ALL ART BURNS

Been sick or catching up since getting back from my interview, so no time to write anything useful. Here are some random and pleasing things until I get back on schedule:

If you’re going to use nixie tubes in this day and age, at least tie them into GPS.

The Namiki Vanishing Point in fine is my favorite fountain pen; the hefty, grippy Rotring 600 Lava in fine (no link because their corporate masters don’t believe in putting information about their products on their web site) is a close second. I recently discovered Noodler’s Ink, which is mostly waterproof and self-lubricating. (It’s not very water resistant in my Moleskine, but I suspect that’s the coating on the paper preventing the Noodler’s from doing the chemistry nasty with the weak-willed cellulose.)

Can’t make sense of today’s electronic music? Check out Ishkur’s Guide for some serious musical ontology.

I like Chris Ware and Poison Elves; Achewood and Lenore.

Blatant plug for Who Would Buy That?, a guide to online auctions that, well, I mean, who buys this stuff?

Do you know Seth Green? If so, could you please explain to him that “Robot Chicken” is a great idea, but that most of us can’t afford the quality and quantity of weed needed to find it funny. (I’m allergic to grass, but thanks for offering.) Same goes if you know anyone responsible for “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, which was funny once, but is now just that dumb-ass Spacecataz frat-boy stoner joke thing. “Venture Bros.” continues to amaze me and proves that the Adult Swim crowd have good days as well as bad. (“Venture Bros.” also gives a venue for the musical genius of J. G. Thirwell, the man personally responsible for my giving up on composing music. I had this great idea in my head for how an industrial swing band would sound, I told a friend, and he said, “Oh, like this?” and played me a Foetus track. GAH! Yeah, only that’s better than what I had in my head.)

Officially licensed Harley Davidson wedding and engagement rings. Nothing says, “I love you, you’re the most special person in the world, will you marry me?” more than a ring with a corporate logo plastered all over it. Of course I discovered this in the free magazine someone sends me simply because I bought a Harley…

Speaking of craptastic motorcycles, you want how much for a used reverse flow flayrod accumulation oiler for my ’31 Spagthorpe Rottweiler rebuild? No way! My buddy can make one for half that. Ok, maybe she can’t, but eMachineShop can if I can draw it for them. They could also make the reversable right-left-hand thread adaptor you need for the ’32, but you’ll need them to make the alternating right-left ratchet driver while they’re at it.

My bike isn’t craptastic, actually. Sure, it threw the shifter peg into the gutter with 70 miles on the odometer, a screw out of the gas cap mount at 120 miles, and the rubber foot pegs seem to have a hatred of their mounts that lead them to spin round in circles on a daily basis, but it’s hard for me to express just how much fun it is to ride a modern, stripped down Harley big twin. I’ve been a BMW boxer fan for over a decade, and will probably restore a few ancient R bikes in my retirement, but in the meanwhile I’m enjoying the hell out of my Harley. I’m sure the other Harley riders despise me, what with my stock exhaust, Aerostitch riding suit and full-faced helmet, but screw ’em. I’m riding in the rain on days they’re protecting the couch from being rolled up by the Prince of Space.

Finally, the title of this entry, “Random and Pleasing”, comes from one of the LED control settings on the Thinking Machines CM-5. The CM-5 was the coolest looking MIMD computer ever made, even if it’s the reason that Thinking Machines tanked. Other LED settings on the CM-5 included “Random” and a couple of patterns based on what was actually happening on the CPUs along with the ubiquitous “Off” and “Unused”. Thing is, the “show me what’s happening” settings were not only really boring to look at but also revealed how often a multi-million dollar supercomputer was idle or busted. “Random” was only marginally better than “Off”, so they came up with “Random and Pleasing” which made the CM-5 look like Important Things Were Happening on the Computer no matter what it was actually doing. Hell, “Random and Pleasing” looked good when the CM-5 was crashed or shut down and waiting on spare parts so we could reboot it. Guess which setting we were instructed to use by the higher-level folks at the lab…

nixie | supercomputer | eletronica | comics | auctions | Harley Davidson | fountain pens | Katamari Damacy | video games | making up Technorati Tags | flu-induced incoherent postings

Sorry to be so quiet lately, but school (and paying for school) really has my full attention right now.

I’m only taking two classes this semester but I seem to have very little free time compared to last semester when I also took two classes. I have “Intro to Drawing” to thank — it’s a studio class and I’m starting to remember how much of my first stint in college was spent in studio classes instead of, say, sleeping.

Studio classes are huge time sinks for a number of reasons: in-class hours are usually twice that of a lecture class (six hours a week instead of three), attendence is mandantory (miss two classes and you fail), and there’s a homework assignment every week (between three and six hours of work). That’s 9-12 hours a week for a single class before the 2-3 hours a week I spend getting to/from class and finding parking. Oh, and I suck at drawing, so I actually have to focus during class and do a rough draft of the homework assignment before doing it for real. My other class is a once-a-week Japanese class. It’s not for a grade, but I do want to learn to speak, read, and write Japanese, so I have to put in a few minutes every day on this just to keep up.

As if all this isn’t enough, I’m also putting together a portfolio for my application to the Industrial Design school of a Big Name Private University with a reputation for turning out multidisciplinary designers. They get hundreds of applicants every year but only admit ~35 students. Because I already have a degree, they’re allowing me to apply as a transfer student and possibly skip some classes, but I have to present a portfolio to show what I can do. I managed to get a brief interview with the head of the program a few months ago who encouraged me to apply, so I figure I have at least have a slim chance of getting in.

Paying for school is an entirely different issue. I can work at my current job and go part-time at the local public school and get a degree at night, but most private schools I’ve looked at frown upon part-time students. I didn’t do well in the boom, so I don’t have the cash lying about to take a few years off work and go to school full-time while paying $30K or so a year for tuition. (A full four years will cost as much as a nice house in most parts of the country. There’s something to make your head hurt.) Working and going to school, it’ll take me four to six years to get the degree, longer than I’d like, but better than not getting it at all. If I get into the private university I’m applying to, I guess it’s time to look at $120K in student loans and sponging off my wife for a few years.

For now it’s back to the portfolio preparation, the drawing exercises, and the not sleeping as much as I’d like. Until I get a chance to catch up on all sorts of things (like the experience of buying a Harley, fountain pen fetishism, dorking around with pencils, being way too concerned about my new leather jacket, trying to get proper luggage on my bike, and a bunch of other things I want to write up), you might find some of these interesting:

Worldchanging, http://www.worldchanging.com, an excellent site collecting information and thoughts about the future and how we can survive long enough to enjoy the future.

IDFuel, http://www.idfuel.com, lots of good words on industrial design that get my mind working.

Extraordinary Ordinary Guy in Japan, http://xogij.blogs.com/xogij, a Japanese guy’s thoughts on life in Japan with lots of great photography.

Core77, http://www.core77.com, probably the best all-around industrial design website and news source.

Technorati: college | industrial design | Japan

Hey KOMPRESSOR fans, Andres K. is having a remix contest. Never heard of him? Check out some of his songs..

Top prize is the original KOMPRESSOR mask.

The rules for the contest.

Technorati tags: kompressor | remix

Up and running with minimal customizations, but it’s a start.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be migrating a lot of content into this site, much of it dates back to before there was blogs, some of it pre-dates the web. I’m not sure that this is the best format for making all of my writings and whatnot available online, but it beats doing nothing.

In the past few weeks I’ve switched to yahoo.com as my primary search engine.

Do I have mental damage? A job at Yahoo that requires I eat the dog food? A pathological hatred of popularity?

No, no, and yes, but that’s not the reason.

The fact of the matter is that for my every day life, Yahoo has become the better search engine. Three quick examples as to why:

– On Thanksgiving, I wanted a quick refresher on how to carve a bird. The main page of yahoo.com had a section on everything I needed to know about carving a turkey straight from Martha Stewart herself. I didn’t even bother checking out google.com, maybe I could have found something after poking around a bit.

– The other day I saw an episode of Biker Build-Off[1] featuring Zero Engineering. I typed “Zero Engineering” (no quotes) into google.com and got a couple of hits with online magazine articles, but nothing pointed to Zero Engineering’s web site in the first few pages of results. Using the same search at yahoo.com returned http://www.zerochop.com — Zero Engineering’s website — as the first result.

– Last night we wanted to go see a movie. Again, yahoo.com wins — start with yahoo.com, click on “Movies”, enter my zip code, and within minutes I had the show-times for local showings of “A Very Long Engagement”.

On the other hand, maybe I just have good library research skills and know where to start looking for things. Google’s a bit too much like every index of every book in the library concatenated together while Yahoo has become the card catalog and the nice old librarian behind the counter, all in one. (I know, I know, “What’s a card catalog?”. Damn kids today and your fancy library terminals.)

1. An excellent series about top notch fabricators designing and building bikes designed to be ridden and entered in show competitions. Definitely not a soap-opera like “American Chopper” or “American Hot Rod”, if you want to learn something about metal fabrication and paint, the various “Biker Build-Off” series are a must-see. “A Car is Reborn” and “A Bike is Born” should also be on your TiVo DVR’s Season Pass list, but I’ll write more about those later.

Technorati Tags: search engines | motorcycles