Month: July 2005

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Remodel Status #1

Drywall job is complete (had a contractor do that – there were some tricky bits expected and we wanted to get on with it). He also found a crack running across the floor where two backer boards met and worried that it could cause tile popping or cracking in the future. Hasn’t been a problem in the past, but decided to go ahead and have him install double-thick 2×4 supports between the joists and drive long screws through the backer board, sub-floor, and into the supports.

Put about 12 hours this weekend into sanding, spackling, digging out bubbles of tired old paint (four layers!), removing messy old caulk job where it will meet the new paint, etc… Funnest part: Sanding new mud from ceiling. Must wear goggles and filter, but breath from filter fogs goggles from inside while falling dust obscures from the outside. So had to remove goggles every few strokes just to be able to see.

The closer one stares at an old wall, the worse it looks. Like word processing, a process of infinite revision. Gotta know when to quit and get on with it.

Finally decided on paint color. Found two separate vendors to supply the chicken-wire floor tile and the coving that will serve as a baseboard; coving color and texture identical to existing shower tile, which we’ll be keeping. Finally found the perfect light (i.e. one we can agree upon) to replace the 1970s Hollywood-style vanity light. I so look forward to ripping that monstrosity out of the wall.

Decided to make a fairly major change to the cabinet, which is too deep to be fully usable – we’ll install three drawers on sliding rollers, which will require knocking out its frame and molding and building a replacement door. Unanticipated work and might cause delay, but will be worth it.

Next up: Final spackle pass, final floor prep, lay tile.

Music: Charles Mingus :: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
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Chemical Stew: You’re Soaking In It

Washington Post:

Unborn babies in the United States are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides … The report, by the Environmental Working Group, is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical-cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA.

Of course if all that goo is in the cord blood, it has to be in the mother as well…

Music: Harold Melvin :: Wake Up Everbody
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Raccoon Infidels

Returned home from vacation to discover the cat food supply compromised by raccoons. Used to be, they’d come through the cat door, move a large garbage can aside, open the cabinet door, pull out a 25-lb. bag of cat food and claw it open. We “solved” that one last year by regularly transferring cat food bags into a large sealable plastic container. Now, it seems, they’ve realized that if they pull the whole container out onto the kitchen floor and start gnawing, they can eventually break the plastic and hit paydirt. No one went hungry, but cats are furious about the smell. We hear that placing a transistor radio set to a talk station near the cat door works – will try that next time.

Music: steve hillage :: Knights Templar
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The Slow E-Mail Movement

I’ve complained for years that I can never seem to get out in front of the email inbox. One of the most continuously frustrating aspects of my job is that a million small distractions conspire to prevent me from tackling larger projects, and I know I’m not alone in this.

The problem for many workers is not just the amount of communication, but the fact that it takes time to mentally “shift gears” and sink fully into a larger task after handling a piece of communication (it takes the average person eight minutes to return to a creative state after an interruption).

Many workers today feel too connected, and are beginning to rebel against connectedness itself. Personally, I’ve found that I become more productive when I shut down my email client completely and just deal with mail in larger batches two or three times a day. I rarely enable iChat for the same reason, as useful as it can be at times. CNET:

“It used to be: ‘I’ve got to be online, it’s so frustrating that I can’t get on,'” said Chris Capossela, a vice president in Microsoft’s Information Worker unit. “Now that’s happened. People are ultraconnected. And you know what? Now they are starting to realize, ‘Wow, I want to actually stop getting interrupted.'”

Interesting that Veritas’ marketing department has actually implemented “email-free Fridays” for the same reason.

The “Slow E-Mail Movement” is probably inspired by the slow food movement.

Music: eels :: Bus Stop Boxer
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moon.google

As if Google Earth wasn’t kicking enough booty, now we have Google Moon to complement the effort for lunar-bound travelers. While exploring, be sure to zoom all the way in for stunning close-ups of the surface composition.

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International Klein Blue

Visited the Walker Art Center in Minnneapolis today, amazement around every corner. Stunning to find the actual tub in which Yves Klein had his naked models dip before applying themselves to large white canvases in the early 60s, saturated in the cosmically deep hue IKB. International Klein Blue was a color invented and patented by Klein, bluer than blue, virtually the only color he ever used. And yet, despite his total commitment to IKB, Klein refused to touch paint. Wish I had jotted down the quote since I can’t find it referenced on the web, but laughed out loud when I read something to the effect of “I would never stoop to dirty my hands with actual paint” … more stuff about distance and control… picturing these poor models bathing in the deepest blue, throwing themselves against white muslin, and Klein standing back, directing traffic, the total puppeteer. An absurd power trip with absurdly beautiful results.

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Lobotomy Inventor Could Lose Nobel

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, lobotomies actually helped about 10% of the people upon whom they were performed. Many of the remaining 90% of lobotomy recipients were left in a vegetative state and spent the rest of their lives in institutions. Now, 30 years after doctors stopped performing lobotomies (electroshock and drugs took over where physical brain scrambling left off), groups are mobilizing to strip lobotomy inventor Egas Moniz of the Nobel prize he was awarded half a century ago. Associated Press:

“How can anyone trust the Nobel Committee when they won’t admit to such a terrible mistake?” asks Christine Johnson, a Levittown, N.Y., medical librarian who started a campaign to have the prize revoked.

Ironic to think that if he had born 30 years earlier, Joey Ramone probably would have been a prime candidate for the barbaric procedure. Instead, his song Teenage Lobotomy became a proto-punk smash hit.

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Albany Bulb

57 Images from a sunset walk with Miles and Amy at the Albany Bulb, June 1, 2005. The Bulb is a local landmark – artists (many of them homeless) use this strut of land jutting out into the harbor to create installations improvised from existing junk and ingredients brought onto the land in wagons drawn by pedaled trikes. Repeat visits bring new discoveries. The light is nearly edible at sunset. Rust and graffiti and plant life in chaotic collaboration. Deterioration part of the artistic process, always a joy. Miles mostly concerned with finding rocks to huck into the sea, but occasionally adds his own contributions to the public spectacle.

Music: Palace :: All Gone, All Gone
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Deuteranopic

I’m one of those people who don’t see numbers in most of the color-blindness crop circles. Have never minded, nor known what I’m missing (though I have at times felt bored by the available spectrum and daydreamed that some genius will come up with a new primary color one of these days). Vischeck helps normally-sighted people visualize how the world looks to color-blind people — a process that proved fascinating to Amy just now.

But the really cool thing at Vischeck is their web page processor, constructed to help web designers see how their sites will look to color blind users. Running the test in deuteranopia mode, pages look identical to me before and after.

I had been on the job two years before I learned that most people see the J-School‘s homepage as greenish — I had always thought of it as beige or tan. The designer who preceded me should have used Vischeck :)

Note: Planned downtime at the jschool today as we undertake a Tiger Server upgrade.

Music: Jean Bosco Mwenda :: Watoto Wawili