Joe Maller: Site Notes Archive - October 2001
Repository of notes, thoughts and links from October 2001October 31, 2001
A bunch of site changes today, although almost none of them are visible. I wrote a perl script (still learning) which automates blog-archive links, another script which automatically changes the month for me. These are great so long as I don't republish my archives, which is a drag that I need to think of a solution for. At any rate it's nice not to have to worry about changing anything on November 1, or December 1, or January....
I also finally got around to building a timelapse slideshow for recent webcam images. There are a few features I'd still like to add, such as reporting of frame rate and elapsed visible time. The code was quickly modified from something I wrote for a small job earlier this year. Whenever I take a break from Joe's Filters, I should really write up another JavaScript tutorial about this one.
– posted 10/31/2001 12:49:49 AMOctober 30, 2001
"In the war of Sept. 11, we've been the first victims of our own inability to tell the truth -- to ourselves and to others."
from Thomas Friedman's editorial, Drilling for Tolerance in today's New York Times.
– posted 10/30/2001 09:01:47 AM
Sam from explodingdog has finished his first book. I bought one.
I still want to buy him lunch someday.
October 29, 2001
At lunch the other day, a woman waiting on take out sushi was wearing a button-down blouse backwards. This is not the sort of thing which happens by accident. While I respect the presumed intention of pushing personal fashion into new places, I came away with one conclusion:
Wearing button down shirts backwards makes you look insane.
Then I remembered when I taught at the Irvine Fine Arts Center's Arts Camp (1987-1990?) and some of the kids would wear their father's old button down shirts backwards to keep paint off their clothes. No one thought the kids were crazy, but no one really thinks kids are crazy until they get to high school. I started at Arts Camp as a summer camp counselor, then went on to teach the afternoon open studio. Most of the kids were between the ages of 5 and 10. Teaching there was a great experience for me although it freaks me out to think that most of those "kids" are now in their twenties.
Anyway, that woman with the backwards shirt at the sushi place; still nuts.
– posted 10/29/2001 09:34:24 PMOctober 27, 2001
For the past several weeks I've been trying to understand how Final Cut Pro works with aspect ratios vs. standard D1 video. Tonight I think I found a document which might contain the answers I've been looking for. When I finally understand all of this, I'm switching to pottery.
– posted 10/27/2001 02:02:24 AMI'm getting really tired of talking about terrorists and Anthrax. I think I'm as scared of Donald Rumsfeld as I am of Usama Bin Laden. All my childhood fears about nuclear wars and terrorism turn out to have nothing to do with childhood.
I'm going make an effort to post about some other stuff, then everyone will find out how boring I really am.
(but before I go too far, this new article at The Onion is more true than funny.)
– posted 10/27/2001 01:31:59 AMOctober 26, 2001
An excellent article on Guardian Unlimited: 'Brutality smeared in peanut butter' by Arundhati Roy. Worth reading.
– posted 10/26/2001 02:55:45 AMSaying it's impossible for an individual to produce weapons-grade Anthrax is the same kind of flawed thinking which allowed hijacked passenger planes to be used as bombs. It's possible, we're likely seeing it right now.
People have been turning all sorts of thing into potentially aerosolized dust throughout history. The tools? A mortar and pestle. I'm not a biochemist, but how mechanically different can it really be to grind a clump of organic particles (spores) into dust? Harder than grinding a charred tree into dust?
In 1995, then 17 year old David Hahn built a small nuclear breeder reactor in a backyard shed. If a determined kid working fast food jobs can build a nuclear reactor with duct tape and smoke alarms, why shouldn't a determined person be able to produce "weapons grade" anthrax without a huge factory?
– posted 10/26/2001 02:40:57 AMOctober 25, 2001
The previous posting seemed pretty good so I decided to put it on MetaFilter.
– posted 10/25/2001 03:52:42 AMA few years back I remember seeing a news report asking whether adverse reactions to Anthrax vaccination during the Gulf War was responsible for Persian Gulf War Syndrome. How come no one is talking about this now?
If congress or the media start clambering for Anthrax Vaccinations, will anyone remember the adverse side effects suspected by many soldiers and scientists? Yes the FDA approved the Anthrax Vaccine, but there are still many questions about it's safety. The military is not unaware of the ongoing debate, but The FDA does not have an unblemished record.
This is all getting very X-Files... (scroll down to 1991)
– posted
10/25/2001 02:41:38 AM
October 22, 2001
On September 26, The Onion publishes this article: Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.
Eight days later on October 4, The Orange County Register publishes Patriotic Baking Recipes. Life imitates... uh... satire.
Thanks to Jason Shellen via Metafilter
– posted 10/22/2001 04:33:27 PMOctober 13, 2001
Directions would probably be a good thing...
The show is at the P12 Gallery at the Jade Pavilion in Downtown Los Angeles, basically across the street from Philippe's (home of the original, incredible French Dipped Sandwich).
Maps: MapQuest, Yahoo!.
More info: 213.687.8685 recording, slightly goofy)
The opening is scheduled for tonight, Saturday Oct 13, 2001 6pm-10pm. There will also be an afterparty from 9pm - 2:30am (5$ donations) with DUBLAB. I don't have any more information than that, but Program 12's parties are usually quite an event.
So I guess the Program 12 exhibition in Los Angeles is actually happening. My work was sent by FedEx last night and should have arrived this morning. Though the show has been loosely planned for a while, I was not given actual dates in time to get a plane ticket at a reasonable cost, so I won't be able to attend the show.
I will be exhibiting a total of 13 photos in two groups. This is the first time I've exhibited the utility box photos, which I've been working on for the past year. All of these images were taken in Irvine, within a few miles of the house I grew up in. Once you notice these boxes, the visible landscape turns out to be littered with them.
Below are the instructions for how the work will be installed. If you get a chance to see the show, let me know how they did hanging them.
Utility Boxes: Irvine (1). (vertical grouping)
Utility Boxes: Irvine (2). (horizontal grouping)
By the way, those are the titles. Vertical photos are 329 x 447mm (13 x 17.625 in.), horizontal photos are 329 x 440mm (13 x 17.325 in.). Currently, these are groupings, and should be labeled as such. The overall dimensions of the vertical group (1) is 1.24 x 1.59m (49 x 62.625 in.) The photos are digital inkjet prints on plastic and mounted on T-pins and floating from the wall.
Individual photos can be referred to as attributes of the whole using the following syntax: "Utility Boxes: Irvine (2)(3)" would be the third photo from the left in the horizontal group. "Utility Boxes: Irvine (1)(5)" refers to the center photo of the vertical group.
Other artists in the show include Gilbert Flores, Heins Kim and Rojelio Cabral. Gilbert, Heins and I were in 581, all four of us went to Art Center in Pasadena and now live and work in New York City.
– posted 10/13/2001 01:14:55 PMOctober 10, 2001
Last night I saw this photo (original Dutch site's servers are flooded) linked from this Metafilter thread. Yes, that is a photo of Bert from the Bert is Evil site. Apparently someone used this image (from a Bert is Evil tribute site) in a poster distributed to a Bangladeshi rally in support of Osama Bin Laden. This site seems to be the clearinghouse of information on the Bert Poster, including links to the original hi-res photos. Direct links to news photos with Bert in there are here and here. One of the photos was posted to FilePile before it showed up on Metafilter. Personally, I don't believe this is a hoax, at least not by the news organizations. Most likely someone did what any of us would do if asked to make a photo-collage poster about a person, search Google (note the 12th photo). Either the person creating this supported Bin Laden and thought this showed his human side by posing with a popular children's TV character, or the intent was malicious or sarcastic. I guess now we're waiting on a statement from Reuters. Who said irony was dead? – posted 10/10/2001 01:53:01 PMOctober 8, 2001
It would have been nice to get this information from our "of the people, by the people" government, instead we have to turn to Great Britain. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Evidence presented to Parliament justifying military action against Afghanistan. All we get here are a lot of big numbers and statistics, America Responds to Terrorism. – posted 10/8/2001 04:12:56 PM34 days, 13 hours and 35 minutes. That was the uptime of my webcam and server computer when it finally locked up this morning. I know it's not that long if you're running Linux, but it's a personal record for me. – posted 10/8/2001 09:06:20 AM
October 7, 2001
Something blew up in Afghanistan a few hours ago. Now we have a bunch of reporters literally in the dark, talking about how little we know. I'm turning the TV off, odds are nothing new will be reported until the sun comes up over there, in about 6-8 hours. On a side note, Bush needs to stop talking in front of windows with stuff flying around outside. The flies behind the stem-cell announcement got as much coverage as he did, this time there were stunt-kites or blowing papers or something. It could also have been plexiglass outside the window blowing in the wind and creating irregular reflections. Whoever coordinates the press-pool photography should really give these things a little more thought and planning. – posted 10/7/2001 03:28:50 PMOctober 4, 2001
We're back from Amsterdam. It was a quick trip but was still incredibly refreshing. I hope to have photos online by the end of the week. We went for the opening of this show, The Photograph and the American Dream at the Van Gogh Museum. It's quite a collection and will most likely travel around the US in the after it's run in Amsterdam. The exhibition also reminded me of one of my favorite photo books, the catalog to Crossing the Frontier, Photographs of the Developing West. I don't go to The Strand bookstore nearly often enough, but many of my favorite books have been found while browsing the tables there. Our neighborhood smelled like smoke again yesterday. – posted 10/4/2001 05:10:31 AMNotes and Archive thanks to Blogger
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