This is my visually impaired grandmother looking at enlarged faces of family member's fotos that we scanned in, many whom she hadn't seen in decades or more, enlarged on my laptop. She was very happy as you can tell. It was great to be able to zoom in so close to her mother and siblings in pictures from the 1920-1970s.

We ended up scanning about a hundred pictures and now I have them all digitally captured. It was so neat to digitally capture my grandfather into the computer. he would have loved it. I even got him into my cell phone.

I guess the sidekick s good for something. Today I was eating with Terry at spot Coffee, when we discovered that our eating experience was being captured on video and displayed at the albright knox. It is really weird but seeing as I am used to public life I did not care. Instead I captured them live on my sidekick. So here is to electronic stalking of the electronic stalkers.

I agree with you anti-voting sentiment but if Bush gets in the whitehouse again it is going to be even more chaotic. I personally cannot stand Kerry. I can't stand the way that he is Yet Another Power Rich White Man. His experience in Vietnam proves nothing to me. I think that he is wrong for going there. I honestly, almost have more respect for George W using his connections to get out of it. At least we know he hasn't shot and killed people directly. While we all know that indirectly he has probably killed hundred of thousands.

Kerry's antiwar stance would have meant more if after that giant anti-war speech he made as a youth in front of congress, that he voted against the Iraq war. But he didn't after all he voted for it. What a two-faced fuck head. Is that the kind of president we want. I guess not, but George W is worse.

I hate having only two choices. I really want a woman president and I don't even have the option to vote for one. I agree that we need more woman leaders and furthermore that Laura Bush is over-watering down the role of the first lady. Why can't she be more compasionate, or at least more passionate about any issue. I would actually rather see her passionately campaign for war a new in Iran, in the name of god (hahaha) than do nothing.

I skipped out on the radio show for a bunch of reasons today. Terry will still be there and do a marvelous job, as always.

0. I am le Tired. I am starting to work like 80 hour weeks and its making me crazy. I teach till 10PM tonight.

1. I need to spend the day programming and its really hard to concentrate without enough sleep.

2. Matt and I spent numerous hours preparing the audio by ripping it from video and converting formats for Theresa show while she presumably slept. I need to learn to not take on the repsonsibilty of everyone else. She should have done it herself. I didn't even get to start my homework till 2:30am because of this.

3. Last night at 3:00am after I finished doing that stuff for Theresa and was still feeling pretty good about it, I went to check her jounral to see if she had posted anything important that I should move to the front page and noticed that she writes in it about twice a month.

So I became really irritated that she asks me to participate and help with the production of her community project, but pretty much neglects mine.

4. This may offend some people but to me radio is a lamest, most archane, temporary medium that can go compeletely unnoticed and leave no trace. There is not real power in radio unless coupled with recorded archives (like democracy now) or main stream audience levels (like NPR).

5. I am going to be on next week anyways to talk about databases and community activism and who wants to hear me two weeks in a row.

6. Theresa discounted Hodowns story from the NYC financial district which contained information reporting that many of the financial leaders that she works with are most afraid of the cost of same sex benefits. She says that much of the concern over gay marriage is about the cost of benefits and also the perception that gay people need expensive AIDS drugs. Hodown works with some of the nations most powerful accountants, and they watched the Bush speech in the lunchroom together. Theresa says it hearsay. She has an opinion piece radio show on AM radio. Its not NPR and Hodown is as close to these people as it gets. Howdown please resubmit your report on this. I think it is extremely important to document it.

I am sitting in a high tech virtual reality lab right now and I have no means of copying my data from my laptop to the computer I am typing on. My wireless connection doesn't reach and the thernet requires some password. This is totally ironic as I could not be in a more high tech place. I guess I could burn to move the data back and forth but it seems utterly ridiculous.

Trebor asked me about the conference. Note to Paul and Holly: What are we doing for the radio show/conference.

On another note I saw so many people from the site today. Its great to actually see them and have stuff to talk about. This medium has really transformed the way I communicate with many of my aquaintences, because lathough we do not knwo each other very well in the physical sens eof hanging out. We read about each other's lives here on elmwoo strip and so when we do see each other it feels like old friends. I like that.

Well about a year and a half ago I lost a major chunk of my portfolio in a digital drama when I copied a file onto itself and lost about 70% of the stuff I had worked on. Since then I have learned my lesson and backup everything, all the time. So recently, when I went to go compile the stuff I have worked on for a presentation about my previous work I figured there wouldn't be that much. Wow, was I wrong, apparently, I mass produce art work. There are so many projects I have worked on. The thing thats werid is that none of it is in any particular field. It seems I definately tend toward 3D design but by no means does that define what I do.

I also have a lot of models that could be tweaked and rendered into really nice work. Its kind of like having undeveloped film.

I had so many from this blue candle stick series that all got destroyed. this is a portion of one of the remaining images. Unfortunately, the bottom of the file got corrupted and it had to be cropped.



In the search for this stuff, I found my new "If I was a Grasshopper" userPic that I made while "sketching" at work one day.

Just about the only thing I don't do is video/photograhy. What I am thinking is that I really don't like the video medium at all. I hate movies, haven't owned a television since 1995 and really don't see it changing. I really cannot stand video. i don't have the patience for something that is so demanding and controlling of your senses. I guess if I am creating it, then it would be different. but I really believe that video is not an interactive enough medium for me. It seems so one way. I could be totally off base. But I just can't get into moving pictures.

This is from my xyloworld project, see the links to the left for more information.


However, photography might be in my future. I am think of using the money I got last weekend for that project I was coding to buy myself a really nice digital camera and give it a whirl. Maybe, I could enjoy it. At the very least I could use it to record my history and collect textures for my 3D models and let matthew do his thing. I have my heart set on the Nikon Coolpix 5700. Does anyone have any thought on that cam? I have only seen good reviews of it.

I wonder what will happen when I am not in school and I can actually work on the projects I want too. I think it may get out of control.

This picture was for this company that was starting a new line of clothes.



It is recursive levels of my work. I designed a 3D model that I outputted to vector graphiccs, brought into illustrator and then saves as a tif and used as the texture on the sign. Then I used that image to design the dress for the wooden puppet.

The whole project got really weird but it was fun.

This one was about my feelings for my nose. I used a scan of the skin off my wrist to create the texture. There were so many variations of this image as well, but this is one of the only remaining ones.


This crazy woman has frying pan and spatula hand and plungers for feet. She was supposed to be a house wife super hero. Man thats fucked up.

Today I have written what I consider to be really great code that writes code. To me that is the best kind. Any kind of abstracted level of me telling a machine to tell a machine to do something is really exhilerating. I get the same kind of feeling that I used to get from dropping acid as a kid. Okay maybe not that profound - but that same kind of heart stopping "something crazy is gonna happen feeling.

Matthew Puchlerz, my straighedge friend told me that he also gets really excited when coding and when something would work that he would sometime jump and and down and shout. I would like to let him know that he is in fact high of coding, lol not so straight edge at all, lol

I cannot wait to fix up the elmwood site once I am done with all this other crap. I have so many new ideas of how to do stuff and what can be done.

I am planning on adding lots of interactive art activites. Not sure exactly what yet. Anyone else have an ideas or requests?

I hope you'll are still my friends even though I was gone for a while. As for my Second Life, I hardly have time for my first so its going to have to wait. Hopefully, when I get back Jesse will have commendeered his batallion of baby soldiers as he had planned!!

So this project is really stresssing me out. I wouodl liek to purchase speed but somehow they stopped selling on on elmwood in the 80s. I guess I was just born in the wrong time period. Anyhow, I just got an email from the guy that I am helping's wife that makes me feel glad that I am helping someone at least.

Hi Paul,
This is Blah blah. Thank you so much for saving our marriage. Because of this stupid fucking web site, I having actually disliked my husband greatly for two years. You relieving my husband of this unwanted code writing is better that any therapist. I now love you and so do my children.

Xoxoxoxox
Blah Blah

I am still trapped in programming land, due to constant disruptions from various sources. Liek having to eat and bullshit like that. Why can't I just be a cyborg on speed.

Every single one of my close friends went camping. We rented cabins months ago at Alegheny and had been planning this for a while. I thought I would be done with this last minute Database project but it sucked so bad that i am still here working non-stop. If anyone else is interested in going out there this weekend give send me an email. Maybe we could ride down there togther when I am done. there is still plenty of cabin space.