Fine Art Collection
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
I worked a bit more on the random art module (renamed the Fine Art Collection module). I've been reorganizing my jpgs, renaming them with the actual names of the pieces, and adding new pieces to my collection. In the meantime all of the unorganized works have been removed.I fixed the resize function in flash so that all images are accurately resized to fit perfectly into the window. It's also now displaying the name of the artist and the title of the piece below. The font's pretty small when the module is less than 270px wide or so, but it's there. I'm thinking of linking the text to a google image search of the artist's name. That'd be nice... For the time being, I added the ability to click on the image and see a larger version.
I need to keep working on my art collection. All of the Monets and Rosenquists have been removed so that I can find better versions and/or rename the jpgs. I did, though, add a LOT of new images including Rene Magritte, Degas, Don Eddy (the VW paintings!), Picasso, Van Gogh, and an artist i wasn't familiar with, Anselm Kiefer, among others.
If you're interested in helping add to the collection you're more than welcome! The files should be named as such: Artist Name-Name of Artwork.jpg Spaces in the file names are ok, but leave no space around the dash in the middle. Also, make sure there are no dashes except the one between the artist's name and the title (e.g. "Self-Portrait" should just be "Self Portrait"). Zip em' up and email them to me. (Try to get images that are at least 500px wide, or 500px tall if it's a vertical image.)
Check out the Fine Art Collection module here, if you're not using the google homepage yet.
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random artwork google module
Friday, January 27, 2006
I created another Google Module today with php and flash. I've got a directory full of fine art images that i've collected over time. Php reads all of the files from the directory and sorts them into an array, then picks one randomly. The path to this image is passed to flash and resized. Trying to resize with php was turning into a wild goose chase, searching for a method that worked.
The nice part is that if i want to add images to it, i dont have to mess with the php or flash file at all, i just add jpgs to the directory. Yay, touch free! I'm open to suggestions, but i dont want to let people upload their own images to it. You know what could happen with that.
If you want to add the module to your google homepage, the url is http://www.j-ink.com/randomArt.xml
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two weeks notice
Thursday, January 26, 2006
I put in my two weeks notice yesterday to very little fanfare, since my boss never did come in to the office to receive my letter of resignation. He was out at the other office/facility in meetings all day, and wound up there today too, so I had to give him the bad news over the phone.I've been working for this company since July of 1999 and it has always amazed me that I've managed to work here for so long. Or more specifically, that they were able to keep me employed for so long. When I came in for my interview the CEO was wearing a South Park t-shirt, there was mess everywhere, and there was a 2 foot stack of pizza boxes on the floor. When I started, two of the Principals were not of legal drinking age and the Art Director had no experience in web design (she was from a print background). But the one thing that everyone had in common, besides being young, was that it was a group of very intelligent and creative people who were full of ideas and a passion not to work for anyone else.
We made it through the growing pains of being a small, young start-up, the bursting of the dot-com bubble (I don't know how we got through that), outside investment, being bought, layoffs, shifting business plans... you name it.
For a long time I was very reluctant to look for a new job because of all the fringe benefits that came with this one. I don't think I've worked a 40 hour week since 2001. "Flex time" doesn't even come close to the amount of freedom that I've enjoyed here. I leave work at 3pm everyday so that my wife can get to work at 4. I have had almost complete creative freedom since day one for two reasons: a) we are all responsible for keeping our individual work to the highest standard and b) we get very little direction! I've been able to explore my creative whims and learn new technologies and techniques, applying them to projects as I see fit, which has allowed me to grow continually with autonomy. To top it off I have my own office in the corner of our suite that looks out onto downtown and Milwaukee's "Historic" Third Ward.
But nothing comes without a price. I was never paid the industry standard for what I do--it's always been quite the contrary. But it was a trade off that I chose to deal with in exchange for freedom in my schedule.
There have been benefits outside of the job, too. My short days allow kim to work part time without being at work too late, while keeping our kids out of day care. It has been a priority of ours to raise our own children. We may not be able to afford two car notes, but our kids benefit from having us with them to teach them the positive things we want them to learn without the bad habits and vocabularly they might pick up otherwise. More than that, though, is all of the time that I have been able to spend with my kids. Honestly, it's hard sometimes to come home from work and spend the next five hours with the kids, keeping them busy and cooking dinner, trying to keep them from driving each other (and me) crazy. But I know one day I'll look back on these years, especially with my daughter, and cherish every minute of it.
I'm really excited about my new job. I think it's going to challenge me in the way that I always hoped my current job would. It's also going to compensate me in a way that I knew my current job never would, allowing Kim to quit her job and stay home, something we've been praying for for a long time now. It'll also give me a chance to work with my friend Adny again, who started there Monday. Apparently the work environment is top notch.
I was talking to my daughter last night about kim being able to stay home now, which elli is very excited about, and how I'll be working later every day, which means we'll see each other a little less. "Don't worry, daddy," she says, "you'll always be able to think about all the time we spent together."
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fema trailer
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
my mom finally got a fema trailer today. they called her today to ask if she still needed one. she said "uh, yeah! where y'at?" apparently they were already at her property with it. by the time she got to Pearl River from work they were just about done getting it all set up.
in some ways my mom really lucked out. she had sold her house just before Katrina hit and was staying in Bush, La. She was supposed to move into a house in Gentilly that someone in our extended family owns, but the storm kinda ruined that idea. after the storm the place she'd been living in Bush was unliveable. she weathered the storm with some friends nearby and has been staying with them ever since -- almost 5 months. when i visit people out of state i feel like i'm in their way after just a few days. imagine what it's like to feel like you're invading someone else's space for months on end.
my mom and her husband had secured a piece of land in/near Pearl River just before the storm, with plans to build a modular home of some sort on it. needless to say, plans were pretty seriously delayed. they're still waiting for the house to be finished with probably another month to go, perhaps a bit less, until they can move in. it's pretty ironic that it's taken fema this long to get her a trailer. it sure would have been nice for her to have her own place to live for the past 4 months instead of the next 3 weeks. that being said, I'm grateful that she's been blessed enough to have a place to live since the end of August and that things are finally turning around for her. hopefully her new house will be done in time for my visit next month.
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81!
Monday, January 23, 2006
Kobe score 81 points!
Not only was it 81 points, but it was on 28-46 (61%) attempts, 7-13 (54%) of them being 3pt shots, and 18-20 (90%) free throws.
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some stuffs i found
Thursday, January 19, 2006
A few more random items of nola interest:Mark Folse wrote an article in the Times Picayune Tuesday (1/17/06) titled Expat ready to hang his hat here again, talking about his recent decision to move back to New Orleans, and discusses the article and his decision further on his personal site.
I also found a link to Wynton Marsalis' "Renewal Series Address" at Tulane.
The full transcript is available on that page, but if you're going to read it i recommend you follow along with the video of him delivering the speech. It's interesting to hear how he deviates here and there from the address as it was written, and how he interacts with the audience. It is very well written and delivered speech, and i was honestly a little surprised at just how intelligent a writer and orator he is. I shouldn't be, though. A creative mind is a very powerful tool. A person with his ability to express himself with a trumpet must have an equal capacity for abstract thought and intelligence.
One other thing I found in Eric Miller's image gallery the other day:
Rocky & Carlo's!
God, help them bring back their baked macaroni and cheese. Amen.
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mardi gras 2006
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Plans are just about finalized--I'm going to New Orleans. I've wanted to go since the storm hit for lots of reasons: to see home, obviously, to see my family, to help clean up the city, and to see the damage for myself. As my friend Ryan said, "these are historical times." Being from New Orleans is part of who I am. I want to make sure that I am somehow involved in it as well.
It wasn't really feasible for me to take the family to nola in the first few months after the storm. There would've been nothing to do in the city but see the destruction. I'm already skeptical about how much I should allow (and should have allowed) my daughter to be aware of exactly what's going on there. To see nothing but destruction wouldn't have been the best thing. So I planned to bring them during Mardi Gras because there would be things to do, and it'll be celebratory, not depressing. I don't know, I'm sure there'll be a lot of both.
My friend Chet was also talking about going, so I suggested he should ride with us and share driving duties. Then Kim decided that she wasn't so sure about taking the kids to Mardi Gras. So it looks like Chet and I are going to be renting a car and driving down for about 6 days. We'll leave here on Feb 23rd and get there sometime early Friday morning, which happens to be his birthday. Ironically, I just realized that this Mardi Gras will also mark the 10 year anniversary of Chet leaving New Orleans, a mark I hit last August. I don't know that I'd call this his triumphant return. Besides the fact that we've been back since, he hasn't changed much since leaving anyway. But that's another story.
There are always very different versions of what Mardi Gras is--the tourist version where everything happens in the French Quarter and the night is topped off with drunken debauchery, and the local version that happens on Napoleon Ave. or St. Charles Ave, eating cold popeyes chicken, walking up and down the parade route where all of your friends have picked out spots to watch the parade and families have set up ladders with seats mounted on top for their small children to wave and holler "throw me something mister!" My grandmother had a friend who lived on Napoleon Ave where we'd watch the parades as kids. It's where I always spent Mardi Gras day, on the uptown route, and where I plan to be on February 28th. (There's also the out-of-state version of Mardi Gras where you watch the Parade Cam on nola.com, search Google Images for pictures of parades past, wishing you were there, and end the day hunting down an Abita to drink with your friends from New Orleans who are also wishing they were there.)
I think Mardi Gras is going to be very different this year. Mardi Gras in a normal year is like a catch-basin for the almighty tourism dollar, but it's hard to know what to expect this year, tourism wise. Who knows if a lot of people are really going to want to go. I'm sure the city is hoping to make some money off of it, but I think more than that this year it's going to be about the identity of the city, saying This Is Who We Are, and really a celebration of the survival of the city. I'm having a hard time tempering my excitement about going and being home with the reality that's going to face me when I get there. I know that things are going to be a mess and that there are many, many places in the city that are going to be devastated most likely for years. I saw some pictures today, from a photographer named Eric Miller, of the 9th Ward, the 17th Street Canal and St. Bernard, and they reminded me of what it is that i'm going to see.
I was even thinking today about ways that i could help on some scale. On this New Orleans Community Live Journal i found a link to the Katrina Krewe at cleanno.com and thought about voluteering with them on the saturday afternoon that i'm there. Then Endymion after. I don't know if there are other small-scale things like that that i could do. I'd love to go work with Habitat for Humanity for two weeks, but it's not an option. I know City Park had an organized Volunteer effort going on for a while, but I don't know if there would be much left to do. Maybe i'll get some garbage bags and gloves and go walk around Audubon Park for an afternoon.
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backyawds
I was looking through more of Eric Miller's pictures and there are a bunch of pictures of someone's back yard (possibly family or friends of his?) from Chalmette (in St. Bernard). The pictures are so typical; it was reminding me of being a kid, visiting my great-grandma's house in the 9th Ward.
There's the backyawd,
and the cawpawt,
and the little sahdyawd where dey growin' some mirliton vines.
It's funny, because it's not a lot to look at (especially now), but people in the south set up their backyards to be so private and shady and cozy, you can imagine the warm humid air on your skin, and you just want to sit down, knowing you'd be comfortable there. But now everything's a mess...
It made me think about my grandma's backyard in Gentilly where she planted a blackberry bush and how, as a kid, i thought that it was the epitome of wisdom that my grandma had the foresight to grow her own blackberries.
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nola.com: rss feeds
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
NOLA.com: RSS Feeds
I didn't even know that there were any site feeds. Talk about insufficient promotion of rss, they barely even mention anywhere in the site that they have rss at all. Seems that you have to be within the weblogs or newslogs section, not on the main landing page even, but on an article page. Then there's a link to rss feeds.
Also, on the weblogs page there's a list of links to other local blogs, including NolaBlogs which has a another, larger list of local sites. Weee. I can't vouch for the quality of any of them, but they're there to be checked out.
Update: as i've come to realize, there's a good reason their RSS feeds aren't well promoted-- they're not kept up very well, which is esp. disappointing for the Times Picayune feed. Oh well.
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NBA games on Google Video
So Google and the NBA have started releasing full NBA games via Google Video, available 24 hours after the game airs.
(Isn't this TV awesome?)
Apparently Google Video is going to be offering all kinds of new, paid content, but i learned about them offering NBA games (every NBA game for the rest of the season, plus some "classic games") a few days ago and i'm fairly excited about it. Except that i don't have $4. It is possible to find some games here and there online, but it's pretty much dependent on someone DVRing the game and posting it, which means you can't be too choosey about what you see.
There are 24 Bucks games shown locally here on UPN, so out of an 82 game season, if i wanted to watch EVERY Bucks game it'd cost me $229.10! That's insanity. It'd be $326.36 to watch every game from an out-of-town team. When you think of it in terms of a single game, it doesn't seem unreasonable. It costs about $5 to rent a 2 hour movie, why not $4 for a 1 3/4 hour game? But that adds up. It'd cost much less to get cable and watch Fox Sports Net (for all your right-wing sports needs), ESPN and TNT.
Adny: that's a lot
Adny: i wonder if they could/would sell season passes per team for $99
sophrosyn1: yeah, that's what i'm thinking too
sophrosyn1: some kind of subscription service
sophrosyn1: though, i'd hate to be locked into one team, too
Adny: even like... 10 packs for $29.95
They should consider creating a subscription service or extending NBA League Pass to online video content or something. I think i've just talked myself out of any excitement about games being available online.
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New and Improved!
Monday, January 09, 2006
I never did find the .fla file, so I recreated the randomizer this weekend and made a few changes to it that i had wanted to make a while back. The functionality is pretty much the same, except that it allows for a max of 40 rows/columns now instead of 20. Also, all of the variables are controlled by sliders now. The controls are hidden until you click the CONTROLS button, which stops the action and displays this panel:
Columns and Rows are obvious, it's the number of each. Main Row/Column is the one that's widest, the one that gets all of the excess space once all of the random widths/heights are determined. It's kinda neat how it works. The min/max of the Main sliders are determined by the number of rows & columns. If you change the number of Columns, the Main Column adjusts itself automatically. Otherwise you could wind up with a Main Column that is greater than the number of columns, throwing everything off. White Ratio is basically the color balance. There are 4 colors, everything else is white. If you set the White Ratio at 4, you'll get no white at all... only the 4 colors (orange, blue, green, gray). At the default, 10, there is a 6/10 chance that any given cell will be white. Set it at the max, 24, and there's a 20/24 chance that the cell will be white. The point, obviously, is controlling the overall sparseness of the pieces. Loop duration is the number of seconds between each refresh.
The only other controls i could potentially think to add would be forward/back buttons, which wouldn't be THAT hard. It'd just require saving the arrays that are created for the random widths and heights and figuring out some way to move back and forth between them.
Hiding the controls really served one purpose, it now looks better on my google homepage. As promised, here's the xml for my "random art generator". Google's kinda weird about installing some modules, so here... on your homepage, click on the "Add Content" button. Click on Create A Section and type in "developer.xml." You'll get a new module called"My Modules." Under "Add Module" type or paste the url http://www.j-ink.com/moderndrian.xml and hit the "add" button. You can then close the My Modules module. module. module.
And there you go, random art! I recommend putting it in the top right corner of the page!
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Google Homepage Modules
Thursday, January 05, 2006
I was messing around with my Google Homepage and found a site full of "unofficial" Google Homepage Modules that you can install, and started thinking about doing my own. You can do some pretty complicated things with them, but to do a basic module is really quite easy. Even better, you can use flash content. So i wrote up a quick xml file based on the Google Homepage API Developer Guide to put my "random composition generator" on my homepage.
The problem is that i want to make a few changes to the flash piece to make it more appropriate for being displayed so small... but i can't find the .fla file! It's been so long since i've worked on it (it has to be at least 3.5 years since i wrote it), and i've had to format harddrives so many times, i have no idea where it is. I'm usually really good about backing up my files, but rooting through my CDs hasn't turned up anything. If i do manage to find it and do some updates, I'll post the link to the xml. What could be better than randomly created artwork in your browser?
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