http://engineersdaughter.typepad.com/engineers_daughter/2009/11/picturing-childhood.html

Castle in the Air was already one of the more awesome stores along Berkeley's 4th Street shopping district, chock full of all manner of Victoriana-inspired knick-knacks and other desirables, and now they've gone and launched a promising new art gallery on their second floor.  Their inaugural show is called Picturing Childhood: Portraits from the Masters of Early Photography (1850-1930) and pulls from the Wolffe Nadoolman Collection, a private holding that has never been publicly displayed before now.  The photos on display range from anonymous daguerrotypes of young siblings in matching outfits to Carl Moon's photos of Native American children, from Julia Margaret Cameron's pre-Raphaelite fantasias to Lewis Carroll's luminous study of Xie Kitchin, pictured here.  They're all rare and wonderful images, but I think my favorite was Jessie Tarbox Beale's picture Physically Defective Children, taken in 1910.  In it three children with their arms draped around each other smile directly into the camera, displaying none of their supposed physical defects, and the spontaneous nature of the photo nicely presages later street photography.  The show closes on Wednesday so rush on down there, and maybe pick up some holiday decorations or a lovely bottle of ink and a fountain pen for your letter-writing needs while you're in the store.

• 22:51 Was pondering christianchirp and its ilk the other day. Christianity is not meant to be a gated community. Can I have my ball? #
• 23:19 Free Money Finance: How to Buy a New Furnace and Air Conditioner ow.ly/Cnds #
• 10:45 It occurred to me this morning that I don't even *know* the english words to "Thine is the Glory"... #
• 11:57 RT @markmeyer: I can "do" church online or at a physical location, but I need to "be" the church wherever or however the rest of the week. #
• 11:57 RT @RezLive: Thoughts, feelings or opinions about worship today at live.cor.org? Email Pastor @andrewconard at andrew.conard@cor.org #
• 16:29 was pleased to discover yesterday that our doctor's office has a new negotiated rate with Humana, which saves us $15 more per visit. #
• 17:41 RT @kemmeyer @markmeyer: idochurchonline.com is up and running! woo-hoo! // un. Real. Just. In. Time. Wow! #
• 19:19 w00t! snow in the forecast for tomorrow! #

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So one night, a space pod comes down, and lands in your backyard. It's about the size of a VW beetle, and as far as you can tell, it's got no weaponry. But it does have a video screen, which you see when the door appears in its side as you approach. There is a clearly non-human face on the screen, and you can hear its non-human language transposed under a computerized translator.

The alien tells you that it would like to meet a Human, but given the nature of terrestrial broadcasts, it is wary of risking an Earthside landing. Ergo, it has sent a taxi, (which is invisible to Earthly technology, so as not to draw unfortunate attention to its landing,) and it would like for you to make the selection of who that you know PERSONALLY, would best represent your Species.

You cannot go yourself.
You must know the person in question well enough to get them on the phone, and get them to agree before the taxi leaves, which it will do in ten hours. If necessary, you can send the taxi to meet your emmissary, but it will not open again for you, or for any other human.

Who do you choose?
Why?

Would you choose someone different if the taxi was the size of a bus, and bristling with weaponry?
Who?
Why?

Here's how the art show panels for the con next weekend are shaping up:
( Bigger Image! )

with the most amazing cook.  I helped with prep but wow can she cook.

I'm back from polar bear visiting in Churchill, Canada, on the shores of Hudson Bay (where it was around 20°F or -6°C) and now I have a day to turn around my luggage for the nerdfest of the Microsoft developer conference in Los Angeles (where it's 72°F or 22°C) — leaving Dean home once again.

Despite camera problems, I came home with 56 GBs of pictures which will have to remain in the queue behind the Morocco pictures. One video I took of a bear is here.

And while Churchill was not intensely cold, thermometer-wise, there was a cold wet wind that blew from the north off of Hudson Bay and you were out back and forth from inside to out all day long. Churchill *was* the place to buy warm fur clothing — fox fur hats with ear flaps, seal fur elbow-high mittens, an entire suit made of polar bear hide, but I didn't buy any because California is not that cold and if you're going to buy fur clothing, you should wear it frequently so that it gets properly aired and keeps the insects off. And animals shouldn't die just to sit in my closet.

I cannot speak for the Canadians, but I was wearing the following (from bottom up and inside out) to try and keep warm:

1. Two pairs of wool socks
   
2. Heavy Sorel snow boots
   
3. Long underwear bottoms
   
4. Insulated ski pants
   
5. T-shirt
   
6. Long-sleeved merino wool shirt (from New Zealand)
   
7. Heavy synthetic fiber cross-country skiing shirt
   
8. Merino wool / possum fur sweater (from New Zealand)
   
9. Insulated canvas foul weather jacket
   
10. Silk glove liners
    
11. Insulated ski gloves
    
12. Wool scarf
    
13. Polar fleece neck warmer (to be pulled up over the nose)
    
14. Polar fleece lined wool hat
    

Yesterday the signing went well and was fun. I met the fabulous Susan Adrian and had a thoroughly good time talking to her. I sold some books and ate some chocolate--yes, I bring my own and give it away, and then partake--and the roads were pretty good despite the snow. Also got to see chkeyes , and forced her to buy books (hah, like force was necessary. Not my books, she has those, but other people's. . . . )

This a.m. I took kids and puppies walking (husband is out elk hunting and I'm keeping my fingers crossed) and went to campus to fetch stuff for class tomorrow. Procrastinate, who me? Then spent the rest of the a.m. prepping. Stuff is uploaded to WebCT, I know what I'm doing tomorrow and this week (it's the class that I taught last block, and so basically doesn't change, but now I'm tinkering. Which I suppose will mean it will change fairly significantly. I love this essay and am making them read it. It's fun. But not for the weak of stomach. But read it. It's really funny). Anyhow, have tinkered a bit and photocopied and prepped, so now am about to dig into The Hollow Crown. For which I've decided to scrap entirely a chapter and insert a new one. Which I now have to write. I know what you're thinking--brilliant, Di, cuz the revision is only due in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I know. I'm a smart critter.

On the news of Jessica--a little more stable, but still in a coma and still very uncertain. See my previous post for where you can go to read the full updates. Work is a great distraction, and kids and puppies. It's amazing how life still has to go on when part of it seems to stop entirely and becomes a black hole.

Today I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to use the windshield wipers on my husband's car. Finally I did and my children thought I was nuts for the happy dance and evil triumphant laugh I was making. Yeah, I'm a dork. Call me momzilla (thank you Ice Age 3).

I will post snippetage soon.

( I must have liked it because I had a lot to say about it )
In summary, these are some Short Trips worth taking.

View all my reviews >>

http://engineersdaughter.typepad.com/engineers_daughter/2009/11/once-i-was-a-cannibal.html

David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro's 2000 documentary Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale is a fascinating glimpse of the life of painter and accidental anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum who spent time as an adult living amongst native tribes in both Peru and New Guinea.  And yes, one time he did eat human flesh.  Schneebaum is probably the most unlikely of adventurers, a gay, longtime New Yorker with a gentle disposition, but he speaks of an early experience of seeing a "wild man" from Borneo at Coney Island when he was young that triggered his interest in so-called primitive cultures.  The filmmakers ask him to return to New Guinea and then to Peru, and though he is quite vocal about his reluctance to go in each case the journeys yield some rich and wonderful surprises.  The Shapiros mix in archival footage from Schneebaum's past talk show appearances in which he calmly and candidly speaks about his provocative experiences, and combined with the modern-day sequences that sometimes do genuinely look as if they were shot on the fly while tramping through the jungle (go figure) the documentarians ably convey the complexity of Schneebaum's relationship to his past.  As a postscript to the film, Schneebaum died in 2005, but his extensive collection of shields from New Guinea are now at the Met in NYC and his personal papers in the Jean-Nickolaus Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota.

As mythological creatures go, I’ve always had a soft spot for cockatrices (or is it cockatrixes in the plural? I have no idea.) This is because I think roosters are incredibly pretty, and adding a snakey tail to just about anything makes it even prettier, except kittens. Or wait, maybe a kitten with a snakey tail would look prettier. I’ll have to toddle off to my lab to run some experiments on that. Anyway, this brings me to my problem. I couldn’t find any satisfactory Victorian engravings of a cockatrice for my bookplate project (of which I’ll write more at a future date) so I had to sit down and draw my own.

The key to a satisfactory cockatrice is to keep most of the beautiful features of a rooster—the gorgeous cockscomb, the extravagant tail, the powerful clawed feet—and just add a bit of snake. Not too much snake. And for heaven’s sake, no fangs! Fangs are utterly unnecessary. And finally, a satisfactory cockatrice should NOT look like a velociraptor. Just sayin’.

This little image was sketched and inked quickly (and furthermore I couldn’t find my preferred inking pens, so I had to make do with a blasted fountain pen and a dull black sharpie) so it’s rather less tight and tidy than my other black-and-white efforts. It’s supposed to look engraving-y, but the shadow lines are too random. Oh well. “Ink in haste, Photoshop at leisure.”

Originally published at M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave any comments there.

Today I need to:

A) do day job work (including filling out expense reports, which I hate)
B) clean (dishes, living room, take garbage out, etc.)
C) pack (for a week-long trip)
D) write checks
E) write (start typing up chapter ten)
F) transfer all necessary files from home beast to work beast (see traveling, above)
G) maybe work out a bit? Walk, perhaps?

So far I've managed to eat breakfast, drink coffee, and surf the interwebs. Oh! And I did the pre-flight check in for my trip tomorrow. (Looks at list above.) Nope. Not going to cut it, not by a long shot.

*sigh*

Sometimes the excitement of my life is just too much.

http://engineersdaughter.typepad.com/engineers_daughter/2009/11/the-mooch.html

Maybe it's because my brother took up the clarinet back in grade school (at the same time that I was learning the flute) that I have such a weakness for clarinet quartets like Edmund Welles and Beth Custer's Clarinet Thing.  Or maybe it's because they just rule.  Clarinet Thing has just released their second CD Cry, Want, and previewing my new copy this morning made me wish I still had my DJ shift it's so perfect for early Sunday listening.  The group performs on every woodwind in the clarinet family and uses no amplification whatsoever, so all you get is the beautiful tones.  On Cry, Want they range freely from arrangements of classic jazz tunes like Herbie Nichols's "2300 Skidoo" and Thelonious Monk's fabulous "Crepuscule with Nellie" to more modern and experimental music, some of it written by the other quartet members Sheldon Brown, Harvey Wainapel, and Ben Goldberg.  Tomorrow night Yoshi's San Francisco will be hosting the Cry, Want CD release party and Clarinet Thing will of course be performing, so for those who prefer that side of the Bay that's my recommendation for your Monday night.  I will actually be back at 21 Grand myself, but more on that later.

Dear Artist:

Your website is a marvel of layout and CSS magic. It has impressive superimposition of graphics on top of moving text blocks, shiny light-up buttons in unusual spray patterns, and a left-hand margin that ripples in and out like a wave.

You also have no gallery, your print shop requires me to find a scroll bar within a text block that extends outside my window frame and is immune to my page-down/arrow-down commands, and you give me no way to link directly to any of the pieces I want to share with other people.

Also, let me repeat: you have no gallery. You don't even link to an external gallery site like DeviantArt. Making me go to your print shop in order to decide if I like your art makes me feel pressured into seeing your art in a "BUY IT NOW" context, which makes me unnecessarily surly.

In short, your website failed.

Presentation should make it easier to find content. If you've mastered that particular (and difficult) aim, you might even attempt the next goal: making it enjoyable to browse content; good luck with that. But something that has to be used should not be designed solely to be looked at.

Just a thought.

Remembering the Days Before Web 2.0,
—A Passerby.


(Your turn, readers... tell me your favorite websites that don't make this mistake.)

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/11/15/12533.html

Courtesy of links from a discussion thread on Otavia's recent Facebook post:

Woofer: Just like Twitter, except that any given post must be at least 1400 characters long. (That's roughly 230 words, or about a page of typewritten double-spaced manuscript; about two-thirds of a page of a paperback book.)

Squeaker: Just like Twitter, except that any given post must be exactly 14 characters long; no more, no less.

http://engineersdaughter.typepad.com/engineers_daughter/2009/11/witch-tricks.html

Last time I saw the Pittsburgh/San Diego duo Extreme Animals it was a delicious brain-melter of a show several months ago at Lobot with one of my local favorites Nero's Day At Disneyland, and they were back together and threatening to induce seizures again at 21 Grand tonight.  There was another gorgeous screenprint by Paul Morgan to commemorate the occasion, Oakland band Deep Teens (composed of peeps from Membership and Stress Ape) opened with an impressive set that was reportedly their first performance, and DJ Kyle Mabson played tweaked-out dance hits in between acts.  I was definitely in the mood for the loud and aggro.  Cleared out some cobwebs.

• 23:46 Finding it rather amusing and ironic that Google sent me postal spam. #
• 14:25 Amused that some of the critters (frogs, bees) in Max & Ruby videos are the same objects as the ones in Peep & The Big Wide World. #
• 15:45 Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide reg.cx/1Fe1 // Ewww! #
• 19:18 This afternoon, F (6) asked "what's 10 +5?" C (4) almost immediately responded with the correct answer. My kids = too smart for my own good #

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Salted Poppy Remembrance

(So you can see it better.)


The Maskwood

Working on this one on and off as a "relax and be loose" kind of experimental thing.

I love Rosanne Cash. This song of hers is one of my absolute favorites:




It fits the story I'm working on so perfectly well, that I have it on near constant replay right now.

Is it necessary to specify 'www' in URLs? Much of the time I've noticed it seems to work without, and it looks so much nicer to write them that way. If I test an address without www and it works for me, can I assume it will work for other people, or is it browser or system dependent?