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Hm. I'm so sporadic about this posting business. Life's busy lately, I guess that means it's spring again.
I love this rope dart so much. It's been with me for some time now. Maybe it's time for a new rope? The blue goes so well with the red carabiner though...
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In the past, I was part of an oekaki community. That's where I drew the pixel art bits I posted earlier. Every so often there'd be an image I loved, but it'd only be 300x200 pixels large, and I wanted something more wallpaper sized. Tiling looked terrible, and ruined the impact of the image, while stretching to fit or make larger made it look bloated and wrong. I started isolating my favorite parts, and pulling the ends out to reach the size of the frame I wanted to fill, which looked right to me.
I decided to try this on a photo. It turned out nice. It looks like pushing and pulling at time. I'd like to animate these ripples coming in and out of a photo, but I'll need to figure out a less tedious way of creating them...
The original photo I used is one of Ed's from his trip to Washington DC for the inauguration.
I've been hearing about SockDreams for ages. Cute socks, colorful socks, long socks, decent prices. Finally I've placed my order, and 36 hours later my socks arrived. Nice job, guys!
What pleasing colors, stacked all in a line. I'm wearing the green ones today. ;)
| Originally published at rt48. |
A finished thing!
I've been working with Morley and Ian on this Burning Man proposal. A lot of working, design, cad, page layout, budget, the works. And the project feels extremely *designed*, like tight and complete and ready to build. So we turned it in! But we didn't just send them over a pdf and call it a day. This project seeks to represent the history of the earth, all of geologic time! One does not merely submit electronic bits, or even just paper. For a project like this, you submit something solid, something real. Something dense, something... interactive. So we started by making a scale model of our proposed scale model. 52.4 feet long, it provides a short walk through the long and storied tales of our planet. A guidebook accompanies this 'time rope', and we've dubbed it the 'time book'. Then we discussed how to best present this object, and decided to have it coincide with the concrete testing we would need to perform to make the columns that comprise the piece. So a concrete cube, with a cylinder cut out of the center was fabricated, three actually, with the best one expertly finished. Topped and bottomed with plates of steel, and the bound proposal document sandwiched between the top plate and a quarter inch of acrylic, we were on the right track. One final touch, a sling of hemp rope and treated wood, and we dropped it off at the Burning Man offices, proud of our handiwork.
View the images of the proposal carrier, and the proposal document itself is up for perusal at timescaleproject.com.
Wish us luck!
| Originally published at rt48. |
Totally safe for work, but now I wanna go for a skip!
Awesome job, Justin!
| Originally published at rt48. |
I like to consider myself a connoisseur of wheeled footwear. I've got rollerblades, rollerblades that convert into boots (and from there into ice skates!) and shoes that have hidden wheels. My brand of choice for concealed wheel shoes are Heelys, which I've actually been wearing since I was about 16 years old! I'm regularly stopped by people surprised to find out that they make the shoes in adult sizes. I recommend trying out a pair if you have the chance. They have a bit of a learning curve to use, but add a small burst of joy to your life whenever you use them. It's nice to have something super fun like skating being accessible whenever I'm walking somewhere. They do have a downside, in that they don't seem to last as long as you might hope shoes would last. I go through a set of wheels about 5 times a year, which cost 20 each (but come with the shoes) and go through the shoes themselves every 7 months. They aren't particularly spendy as far as skates or shoes go, so I don't feel so bad, but I do wish they made their adult shoes a little bit heartier. Maybe I'm just hard on things.
Anyhow, recently my pair of Heelys gave up on me while I was walking around Disneyland, so once I got back I ordered a new pair from Zappos, and I'm really pleased with how these ones look. Digital skull camo! How very strange. I took a few shots of them and posted it up on flickr. Aren't they awesome?
So this Saturday, I got together withVanessato work on my photography. I haven't quite gotten to figuring out if any of my shots worked out so well, but I am in love with this portrait that Vanessa took of me! I felt like being particularly colorful, since I was to be hanging around with actual photographers, and imagined that I might be modeling as well as taking photos. Glad I did!
We started out at the mall in downtown San Francisco, which is where this crazy lighted floor lives. My back, which has been pretty sore from a fall during last week's parkour class, was in good enough shape for me to do some QM (quadrapedal movement) across the floor. It makes for a good prowling body shape, don't you think?
You all know about shirt.woot, right? One day, one shirt, one future?
Well, occasionally they have random shirt days, where shirts are cheap and unknown. I was in for three, and curious to see what would show. The results came in just a few days ago! This is now the second time I've tried this game, and I'm thrilled with what I received.
Shirt the first is a dark grey with a bomb of some sort making impact with ground in a caution triangle.
Shirt the second is binder paper and scribbley cute things, with the words 'draw more'
The third shirt is entirely covered in weird creatures. One has a knife! One's a jellyfish! One says BRB! Fun for hours. Seriously!
Anyway, sharing is caring, so I've taken some pictures and put them up on flickr. Enjoy~
| Originally published at rt48. |
[/caption]I used to draw pixel by pixel, back in 2002. I occasionally go back to these, and wish that I had the time or drive to do so again. It took me ages, and I just don't seem to have the sequential hours necessary to do so anymore. I can't really believe that it's been six years though! I really liked the end result at the time.
One more.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="drink! - 776"]
[/caption]| Originally published at rt48. |
Turns out, not hard at all. And theoretically, this will even post right back into my livejournal! Woo.
So what do I hope to accomplish, now that I've got a real blog thing? I'd like to post clips and bits of art that I'm working on, and it seems like a wordpress blog might be the right place for it. I hope to feel more encouraged to get screengrabs of quartz compositions, take strange photos of interesting places, and craft small mixes of my favorite tracks. And I hope to post them all here.
If you look at the blog itself, prepare to be underwhelmed! I have no clue how to make a wordpress theme, or what basic pages to make, or any of that. Figuring it out as I go. Don't do this very much. So, if you have any tips, please comment!
I'm gonna end this ramble here, with some german guys covering Michael Jackson's Stranger in Moscow.
[audio:stranger-in-moscow.mp3]
A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to get involved in pyrotechnics. I'd occasionally ask around and see if anybody knew anyone involved, but this summer I made it a point to find a way in. I met Jeremy at a party, professional, licensed pyrotechnician involved in the fire art scene. Said he'd give me a call when they needed some help. Finally I get a call in September, but it's for while I'm in Japan! Drat. He mentions that they may need some help for New Years Eve. I keep following up, and find myself on a barge, tuesday morning, building racks, loading shells, wiring up modules. Wednesday I'm back doing more of the same, getting to know the various operators involved, explaining my work with propane. Wednesday night a tug takes our barge out into the bay, underneath the bay bridge, and out in front of pier 14, and I'm directly underneath one of the biggest fireworks shows I think I have ever seen!
I figured I'd bring a camera, but I wasn't quite prepared for the task of shooting photos while simultaneously avoiding the smoke, falling bits of fire, and other related shrapnel. I managed to get one or two shots worth seeing, but luckily I'll have a chance to try my hand at it again... I got called back on the first with thanks for working so hard, and that I'll be called to work on another show soon!
Hopefully I figure out a way to do this regularly, as it's completely fun. A good start to my 2009, don't you think?
- Location:cakebread castle
I was mostly shooting for HDRs while I was in Japan. Some of them worked out. The ones I posted a while ago, for example. However, this last batch were ones that I initially rejected since they failed as HDR composites, but taken individually and fucking with the color, I find myself liking them even more. In this one I took the most over exposed out of the three I shot, blew it out even a bit more, and reduced the saturation for each color Yuki had on her till she was greyscale, which left this nice bit of sparkly wall to her side. Yay!
While visiting japan, I ended up at the Yokohama Triennale with Mella and Yuki. I found it to be somewhat all over the place as far as my impressions of the various pieces, but I suppose that's to be expected. I loved this room though. The walls were covered with glittery paintings, and it extended down to the floor, where these toys were. Really adorable.
Generally in Japan I was shooting for HDR's. While a few of them came out okay, most of them did not. This was initially disappointing, however, last night I decided to just start fucking with the colors of the individual shots in Aperture, and managed to get a few to turn out how I wanted!
I'm pretty happy with this one, especially large.
Man, PuriKura is fucking ridiculous.
Also awesome. That is all.
So I was walking from the National Art Center in Roppongi towards 21_21 Design Sight, with mella. We stop by this sculpture and I get out the map. Walking along through this garden-esque grounds area, I'm trying to find my bearings. Rotating the map and such. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the most adorable cat! And promptly walk and trip into a water feature. Luckily none of my things were damaged, but I was pretty much entirely soaked from the waist down. I couldn't believe it. I thought that sort of thing only happens in sitcoms.
Anyhow, temporary installation! beatmania complete mix 2! Anyone wanna play?
Rubin and Qarly came by to play!
I am foolishly looking at beatmania the final upgrade kits on yahoo japan...
- Location:home!
The experience of going to a great big crazy festival thing and not having to set up anything more than a tent was new, different and thoroughly enjoyable. I partied for three solid days, didn't get sick, and didn't want to kill everyone (except our neighbors, who played gaydance and 60s music nearly 24/7) by the end of it.
Kudos to Do Lab for rockin a thoroughly professional sort of thing, with really adorable structures and stages, and for securing an absolutely mindblowing lineup.
Yay.
Perhaps should be renamed next year.
I propose
Heather in a Bathtub.
It's been just about the best arrangement I could possibly think of.
Living with Ian, Audrey, Qarly, Heather, it's been wonderful. I loved making cinnamon rolls, going rollerblading, walking through the cemetary, naming pinatas, baking vegan everything, gardening, sword-gardening, watching movies, dying flags, meeting chicago-ans, and on and on. I am so glad that the house I helped start feels like a success, and that it so frequently contains so many friends. It feels really welcoming.
Unfortunately, there's one thing that's been missing from the house, and that's Mella. She's over all the time, but it definately feels like she's staying over at *my* house, and when I'm at her place in the mission, that I'm at *her* house. We have these ideas, these projects, these things, that all seem just a little fractured with a bridge between them.
Well, we're fixing that now. The past couple months, we've been talking about living together. The past week, we started looking at lofts. We looked at three beautiful, but somewhat impractical and very spendy places at the cotton mill studios, a large open space that felt a bit overly run down for us, and then last night, we found the most beautiful space on kennedy in oakland. We talked with the girl showing the place for 40 minutes, then came back an hour later after filling out the application. While we measured the floor so I could model it in 3d, her boyfriend ran our credit, and when I returned it to him, they told us we got it!
So excited. So nervous.
I'm scared that things may change, and that I may be giving up a tragically great deal on a space, and what if it's too soon? what about my roommates? what if I'm not ready? what if I can't afford it? what if my job changes? what if it stays the same? and a whole load of other things, but then, I'm a worrier, I'm good at it. I'm completely thrilled to be living with mella, I'm excited about the prints we'll make, the clothes we'll sew, the food we'll cook, etc, etc.
So yeah.
I'm sure I'll write more later. I'll post the render once I get around to making it.
In any case, anyone looking to move? I know this great spot in the piedmont/temescal area of oakland looking for an awesome/rad sort of housemate...
