Masklessness

It used to be that each fall I would make a mask. These would be fairly elaborate masks, of latex or wood or papier mâché. They were usually scary, although some were scary only in odd ways, like the one that was a huge 48-pixel icon of my own face.

But for the last several years it just has not happened. Two years ago I made a plaster mold for a multi-eyed, polymouthed, Lovecraftian horror, but never cast it. This year I made a rather enormous, spooky castle to wear on my head, but didn’t get it painted. Just couldn’t make the time.

The proximate causes are obvious enough. I have two young children. I’ve been working 75 hours a week. But this matter depresses me far more than merely confirming that I’m busy can explain.

I guess it’s part of my broader fear/regret/angst about what seems the death of my creativity. I’ve made so little art of any kind lately that I can’t believe anyone believes I’m me. Clearly I’m an impostor in my own life.

Bah.

Can I be fixed? Will getting work hours under control do it? Must I go all Pollock on my Ford Focus? Burn my giant stack of old sketchbooks and give up? I know - silly drama for a lame dilemma. I’ve become the Willy Lohman of artsy and/or fartsy dilettantes.

Feh. Please ignore me.

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Because it’s too long for Twitter but too blue for Facebook…

RT @TedHope via @james_gunn: just punched Lampton in the face b/c he had a “World’s # 1 Dad” drawing on the wall! Hope: “Fuck you, I’M the number one dad!”

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Boo Rhymes

Yesterday I was singing a silly song with Boo, involving making up verses about each family member. I was pleased with my effort at a rhyme for Kathryn: bathroom. But Boo required that we do that one over, and insisted that I had to rhyme with Kathryn. I protested that I couldn’t think of any words that rhyme exactly with Kathryn, so Boo patiently listed some for me: “tathryn, sathryn, mathryn, gathryn, dathryn, lathryn.” Enlightened, I did another take, which was well received. I went with “mathryn.”

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Nostalgic for server log analysis

Basing your Web analytics exclusively on data collected via client-side mechanisms built from ambitious Javascript and faerie duste is rather like basing your weather reports on information collected from everyone’s toaster ovens.

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Why is this one purple?

Notice: the photos from the company picnic do not need to have sepia-tone, infrared, vignette shadows, rough film gate edges, pretend Polaroid frames, or other “effects” randomly applied to them.Thank you for your cooperation. P.S. Scrapbooking should not be your entire way of life.

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Attention creators of stock photography and illustration

There is no need to create any new versions of the following images:

  • Handshake closeup, even with different skin colors
  • Dynamic young businessman on a cellphone, even if she’s a businesswoman
  • Someone looking over the shoulder of a laptop user and pointing out something on the screen
  • Stacks of bills or piles of loose change

Plus: 822,587,214 other types.

Just. Stop.

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If you take an isometric view of a “3d” space and plop it onto a virtual plane that you then stretch backward into artificial perspective, you create a weird reverse perspective effect that gives me a headache. Ow. Do not want.

If you take an isometric view of a “3d” space and plop it onto a virtual plane that you then stretch backward into artificial perspective, you create a weird reverse perspective effect that gives me a headache. Ow. Do not want.

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This object divided the different vegetables on my shamefully overpackaged party platter from one another. But it’s a much more important object than that would suggest. It speaks to me. It stays with me. It wants to be art. It may be already. What will I name it?… Click for high-res photo

This object divided the different vegetables on my shamefully overpackaged party platter from one another. But it’s a much more important object than that would suggest. It speaks to me. It stays with me. It wants to be art. It may be already. What will I name it?…

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Blasphemous Punks?

So I’m trying to save a file to my hard drive. An alternate version of an application entry page, so I call it index2.shtml. It tells me that already exists. I don’t remember creating such, but I try index3.shtml. Already exists. Then index4.shtml - same thing. I try index29.shtml and it claims that it exists. So just for my own amusement I try calling it blasphemouspunksatemyprayerrug.shtml. Guess what? Already exists. My computer is losing credibility.

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Helpful Message

I love useful, informative error messages that guide one through the use of an application. This is not one of them:

NOTIFYWN_OTEX_LLDS_082803: cidaemon.exe - Application Error The Instruction at "0x7c34240d' referenced memory at '0x00000000". The memory could not be "written".

This came up with no indication of what application or component it had to do with, and had to be clicked twice before I could do anything else. About as helpful as forcing the user to print out a full stack trace and eat it with mustard. Aargh.

I do like the quotation marks around “written,” though. This is perhaps a new word for the user, or simply a bit of opaque sarcasm on the part of a deranged OS coder: “I’m obviously talking about initializing an array of pointers to pointers in an electronic storage system, but I shall dumb it down for the idiot sheep who will use my masterpiece.”

As you may have inferred by now, today is my day of 31 flavors of computer trouble. And Fudge Brownie is NOT one of them.

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