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I'm a freelance writer, photographer, knitter, crocheter, designer of graphics and other things, avid reader, pop culture aficionado and information sponge and occasionally make things that I might even label art. New website in the works.
Artists, as a species, are amazing people. And America, as a general rule, does not fully get this. Show me a good artist and I will show you a highly educated, highly creative, highly passionate, highly driven human being. If they’re a performing artist, I will show you someone who breathes teamwork. I will show you someone who eats healthy critiques for breakfast and grows an inch that day because of it. I will show you a communicator, and a thinker.
I will show you someone you want to hire. And all you have to do, is not destroy the whole reason you want to hire them.
All you have to do, in short, is create jobs built for artists. The result? Instant competitive advantage.
”My Competitive Advantage: I Hire Artists – ChrisAshworth.org
(It’s hard to find companies that take this approach. In my experience, people only want employees whose only loyalty is to that company, not to themselves.)
Joe Deal’s Western Landscapes - Slide Show - NYTimes.com A nice obit for photographer Joe Deal. Unlike Ansel Adams dreamy landscapes, Joe Deal’s photos were as practical as his name, showing, not obscuring man’s encroachment on nature.
Colton, California, 1978. From the series: The Fault Zone Credit: ©Joe Deal, Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery, New York
Color Me A Dinosaur – The History Of Crayola Crayons, Charted
the evolution of Crayola colors
Eyewitness: BP oil spill | World news | guardian.co.uk
Surreal. I also keep wondering where the photographer must have be standing to get this shot. I hope it was on a boat.
Dennis Hopper: a life in pictures | Film | guardian.co.uk
Dennis Hopper dies at 74. As his character says in Apocalypse, now, “What are they gonna say about him? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? Bullshit, man!”
He was one of my favorites and miss not seeing more from him. I didn’t even mind those stupid baby boomer retirement commercials. RIP Dennis Hopper. And Heineken? Fuck that shit. Pabst Blue Ribbon!!!
Eco-Friendly Aggression at David Belt’s Glassphemy! - NYTimes.com
I don’t think people are going to see this just cause it’s eco-friendly. It’s more the high-brow equivalent of a Bruckheimer film. Of course I want to go.
Even if it turns out Apple sanctioned the “leak”, I’m still glad I’m not this guy.
An Ethical dilemma
So if you’ve paid for an item in one format, is it okay to download it illegally in another? The NYT says yes. My ethics teacher would probably weep.
An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical. Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.
Buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform. Sadly, the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology. Thus you’ve violated the publishing company’s legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability.
The Don’t Be a Dick License
This proposal for a “Don’t be a Dick License” came to my attention via a tweet from Wil Wheaton. Of course if people weren’t generally dickish about copyright it wouldn’t need to exist in the first place.
version 0.1 Project: Candy v0.2 Author: Stephen Eley (sfeley@gmail.com) This is a proposed draft of the Don’t Be a Dick license for open source projects. The purpose of this license is to permit the broadest feasible scope for reuse and modification of creative work, restricted only by the requirement that one is not a dick about it.
LICENSE.markdown at master from SFEley’s candy - GitHub
Modern Daguerrotypes by Chuck Close
lens culture photo book review: Chuck Close
From the review:
Close: “It was more warts-and-all than any other process. Because it’s so red-sensitive, any marks, any flaws are heightened. You have to be pretty comfortable in your skin, and vanity goes out the window. And it’s also physically painful. A normal daguerreotype is a more than two-minute exposure. We’ve made it instant photography by having a billion foot-candles of light go off all at once, and that’s very painful. The flashes are so intense your eyes slam shut. It’s like having an ice pick shoved in your eyeball. You can smell hair burning… Each one of these people who lent me their image with no control over how it’s going to come out, in this act of incredible generosity, had to put away whatever self-image they had of how they looked and accept this other image as being them. That goes beyond generosity.”
Shamelss plug - If you like the bag please vote for it after April 1st in this Project Yarnway thread. Thanks!
Materials:
About 540 pop tabs
2 soda can bottoms
1 chain
material for lining
1 zipper
Total weight: 305g
Tools:
Hammer
Wire cutters
Pliers
Heavy duty scissors
Hydrogen peroxide
Darning needle
Awl
I’ve been collecting these tabs for years and realized that if I didn’t step up and try to use them for this Project Yarnway challenge, I’d probably never use them and I should just throw them out. Getting this bag done nearly killed me. March was a crazy busy month and I wasn’t even able to get started until the month was half over. As of last night I was seriously afriad I’d pulled an Emilio and would be sending my model naked down the runway. But - I made it and here I am sliding in just under the wire. My model’s still metaphorically naked, but she’s got a damn cool bag.
I had intended to use dental floss instead of the crochet thread, but (probably not shockingly), the metal tabs acted exactly like the metal tabs on floss packaging and cut the floss. That also ruled out sewing thread. Thin wire was too brittle to use and thick wire would have taken me a year to work with and killed my hands. So I just broke down and used thread. I hope it passes the 20% rule.
This is my first time working with poptabs though I’ve wanted to do it for a long time. After my first swatch I realized I’d have to change my idea for the bag drastically. The “fabric” was much more flexible than I expected. (It’s really quite cool, I can see why people use it for clothes) The first idea, a backpack with triangle motifs can be seen out of focus in the sketch photo. I wanted the look of the bag to be as tidy as possible so I experimented with a few ways to attach the tabs. The final bag uses a few different techniques.
Crocheting with the tabs was challenging, but what took even more time was the prepping. The tabs had to be cleaned, flattened and in some cases I had to rip extra aluminum where the tab was pulled. The extra prep was worth it though to have the tabs lie flat.
All in all I really like the bag and would love to make another. Just not anytime soon!
