December 31, 2004
sweet sweet crack cocaine
I got back from Tulsa last night. This is the first New Year's Eve I've spent in Austin, and its in the 70s. It feels a little strange running around town in sandals, especially when it was 24F when I left town last week.
Looking at Pitchfork's year-end record roundup, I wish I could list my favorite records of the year, but I just didn't buy all that many records, and what few records I bought were mostly used LPs from years ago. The record that came out this year that I wish I had is M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts but I'm too lazy and too cheap to pick it up. My favorite song this year is "Slow Response" by Trans Am, and it was released in 2000. Its hardly even a song, I suppose, if the only vocal I can understand is "Sweet, sweet crack cocaine."
The weirdest musical moment of the year for me has to be the use of The Kinks' "Picture Book" in commercials for Hewlett-Packard digital photography products. Unless the folks at HP are way hipper than me and I'm missing a layer of irony, this has to be one of the most inappropriate appropriations of a pop song since Reagan used "Born in the USA" as the theme song for his 1984 re-election bid. The song mocks the use of photography to commodify moments in people's personal lives, right? I'll bet Ray Davies is laughing all the way to the bank.
December 29, 2004
el rio verde
I've been busy out and about in Tulsa, so here's some gratuitous burrito blogging. Damn, Tulsa's El Rio Verde has some bangin' burritos. After I introduced them to the little joint, they'll drive all the way up to North Tulsa to get burritos and Tilapia.
El Rio Verde's wet veggie burrito
December 24, 2004
on returning
One of the things I enjoy most about going home for Christmas is casually bumping into people from my past. This morning at the liquor store, I saw my old Scoutmaster Mr. Horowitz, so I went up to him and said, "Hey Mr. Horowitz! It's Chris McConnell from Boy Scouts."
I finished my Eagle Scout badge when he was the Scoutmaster, so I thought he would remember me. I looked at me for a moment, smiled, and said, "Oh hey! I always mean to ask your parents about you when I see them. Where are you living these days?"
"Oh, I'm down in Austin, working on a PhD."
"Austin? That's the capital, right?"
"Yeah. I'm at the University of Texas."
"What field are you in?"
This is always a tough question for me to answer. Sometimes I just say "Communications," but I thought Mr. Horowitz would enjoy that I was doing something a little offbeat, so I said, "I'm in media studies. I study TV and movies and things like that."
He asked the inevitable, "What are you going to do with that?"
"Oh, I want to teach at the university level. Right now I'm teaching kids how to make Web pages and do computer animation. I'll teach kids how to make movies."
Mr. Horowitz is a CPA in Tulsa so that might have blown his mind a little.
My mom asked him what his kids are up to. His son is a physical trainer and his daughter is a social worker of some sort.
We wished him a merry Christmas, grabbed a bottle of champagne, and headed for the checkout.
At the checkout, he asked, "They have all kinds of programs at the universities, don't they? Now what university are you at again?"
A little confused, I said, "Um, The University of Texas at Austin?"
"Now that's just, 'Texas'?"
"Yeah, its 'Texas Longhorns' Texas," I explained, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the crimson "Oklahoma" sprawling across my hoodie.
I guess he's not a college football fan because that didn't seem to make sense to him. He just said, "They have all kinds of programs these days, don't they?"
December 22, 2004
tofu and gluten
Tomorrow, I'm driving up to Tulsa to spend Christmas with my family. Blogging's been light the few days, and I expect it to be light for the next week or so, so, in the meantime, check out that old chestnut of a post about a Tofurky Christmas.
December 19, 2004
out of telecommunicontrol
I don't know if they took their cues from Slashdot's interviews, but Flow is running an interesting experiment. The media studies site plans to run an interview with Jason Reich, a writer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in January. Like a Slashdot interview, the editors are asking readers to post questions in the comments area and will forward the best questions on to Mr. Reich. Yup, they be "truly flowin in the electric consciousness."
candor and honesty
Today's New York Times Magazine features a story on blogging, dating, and privacy issues. Perhaps it provides insights to non-blogging readers, but much of the discussion like, "Discussing your dates in detail on your blog might hurt someone's feelings," seems like common sense, but it surprises me how much personal material some people share on their blog. I do worry that some people might read a story like this and assume that all bloggers share juicy gossip and messy details on their blogs.
The piece is illustrated with a series of isometric pixel drawings. I think the isometric pixel art of eBoy is amazing, Diesel Sweeties' use is amusing and effective, but, now that its used in the Gray Lady, its probably over. Regardless, I was delighted when I ran across these toys, "The Cubes," which take cues from pixel art, and mock the conformity and blandnesss of cubicle life. As a former cube-dweller, I can say that I often felt if I was crammed - physically and culturally - into a a little box. I was probably Jim, the cube-dwelling rebel, on this page. Thankfully, I never had a goatee.
December 18, 2004
entire weblog medium
Everyone who uses Movable Type probably saw this item in the news section of the main admin screen, but I think its worth commenting on. Jay Allen discusses the exploding problem of comment spam, and how comment spam is leading to severe performance problems for many blogs. Some of what he says about how Movable Type is architected surprised me; I would not have guessed MT rebuilds individual entry pages even when MT-Blacklist denies a comment or sends one to moderation. No wonder this site has been slow as mud the past few months. I have noticed that I've been getting a ridiculous amount of traffic on my comments.cgi file. I presume that its automated bots constantly banging on my blog, trying to add links for cheap viagra and online poker. Occasionally, I'll wake up to discover that someone or something has been spamming the site for nine or ten hours, sending 100+ comments to moderation. Although this often happens early Sunday mornings, I do think its a bot. Depressingly, I think about two-thirds of my traffic isn't from friends or fans, but from these spam creeps.
December 17, 2004
buckheadtrip
The other night, I had a vivid dream about being stuck in an awful grimy Atlanta mall. A split level mall with narrow corridors, it was filled with cheesesteak stands and check cashing outlets. I only remembered this now as I was reading about the Virgin Megastore. I thought to myself, "remember when you were at the Virgin Megastore in Atlanta?" I quickly realized that never happened. When I was dreaming, I didn't know where I was until I saw the Tower Records in Buckhead. Its funny how you can forget dreams are dreams until you remember them.
I've been in a Virgin Megastore - once - when I was looking for apartments in Orange County, and I was bored. I bought CDs that day, but at the local store Noise Noise Noise in Costa Mesa. I got Viva by La Dusseldorf and Psychedelicate by Slumber Party. When I asked the cute punk girl working at the counter if there were any cool neighborhoods near Irvine, she said, "Hell no! I'm moving to Portland next week." The September 11 attacks occurred the week before, and I remember loving the hell out of the "make love not war" chorus of "Geld" when I was queueing through security at John Wayne International. I've never been to Orange County again.
unprecedented interoperability
I've been up in Studio 4B, trying to teach myself the 3D animation package Softimage XSI. Obviously, there's only so much I can learn over the break, but its been worth my while. Hopefully, I'll learn enough to get students started working with it in a future semester, if not generate my own projects.
The Danish exchange student was up there, too. He's been trying for weeks to author a PAL-compatible DVD from an NTSC-formatted After Effects project. From the start, I've thought he would have to go about this by either running it through a hardware scan converter and author the DVD from raw video or starting from scratch and adjusting his resolution and frame rates in After Effects. Either way is going to be a hassle and give less-than-optimal results. He has a Quicktime of his movie, and I keep telling him that it'll play on any computer with the plugin, so its probably not worth the effort to try to make it readable on a PAL DVD player.
Regardless, he's been trying to create a PAL DVD in various DVD authoring packages. He was mucking about with the cheesy wizard-based package that came with the DVD drives on our PCs, and I was like, "Um, you should be able to click something and get more granularity."
"What's granularity?"
Its sometimes hard for me when I'm working with non-native speakers when I use weird words in conversation. I don't want to dumb down my discourse, but at the same time, I want to be intelligible. I imagine the Dane and others do want to learn as many English words as possible, but, then again, how often will he run into "granularity"?
I said, "You know how sand is made up of a bunch of little grains?"
He nodded yes.
"Granularity is like you can mess with each of those little grains. If there's more granularity in software, you have more options to manipulate."
"Got it."
Awesome.
distressed
Before I start enother this-blog-is-lame post, I think I'm going to try to use this blog as more of a sandbox, which is what it should be. I don't have a lot of readers, so I might as well allow myself feel free to post experiments and lame doodles, rather than stuff I think is "presentable."
December 15, 2004
faster than the connection
I'm here at the Austin Bloggers meetup, and we're planning where we will hold our monthly get-togethers in 2005. Looking at Josh's list of wireless venues in Austin, I learned that RPM Indoor Speedway offers wireless to its customers. Needless to say, this town is saturated with free wireless.
Update: We came up with a list of venues for next year, and I've pasted them down below. I sent this list to the Austin Bloggers listserv, and one dude emailed me off list to complain about parking at a couple of the venues. Come on - its Austin - parking is a pain unless you're going to a strip mall or a big box. Take the bus or ride your bike if you don't like to find parking.
Jan: Green Muse
Feb: Little City on Congress
Mar: Central Market South
April: Opal Devine’s
May; Café Mundi
Jun: Bouldin Creek
Jul: Metro (on drag)
Aug: Mangia on Far West
Sep. Dog & Duck
Oct: Mozarts
Nov: Flightpath
Dec: Triumph Cafe
remote procedure call
Last night, I attended Sandy Stone's end-of-semester party. I used to TA for Sandy, so I was excited to former students and Sandy's odd assortment of friends. I never thought I would use "SOAP API" or "XML-RPC" in conversation ever again, but this party disproved that notion.
Later on, the party took on an even geekier turn. I was looking at some blogs on the machine in Sandy's office, when Janet Staiger walked past and asked, "Chris, have you seen the six-panel set-up?"
I was like, "Huh? What? No!"
Janet said, "OK, look at this," and led me into the small room where Sandy's partner, Cynbe, works.
"Good lord!" I exclaimed. Janet laughed and I ran for my camera.
The wide-angle setting on my camera wasn't wide enough to capture of the six 19" monitors Cynbe's using, but I think you get the idea. I've uploaded a few more shots from the party to Flickr, including a shot of the suspension system used to hold the monitor array together.
I also talked to my former student Charles, who said that his site, sorry everybody, will soon arrive in book format. The book will include pictures of the site and commentary about the election. Good for Charles! I also chatted with Jon for a bit about his sponsored-blogging experiment. I'm not sure I completely understand what his sponsor hopes to get out of the arrangement, but maybe I'm just jealous no one's paying me to blog.
December 14, 2004
descriptive poetic field
This afternoon, I went downtown to The Austin Museum of Art to check out the Andy Goldsworthy show. I think its the best show I've seen at AMOA. His photographs of his land art actions are just gorgeous and calming, exactly what I needed this afternoon. I wish I'd known about the action on Saturday downtown; I would have checked it out before I headed out to backhoe ballet.
Some of his installations reminded me of some clumps I photographed during the summer of 2003. There were by the railroad tracks south of Manor. I'm pretty sure the wind created these things, but I almost wonder if I stumbled across someone's project. For context, I'm also posting a shot of the wall that I walked out there to shoot.
magnet kiss cut
Ooooh, these "custom patriotic ribbon magnets" are ripe for detournement. If I could swing the minimum order of 250 magnets, I'd sponsor the infobong.com slogan contest. Ideas that come to mind would be "lives to the gallon," which would be fun to stick on the back of unsuspecting SUVs, and simply "peace." It occurs to me that the printer would refuse to make magnets with an anti-war message, like the custom Nikes that read "Sweatshop," but the phone number for this place is in a suburban Boston area code, so maybe they're good blue state folks. So what would you put on a magnet?
December 13, 2004
from old norse
In my Historiography term paper, I quipped that "blog" sounds like "an obscure Scandinavian liquor," but apparently the truth is stranger fiction. According to Jill, "å blogge (Norwegian for “to blog") is also perfectly good (though somewhat rare) Norwegian for piercing a fish with a sharp instrument until blood runs from it." This seems like a good addition to my Norwegian vocabulary, which, until now, consisted of "Jeg Kan," the title of a Norwegian children's book I had as a kid.
whoa
I just can't stop looking at this picture Mel tracked down. I'm Joey Lawrence all over the place.
December 12, 2004
heavy lifting
In case you wondered what a backhoe ballet would look like, here are a couple of [bad] pictures I took at yesterday's performance. I'm glad I went to the ballet, if only because I finally met Mel in person.
Aw, how sweet.
December 10, 2004
capital l capital a
This AP story on Bill Moyers' retirement helped me understand the journalist better. The article consists of largely biographical data, but sometimes basic facts help me put things together. The information about his production company, Public Affairs Television, gave me further insight into how PBS operates, It sort of strikes me as strange Moyers has become such a fierce critic of the mainstream media, when he has spent so much time in the establishment, even working as LBJ's press secretary. On one hand, I'm inclined to think the American media situation must be worse than ever, if Moyers is finally speaking out about the media. On the other hand, as a student of media history, I'm well aware that there's long been a stark contrast between how the media presents itself - as a champion of democracy and fairness - and the often unfair, undemocratic realities of the ways powerful interests intersect in the media world. I wonder if Moyers regards the early decades of television journalism as a golden age, where things like the fairness doctrine and news execs were sometimes able to act expressly in the public interest.
sovereign immunity
bOINGbOING has another post on the spate of Army recruiting spam UT students have been receiving. A recruiter also left a call on my answering machine last night, and, although, I didn't give Sgt. Chuck a call, as I thought I might, but I am ready to take some kind of action on this issue. A UT law student, Mark Miller, says that anti-spam and anti-telemarketing litigation against the Army would probably be useless because of a legal doctrine called "sovereign immunity," but he is planning to file a Freedom-of-Information-Act request in order to learn how the Army is getting our contact information and who is giving the orders to call our phones. He tells bOINGbOING readers to contact him at mirell@gmail.com with your phone number and the information you get from the Army.
assembling a hang-glider
Dan Gillmor is leaving his job as a technology columnist at The San Jose Mercury-News to start a "grassroots journalism" project. I'm intrigued by the notion of a centralized system for ordinary folks reporting on the stories that affect them. On one hand, I'm inclined to say, "Well, there's already IndyMedia," but, although IndyMedia aims to be an open platform for people to share their stories, in reality it tends to be a mouthpiece for a segment of the radical left and, often, a bulletin board for cranks. I think a lot of ordinary people are alienated by the overheated rhetoric that emerges from the communities plugged into IndyMedia. I also suspect that some folks in these want to alienate people who come in with mainstream views; I've heard activists trash academics and persons who espouse traditional media practices, which, as a grad student and former editor, are hard for me to stomach. Because of this situation, I suspect a lot of left-leaning people interested in participatory media self-select out of contributing to IndyMedia. On the other hand, the SiliconBeat item says Gilmor has received "seed funding" for his grassroots media project, so he will be operating it as a business, which introduces its own issues like alienating advertisers. Whatever form this venture takes, I'm looking forward to seeing the results.
December 09, 2004
cool solidarity
A friend sent me a link to this AP story describing a recently-published linguistics paper which analyzes the use of the word, "dude." According to the story, Scott Kiesling at Pitt is "contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers," but instead is situated in heteronormative male social bonds. Dudes use "dude" to express intimacy with other dudes. Whatever, I think I use "dude," much as I use "like" or the participle of another four-letter word: as a placeholder when I'm gathering my thoughts. I haven't read it, but you can download the paper as a .pdf here.
machines get their oats
The "Backhoe Ballet" event this Saturday at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems looks sweet, and - dare I say - weird. It features two backhoes choreographed by Kate Scherer, plus music, and, presumably, lots of dirt. It looks like CMPBS is way the heck out on the East side of town, but I suspect it will be worth the trip.
December 07, 2004
historic computational works
I just ran across something on see art make art that really makes me wish I live in New York (or even Philly, for that matter). Scratch Code is an exhibition of computational art from the 1950s through the 1970s by conceptual artists, filmmakers, and people who had access to a plotter. Its even at a gallery devoted to computer art. I worked with AMODA for about a year, but their emphasis is largely on putting on revenue-generating parties with critically acclaimed electronic music acts, rather than exposing local computer artists.
On the other hand, galleries are often not the best place for computer art. I went to The Whitney's Bitstreams show a few back and felt a little unsatisfying. Futzing around with computers in the rarified environment of a museum with other patrons waiting was not the best way to appreciate the works. Their Artport might be a better project, allowing patrons to check out digital works on their own machines. Ideally, users would be able to look at computer art in an environment that allows them to linger on a project for as long as it took them to appreciate the work, yet pulls them out of their normal surroundings.
extensible infrastructure
I used to hate Microsoft Office's realtime spellcheck and grammar check functionality. I found all the green and red underlining distracting when I was trying to crank out a paper. I used to turn them off when I logged on to a lab machine, but, I think it improved considerably with Office 2000, because I don't remember even noticing the feature after I finished college. Even more frustrating is the Autocorrect feature which seems to refuse to allow me to correctly type "bell hooks" or "ICTs," changing the capitalization even if I correct the correction multiple times.
As I've writing furiously here at the end of the semester, I've noticed that my papers are peppered with egregious typographical errors, and I wondered "How is this happening?" I've had to go back and correct errors that are normally fixed as they happened, and I realized, "I didn't install any spelling or grammar dictionaries when I rebuilt my hard drive." I was trying to keep the Microcruft to a minimum when I did a clean re-install, and as a result, I'm not able to even run a spell check, so now I need to figure out how to install these indispensible featuers.
UpdateAs a sidenote, after I installed the spelling and grammar "dictionaries" to my machine, I quicklly discovered I had to add "blog," "blogs," "blogger," and "blogging" to the local dictionary. "Blog" may be the word of the year for 2004, but Office 2000 thinks its a typo. Does anyone know if Office XP or Office 2003 include "blog"? I'm still using the copy of Office that came with the huge bundle of software Microsoft sent me when I was writing for computer magazines.
December 06, 2004
media culture
Today, I learned of a new Web publication affiliated with my department, Radio-TV-Film. CinemaTexas Notes is a compilation of movie writeups done by graduate students in the 1970s and 80s when CinemaTexas was a film series presenting movies from the past for re-examination. It dissolved when the introduction of VCRs took film buffs out of the theater and onto the sofa, but this site should provide an interesting resource to movie geeks.
I'm like totally tardy in blogging Flow a new publication from the department that launched in October. Flow is an online journal-like site where esteemed media studies scholars post short articles about TV and other forms of electronic media. It falls somewhere between a journal and a group blog, since its not peer-reviewed - only edited by a crack team of grad students - and provides comments functionality for immediate reader responses.
Which, for me, begs the question, "Where are all the media studies blogs?" I see mad Rhetoric blogs and some information studies blogs, but I don't see a lot blogs from media studies folks. Granted, a lot of universities don't have dedicated media studies departments, and even a lot of film departments concentrate almost exclusively on film, so there may just not that many of us out there. But, but, blogs are media, right? So where are the media studies blogs?
crackly digital static
Friday's Oscilate Night #6 looks to be rad, and not just because my boys from Numbers on the Mast will be playing. Its gonna be a laid back party-party, and we'll be dronin' on and on almost to the break of dawn (10pm-2am) at Ruta Maya. Most exciting is Tim Hecker, whom Josh is flying in from Ottawa, and makes, according to Pitchfork, "crackly digital static, mournful swoons of drone, and rumbling bottom." It may not be a genetically engineered army of Trans Am fans, but it'll be the next best thing.
...and since this post borders on nonsensical, I'll add that, I just wrote "I was Joey Lawrence all over the place" on a comment here. I think "Joey Lawrence all over the place" should be a phrase that gains some cultural currency. I know I'm Joey Lawrence all over the place about the next Oscillate night.
yucky yucky yuck yuck
One of the more unpleasant surprises I've had came this morning when I came back soggy from a hard run in light rain. I peeled off my clothes and turned on the tap, waited a moment, waited another moment, and realized that the landlord had turned off the water for some repair in another unit. This had happened before without warning, but that time I just had to go to school without shaving. This time I sat cold, clammy, and naked until the water came back on.
December 04, 2004
stereometric models
My pal Jared appreciated this link to a New York Times Magazine photo feature, so I thought I would blog it. These plaster models were made in 19th-century Germany to illustrate complex trigonometric formulas. They're also pretty. I sent them to Jared, since he makes wild mathematically-driven flash art, and operates out of a similar aesthetic.
On a similar note, I dig this Benjamin Edwards' art based on satellite imaging. I like this one, "Immersion."
December 02, 2004
provenance was preserved
I wanted to blog this a few days ago when Salon.com published an excessively snarky item about the Harry Ransom Center's acquisition of Don Dillo's papers. Not mentioning the papers would be housed at HRC, or the University of Texas, or even Austin, Scott Thill wrote:
The bad news? It's in Texas.
... an author who was born, raised, employed and housed in New York for decades now has had his personal papers shipped thousands of miles away to a state that could stand to learn more than a few lessons from his work.
I personally know the person responsible for cataloging DeLillo's papers at HRC, and wondered how Kati would react to this portrayal. I understand the coastal humor, but not acknowledging that the papers would be housed at one of the largest and more prestigious campuses in the country was disingenuous and misleading to readers unaware of the archive's acquisition.
Today, I was happy to see Salon published a letter from Kati, taking issue with the story's portrayal of Texas. So you don't have to go through Salon's Clockwork Orange-style ad system, I've pasted in her letter below. (Kati, I know you read this site from time to time, so let me know if you have a problem with this.) Hooray for Kati!
As the archivist who processed and arranged DeLillo's papers it saddens me to see that you have used your column to obliterate the difference between those who treasure the lessons of history through art and literature and those who may wreak havoc on our culture. I spent several months of my working life engrossed in DeLillo's writings and personal correspondence. It was my job, duty and pleasure to ensure that the body of work he entrusted to the University of Texas was processed and arranged in such a way that its provenance was preserved. Thus, scholars for generations forth will be able to learn from the primary sources of a great man who has spent his life crafting stories to illuminate his vision of our world and her people.
It is true that DeLillo is a New Yorker, but a New York institution did not come forward to house his papers. A Texas institution recognized his influence on American culture and cared enough to step up, purchase his papers, and provide a permanent and safe home for this important collection. I understand (and share) your disgust regarding Bush's reelection, but to use that as a catalyst to degrade the fact that a Texas institution received Don DeLillo's archive is a sophomoric jab. To conflate the whole of the state of Texas with George W. Bush demonstrates, at best, intellectual dishonesty and basic ignorance. At worst, it shows exactly the kind of closed-mindedness that you believe makes Austin a city less worthy to house DeLillo's collection than New York, Yonkers, or Newark. Beware that provincialism comes with more faces than those shown in the South or in supposed "red states." Not everyone in Texas is benighted and toothless, and the stereotypical resident of Crawford is not representative of the state. In fact, even Crawford has a few residents who see beyond the media shine of their pseudo-hometown boy.
Here are the Web sites to the HRC and the Web page outlining its history.
If you have not seen it, the finding aid for DeLillo's collection may also be found here.
The finding aid is an interesting document to read, at least for those of us who find literary archives, regardless of location, to be fascinating capsules of history. Other notable collection finding aids that are available online include those for Ernest Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.
If you ever make it to Austin I would be happy to show you around and perhaps open your mind to the idea that there can be goodness, beauty and culture (sometimes even in the variety of hipper-than-hip cool) in Texas.
-- Katherine Pelletier
particular plumping overwhelmingly
A survey of 500 art critics recently named Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" the most influential work of twentieth-century art. The work, which I've had the pleasure of viewing at the Philadelphia Museum's Duchamp collection, consists of a urinal turned on its side and signed "R. Mutt." Even more exciting is #6 on the countdown, my hero Joseph Beuys' "I like America and America Likes Me," which Prentiss and Adina derided at the last Austin Blogger meetup. Come on, how can you go wrong with a felt blanket and a coyote?