llpricedesigns

Today’s Wordsmith offering of the the day is “manichean.” How appropriate. I stumbled upon a YouTube video in the very next email; a couple of talking heads trying to define “what is art”. “Is this or is this not?” They proceeded to posit that any particular artworks might or should fit into some true or false construction. The tubers manufactured 90 seconds of verbal haze by wandering into the hapless and a useless muck of rhetoric by attempting to answer their own wrong-headed question.

My shirt is red: false.
My shirt is not red: false.

Symbols and representations of reality can be visualized in pure red. But when I say my shirt is red, that is not precisely what I know to be true. If I photograph the shirt, and use Photoshop to sample colors, a few pixels may approach pure ff0000. The vast majority of pixels will fall within a gradient field of mostly rosy pinks to burgundy; saturated or not, imbued with slight reflections from nearby objects. My eye sees even more variety than this electronic tool. My red shirt is really a rainbow shirt, and if I don't know that on some level, I'm going to have a difficult time representing fabrics in a painting, or even understanding art.

The reality of a red shirt is like the reality of art. Unlike RGB colors, It’s impossible to pin down essential attributes of art once and for all. To be honest, many people would say the extremes edges of RGB (black and white) are not really colors at all. The same problem arises when we try to define Art by ideal example, Art will always defy simple, universal descriptions. It is impossible to reach agreement on what is best. Rhetoric can categorize and simplify, but it is an inept tool for describing the broader subtler realities.

Art gets to the heart of our human reality; that’s it’s special power. Art is truth.

I logged  back into my Win-laptop Monday and spent a couple of hours getting the frisbee up to speed. I downloaded all the current anti-malware definitions, then I turned to those critical Microsoft updates again.  I manually selected just the titles that looked appropriate to my setup to avoid  the 94% problem. Still feel  irked that I had to waste so much time.

Last night I installed an update on my Mac. I got an email alert that it was available; a dialog box prompted me to enter my pass;  I kept working. When the update was completed seconds later, I closed the notice dialog. Such a breeze. Guess I’m just spoiled by my trusty OSX software.

RANT ALERT II:

I sometimes run across articles with references to Mac “Fanboys,” the people who prefer Macs to Windows. The pejorative is hogwash, bunk, poppycock, horsefeathers, hooey, twattle, a shibboleth of those with Mac envy.

If it wasn’t just a more pleasant experience working on a Mac, I’d still have to keep one around to find information on how to avoid being sideswiped by Microsft little features.

Today for example. I fired up the PC to see how the notoriously buggy IE would render the CSS for a new page I had just authored. Unlike Apple, which sends its painless updates four, maybe five times a year. I was greeted by yet another Win-Vista update alert, which plodded along for serveral minutes after launch. I don’t want malware, so I usually follow the Win prompt to get the critical patches.

First it downloaded, then it labored to install, then it has to do something else after shutdown. Today it stalled at 94% complete. The computer restarted and re-ran the install back to 94%, where upon it restarted and re-ran back to 94% three times; four times; five times looping to 94% then restarting, all the time warning me not to shutdown.  Ha, like I could shutdown this infernal machine! There is no manual off switch to kill the never-ending loop.  After trying “F8″ then “Control,” then “Esc,” I went to my Mac and looked up “Safe Mode.”
A sticker note I had pasted on the face of my laptop was correct after all. I needed to use “F8″ (and we all know what that “F” stands for), but I couldn’t just hold down F8 during restart.  I had to tap it like a fool during startup or watch it keep cycling through its stupid little loop.  Finally, after minutes of nonsense, I  was able to select reset to a prior install, and then wait.

Minutes later, I was back where I started, and had to to ask myself, Should I go through this obnoxious routine again just to possibly get a  security update, or should I ignore it and take the risk?  Easy. Ignore; forget it! Perhaps I’m leaving the machine open to some botnet attack, but what do I care? At least this Frisbee runs for now. A tragedy of the commons perhaps, but so be it. I’d wasted enough time.

Macs are about twice the price of pc laptops, but they’re  worth every pinching penny and then some. Worth it in time saved, in frustration avoided, in repairs bills dodged, and better security.

So I also must ask, who’s the Fanboy? The people who know how much better the Mac works, or the die-hard Win fanatics, who wish to inflict their sorry software angst on everyone else?

Maybe I’ll check that CSS tomorrow.

Don’t open, just toss. The notice looks official, it looks like some kind of urgent business, but it’s just junk mail. There must be 1001 domain scams.
More Info: http://en.search.wordpress.com/?q=Domain+renewal+group.

Rewnew WordPress.com domains online (from your dashboard) using PayPal.

I took a short vaction to Fort Robinson in Northwest Nebraska. The Fort is the site of the old Red Cloud Indian Agency; and the site where the Lakota leader, Crazy Horse, was murdered. Officers barracks dating back to the 1870’s (along with more current ones) are available to rent for a modest price, but there is a large camping area at the fort as well. Jeep-tours, horse trail-rides, evening plays, hayrides, stagecoach rides, rodeos, and all sorts of activities for families and kids are scheduled throughout the day at the state park, but visitors can take day trips to the lovely Chadron State Park (birding), to the Hudson-Ming Giant Buffalo kill site (with its 10,000 years old bison bones) Toadstool National Grasslands and Park, Battleground site, Black Hills and Rushmore, Wind Caves, Agate Fossil beds and more. The area is rich in the Cenozoic, or weird-mammal, fossils. Huge Mastadons, camels, pre-horse, rhinos, bear-dogs, huge, nasty-looking wild pigs, saber-tooth-tigers, and so forth. A natural history museum right on the Fort Grounds has a surprisingly fine display about these creatures, including the remains of two bull Mammoths who died battling with their massive tusks locked.

The fort is not an especially well know vacation destination in the upper Great Plains—Mt. Rushmore is the usual destination—but “Fort Rob” is a favorite among those who have visited.

I took a few photos during my stay:

I think this pre-rodeo event is called the hat-swipe.

On this spot, Crazy Horse, Ogallala Chief was killed Sept. 5, 1877

Red Cloud Buttes loom over green lawns of Fort Robinson. View from Jeep-tour to 2nd highest point in Nebraska.

Low fares for fun, but bumpy park rides.

I’ll probably add more photos at Flickr.

Since tornadoes hit Kearney on May 29th, a number of other violent thunderstorms have blasted through Central Nebraska, sending us to our basement at midnight on one occasion, and leaving us in the dark on another. Those storms arrived with hail, whipped rain, and more damaging winds. Yesterday, our power was out for a few hours as even more limbs succumbed in yet another onslaught and pulled some power lines down as they fell.

Just a few mile south of town, baseball-sized hail battered a trailer court, while quarter sized hail only dimpled car bodies at another trailer court east of town.

I did find some astounding photos of that first toranadic supercell (scroll down), or the cloud formation that beat and blended trees and power-lines throughout Kearney. I still haven’t located any photos of individual twisters touching down. The sky is mostly blue today; hope that lasts for a while.

I have been trying to rebuild a blog that crumbled due to a combination of server software upgrades, but every time I get into that project, power outages have killed my connection. Maybe I can complete that task this evening.

A series of six or more F1 and F2, (lightweight) tornadoes blustered through Kearney on Thursday evening, May 29, 2008, doing considerable damage to the power infrastructure, and producing a few amazing sights, but leaving most of the city intact and no reported injuries. The local press seem to have missed the fact that this recent tornado event was a centennial reenactment of Kearney’s last significant encounter with the dreaded storms. On June 4th, 1908, the earlier storm system also sent several twisters raging through the town. One hundred years ago, those twisters destroyed several homes and killed a half-dozen people. The quirky behavior of the fearsome “cyclones” in 1908 were even featured in the August 1, 1908 issue of Scientific American Magazine. The 1908 aftermath was recorded by photo-documentarian, Solomon Butcher, and other local photographers.

I haven’t seen any good snapshots of funnel clouds from 2008, but several people reported seeing twisters before running for cover. The photos below are from a Scientific American article (8-1-1908). They were taken by Edward Bricker, but it is no surprise to to see that George Frank, the genius promoter of Kearney, is mentioned in this article. The photo captions say “One of the day’s seven tornadoes” and “The tornado picked up a castor from a table, unscrewed the top, took off the turntable, and drove the central rod into a tree.”

I didn’t take photos of the storm, or the more spectacular aftermath scenes, but lots of other people documented the the Gehry like distortion of a metal building at the fairgrounds, the stacked automobiles, the tipped train cars, and the exposed appartment on 39th street. I did take a series of photos of tree damage and the clean-up crew that quickly cleared the streets on Saturday. See a slideshow, or click a photo at right.

Users who pay for the domain/mapping “Upgrade” at WordPress.com, can also apply for a matching email from Google Aps.  I found the process a bit daunting; I had to make note of several longish codes during the setup process, switch between screens, and had to wait a few days for the account setup, but I finally have an email that matches my new domain here. I’d prefer a drop-in mailer to further deter spam, but Gmail (part of Google Aps) has excellent filters.  I’ve put the contact information on  my about page, but I think I’ll explore some form options before I create a link.

It is especially hard to write regularly during the summer, when days are long and grass grows fast. It’s the season of vacations, sports, home repairs, gardening, and other festivities. No time to be sitting at a keyboard. But blogs require a bit of attention, even in the summer, so I’m going to make an appointment here each Friday evening I’m free. We’ll see how well I keep the schedule.

I would like to find the perfect photo image for a header. I might just pay for the CSS upgrade— just to play around a bit with the colors and fonts. This soft gray is nice, as is this sans-serif, but the blue is not quite what I’d pick. I don’t know if my fussy issues are worth an upgrade at this point, but it’s nice to have the option to completely revise the site—even dramatically, if I want.

Yesterday, I read that Tim Berners-Lee (the web’s inventor) says the Internet is still in its infancy at 15 years. I’m not sure I’d recognize the Web 15 years hence, but I’ve seen some of the places it might go, and tools like WordPress are certainly on that path. I’m especially enthusiastic about the ease of blogging. Aps like WordPress make the web so much more accessible and democratic for people who don’t have time to learn coding. Google and other engines have made some progress at cataloging the content and keeping those who would game their system under control. Scammer, spammers, and botnets aside, Networking has changed the world, and mostly for the better. Granted, some people and businesses have suffered as the Web has caused the ground to shift quickly in many markets, but other opportunities have arisen. As a consumer, I love the choices; perhaps more than I resent the personal decay of privacy as records move out of file cabinets and into hackable databases—in fact, those changes began long before the web.

I am able to find copies of long-lost books I throught I’d never see again, find the most obscure information, see the world through the lense of a million people, instead of the filters of a consolidating mass media, and connect, through words and pictures, with people around the world.