Archive for category linkedin
Barefootage
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts, linkedin on August 23, 2010
The remaining pieces are up at the Barefoot Coffee Bar, and so far the response has been positive. Thanks to Steven Lorenzen for his coordination (and banter on the merits of various Linux distros) this go around, and to Kate Saturday for always having been a keen supporter and easy person to work with.
Pictured here is some extra shots of the second wall I occupy, the bars in house phonograph (which I am far more impressed with than you might suspect) and some developmental pieces that almost made it onto the walls.
Lessig on Asphyxiating Effects of Copyright on Creatives
Posted by zeruch in Law, Politics, Technology, linkedin on August 22, 2010
I am a firm advocate for IP rights, but I agree with the general sentiment that the continuous extensions and abuses of legislation like the DMCA (and the onerous narrative that is ACTA) need to be reigned in if not tapped out altogether.
@Barefoot Coffee Bar this Month
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Visual Arts, linkedin on August 5, 2010
While I have been suffering some logistical snafus all around, I managed to get part of a display up at Barefoot this evening.
I’ll be showing all of August, and I may rotate some pieces out midstream (I will definitely be adding some more in later next week), with most of the work being more recent items, as well as some developmental sketches.
Random Bits for 2010-06-27
Posted by zeruch in Law, Observations, Politics, Technology, linkedin on June 27, 2010
- So the DPRK (aka, the rumpus room of Kim Jong-il, the worlds most ill-tempered Asian dwarf Elvis impersonator), apparently in response to the epic trouncing it received at the hands of the Portuguese in World Cup play, has decided it needs new leadership. Ultimately, I suspect it will not change much; PyongYang won’t become a tourist haven anytime soon no matter which of Jongy’s little rutlings makes it to the highchair of power and incoherent raving.
- Senior Taliban commander, Ghulam Sakhi, was killed after attempting to escape/grenade Afghani/NATO troops while cross-dressing. While I can write this in a way that adds some satirical levity, I can’t actually make this stuff up. Ghulam, will you be one of your own 72 virgins in the afterlife?
- I find Governor Jindal’s attempt to prevent transparency in his office with litigation (potential or otherwise) with BP over the Deepwater Horizon spill, to be suspect. I have yet to see too many jurisdictions jumping on the open-data bandwagon, especially when it gets close to political hotspots like the BP spill would certainly be. Criticism of the veto comes even from his own party:
This governor has opposed transparency for the three years he’s been in office, so that’s not a surprise. What is sad about all this is it’s just another black eye on Louisiana internationally now
Senator Robert Adley, R-Benton.
- For the umpteenth time, someone in the mainstream press is writing about Pakitsan’s ISI being linked to the Taliban as if it is something new. The US relationship with Pakistan is one of the most complicated we have, yet one of the least understood or properly defined in general discussion. It is shockingly shallow, and coverage for all intents and purposes, is useless when it isn’t wholly counterproductive. The lack of a coherent strategy since the onset of conflict in both Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in the slow morass of fumbles we have progressed through thus far, and the regurgitation of data without real context is appalling.
- Twitter has a list of verified “world leaders” and their 140 character proclamations.
Weekend Travelogue 2010-06-06
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Out and About, linkedin on June 7, 2010
Saturday was a brief meet up with Angelo & Sasha from DA, which is always pretty interesting (the DA folks are almost inevitably up to interesting things), and then a serious plundering at FLAX with the missus. I picked up numerous pens, brushes, some acrylic paint/ink, two mid-sized hardbound sketchbooks, a 6B grade graphite pencil (how often do you see those), and a pen by Koh-i-noor whose color was labelled as “Gangrene Green”. Lunch was next door at DeLessio, which has some great casual dining. Really funky, busy interior and a patio area.
Sunday started off great; The Missus and I met with the Flemmings for brunch at the Village Pub in Woodside, where I had the greatest breakfast chow in memory (Meyer Lemon and Ricotta Soufflé Pancakes and some maple pecan syrup). After that there was some cruising around the Skyline area; it never ceases to amaze me how just under the nose of the masses tumbling up and down the industrial/urban chute that is the 101, is a tucked away semi-rural universe of scenic vistas and trails and things to do that don’t involve surgically attaching a Blackberry to your thumbs or updating a microblogging feed about the dangers of losing your weekend to off-hour demands from the office.
Which reminds me, Sunday started great, and then proceeded to get really not-so-great. A fire caused a 70 minute power outage near my office, which in turn caused klaxons to go off and I had to assemble my little elite team on their weekend (and mine) to help make sure things don’t go thud for too long. It took hours to run checks and fix a few problems that cropped up. Good going folks, you were solid as always.
rd.io
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Sounds, Technology, linkedin on June 3, 2010
Been playing with the just launched rd.io for the last 90 minutes or so. There are things I’m not sure I like, things I definitely like, but so far nothing I definitely dislike.
Arms control, recent events…
ACW has a post about the collected papers and meeting notes of the American Academy’s 1960 summer study on Arms Control, and tangentially related to that (by nature of the hostile nature of nuclear extortionist state, the DPRK) is an analysis of the recent torpedo attack on the South Korean ship, Cheonan.
There is some video and audio available of Steve Coll of the New America Foundation on the Globalization of Terror, with an intro by Scott Sagan (who, along with Kenneth Waltz wrote the seminal work, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate) at CISAC, as part of the Payne Lecture series.
Basically, I’ve noticed that there really has not been a lot of political science/current events related stuff on here recently -lots of doodles and non-defense tech, but not much else- and given my steady diet of foreign policy material, that seems odd.
I recently dug up my heavily annotated copy of Sagan & Waltz, as well as the old edition of and American Defense Policy anthology I pored over 10 years ago. Between that and a desire to work on a political leadership series of illustrations has my head very much back in this space.
My POSSE’s on FOSSway
If anyone is totally clueless to the hip-hop reference in the post title, its from Sir Mix a Lot’s SWASS album. Take a peek. It is also ridiculous given what the subject matter actually is:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: “Karsten Wade” <kwade@redhat.com>
Date: Apr 30, 2010 6:34 PM
Subject: Professors’; Open Source Summer Experience – 5 to 9 July in California
(Please pass on! I don’t know enough faculty at local schools, your
word of mouth is appreciated.)
Have you considered the benefits of teaching open source participation
in the classroom? More than teaching tools and technology, teaching
open source is about giving students a chance to get hands on with
real code in real situations. A chance to build skills and
experiences that scale to fit the classroom.
Professors’ Open Source Summer Experience, or POSSE, is a week long
class taught by open source community experts from Red Hat and the
Open Source Initiative, for those who teach higher education or
advanced students in computer science/engineering and electrical
engineering (CS, CE, EE.) In this class we teach the skills to be
“productively lost” through participation in actual projects. These
skills are transferable directly to teaching open source participation
in the classroom.
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE
We’re offering the first California POSSE in Mountain View, 05 to 09
July. If you or someone you know is interested, read more here:
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_California_CS
POSSE itself is free; attendees pay their own travel, lodging, and
expenses. To find out more or to apply, check out the program page and
send in an application.
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_California_CS
If you have questions, our general Teaching Open Source mailing list
is used for support, networking, and discussion amongst teaching
colleagues and open source experts:
http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
You may also email posse@teachingopensource.org for more information.
You are encouraged to pass on this email to anyone or anywhere there
might be professors interested in teaching open source.
–
name: Karsten ‘quaid’ Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team: Red Hat Community Architecture
uri: http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg: AD0E0C41
Website Language Switching
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Technology, linkedin on April 25, 2010
In one of the cases where Yahoo (well, Maktoob, now a part of Yahoo) gets its right:
This is a good, easily understood way to work with language in your UI/navigation.
GAFFTA Processing Workshop
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, FOSS, Out and About, Sounds, Technology, Visual Arts, linkedin on February 27, 2010
I’ve been going to a Processing workshop at GAFFTA, and its been pretty rockin’ so far. While I can’t say I’ve created anything really show-quality, I like the potential of adding code to my toolset. I had been following the development of Processing for a few years, but figured if I spent actual money for an actual short, intense workshop, I might succeed at getting up and doing something rather than just lurking. So far, so good.
For those of you who want to see what can really be done with it, check out OpenProcessing.
SCALE 8x
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Out and About, Technology, linkedin on February 25, 2010
So after years of almost going, seriously considering going and sort of thinking of going, I finally went and attended SCALE. It was wholly worthwhile. A bargain (to paraphrase conference Chair Ilan Rabinovich, “You’ll spend more on parking than on a pass for all three days to the show”) it had a lot of pros and very few cons:
Pros:
- Great speakers talking about pertinent topics (i.e. Brian Aker, Jono Bacon)
- Great conference layout (the Westin LAX was well suited for the logistics of such an expo)
- Great accommodations (the Westin LAX had nice rooms at a decent cost if you went with the conference promotional rate)
- Great food within short driving distance (the Missus and I scored with Derrick’s Jamaican Cuisine)
- Well organized expo floor, where commercial firms, public-sector entities and .org’s all were commingled instead of broken out into ghettoized segments.
Cons:
- The Westin LAX is otherwise not in the most awesome neck of the woods; there are no really decent eats within walking distance, unless you happen to be an avid fast food junkie (which I am not).
- It’s LA, which never entices me a whole lot. Move the show to San Diego.
- Parking is extortionate, even for guests of the hotel, as was the wi-fi per diem costs if you were anywhere except the conference floors (which were free).
- The menu at the Westin is a tad limited.
- Too many sessions worth attending (an otherwise good problem to have) where two or more good talks would be going on at once.
To back up a bit, I started by opting to drive to the show, and take the 101 instead of Interstate 5. While this adds up to an extra hour of drive time, it also means you have a much more scenic route and better opportunities for photo opportunities and dining options.
Case in point, I opted to stop on the way down at Avila Beach and have a pit stop at Joe Momma’s, which had good coffee and also offered a rather odd item: King Crimsonade (Iced King Crimson Tea + Lemonade)
I arrived in LA, checked in, and meant to catch some of Friday afternoon sessions but ended up having lobby lounge discourse with Jono, Ilan and others into the wee hours.
Jono Bacon’s Engines of Revolution talk actually finally got me to really notice Quickly, which now very much has my interest.
Don Marti led a really useful panel on Git adoption and usage that I really found useful (especially since some developers at work are starting to use it in lieu of SVN, but others are balking, and getting some consensus is proving elusive).
Mark Stone gave a rather interesting view into aspects of corporate participation in FOSS that I think gets overlooked (particularly in how “tribal” versus “institutional” knowledge and what certain hierarchical organizations expect to achieve from a particular engagement).
I missed the keynote by Karsten Wade, which I sorely regret; at least there are some decent notes. I have known Karsten for years and his thoughtfulness and outlook are really well suited to what he does. Bravo Karsten. Sorry about the crossed signals about dinner though (even if we ended up in the same spot anyway). heh
On the legal side, I managed to catch the tail end of Richard Fontana’s Improving the Open Source Legal System. Sadly, that same session produced also some stellar verbal segfaults like Bradley Kuhn’s “Everything that can possibly be bad, you can find on SourceForge“. Having seemingly inherited the diplomatic and interpersonal graces of RMS, all I can say is “stay classy, yo.”
I spent a decent amount of time speaking with Josh Berkus about everything from what makes for a good conference to the peculiarities of Bay Area public transit, including Epic Beard Man. That is part of the reasons these shows are so superior to any of the IDG-style low signal to high noise schmooze-fests; shows like SCALE manage to keep things collegial and friendly instead of constantly getting the sense you are being given the marketing equivalent to copping a feel by some sleazy field rep.
Big ups to Don Marti, Jake Edge, Karsten, Gareth and everyone else who helped put the show on, or whose session I attended. There were no bum notes in this concert.
The weekend was not all geekery however.
The Missus had arrived Saturday morning via LAX, and Sunday we ventured some 25 minutes from the Westin into Japantown to try a relatively new place, a place called The Lazy Ox Canteen. Calling it a “canteen” seems oddly quaint for such an otherwise really exceptional gastropub, tucked away with no signage but clearly having already won over a clientele that likes quality food and libations. Over the course of several hours K & I shared salt cod fritters, charred octopus with white beans, flat-iron pork loin, salmon on a bed of black orzo, tapioca brulee, tiramisu trifle, and I got a bottle of Ozeno Yukidoke I.P.A. A big win.
We also stopped by the Kinokuniya store in Japantown and picked up some items:
Other random bits done while hanging about include the above doodles of Chinese premier Hu Jintao and political commentator George Will.
Creative Commons at Parisoma
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, FOSS, Law, Observations, Out and About, Politics, Pop Culture, Technology, linkedin on February 17, 2010
Watch live video from VidSF on Justin.tv
Creative Commons at Parisoma. Somehow I actually managed to make it up here from the South Bay in time for the 7PM start. Spoke briefly with a guy working on FOSS test suit stuff, and a woman who works with the non-profit behind Sesame Street, which may give you an idea of the breadth of folks in attendance.
Props to CC CEO Joi Ito for being not only a very good panelist (read: not dogmatic, but grounded and clearly well prepared for questions).
SVLUG: David Weekly and “Infrastructure Memes”
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts, linkedin on February 4, 2010
On a lark I caught the last portion of David Weekly’s Infrastructure Memes talk at SVLUG. It was probably the first SVLUG meeting I had been too in 7-8 years, and the crowd was notably smaller, and no Rick Moen or Marc Merlin to be found.
The talk itself was a good mix of items that seemed quite obvious (then again, community building -both online and in real space- is not exactly alien territory for me), along with some interesting statistics and some things which struck me as quite interesting.
The discussion on trademarks and the states that use first-to-file systems was animated, although much of it seemed to forget that part of issue will always lay in regional/local political imperatives versus any transnational tendencies brought about by bandwidth and pagerank (although it isn’t totally immune to either).
Geeks and wonks don’t seem to hang out together as much as they should.
The most interesting part for me was talking to David briefly after his presentation and asking him about places where he saw the intersection of hackerspaces and design/aesthetics folken. He gave me GAFFTA, and I was blown away. How such a group had been sitting right under my nose…?
Earmarks of Project Management Gone Awry
Posted by zeruch in Observations, linkedin on January 18, 2010
<mild_rant>
Don’t you find it charming when preening, self-inflating people of pedestrian ability and bloated ambition blame others for their erratic and often scattershot initiatives not going according to (the nonexistent except in their own heads which they failed to communicate to others) plan? Me neither.
Projects that require a substantial amount of resources to roll out, regardless of level of urgency, must have something resembling tangible requirements spec’d out before, or at least during the design process so that deployment, troubleshooting and maintenance can be done relatively smoothly and with as few hiccups as possible. Otherwise, you are flying blind, which is a recipe with wasted effort and possibly abject failure.
Just taking a cavalier Sherman’s March approach with other departments affected by your actions (and acting completely oblivious to this throughout) not only is prone to pitfalls, but also makes you look like a juvenile cretin.
</mild_rant>
Microsoft Gaffe #794586496 And This one is a Doozy
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Technology, linkedin on December 15, 2009
There is no kind, delicate way around this; MS blatantly pilfered design and/or code from Plurk. It is not even remotely subtle as to the ripoffery at work here.
Now while Plurk is one of the better but lesser known microblogging services out there, how this one passed any MS launch smell test just boggles.
As an aside, Plurk has some cool Open Source projects they support, including the KVP DB Lightcloud.
Techcrunch has a follow up, and they reached the same conclusion I did (actually they reached two, of which only the latter was the one that immediately jumped into my head, possibly because I am used to them commiting many sins of vanity that obfuscate this huge sin of idiocy):
Only two things are really clear right now. First, Microsoft is standing around with their pants around their ankles looking pretty ridiculous right now. And second, this is the best thing to happen to Plurk, ever.
Random Bits for 12.12.09
Posted by zeruch in Law, Observations, Politics, Pop Culture, Technology, linkedin on December 12, 2009
- Ancient Roman city found off Libyan coast in Cyrenaica region. I think this just adds one more bit to the case for Libya as a tourist spot (and I would argue for student exchange programs). Compared to its neighbors it is comparatively safer, and -current events around Lockerbie aside- is very open to coming out from the political cold that it has been under since the Reagan administration.
- MIT has a new course in data visualization, specific to the peculiarities of social networks online.
- Speaking of MIT, the university has also published an economic analysis of the Obama health reform plan.
- Looks like at least one household product company is becoming more transparent; SC Johnson has Whats Inside SC Johnson, and I for one applaud the move.
- Forbes has published their list of the most powerful people. Oddly, I am not on it. Note to self: work on that.
- For the oddly cynical (or recently politically dispossesed) there is the Hope is Fading t-shirt. I guess some of us find that ‘hope’ is not something simply pushed simply into form, but an incremental process. That is not a defense of Obama per se, but it is not an indictment of his rather difficult task he has (which is a presidential inheritance of unfathomable misfortune). The irony of the t-shirt however, is not lost on me either.
- A geographical breakdown of VC firms in the US. Show (where the) money indeed. The fact that Sand Hill road is top dog is not terribly shocking.
- “Say hello to .كوم as domain names go truly global” = an interesting linguistic experiemnt that could offer new possibilities or allow a further layer of balkanization where it is unecessary.
MySQL Admin Tools
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Technology, linkedin on December 9, 2009
Webm.ag has a rundown of a few different GUI apps for administration/querying MySQL databases. Outside of the fact that they list HeidiSQL as a Linux app (it’s currently Win32 only, although in the comment exchange I had with the author, it apparently works well under Wine) its a decent list.
I have been using HeidiSQL regularly and generally liked it. On Linux, I still either go via a terminal (Konsole) or the staid but utile MySQL Query Browser.
SQLite & Lita
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Technology, linkedin on December 8, 2009
So I honestly have not really ever touched an SQLite DB, but wanted a simple tool to play with the DB instance that powers the Zotero extension I use with Firefox that was somewhat similar to MySQL Query Browser or HeidiSQL. The closest I have found so far is an AIR application called Lita.
Haven’t kicked the tires too hard, but at a rudimentary level, it looks like it will do the trick.
Duck Duck Go
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Technology, linkedin on December 5, 2009
Linux Foundation gives out lifetime @linux.com email addresses
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Technology, linkedin on December 2, 2009
I upgraded my membership with the The Linux Foundation to include a lifetime @linux.com email address (well, the forwarding thereof anyway).
It is really reasonably priced, and since I am looking for a new minitower soon, the discounts on hardware from Lenovo and HP is a nice perk (so are the big discounts on attendance at SCALE and OSCON).
Sand, Bacteria and Odd Architectures
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Technology, linkedin on November 28, 2009
I have always had a love of deserts, but the way Magnus Larsson describes sand and the potential of it as a building material for a rather interesting and ambitious set of ideas that mix concepts of bleeding edge architecture, agriculture and -on a grand, yet-incremental scale- issues of desertification (which has larger effects that are generally negative) takes it to a whole new level.
What it produces is almost out of a Roger Dean painting as applied to concepts out of a Frank Herbert novel.
Part of the very interesting (and the way he presents it, funny too) is the very economically efficient manner in which he conceives this being applied.
Part of the research involved was done by civil and environmental engineering professor Jason Dejong at the UC Davis Soil Interactions Lab. Seriously, this is some insanely wild stuff. I will be the first to state that dirt (or sand) should never really be this fascinating…but in this case, it is.
I do think that part of his presentation is heavy handed and overly romanticised, but the root idea is totally arresting in its elegance.
Twitter + jQuery + Simile
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Observations, Politics, Technology, Visual Arts, linkedin on November 24, 2009
So the idea of making a timeline of someone’s Twitter feed did not strike me as very interesting, until someone did it using Simile (or rather, the timeline widget thereof), which I think is a cool project.
It also allows you to play/edit with the sourcecode easily.
I have been thinking of good way to use it for both work in terms of visualizing a product life cycle (including all downtime incidents and planned maintenance) and for wonkish pet projects involving tracking terrorist/conflict events and electoral results/regime shifts for the political actors involved.
It might also be a cool way to represent a semi-interactive CV/resume.
A Decade of Sourceforge
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, FOSS, Technology, linkedin on November 18, 2009
Today, Sourceforge turned 10 years old.
Tony Fusion94 Guntharp was the original project manager and taskmaster, Uriah Precision Welcome was the first walking swiss-army knife of system/network admins I ever encountered.
Of the original four (the other two being Drew Dtype Streib and Tim Perdue) they are the two I still am in contact with and still call friends. Uriah is the only one of the original four who remains at what is now its home, Geek.net
And that gets me to a first point, since it bears restating: Sourceforge was given life by those four men. That is the list. Four.
Anyone else laying any claim to creation is questionable, unless their name is Larry Augustin, who was CEO of VA Research (VA Linux) at the time that the original software archival project ColdStorage was expanded to what was referred to internally as Alexandria (it was going to be called Ptolemy). There was a small circle of other people in the company that knew what was going on in the middle office in the west wing of 1382 Bordeaux Avenue in Sunnyvale. It was VA’s very own skunkworks, and it was exciting.
I am proud to have been involved, if only mostly at the minimal level of being just someone to vet an idea, spur a tirade, or otherwise support an concept that I thought then (and still now) made an immense amount of both practical sense and offered the possibility of being something Bill Joy often referred to as “disruptive technology”. Even though the tech itself was mostly well known at the time (within FOSS circles at least), putting it together in that way was ambitious, it was ballsy, and no one knew better than to think it was not doable.
The amount of work effort was heroic, with people operating on a perpetual diet of caffeine, nicotine, honor and distilled hate for failure. The atmosphere was part M*A*S*H, McGuyver, the A-Team, and an Akira Kurosawa film with lots of angry dudes with katanas.
To know it is still going, and having carved a path that has helped indelibly change the entire software industry (which is something I think really gets overlooked in an age of “Forges” and forge-like sites like Launchpad, GitHub, Codeplex, et al) is not an understatement and it is amazing.
Something like that is worth noting, as are probably a slew of interesting stories about colorful personalities, weird happenings, and crazy adventures that surrounded the gestation, birthing and nurturing of it…which I will not tell in any detail here for reasons of both brevity and to not name too many names (some of which may not want to know how they bartered servers for Single Malt Scotch, or didn’t recognize that guy named Guido who wanted to host Python on SF.net, or who garnered the reputation for the worlds worst collection of plaid shirts since the invention of textiles, or who terrorized upper management the most over a litany of issues both technical and political).
Cheers guys. You did damn good.
ArmsControl + Personal Grudges
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Politics, linkedin on November 15, 2009
Arms Control Wonk has a post about a pair of policy disputes that moved well into personal territory; Oppenheimer v. Teller and Warnke v. Nitze. It is an interesting look at an aspect that probably gets ignored (or assumed too glibly). Often we want to look at these kinds of things from a detached eye, but the fact is that often very real moral convictions and personal ambitions color the statements and actions of any key player.
It gets easy to say someone is choosing a political position because of convenience or ideological rigidity, which can and does happen, but what are the practical and personal results? As Michael Krepon states, the disputes are sometimes very public, other times wholly behind closed doors, but what effect that has on the outcome is unclear.
I am still personally interested in the events more recently of sour disputes between Powell/Armitage v. Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld during the first George W. Bush term and the hints of disconnect and backbiting in the current Obama administration between various actors (General McChrystal,Karl Eikenberry, Matthew Hoh, President Obama and VP Biden, et al)
Economic Woes Hit Iraqi War Veteran and Artist
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Pop Culture, Visual Arts, linkedin on November 15, 2009
Peter and Jennifer Damon established the Middleborough Art Gallery, but the economy has forced its imminent closure:
When the Iraq War veteran returned to Massachusetts in 2003, he took up an old hobby, painting, to get the feel of his new prosthetic arms. But as he gained dexterity with his new limbs, Damon discovered that his artwork was more than just an exercise….In 2006, Damon and his wife, Jenn, fixed up an old building in downtown Middleborough, transforming it into exhibition space for work from Damon and other local artists….The couple will be forced to close the gallery this week…as the economy began to slump, so did sales at the gallery.
I wish I could do something for this guy right now, but ultimately all I can do is hope that his next venture (which he appears to already be planning for) is a roaring success.
The couple will be forced to close the gallery this week, but for the former helicopter mechanic and his wife, the venture is a launching pad rather than a failure. Peter Damon said his new role as a painter has given him a platform to raise awareness about veterans’ issues.
Art is often, in and of itself, a catharsis. A compulsion. It often offers more than the deceptively simple act of making “pretty pictures” and reading about someone like Peter Damon reaffirms that for some of us.
SCALE 8x is coming
Posted by zeruch in FOSS, Out and About, Technology, linkedin on November 7, 2009
The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is coming up in February and I think I will actually make it out this year. It is one of the few tech shows with a track of any interest to me that is also logistically easy. That, and I trust Gareth Greenaway and Co, to put on a decent show; the CFP period is still open for those that might want to actually present.
Alternative Press Expo 2009
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Visual Arts, linkedin on October 18, 2009
So this year I went with K instead of just rolling through on my own. The show floor looked like it always does and most of the same cast of characters were there, making a kind of Pitchfork Media for the sequential art set (even if in actuality it caters to a generally broader set of interests).
Allen Spiegel himself (2nd from right)
Ended up spending far more than I had intended, but the pickings were really good for art books:
My regular pilgrimage spot is Allen Spiegel Fine Arts, which had a handful of The Marat/Sade Journals by Barron Storey. I picked up one of the slipcased editions, which are signed by Storey and were limited to only 100 being made. Also purchased at the ASFA booth was Postcard from Vienna by Dave McKean and the new Kent Williams retrospective, Amalgam: Paintings and Drawings, 1992 – 2007.
Having been an acquaintance of Jonathan Wayshack since about 2003, I always stop by his booth. At this point, it’s the only time of year we speak, but he always remembers who I am, and I always pick up whatever he has that is new; in this case, Toner IV. Even as his clientele gets bigger and more mainline (DC Comics, Nike) his work retains a very underground edge. His use of pro-white is always intriguing.
The last item was Process Recess vol. 3, The Hallowed Seam, which is a collection of work from James Jean. It has a great simple die-cut cover concept and the Giant Robot folks only had three left by the time I made it to their booth.
Federal Register goes ‘Web World’
Posted by zeruch in Law, Observations, Politics, Technology, linkedin on October 5, 2009
The Federal government is making the move to take some of its massive tomes of announcements, and making it available back to the beginning of this decade via an XML feed; the Post posts:
Starting Monday, issues dating back to 2000 will be available at Data.gov in a form known in the Web world as XML
The ‘web world’ makes it sound like they are moving the register to a planet of hyperactive arachnids (lets face it, layman English copy about tech topics always sounds slightly inept), but the point is the same, that it is an improvement over the rather clumsy way to currently navigate the voluminous daily postings. The span of topics and its comprehensive nature -never mind the often dry, technocratic language- can make tackling this kind of material normally an exercise in masochism.
They quote one staffer, “the changes online may inspire someone to find the next best way to publish, display and distribute the Register.” Well, how about an RSS feed system that you can setup via keyword (a la the clean setup SimplyHired has)?
This invites all manner of possibilities for content analysis/visualization projects.
Some additional good commentary about the announcement is over here.
Upcoming GIMP 2.x Releases
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, FOSS, Observations, Technology, Visual Arts, linkedin on September 29, 2009
So my usage of the GNU Image Manipulation Tool over the past 10 years has been hit or miss (more often the latter) not because it lacked too many features (it did early on but got much better, and had some great ones all to itself) but mostly because of two things:
- It did not have the good sense to do what Adobe did with InDesign with respect to migrating users from Quark: get very granular key-mappings/lexicon so as to make transitioning users much easier.
- It had a general user interface experience that I would put barely above Blender and slightly below MS Windows 3.1.
The former (and a small part of the latter) was partially addressed by the advent of projects like GimPhoto and GIMPShop, but these were effectively forks, and not the most actively supported and stable.
Finally, it seems that GIMP itself is getting a real makeover with a single window and clean menu system closer to Photoshop, without losing the strengths it inherently has, and in a way that will allow users the choice of UI layout. FOSS wins again.
Let’s face it, I paid a hefty sum for my Adobe license (I waited years to go to the full CS3 suite from version 7.0 of just PS, and am still not sure if it was worth it for the PS upgrade) and if I can get an app that gets me what I want in a manner that is easy to transition to, you have a test case to win over a lot of other users.
The idea of having an application that has the bulk of features PS does, for zero dollar cost, smaller resource footprint, and is built to let people test the waters easily, is a big step in the right direction.
Here is an image from my time at Damage Studios, working on the Rekonstruction MMOG, which made use of GIMP to some degree:
p.s. yes, I still think the GIMP is a completely asinine name (recursive acronym or not).
Paranoia as a Form of Corporate Culture
Posted by zeruch in Technology, linkedin on September 24, 2009
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick seems to think that “skepticism, pessimism, and fear…We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression.” combined with all focus internally to a basis that “really rewards profit and nothing else” is the way to reach long term success.
Now I do not want to appear all hippy-dippy and diss the profit-motive. Profit is how you keep a company afloat (unless you are a buzzword compliant VC-backed firm, in which case it is which round of funding keeps you buoyed until you sink or become the next Google) and it should always be a focus of the overall strategy. Profit is also nice for other things, like expensive means at Michael Mina, go-go dancers, flights to St. Barts… as well as things like food and your mortgage.
Also, having some sense of skepticism keeps employees from becoming too complacent in times of great success. When I was at SUN in the late 90s, the company was doing incredibly well, moving from strength to strength. It was a fantastic place to work, and people were generally highly satisfied and loyal. Yet the corporate culture rewarded being aware of potential threats or of great ideas that could be built up. It was open to new opportunities, but always looking for possible threats too. The result was often a culture of people who really knew their competitive landscape, and could articulate advantages and weaknesses within their own groups; something I find critical in any business to becoming successful, and certainly staying successful.
In an industry that was often carried by creative personalities and pushed by driven and inspired developers and designers, Kotick sounds like he’s been drinking all the Kool-Aid flavors at the Larry Ellison Hyper-Darwinian HR Juice Bar. This may work for the often staid arenas Oracle makes it big margins in, but for game development, I see it as potentially fatal in the long run.
Making it a sole benchmark, and using it as a method to make internal conflict between departments competing for resources is usually inefficient and ends up costing in the end with burn out and employee turnover, which in turn can have other costs related to institutional memory/continuity, and creates a general atmosphere of disincentives to trying potentially innovative ideas. It basically rewards a paranoid, risk-averse set of behaviors that might be short to mid-term lucrative, will eventually stagnate and set a firm off to decline.
Now Kotick also refers to “thrift” which I also think is a valuable idea; tons of perks is just as bad as no perks, since they are easy to get used to and the second margins are being eaten into too much they get chopped and it also can send employees into an ‘abandon ship’ mentality that further leads to churning and loss of usually valuable talent (since they are also usually the first ones to see the warning lights and make for the Exits before the office hits the Dilbert Effect apex. But ‘thrift’ != ‘miserly’ and certainly should not reward austerity measures that would make the IMF have pause.
That being said, it would appear not all of Kotick’s employees fear him. I think ArsTechnica gave the best general overview of his rather brick-headed remarks.