House Keeping (or, On the time honored tradition of giving up)

I figured since I announced the start of my 365 project here, I should probably make a quick post about it one year later, even though I didn't finish it. I decided to give up on it the day my dad passed away. It had gotten increasingly harder and harder to make myself pick up the camera the sicker he got. I was starting to develop an adversarial relationship with it, which is exactly the opposite of what I set out to do. Truth is that I kept shooting for some days after, but none of it was remotely worth posting. I'm sure there might have been value in trying to express what I was feeling visually, but I was too busy feeling it to try to work how to express it.

Some people can turn their pain into great art. Others turn their pain into blurry, badly framed, so-awful-it-almost-looks-intentional photography. I'll let you guess which one I am.




(also, for those who know what I've been dealing with lately, there's a horrible pun in the title that I didn't realize until I wrote it)

Random notes from the Broad Art Walk

• I have never before tonight been to a gallery which seemed to invite me to transcend my Earthly self and become one with the Pizza god. I did not, in fact, know that there was a Pizza god. There is. He's in a gallery on Broad at the moment.
  


• Tonight marked the second time that I can remember having seen a bunch of white balloons used as a "screen" for a projector. It's an effect that I like and will have to remember.
  


• If anyone knows what the music playing in Material was tonight, please leave it in comments.
  


• Amber was quite taken with the work of a painter by the name of Amy Hutcheson in a gallery I very much like but the name of which I can't remember. The work reminded her of home. I dig that.

Further thoughts on the Pirillo/Drupal thing (Geekpost)

Starting here, we join a conversation in my head already in progress:

I actually think the project is a great idea; I see incredible potential applications on the micro (niche) level (e.g. in the enterprise, social action networks, etc.). My problem is that some of the coverage of it I've seen and heard so far seems to spin it as "soon anyone can launch their own Facebook or Digg" which is great except that no piece of software is going to deliver you the several million eyeballs to go along with it.

That's not to say that you couldn't combine parts in a new and interesting way (I'm all about the mashups), but at least part of what make Facebook and Digg what they are is a) innovation and b) position in the market. There are literally hundreds of companies that will sell you the code to put up your own auction site but, for better or worse, there's still just one E-bay.

Delivering functionality with a minimum of fuss is fantastic; I truly believe that. I just hope the project steers towards making the core Drupal experience more user friendly rather than simply a faster way to deliver the latest Web 2.0 widget.

@ckenp : Your top five list, sir.

Not that this has anything to do with anything I've ever written here, but I'm answering a question at twitter that's actually to long to answer there. I'm not really a car person, as such, but here goes:

5 - 1957 Ford Thunderbird (cherry red) - Unspeakable love for the Thunder-chicken. Not a vehicle owned by anyone in my family and I only road tripped in it once, but I have a soft spot for it none the less.

4 - 1974 Dodge Power Wagon (emerald green) - Thing howled on asphalt like something out of a B horror flick. Still, off road, nothing even comes close.

3 - 1995 Chevy S10 - My current ride... Loud unruly gas guzzling beast, but it's been an incredible little truck. I can't imagine I'll ever have another vehicle that will serve me this well. When I have dreams about being on the road, I'm in this truck.

2 - 1976 Plymouth Trailduster. For those unfamiliar with the Trailduster, it's a Ram Charger with a different name plate and a few alterations in the cab. My first truck... 440 with a Holly 4-barrel carburetor and high performance intake manifold. 8 gallons to the mile. I only had it for 3 years, but those years are the stuff of epic road trip legend. I could pack 10 of my closest friends in it and should we have a wreck, there was enough distance between any one of us and the dash board that we could write out our last will and testament before we hit it.

and, at the risk of being predictable:

1 - 1969 Chevy Camero Z28 (black) - First love. Seriously. 427 cubic inch block; there are few (street legal) things in all the world that equals the power or gas consumption of that vehicle. Considering I drove this thing alone out Oak Ridge Road at the age of 14, it's an absolutely bloody miracle that I'm still alive. It's probably as close as I'll ever come to knowing what a fighter pilot feels like.

Honorable mentions: My Grandfathers 1947 John Deere B Tractor and Gladys' late fourty's Chevy pickup with the three speed shifter on the column.

"Notes from the weekend" or “We are Artist of Borg”

Few notes because I don’t have time to write a real entry right now:

1. The worst service on planet earth can be found at the Starbucks on Poplar near Highland. It’ll be delivered to you by the dark haired girl at the drive-thru. Also, be warned that they apparently haven’t calibrated their espresso maker since 1997.

2. The nice people in North Mississippi (where I spent my weekend) are incapable of delivering me a Diet Coke. Upon ordering one I received: a small Coke, a large Dr. Pepper, a medium watered down orangy thing, and a Pepsi in a bottle.

3. Pepsi tastes like Christmas. (I’ll explain later)

4. We need a new word for installation art because it’s a bifurcated tradition. There is the responsive sort (“I’m going to go into the space and make art that uses what’s there”) and there is the other sort (“I’m going to go into this space and make it something else entirely”).

5. I was tempted to work in the word “assimilate” in the description for the last one, but I’d just end up quoting Star Trek and we can’t have that.