.: time :.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, you twitter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
I wonder if anyone thought about the net weight of all blogs and tweets that exist in the ether, or more importantly the total amount of time wasted globally by people just doing not a lot on the Internet ... is it just me or is being online a LIFE SPONGE? Not that I am taken, kicking and screaming, oh no. I can willingly while away a whole morning catching up on news, drilling down on blog posts, annotating facebook entries, chatting, browsing artworks, exploring foreign politics, participating in forums about obscure topics, sharing the love 140 characters at a time ... but?
There is so much to be interested in, what is the "net effect" however? I fear it is that a generation of people will know very little about a whole lot of things - rarely delving beyond surface knowledge oin anything at all. Do not get me wrong, I understand how this happens - the plethora of information sources and the ease to which you can access them is astounding [who doesnt, for instance, have a net-enabled phone] but really, do we need to twitter whilst on the loo I ask you? So why do I embrace this thin tracery of knowledge, this info-blah that every day threatens to submerge me in a sea of trivia ... because it is so damned interesting that is why.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town, waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
... now I used to make Leadlight windows, and quite enjoyed the creative process [if not so much the final, messy construction stage - black putty and lead channelling were what finally drove me away from the craft]. After nearly 20 years, I was rummaging around under the house anc came across all my old materials and tools, and thought - why not. Designed, cut, constructed and hung a new panel in my laundry - quite satisfying to return to something "hard craft" and tangibly creative, plus we now have another "asset". I had forgotten how magical light is, as it plays through hand cragted and flawed glass, must do some more.
In related news, whilst moving one piece to make way for another, I dropped one - flooping heavy leaded panel, part of the bottom edge crumpled a bit so that is my next job - a restoration, you get that. Chose Copper foiling instead of lead cane for the most recent work because it would weigh a ton if it was leaded and free hanging. EXPLORE if interested.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
Now I am all for obeying copyright laws, but what happens when you want to buy something that is no longer available for sale? Take American McGees "Alice" - a ripper mod on the Quake3 engine, artsy, interesting and not available for sale since 2005? Thank heavens for bit torrent? What about obscure recordings, bootlegs and classic albums from artists now defunct or telly programs that will never get to our shores? Does the present day market economy support such things? Does teh distribution model match what users want? I think not.
...now this raises a larger question, in my opinion - what happens when all we have are DIGITAL records, no physical artefacts? I bought a USB turntable with the view of digitizing some of my rarer and more obscure albums that are not purchaseable by any other means. I carry a lot of digital media but how do I ensure it persists into the future - sure I back it up, but how do I ensure its longevity. Burning them to disk is not a permanent solution [disks have a 100% failure rate] and trusting it to the cloud is perilous as the owner of the storage may just as well up and go [net businesses come and go with alarming pace] ... have we as a society considered the consequences of investing so heavily in digital storage and resources, with less and less physical artefact? I think not. Having sustained catastrophic data loss [a visiting tech guru formatting the drive my H drive was on, with NO backup - a loss I still cannot comprehend as there were resources there that now no longer exist anywhere] Do we as a species merely jettison that which we lose, do we mourn or even notice its passing, or do we painstakingly re-construct/reinvent the wheel? I suspect that countless important records become inaccessible, corrupt or are lost in leviathon systems every day and we barely notice. Is there a solution? I do not know - who does? Backups are only useful if they actually work and are themselves backed up or maintained in a workable form... what did all those betamax video enthusiasts do when the format changed underneath them?
Interestingly, in making this blarg entry, I lost the first draft [idiot me was beavering away without saving and the program I was using smeffed, taking ALL the blarg with it ... this entry is remarkably different to that one, is that a good or a bad thing, or just a sign of the times?]. When students are writing, does this happen to them, what happens to that effort? Those thoughts, insights, ideas merely cease to be, return to the digital soup ... no electrons were harmed more than 100 million times a second in the making of this blarg entry.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
"Time" by Mr P. Ffloyd remains a masterpiece of lyrics and instrumentation. Anyone who has yet to hear "Dark Side of the Mood" has yet to experience concept and real sound engineering. I have been exploring sound art even dug out my "tape bow violin" [thanks Scotty, your circuitry lives on] and am contemplating getting musical again, want to explore a "laptop orchestra" concept [first popularised by Mr David Toop - a sound artist]. Unsure if there will be any interest, we shall see.
Say hi to your Mum for me.
I wonder if anyone thought about the net weight of all blogs and tweets that exist in the ether, or more importantly the total amount of time wasted globally by people just doing not a lot on the Internet ... is it just me or is being online a LIFE SPONGE? Not that I am taken, kicking and screaming, oh no. I can willingly while away a whole morning catching up on news, drilling down on blog posts, annotating facebook entries, chatting, browsing artworks, exploring foreign politics, participating in forums about obscure topics, sharing the love 140 characters at a time ... but?
There is so much to be interested in, what is the "net effect" however? I fear it is that a generation of people will know very little about a whole lot of things - rarely delving beyond surface knowledge oin anything at all. Do not get me wrong, I understand how this happens - the plethora of information sources and the ease to which you can access them is astounding [who doesnt, for instance, have a net-enabled phone] but really, do we need to twitter whilst on the loo I ask you? So why do I embrace this thin tracery of knowledge, this info-blah that every day threatens to submerge me in a sea of trivia ... because it is so damned interesting that is why.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town, waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
... now I used to make Leadlight windows, and quite enjoyed the creative process [if not so much the final, messy construction stage - black putty and lead channelling were what finally drove me away from the craft]. After nearly 20 years, I was rummaging around under the house anc came across all my old materials and tools, and thought - why not. Designed, cut, constructed and hung a new panel in my laundry - quite satisfying to return to something "hard craft" and tangibly creative, plus we now have another "asset". I had forgotten how magical light is, as it plays through hand cragted and flawed glass, must do some more.
In related news, whilst moving one piece to make way for another, I dropped one - flooping heavy leaded panel, part of the bottom edge crumpled a bit so that is my next job - a restoration, you get that. Chose Copper foiling instead of lead cane for the most recent work because it would weigh a ton if it was leaded and free hanging. EXPLORE if interested.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
Now I am all for obeying copyright laws, but what happens when you want to buy something that is no longer available for sale? Take American McGees "Alice" - a ripper mod on the Quake3 engine, artsy, interesting and not available for sale since 2005? Thank heavens for bit torrent? What about obscure recordings, bootlegs and classic albums from artists now defunct or telly programs that will never get to our shores? Does the present day market economy support such things? Does teh distribution model match what users want? I think not.
...now this raises a larger question, in my opinion - what happens when all we have are DIGITAL records, no physical artefacts? I bought a USB turntable with the view of digitizing some of my rarer and more obscure albums that are not purchaseable by any other means. I carry a lot of digital media but how do I ensure it persists into the future - sure I back it up, but how do I ensure its longevity. Burning them to disk is not a permanent solution [disks have a 100% failure rate] and trusting it to the cloud is perilous as the owner of the storage may just as well up and go [net businesses come and go with alarming pace] ... have we as a society considered the consequences of investing so heavily in digital storage and resources, with less and less physical artefact? I think not. Having sustained catastrophic data loss [a visiting tech guru formatting the drive my H drive was on, with NO backup - a loss I still cannot comprehend as there were resources there that now no longer exist anywhere] Do we as a species merely jettison that which we lose, do we mourn or even notice its passing, or do we painstakingly re-construct/reinvent the wheel? I suspect that countless important records become inaccessible, corrupt or are lost in leviathon systems every day and we barely notice. Is there a solution? I do not know - who does? Backups are only useful if they actually work and are themselves backed up or maintained in a workable form... what did all those betamax video enthusiasts do when the format changed underneath them?
Interestingly, in making this blarg entry, I lost the first draft [idiot me was beavering away without saving and the program I was using smeffed, taking ALL the blarg with it ... this entry is remarkably different to that one, is that a good or a bad thing, or just a sign of the times?]. When students are writing, does this happen to them, what happens to that effort? Those thoughts, insights, ideas merely cease to be, return to the digital soup ... no electrons were harmed more than 100 million times a second in the making of this blarg entry.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
"Time" by Mr P. Ffloyd remains a masterpiece of lyrics and instrumentation. Anyone who has yet to hear "Dark Side of the Mood" has yet to experience concept and real sound engineering. I have been exploring sound art even dug out my "tape bow violin" [thanks Scotty, your circuitry lives on] and am contemplating getting musical again, want to explore a "laptop orchestra" concept [first popularised by Mr David Toop - a sound artist]. Unsure if there will be any interest, we shall see.
Say hi to your Mum for me.
| Feeling | :: | Holidayed |
| Watching | :: | QI [a series that is unlikely EVER to make it from UK telly to Oz, sadly, is funny] |
| Reading | :: | "A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian" by Marina Lewycka [a quaint tale of lust, stupidity and magnificent bosom] |
| Hearing | :: | "A Cloakroom Assembly" [odd spacescapes that are strangely compelling] |
| Accessed | :: | 2045 times so far, not that anyone is counting. |
flopcorn (n.) The unpopped kernels at the bottom of the bowl you unknowingly pick up amongst popped kernels and crack a tooth on.