly their walk-through aviary where we sat for probably 45 minutes watching and listening to the birds fly around and sing their songs (if you could call ‘em that.) The ocelot mother and cub were also a great joy to see, even if they spent most of the time asleep in the sun. Other exhibits were nicely arranged by climate and region of the world, too bad we rushed through much of it ’cause of the weather.
Dinner at the nearby “Serious Pie” pizza restaurant (apparently run by the same folks who run Lola) which put a capper on our stay in the city; we shared a bottle of asti (sweet sparkling wine) made with muscat grapes and had wonderful pizzas; mine a simple cheese pizza but with the cheese being mozzarella from the milk of the water buffalo (I couldn’t tell the diff, personally) and she a clam pizza with some sort of crumbly cheese (delicious!) Dessert of a fabulous chocolate & hazelnut mousse and we were off to pack and to bed.
Thursday morning, after a too-big-breakfast via room service, we taxi’d down to the train station and off we went. More great conversation, lunch with two guys (not together) who were of our generation, one a student from Taiwan, another traveling to see family. Dinner was with a retired engineer from GM with a German accent who was returning from Vancouver where he spent a week skiing. Breakfast the following morning, and we were back in San Jose on time at 9:55am on Friday (yes, each way ends up being ~25hrs).
Traveling on Amtrak was a great deal of fun, we really enjoyed the relaxing time on the trains (nowhere to go, nothing to do but to look out the window or read.) The staff was always friendly and helpful, and I was surprised by the reasonable cost. Sure, it’s not fine dining, but it’s better than a hotdog at the snack stand and community seating was a nice opportunity to be social with folks having a variety of backgrounds. Having a smoke-free train and staying at a smoke-free hotel was a definite bonus, last Amtrak trip (~1993?) was in a time when smoking was allowed and commonplace. How times have changed!
I celebrated Pi day on top of Mount Hamilton; a friend works for the Lick Observatory and has a cool place he rents on the mountain nearby. We played the Doctor Who Miniature Game (playing the scenario “The Invasion: Into the Sewers” where a plucky reporter and a companion go into the sewers looking to photograph the rumored cybermen, and UNIT sends in troops to try to save their butts.) Much fun, we played the scenario twice, once we had a better feel for the mechanics and the balance. Second time, the good guys almost made it, but a lot of bad rolls left most of ‘em dead. Evening was RoboRally, with the usual “aw shoot, I turned the wrong way!” sorts of antics.
Two great urban art examples…
If these don’t make you laugh and smile, you are dead. See your local taxidermist to preserve your appearance of alive-ness.
I present to you my Javascript/AJAX character sheet for 4E. It’s Creative Commons licensed (BY-NC-SA), so feel free to krib it and use it for your own purposes, just no commercial use and you must share mods under the same license.
Is it obvious how to get to the menu? I didn’t want the menu to interfere with printing, so I made it show/hide.
It’s AJAX in that it supports storing/retrieving character sheets from a DAV server (any server that supports PUT and GET.) Even if you don’t have access to a DAV server, you can use the export and import capability to copy/paste the XML to your favorite desktop XML editor (notepad, stickies, etc.) We’re going to try storing/retrieving via a SVN server for automatic character revision control, too. I’m also thinking of adding an internal revision log, I find it helpful to review how a character was generated (how did you get that 19 CHA?)
So far I’ve been focusing on UI and underpinning, this sheet has absolutely no smarts to it. I am hopeful folks will add smarts to it; particularly I would love to hook it into the same dataset that Char Tool uses, so that we can share data entry duties.
I have no idea if this char sheet violates some sort of D&D licensing. I doubt it does, as it has no smarts to it, but one never knows.
Why did I create this char sheet, when there are good options out there? I wanted something cross-platform (ok, I’ve only tested this in Firefox, although it seems reasonable on the iPhone ;) and something that looked like a real character sheet, with power cards (I insist on using power cards in playing 4E, it makes decision-making so much more straightforward. Looking for thoughts on how to simulate the “order the power cards by usefulness in this situation, and put aside useless and used power cards” in this sheet.)
I hope you find this sheet useful, interesting, and helpful. I ended up rolling all of the Javascript on my own, I really wasn’t fond of the iframe solutions for WYSIWYG editing and most everything was fairly easy to code.
Some interesting coding solutions, though:
* editablecontent is a godsend, ‘nuf said.
* power cards auto-size their fonts to fit inside the box–this was tricky, but involved turning off the fixed size, inspecting the bounding rect, shrinking the font if the bounding rect was too large, repeat. Slick!
* ensuring that power cards print reasonably was tricky, why, pray tell, isn’t there a “force page break here” capability? The whole “page-break-before”/”page-break-after” CSS is crazy and semi-broken in Firefox.
* pop-up editing toolbar was a bit tricky, I wanted it to disappear when the div lost focus, but guess what, clicking on the toolbar “blurred” the div before it got the click to the toolbar, making it disappear before the click was executed. I found an elegant solution, set a timer and a flag, if the toolbar gets clicked, clear the flag (and return focus to the div). If the flag is still set when the timer elapsed, hide the toolbar.
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