home about | services artwork blog

disorientation

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

I found out today that my grandparents are ok, staying in the east jeff. memorial hospital. But apparently, they're giving patients one meal a day. My grandmother isn't a patient, she's there with my grandfather who is a patient, so they've been splitting his one meal a day. Now, this is third-hand info, so it could be an exaggeration, but that's just ridiculous. How long until non-patients become patients with that rule in place?




we haven't heard at all from my mom yet, nor my step-sister, but I'm assuming that it's a communication issue. There are no phone calls to the 504 area code. My brother says my mom went to Bush, La. which is about 1/2 hour NE of Covington, La. It's a rural area near an area that did get some damage. I don't know what she was thinking going there. You get into this mindset, i guess, "as long as i'm not near the water i'll be ok." My step-sister went to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which also was damaged, to what extent i don't know. But like i said, no phone calls. I can't even call to Pensacola, Florida, where my dad is staying. He can call out, so he's been in touch with me well, but i'm sure my step-mom and stepsister are both freaking out about not being able to speak to each other.




This whole experience has been very odd. I feel completely burnt out, I feel kinda blankly sad and just a big sense of loss. It's not fear for my family members, I'm not that worried yet just because of what the situation there is. But the city itself, the culture... it doesn't look good. I've never ceased to think of New Orleans as home, you never really do, and to get so much information from such a distance about the destruction of my home is disorienting.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

conditions in new orleans

There are people in New Orleans who are extremely poor and oppressed, not necessarily by "the man" or "the white man," even, but by the economic conditions they are in. Granted, economic conditions do carry a social aspect, and the social aspect in New Orleans is also going to contain a racial element. Most of the people left in New Orleans are from the poor black communities and, as a resident, to be surprised at the looting is to be in denial of the situation you've been living along side this whole time.

People look at terrorism and say "to eliminate terrorism we need to eliminate the things that cause the alienation and and economic conditions that compell young people to become terrorists." The same is true here. Of course we say, "they have the same opportunities as the rest of us," which may be true in a sense. I'm sure the poor black folks have roughly the same opportunities as the poor white people. But don't act like there aren't class differences. And don't be surprised when people in endlessly desperate situations are suddenly free to roam and take and have all of the things that they long for everyday. We all watch television and think about how much we'd like to have that BMW over the Dodge Caravan that we drive to work. Imagine how much more so when you have to beg for bus stamps. Our society teaches us to want but it doesn't always provide us the ability to earn.

That being said, New Orleans is in a state of chaos right now that, even if it's not hard to believe, is still bewildering. There are things that New Orleanians hold sacred to the city and I'd say that the mansions along St. Charles Avenue are amoung them. To know that there are armed gangs ransacking those mansions is sad. It's an affront to our culture. I'm not rich, I don't live in a house like that, but I've driven along St. Charles and rode the streetcar along that line hundreds of times. It's a beautiful place, a street lined with huge Oak Trees. If there's anything that says Deep South it's a picture of Live Oaks. Those people are abusing my memories of home.

At this point I don't know how much of home is left. It's hard to tell from the aerial videos how much water is spread throughout the city. My grandparent's house is in a section called Gentilly that seems to be on slightly higher ground. It's the same neighborhood that I grew up in. But it's not far from the breach in the levee on the Industrial Canal, so it's hard to say. The fact that they have not shown many pictures of Gentilly on the constant news coverage is a good sign, though, I think.

You go home to New Orleans and see all of the progress that they've made in this part of the city or that, mostly in parts of the city that serve as facades: the French Quarter, Magazine Street, major streets throughout. But behind those major streets are neighborhoods that have been deteriorating for years. The 9th Ward doesn't even have a nice façade. It's a run down, dirty, poverty-stricken mess. You see it and you think "why doesn't the city put the money into rebuilding these areas?" It looks like now they'll have to.

They're not going to let New Orleans go to waste. There are too many interests at stake. Between Oil and Gas, Tourism, and the Southern Living mentality, people are not going to want to leave New Orleans behind. If the whole French Quarter had been destroyed I think they'd be up a creek. But the oak trees and going to survive, the mansions are going to survive, tourism on Bourbon Street is going to survive, the looters are going to have brand new TVs and the city is going to come back.

You know, when you see the pictures of the Twin Span, the expanse of I-10 between Slidell and New Orleans, it almost looks like the sections of the road were meant to be modular, like the pylons stay in place and the pieces of road are placed on top. I'm not sure if that's truly the case, but you can hope. And you can hope that they could be smart enough to employ a similar technique to the levees that surround the city. If the levees were built with interlocking vertical sections, it may be possible to more easily replace sections that are torn down. It's ridiculous to watch the slapdash solutions that they're trying to use to fix the levee system. Didn't they consider "what are we going to do if a section breaks?" "We'll fly huge bags of sand in with helicopters" doesn't seem to indicate a whole lot of forethought.

posted by j. Permanent Link 1 comments

pre-decimation nola

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

that is a LOT of water. the entire city of new orleans is covered in water.

i feel like part of me has been destroyed.




City Park...










The Carousel




My grandfather is in the hospital (in Metairie) so my grandmother stayed there with him. I don't know any more than that.




Homes in the Garden District...



















Audubon Park in uptown nola...










The Jean Lafitte National Historical Park...




























The lakefront (Lake Pontchartrain)




Audubon Blvd., uptown







Audubon Park




State St., i think




More homes in the Garden District...



















Audubon Park










The lakefront before a storm.


No big versions for now, it's late. I do have more nola pics with large versions at www.j-ink.com/nola/.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

katrina

Monday, August 29, 2005

It's funny how much the news casts try to demonstrate the “gravity of the situation,” going so far as to put their reporters up on hydraulic lifts in the studio to show “just how high” a 20 foot storm surge is. It's very important to them to “drive the point home” just how severe the situation is.

It may sound stupid, but it's hard not to want to be in New Orleans right now, or at least nearby, to experience the storm first hand. It's not a desire to be in danger, but… being in a hurricane is a pretty intense experience. Since I was little we've always heard about “what could happen” if "the" big storm hit. This is obviously a big storm and you know, being from New Orleans I can’t not pay attention to it. I’m glued to the coverage.

sophrosyn1: they were interviewing a few guys in Baton Rouge
"myfriendjohn": what'd they say?
sophrosyn1: and they cut back to the anchor
sophrosyn1: who says "ok, there you have it, the frat boy perspective on hurricane katrina"



I was going to expand on this, but my outlook on things has shifted a bit as more news came out tonight. I'm posting it as is with some pics and I'll follow up tomorrow, perhaps.

























All photos from the Associated Press via www.nola.com

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

google desktop search sidebar

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

My initial thoughts on the Google Desktop Search sidebar feature, as told to Google's feedback submission form:

i installed the desktop search today to explore the sidebar and was disappointed with one thing: docking. people, myself included, are very acclimated to our desktops and often lay things out a certain way... IM client top right, winamp, etc...

if the sidebar could detach and float, it'd be superb. i only really need x many features on it and don't need it to take up so much real estate. i'd like to put it where i want it. you know. (the auto-hide does _help_)

another consideration: allow duplicate web clips panels to route different rss feeds through. right now they all kind of come through in a jumbled mess.

ALSO! Consider the possibility of multiple users on a single computer (without separate Windows profiles).

any chance the panels could be scrollable?



If it literally just looked like this and floated like any other application window, it'd really be quite perfect. There are a few cool plug-ins for it already, too, like a handy to-do list panel. I really like the idea of applications with extensions... firefox, trillian, and winamp being other good examples. Being able to bend the way my computer functions to the things that i specifically want it to do is a pretty useful feature! I hope google takes some of my suggestions.

Oh, and Google, how about a bookmarks panel too? Great.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

another kim drawing

Monday, August 22, 2005

i did another drawing in illustrator this weekend:




i started from a picture this time instead of a pencil drawing. i did the entire line drawing in Illustrator, then imported the .ai file into Flash to experiment with color a bit.


click to enlarge


Flash's vector drawing tools are a bit more rudimentary, but that works to its benefit in one sense. In Illustrator all of the wrinkle lines in the shirt are their own separate shapes. In flash, any lines that intersect and form an enclosed area constitute a shape which can easily be filled with color. Illustrator has some options for combining paths (lines) into complex paths and such, which i need to start using more, but it was like 1:30am, i only had so much patience.

For the shadows, instead of using a darker flesh tone, a darker red, etc., i decided to create a couple of semi-transparent black overlays. i decided not to use the shadows on the face because i like her face to have this glow that the shadows detracted from. perhaps i'll add a bit of shadow around her hairline and on the right side of her jaw just to keep the lighting consistent.




This is a sort of byproduct created by hiding the line and color layers that i thought was pretty interesting.


I hope you kids can see past making Nagel comparisons.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

haiku for michael gray

Sunday, August 21, 2005

i wrote a haiku for my older brother who recently legally changed his name.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

Remembrance of Things...

Friday, August 19, 2005




i've created a new site for my brothers and i to post memories from our childhood at www.j-ink.com/brothers/. it's pretty new yet, only four posts deep, but if we manage to keep it up regularly it has the potential to become quite funny.

my hope is that the more we post to it, the more we'll recall of our childhood and the more obscure our memories will become. it probably won't be a very image intensive site, but it could make for some good reading. perhaps if we can compile enough good stories it might make for a good short book or kids book. never know.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

movin' right along

Thursday, August 18, 2005


You know you love my shed that looks like a barn, and my lawn deer.


My scooter has 165 miles on it as of yesterday. I've been taking it to work all week, but left it in the garage today because of rain. Turns out that it didn't rain until about 10:30 or so and it was clear and dry by the time i came home, but oh well. Better safe than sliding across the pavement on my elbows.

As i may have said, this is my first experience on two wheels, not counting the years i spent traversing nola by bike, so i've been trying to take things somewhat slowly. The first night out i rode around the parking lot behind my house for about two hours just getting a feel for things, learning how to stop quickly and take sharp turns at slow speeds. The second night i went to the parking lot i was bored after five minutes so i took to the streets. I spent the next few nights riding around the neighborhood, which turns out to be a neighborhood well suited to learning to ride a scooter (and perhaps a motorcycle in the not-too-distant future). I found myself on Puetz Rd. a 35mph road in South Milwaukee a bit sooner than i was prepared, after riding through a neighborhood where they don't believe in grids and straight lines. Suburbs are much more picturesque if you can't see the end of your block around a bend. So it spit me out on a street that was still a bit above me, but all went well and my confidence rose one more notch.

A night or two after that i rode down through Grant Park near my house and took a quick ride down Lakeshore Dr. I figured since this was going to be my route to work it'd be good to familiarize myself with it from a new perspective. I had decided that i was going to start riding to work this week, so sunday i took a practice ride all the way downtown, about a half hour ride each way. There are a few spots that are a little nerve racking yet, like where i turn left off of the main road at a stop light to head back to Lakeshore Dr. It's not my ability to ride that i'm concerned with, but other people's ability to pay attention and not hit me.

One thing i have noticed is that because i'm on a scooter people assuming that i'm going to putt along and so they tend to give me a little more room. I think part of it is that they aren't sure how to predict what i'm going to do. What i'm not going to do is move over and let them pass me. I'm glad i got the 125cc and not a little 50cc; i have no problem at all keeping up with traffic. I haven't been on any roads yet posted more than 35mph, but i'm figuring that eventually 45mph roads should be my upper limit, assuming traffic moves 10mph over the speed limit.

All in all, the scooter has been quite a bit of fun, i think i made a good choice with the one that i got. My only regret, i think, was erring on the side of caution a bit too much and buying a full face helmet. I figured if i was going to be learning to ride going 40mph i should take as much precaution as possible. But honestly, i feel self conscious with it on and am eager to get a helmet that is a bit more synonymous with scooters. Like this!:




It's like i live in a city full of Harleys and i'm the only one wearing a helmet.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

The Corrections

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Against my better judgement i picked up The Corrections from the library a few weeks ago. my friend ryan, who recommends most of the books i read, has been pushing it on me for a while. i knew what i was in the mood for and i was fairly sure that The Corrections was not it, but i relented. he planned to re-read it at the same time, so that effected my decision a bit too. i should've listened to myself.

i sped through the first 1/4 of the book, reading ~100 pages the first day that i had it, where i usually average 10-20 pages a day at most. i was pretty captivated. but to be honest, after about the first 1/3 of the book my interest took a dive. i think the timing might have coincided with me finding Franzen's picture inside the back cover:


I am smug.


One of his characters was writing a book or screenplay (whatever) and one of the main criticisms of it (from another character) was that it had way too many references to female body parts. It's hard to imagine that he's not aware of the irony and is criticizing himself; the book is so full of sex it borders on the immature. The subject of the book revolves around family dysfunction and the only remedy any of the family members seem to understand is replacing criticism with sex.

Gary, the oldest sibling, has not one endearing quality. He's trying to avoid the dreaded "CD" (clinical depression), or at least the admission of it. But why is it that he's so aware of all of CD's intricacies?

Chip, the middle child, is the best developed character, though he's something of an idiot. He's the easiest to relate to, but c'mon, he IS too old to be wearing leather pants. And he's still wearing them later trying to flea Lithuania? THAT's not making yourself conspicuous trying to escape a country in collapse. It's hard to truly like you too, Chip.

Denise is interesting, sure, but she's completely unbelievable. She's about as male-fantasy-characterization-of-a-female as you can get. And she's a successful chef? Of all things to make her succeed at, food prep? Hardly. It's not a life of glamour, trust me.


I'm not even going to get into the parents, they're such caricatures.


I don't know, i mean, it wasn't a bad book. Perhaps i just need to be convinced of why i should like it. As an artist sometimes it is difficult not to incorporate your hormonal urges into your artwork. What's wrong with that? It's subjective, a matter of taste. I find that hormones often come into direct conflict with intellect and reason. Hormones breed impulse and abandon logic. You're not thinking, you're being driven. They may be a legitimate human experience worthy of self expression, i suppose, but it can be more difficult to respect something that seems to be created out of unsuppressed urge instead of contemplation and insight.

With that i will note the one insight that has stuck with me from the book. To paraphrase, once we began to comprehend the idea of infinity, we began to strive to attain the infinite for ourselves. Wait, was that from The Corrections? I hope so.

posted by j. Permanent Link 1 comments

Web Developer's Handbook

Monday, August 15, 2005

Web Developer's Handbook: developing web-sites, exploring own imagination | CSS, Color Tools, SEO, Usability etc.

This is, like, the best list of links ever. Fo sho.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

kim drawing

Friday, August 12, 2005

i turned this



into this


click to enlarge


i don't know what i'll do with it... it might be cool to print it out large scale and fill it in with watercolor. i could keep it in illustrator and colorize it there, i'm sure it'd be a good exercise in learning further how to combine paths and create shapes from lines. though, i like the fact that it's in black and white, too. maybe i'll just fill it in with cross-hatching. part of me still wishes i had gone into illustration.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

reply to kottke

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

jason kottke posted the question today:

Perhaps this is impossible or unfair, but can we have a discussion about where technology and user experience on the web are headed without using any of the following words or concepts:

Ajax, web services, weblogs, Google, del.icio.us, Flickr, folksonomy, tags, hacks, podcasting, wikis, bottom-up, RSS, citizen journalism, mobile, TiVo, the Long Tail, and convergence.
it got some pretty interesting reponses, even though some people went pretty far off the topic of "...on the web" to talk about space travel and this and that.


i think it'll be split between things that function (paying your bills, organizing your information, communicating, reading media) and things that entertain (streaming movies, tv, phone, music).

it's the first that i think most of us find most interesting. imagine if you could combine your google homepage, the news feeds, feeds from your favorite sites, email previews (as well as other forms of communication?) etc, with all of the bill paying functionality that we utilize, our bank accounts, even the possibility of interaction with gov. agencies (reminders that you need to renew your drivers license...). using rss to read other people's personal sites is neat and all, especially when they're in "high level" web technology jobs and we get the inside scoop, but in the end it's not a lot different from reading someone's aol homepage 8 years ago except for the fact that they can be more prolific about publishing now. i think what woud be of more use to us is something that is a well-rounded personal information system specific to our own individual needs.

it's the entertainment aspect of the web that's always scared me. the faster speeds get, the more media we will be bombarded with and the more advertising we will have to deal with. firefox's adblock won't cut it anymore. i don't even want to think about it. (unless we start talking about webcasting nba games...)

the innovations that i think will be most useful will come in making the web easier to use for people who DON'T live on the web like i'd imagine many of us replying here do.*

something else i'm curious about is how we might be able to further filter search results in the future (near future, i hope) to eliminate the glut of useless websites out there pointing to third and fourth party resellers of some product that's barely related to the "how to install a new toilet" information that i was looking for in the first place.


one really cool link that i found in all of this is http://www.housingmaps.com which is by far the coolest application of the google maps api that i've seen.


* i had actually started a website a while back called mrinternetsworld.com. it started as a joke based on an email that i'd sent to a friend of mine who had just gotten his first web connection. i sent him a message from an anonymous account informing him that he'd broken the web, signed Mr. Internet, Ambassador to the Web. It was dumb, of course, but i started developing it into a pretty informative site about the internet for newbies, as well as a place that you could send emails from Mr. Internet to your newbie friends. I actually got pretty far with it, but a few conflicts arose with it (spam was becoming a major problem and i didn't like the idea of disclosing the source of the email in the email, and it seemed that the number of new internet users wasn't what it once had been. i think i was pretty wrong on that second point.) and i let the domain expire. Perhaps i should consider revisiting the idea.

posted by j. Permanent Link 2 comments

A good ending to a bad week

Sunday, August 07, 2005

We had signed a contract to have some work done on our bathroom and the contractor was supposed to call Monday to schedule a time to start. Instead he called Sunday night and said he'd start Monday. We hired them to replace the bathtub, install a tub surround, fix whatever was causing the leak into the basement, replace the floor with ceramic tile, and re-set the toilet in the floor. I was supposed to remove the bathroom cabinet/sink for them to be able to get the new tub in, but it was too short notice for me to do it Sunday night.

Kim was supposed to take elise to this bible summer camp thing for a few hours each day last week, which meant she needed the van. On the days she needs the van, she brings me to work, but i had to deal with the contractors, bla bla bla... so i took a personal day from work, as did kim.

As they pulled into the driveway, home from day camp, i was on the phone with Yamaha dealer #11 who told me "yeah, i've got two vino 125s in stock." I decided to ride out to Jefferson, WI, over an hour away, to look at one. Elise rode with me and we brought a bunch of read along books/cassettes that she'd gotten from the library. We listened to clifford, winnie the pooh, the berenstein bears, etc, stuck in traffic. In all it took about 4 1/2 hours to get there, check the scooter out, do the finances, and drive home.

I also had that side project going on, doing some animation in flash, that had to be done by Tuesday morning. By the time i got home it was probably around 5pm, and i went right to work. I didn't finish until 3am. Going to bed at 3am on a Monday night is a good thing. I did manage to wake up at a decent time Tuesday, since the contractors were supposed to get here at around 8am, but i was pretty tired and draggy all day long. By 9pm i was ready to go to sleep, which of course i did not. Instead I stayed up until 1am. Then for some reason i did the same thing Wednesday night.

Somewhere up in there I read the WI Motorcycle License handbook cover to cover.

So Thursday morning, after having very little sleep all week and in a relatively bad mood, i thought it'd be a good idea to stop at the DMV on the way to work to get my motorcycle learner's permit. This turned out to be a big mistake. I was already sorta cranky when i got there, but i was pretty livid after i failed the freakin test. I hate the "written" part of driving tests, but i've never failed one. It wasn't until much later Thursday evening that it really set in how exhausted i was and that i should never have even tried to take the test.

Failing a driving test is a pretty deflating experience. I felt pretty prepared for it, having read the entire handbook. My friend adny told me it'd be like 5 motorcycle specific questions, turned out it was 25. So when i got to work and emailed him that i'd failed the test, his kind response was "hahahahahahahahahahahaha." Followed by "Don't you know how to take a simple test?" and something else snide. He's a bastard. So i found a bunch of handbooks from other states, but it turns out they all use the same content. I did what i could to find practice tests, but there's not a lot out there. There was one site that would randomly generate a 10 question test from 43 possible questions, i think from the CA M License test, which was pretty helpful. I even picked up a book from the library. I wasn't going to fail twice. So i went to bed at 11 Thursday night and went back Friday and got a 96 on the test and i now have my learners permit.

To top it all off, all week long we were cleaning and shopping and preparing for a birthday party for Elise Saturday. (She turned 4 on Tuesday!) I spent 2 hours Wednesday night running around looking for a toy fishing pole, which i never did find. AND my mother-in-law arrived on Friday evening to stay with us for the weekend. You may recall that i'm refinishing the master bedroom, so she's staying with us in what is essentially a 2BR house. We do have a futon in the living room, but it makes for tight quarters.



So, the bathroom was finished on Thursday and it looks great. I passed the test on Friday. The party went well Saturday. After everyone was gone, i took my scooter out for the first time and put 12 miles on it, familiarizing myself with it. I thought i was only out on it for about 40 minutes, but when i came back inside Kim and her mom had watched Napoleon Dynamite in its entirety. I turned on the movie for them when i left and literally walked in as Kip and LaFawnda were riding away on the horse. I guess time flies when you're learning to turn at 10-15mph.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

sprawling post-modern novels

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

i'm not necessarily looking for "sprawling" books right now, but this is an awesome list of books/authors. i need to save this link for myself if nothing else.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

Peeron LEGO Set Inventories

I was looking for icon ideas for "order fulfillment" and came across a small image of a lego block, which somehow led me back to this site, Peeron LEGO Set Inventories. I don't think you can order lego parts from this site, it seems to be an entire lego parts library. Which is kind of weird, really, especially considering the technical aspect of it. There's an advanced search that even lets you search through sets by date. I'm very tempted to search for all of the sets that i had as a kid, like this King's Castle that i got for Christmas (most likely in '84, the year the set was released according to the site):




What's really cool is that when you're looking at the inventory list for a set, you can click the "show pictures" link and see every piece in the set. They also seem to have PDFs of the lego box cover designs and, in some cases, full scans of the instructions.

Something else funny, they have a link on the homepage for a Featured Set, the Ultimate NBA Arena for 75% off at Amazon. Hahahaha... yeah. I'm tempted to buy that for my wife.


It's like the lego all star game.

posted by j. Permanent Link 1 comments

vino 125!

Monday, August 01, 2005

i don't have a lot of time to write, i'm in the middle of working on a side project that is due tomorrow morning, but i just thought i'd post this:




yay!

i was reading this page that says "A moped engine may not exceed 130 cc's in size and must be an integral part of the vehicle." 130cc's! I saw a yamaha that's 125cc's! I doubted the correctness of it, and double checked the WI laws and found that it was, in fact, wrong. But it got me thinking about the Vino 125 and that kinda settled it. (This side work helped offset the price difference, too.) I liked the looks of the Vino better than the Metropolitan anyway, so i'm pretty pleased with it. The gas mileage isn't as phenomenal, but it's still really good. I've heard in the range of 60-80mpg.

I called 10 places in and around Milwaukee and not a single one had this model. I wound up having to search the dealerships starting from a Madison zip code and found a place about an hour or so away that had two, a red and a grey. I thought for sure i'd go in and choose the grey one without hesitation, but i have to say that the red one looked very nice, a deep, dark red. But i figured in the end grey is more my style (this is the color i had wanted my Jetta in, before the Jetta came in smoke grey), and as they're only making red and blue in '06, the grey '05 may have slightly better resale value. Maybe. Or not.

Only problem is now i need to get my stupid Motorcycle license. But i can drive 55!

posted by j. Permanent Link 1 comments