I’ve started to change just a little how I do these.  It turns out to be better to start one of these one day and finish it the next.  Best to sleep on most decisions including the one deciding when a pai.. oops picture is finished.

Technologic is a track that’s lived on past the album.  Is it one that some American used in their hip hop music??  I think so.  I’ll look that up before the end of this. 

Then there’s all those great youtube vids for this song.   Ok that’s it.. I have to get up and come back to this in a few more moments with all my sources in place!!

Ohh ok - it was Busta Rhymes with Touch It which was bloody excellent song if I remember it right. 

Youtube - here for one. 

The real video clip here.  Let it play in a new window while you look at the picture (press on the picture to see a full size version)

I was reading that initial reports on this album was that it sucked.  But since then it’s been a grower on the world’s conscience, one of those albums that just keep on getting better. 

Obviously this song has a bit more of a message.  Tapping into that was easy.  Actually it’s like they had collected lyrics from a few of the other songs… removed them and then stuck them all in to this one.  They don’t stop.  Albeit, it’s still repetitive don’t mistake a Daft Punk song on this album, even one with lots of words as not being repetitive! 

So where did I go with it?  Well, they have taken note of the lingo that we all use these days, really a lingo that is still only a few years old.  How things change so rapidly at this point in time.  So many aspect of our lives are run in a different fashion to even a few years ago.. (and it continues to change at the same rate).  I’m not sure if they were going on about this very same point in their song, but it’s what I’m going with. 

click to make big

The next step for me was to take that and turn it into a disguise of things changing so fast that sneaky changes make it into our psyche without us noticing.  A different way of thinking.  A way that leaves behind some morals, but amongst the busy changes we don’t notice something worthwhile has gone missing.  It’s the distance between us as real people and the things we do on the net and with computers.  So much happens online, which is sort of invisible to anyone who can’t be bothered actually tracking you individually.  Which people are scared of loosing their anonymity and their privacy.  However, at the same time too much privacy let people go about acting in ways which they never use to act. 

So before I go on and on about this, I’ll just say that I’ve tried to put that into the picture.  You can have a look at it for yourself and hopefully see how I’ve depicted those things?  

You can also buy it here (for the next week) on eBay.  Not any more sorry, that one ended and it didn’t sell!  So you’ve missed your chance to have it for a dollar!  Now if you want it you’ll have to pay me $40 000 to get your grubby mitts on it!

Classic Daft Punk with Robot Rock.  Annoying as all hell, but so perfectly repetitive that you’re quickly hypnotised into loving the song regardless.  Hear it play by pressing here to start a video clip playing in a new window.

I tried to think of robots really having a good time.  Dancing around… and volcanoes came to mind immediately.  Any robot party would definitely have volcanoes!  So my scenery starts with that.  Next, since robots by their nature are always working in such a repetitive way, I decided that stamping cut-outs of dancing robots would be one way a young robot would be able to express rock.  I would like to think they would actually be dancing as well… but that would assume some sort of freedom. 

click it to see the full size 

Moving on from that, isn’t a bit sad that robots could well develop to have a mind of sorts.  With a mind, one can be thoughtful.  But I wondered if that would automatically mean they would have a soul.  ie:  Do you need a mind in order to have a soul?  I’m not going to get into what’s all about souls, but it’s an interesting thought.  So let’s say they don’t… have a soul that is.  And so I’ve put some words in there to the effect of “When the dancing robots realised they had a mind but no soul, they said… Help… Help… Help…     and     oh    fuck”.  (I was about to ask someone if I can swear on here… but there’s no one to ask!)  Yes,  I know it’s moving away from the song, but Daft Punk don’t exactly give me many lyrics to work with here!

Taking that a step further I wanted to point to the inevitable dead end a robot mind faces.  Where there is no further experience they can get to in order to get past their limitations.  It’s the frustration of that I was trying to get in the end.  I’m probably not being precise in how the picture works, so frustration probably takes the form of confusion, being what the coloured bars are suppose to be.  Hmmm.. Well I like how it looks and I’m sure you get the gist anyway.

The coloured bars are actually taken right from Sir Sidney Nolan who’s retrospective I recent saw at the NSW Art Gallery much more variety to the bloke than you would assume.  I had a theory for when he used them (coloured bars), but now I can’t remember what it was??  Did he actually give a reason for the coloured bars? anyone??

So there you go… and why not join the one person so far to make a bid on one of these pictures listed here on eBay.  It didn’t sell - not even for a dollar!! Well that’s a bit of a slap in the face.  So it’s here if anyone wants it?  Send me a few dollars and it’s yours!

Steam Machine is exactly the machine I’m living in right now.  It’s hot here! and we’ve run out of milk so I’m giving ice cream a go in my tea?  Ok here’s the trick - lot’s of sugar.   Oool little white lumps come to the top, pure fat I guess, I can’t recommend it…

A live version of the song with another one is on their myspace website here… but it doesn’t have much of the album version in it, hardly any truth be told.  A good listen just the same.

Now quick while the song is playing.  It’s basically a pinball machine sound track, sinister in sound.  Grungy and dirty like the rest, the only smooth thing in it is ‘Steeeaam Machinnnne’ that is breathing out steam all over the rest of the grungy pinball machine beats.  If I was photographing it in stead of picture making it, I would have definitely taken a photo of an old pin ball machine surrounded in dry ice and darkness beyond. 

It’s repetitive and sort of simplistic made me think of industry stuffing up the skies with steam.  Well at least as far as you often see pollution causing cooling towers being blamed for screwing with the environment.  (Hey TV people, point the cameras at the tall thin stacks, not the low fat ones, but anyway.)

click to make bigger

Out of all that I did this?  Now I can’t remember exactly how the picture relates?  The steam machine is there at the bottom and it is pumping it out, sort of dirty steam all over the back.  Ahh I remember, I also thought I couldn’t miss a train reference and the black bars are sort of tracks.  But also they do well to bring in the heaviness of the sound visually.  Overall, the picture is repetitive beats and marks under which the murky steam swirls below.    

So that’s track 4 on the album Human After All by Daft Punk.

Click on the thumbnail to see a full size version and head over to eBay to buy it if you want… here.  (Ok it sold for a dollar too! - I’ve got to start listing these as starting a $3 to cover my listing fees)

More on the way!

The very first one! 

I was actually going to reorder these not in the order I had painted them, since it seemed they were getting better as I went.  (a little secret… I’ve already done a few ahead of time).  But I figured to see them in the same order I do them is probably more interesting.   

The 1st track off the album Human After All by Daft Punk is actually the title track!  Well you would think that meant it was a bit more important than the rest of them… well wouldn’t you think so??  So I decided it should be the last picture to be painted.  By that time, I figure I will be at saturation point and sort of ready to do that one-footed karate kid kick to the picture.  HAA will be in my veins.  (Actually, since my foot is actually broken atm, that makes more sense than you may think!)  

The prime time of your life; a very crunchy sounding song.  If you open this link (it will be in a new window) a streaming video clip for the song start playing.  Big bass thump thump thumps in.  I wasn’t sure either at this stage how I was actually going to do this whole song to art thing?  So I started as simply as possible, which seemed to mean leaving the actual lyrics alone and just concentrating on the sounds and progression of the track.  For whatever reason, I did this as if travelling from left to right across the paper as the song progresses.  Everything is wide open in the start, the beat gradually raises, the tempo increases and everything intensifies.  Over all this are the words “the prime time of your life” ringing in waves.  What starts out open and definite gradually bears in on being closed and cluttered cramping down to pure noise, which shatters suddenly leaving that a smooth wake of sound.  The harmonics of the previous deafening noise is all that remain and green felt right for that.  In the song that happens right at the end, just in the last few seconds.  But in terms of presence I had to give those few seconds much more room on paper, in order to match how much space it takes up the song really.  

As I was finishing it, I decided that at some stage I had to leave the song behind for a moment and see what the picture wanted.  I’ll admit, at that point I felt rusty as I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  Extra red dots went on, the one in the middle had been there right from the start… I guess that is the prime time red dot, but I thought it to need company.  I’m not so sure about it even now.  But when I listen to the song it makes more sense. 

Hope you like it. 

It will be on eBay for the next 7 days find it here, starting at $1. (And as it turns out it finished at $1! as well, well my fears of having an initial success with this only to have it followed by a deflating slide into obscurity have gone unfounded!)   I’ll be sending it off unframed, just gently rolled up.  

Have any of you seen websites like a painting a day?  I discovered that website a while ago now.  I since discovered there are quite a few people doing similar things all over the web. 

Well I figure, the excuse of a new year is enough to go and give something similar a wack.  But I don’t want to simply copy that exact idea, that’s a little boring… so I’m added something right from the middle of my own grey matter. 

Not that it’s a bad idea on it’s own, but maybe to some it’s not quite there.  I think to many, art is not really a heartfelt interest, so I want to put a bit more into the mix.  After all, we’re all wanting more.  Yep, more for the average everyday peruser of pages like this one…

(did you know that peruse should actually mean to read or study thoroughly, but I’ve never known that and only ever used it to mean something like ‘browse’ or ‘lightly read’)

so what I’m talking about is art and then some.  And that’s a special ‘some’, which in the end, might just be enough to raise your interest in art all round.  Which I guess sounds like a nice goal.  This didn’t actually have a goal until just then mind you.

Do you get the feeling I’ve built this up a little too much?  Well anyway, here it is. 

Music, I also love listening to all sorts of music, or more precisly, all of the sorts of music that I like anyway.  Which is not all sorts of music truth be told but a great many sorts of it at least.  And it occurred to me that what I used to do - years ago in the privacy of my bedroom, can now be brought out into public thanks to the internet.  That is to paint or ‘do pictures’ as I prefer to say, I hate using the word ‘paintings’) that relate directly to a particular song.  What I’m going to do pick my current high rotation album; and paint a picture for each of the songs on there.  Hopefully, one per day.  Take a photo of it, put it up here somewhere and write a quick thing about the song and the picture.  Maybe even trying to explain how I think they are related!  Yes!  I know that in itself is nothing, anything like a new idea.  But it’s new enough for me.  Plus it’s something I like doing anyway. 

One more thing, and I’m not sure if this is the right place to express this disclaimer, but I should say that I don’t ever intend to make a connection between song and art that necessarily makes sense to you.  Actually in all likelihood, it will make sense to no one but me.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not still interesting look at and read about… right?

Oh, and I almost forgot to say this whole thing is going to be interactive as well!  Yes, I’ll put each picture on eBay the same day I stick it on here. So you can bid on it and buy it if you like it.  Maybe that’s not the type of interactivity you were hoping for, but well that’s going to have to suffice for now. 

There’s no point talking about this any further as I already have gone ahead and got my first painting done.  There should be a link somewhere to it here once I get on with uploading the picture and writing somthing about it.  I have to in fact as it is already listed on eBay as I type. 

I’ve been meaning to let everyone who reads this little section of the web that there is an exhibition I’ve got going on at The Feather Gallery at the moment… well it’s not my exhibition, but I do run the gallery… so it’s sort of like mine.

Well anyway, head over to www.thefeathergallery.com but don’t delay as the exhibition is ending today.  

Now lets say you’re reading this way past the time I posted it… that’s not a big problem.  Still go and have a look, there’ll-no-doubt still be a link up and maybe even a way to buy the art (probably not as cheap as it is now though).

That’s all for this one… just a short bit of cross promotion! 

Back to some less controversial material for me, the third and last part of my little series of ideas I’ve had floating around in my head.  Controversial? Well, in my last post about Ultra Mobile PC’s, I raised a few eyebrows, I mentioned something about dead-end roads, which didn’t go down too well with some UMPC folk.

But I got a few interesting comments.  One of them pointed towards the fact that cars today come in many and varied shapes and offer a variety of solutions to a variety of people.  Essentially they were saying that Ultra Mobile PCs will be many and varied as well and suits different groups of people.  That maybe so, but I would argue that just because they are many and varied doesn’t mean that any of them are actually meeting our requirements as best they could.  If I was to use the same analogy, I would say the current UMPC’s are obviously still at the stage of the Model T ford or even earlier.  My point being that many mechanical and design details in the early evolutionary stage of the car are no longer with us, they came to a natural dead end and were replaced with better and longer lasting solutions… but anyway.  Or  is it?

It got me thinking, and the more I analyse it, the more it becomes apparent that people are used to dealing with inadequacies in most of the things they use in their day-to-day life - a sort of apathy.  But don’t mistake it for thinking things are working well for you.

This all brings me to the topic of this post, it seems the internal combustion engine… that burns petrol - is another thing that is on a dead end track.  Okay, maybe not completely dead end, but in the form of a ‘power plant’ for day-to-day transport, that seems to be an untenable proposition.  Rather than going into all the assumptions of that I’m just going to jump ahead to say that it seems electrical power will, more than likely, be the replacement.  The problem with that though, is the storage of energy.  The means of taking electrical energy with you in some sort portable form is decades behind all the other technology involved with electrical vehicles.  So what can be done in the meantime?  I think there is a solution…

(more…)

Out of nowhere, I’ve found myself hooked on reading blogs about Ultramobile PC’s (UMPC’s) and tablets-PC.  I’m addicted to reading about the lives these people lead, constantly receiving, buying, using and reviewing Tablet PC and UMPC’s as well!  I’m not sure where they get the money? I mean, they can’t seem to get enough of them!  More annoyingly… neither can I stop reading about whole thing. 

We all (myself and them) are feeding off the same thing I guess, except (since I don’t actually own a UMPC or tablet) I feel like I’m a bit more objective about the ‘apples of their eyes’.  For me, I find TabletPC’s and UMPC interesting more because they come so agonisingly close to something which will be so perfect, one of those things you’ll wonder “how did we cope before we had these?”  And like anything so close… so almost right, they can be so wrong!   That’s the other reason why I’m addicted.   

Admittedly, I have to separate my thoughts on UMPC’s from those on Tablet PC’s.  Personally, I think a Tablet PC will replace my laptop one day soon, and I’ll never look back.  Not so, for the current crop of UMPC’s, which seemingly have grown out of the Tablet PC scene.  I guess the two are related, UMPC’s do tend to use touch screens, so…

Anyway, the topic for this post has been developing in my head over the last month or so, my view from a distance has lead me to a number of conclusions about why these people are in such a frenzy over these things and why they are to talk about them at length for 100 minutes at a time.  And when you can talk about something for so long (it even remains vaguely interesting) whatever you’re discussing probably has more than just a few issues with it! 

So what’s this about?  It’s about how and why UMPC’s come so close to being right, but I think they have gone down a dead end road which finishes in no-mans-land!

I’ll explain.  To my mind, there a bunch of practical design issues that were been left behind in the… rush?  maybe? to produce gadgets that hook into the hype of ‘a new thing’.  The new thing being pushed by MS and Intel, you know the origami concept?  I don’t have a problem with companies trying to introduce new concepts for products, but they must have hoped that the manufactures would have given a little more thought to what they would create?  I mean is this a case of getting the horse upside down or something?  They’ve been busy developing a market for origami, a device they say we ought to need; but did anyone think to wonder what it is we actually need?

So ask yourself… what is it you actually need?  Then ask yourself what can provide that?  Or what will provide that?

When I ask that, I end up with something different, a warm bath?  Well yes, but also a useful little gadget, but the problem is it doesn’t really exist right now.  Why it doesn’t exist now brings me back to the practical issues I think they’ve missed.  This really goes hand in hand with the ‘what I need?’ question.

1. What I need is a way to have access to the internet as I know it (on a PC screen) when I’m out and about.  So what do I mean ‘out and about’?  Do I mean Walking?  In a shop, in the car, at a friend’s place - getting lunch, in the park, standing up?…  Sitting down?  I would say all of the above. 
2. I also need a phone… got that! Nothing new there, and lets not try to reinvent the phone. 
3. Finally, productivity away from the office or home – out and about… umm?  All the time?   So that’s 100% productive… all the time?  Sure, I could aim for 100%, but how often do I have to be 100% productive when I’m ‘out and about’?  Probably worth asking that question for yourself, and also this one… wouldn’t I keep on working at my desk even though I could be working beside a flip’n lake or something? 

I appreciate that is different for people working on the road… but even then, don’t many people on the road simply save doing intensive work for when they’re back at base?  Having said all that, I guess if I could have access to good levels of productivity, then that’s all-the-better. 

4.  (Yeah I know 3 was suppose to be the last)… anyway, same goes for GPS navigation, maybe not essential, but nice. 

So that’s a rundown on the everyday practical use I could see in my life for one of these. 

The next practical question I ask is - how I want it? 
Ideally, I want it in the form of something that goes in my pocket, where I forget I have it until I need it. 
Next I want it to be big enough to read and see sensibly.  I don’t want to peer!  For example if I read a magazine I’m not peering at it.  If I’m looking at the address list in my phone I’m peering. 

For me that means when I access the internet on the go I want to see it at fairly normal size.  For me I would say 12in diagonal semi-widescreen would be a comfortable viewing size.  Maybe a little smaller, 10in to 12 inches, it’s hard to say for sure.

So I want it in my pocket and I want it to be viewable…. um… that doesn’t exist right now.  hmmm.  Pockets are not that big and screens don’t fold. 

Don’t panic!  That just means we’re going to be looking at a trade-off with those 2 things.  I mean, this is practical stuff!  Do I want viewable screen or… small size?  I’m picking viewable screen, maybe you like to peer at things?  But I don’t.  (and …And! trying to achieve both things with today’s technology is the dead end I’m talking about,  but anyway I’ve moved on from there… ) 

That’s a big step forward:  This thing, whatever it is - it will not be going in my pocket!  Soooo…. I have to carry it.  Nooooo, not in my hand all day, it will have to go into a bag.  So for me this all comes down to what size bag am I likely to carry around?  If I answer that, then I’ll be in the right place to decide what sort and size of internet access UMPC type of thing is right for me. 

Just looking around at the bags available, I would go so far as to say that a computer company planning on making the perfect mobile computer, should also be making the perfect bag for it. 

(There are some nice bags out there, but bag making people still only think of a ‘bag’ like something you put things in… I feel it could be more than that, buy maybe I’ll go into that in another post.)

In my case, I’ve looked around and a leather portfolio or a small over the shoulder bag, or small backpack would be fine.  So what can I fit in there?  Satchel bags will take an A4 notepad and a few other things… over the shoulder will take a few books and notepads and backpack will take the same.  I see the satchel bag as the smallest out of those.  Hence this thing will have to be thin, but can be up to the size of an A4 page… easy.  Well sort of, since the other aspect is its weight.  It would be really nice to be able to hold this thing in one hand without it ripping your shoulder off!  But I leave that thought alone for the moment.

In light of that, lets go back to my list of want’s… there was the question of productivity… now that we know this thing doesn’t go in a pocket, maybe some level of productivity is possible?  And let everyone face facts!  There’s a certain small size, below which, productivity really falls off.  However, I’ve decided that my screen should be around 10in to 12in diagonal… maybe adding some productivity credentials is more of an option now?  Trading off small size for view-ability flowed right on to potentially better productivity. 

As I think about this, I keep coming back to the fact that these devices are never going to fit in your pocket - they will always be carried in a bag, so why on earth do they have to so small?  Maybe there’s a belief that ‘small’ must be ‘light’, but unfortunately the little UMPC’s that are reasonably powerful are heavy (by all accounts I haven’t picked one up myself.)  I’m trying to think of where this might be important, and the only time I can think of is when you’re using this thing standing up, maybe on a street corner walking somewhere on a job site… or on a train or bus.  In which case, sure it has to be light, smallish but most importantly comfortable to hold with one hand!  I don’t think it means it has to be almost small enough to fit in a pocket… but not quite?

Hence, I think this is where the argument stops, let PDA’s or smart-phones be at one end and small Tablet PC’s at the other – thin, convertible, with a screen size 10 – 12in.  And the middle ground… serves no real purpose at all!  I’m sure the UMPC lovers would argue – “Not so!”.  I don’t know, maybe they like the fact it’s almost right.   (ok… that sounds a little too harsh)

There’s a concept in air-conditioning and ventilation design that talks of ‘hunting’ or ‘fan hunting’.  It happens where the system as a whole is not in balance a vicious circle is set up where the fan speed will ‘hunt’ up and down, but never finding a steady resting place.  I think the same thing is happening in the UMPC scene.  Back and forth they go – ‘productivity!’, ‘can’t pocket’, ‘too big’, ‘screen too small’, ‘no productivity’, ‘not mobile’, ‘too big’, ‘hard to read’, ‘no keyboard’, ‘too heavy’, ‘lacking features’.  Get the idea?  Actually, I don’t mind the fact they’re stuck in that spin cycle, it’s fun watching the whole thing go round and round.

This all points to a conclusion I came to in my very first post here – at the end of the day, in an effort to make UMPC’s a ‘gap filler’ between PDA’s and laptops they have ended up creating a compromise of those 2 things, but in the process the compromises made, fail the end product.  They end up not being particularly good at anything.  Well… for me anyway.

I thought I would add yet another page to the many dedicated to the art of building bicycle lights.  But before I dive into it, a little background on where I’m coming from when I first approached this.

Since the day someone accused us of entering the Mont 24hr bike race a few years ago, I realised that between Amirah and myself we would need some decent lights.  The sort of lights you can race down a single track at 3am and not be left arhh… in the dark?  Well, hoping to come across someone with proper lights, so you can follow them like a shadow, cataloguing every rock and root that passes briefly through their nice light, before it passes into darkness heading for your front wheel.

Anyway, with that in mind, I had a decision to make, I could either go out an buy two pairs of bike lights from the shop which (if they’re to of any use at all) cost a fortune for what you originally think should just be a globe, switch, wires and battery.   Or make our own!  I can say in hindsight, if I was making lights for just one, I would seriously consider paying the money for some off the shelve lights; on sale perhaps.  However, we were 2, and that ultimately swayed me in the direction of making our own.

First stop was web research, what you’re doing now I guess.  Like you probably have, I found many many website that show you various ways of doing this.  You didn’t?  Well there are a bunch you can get to from Mike Bentley’s page.  Sorry, there’s a number of dead links in there though. 

So far so good, but what did I learn?    ************************* 

(more…)

The second little idea I’ve wanted to put up here is not really a big one, but something I would immensely love to see put into action.

I’m not big on shopping for clothes at the best of times.  But it occurred to me the last time I went in to one of the big department stores to buy some pants or something… It took me forever and was an extremely frustrating process.  No wonder I don’t like doing it.

The reason being that my size is at the small end of ‘men’s’ sizes.  So I’ve had to develop a method of roaming around the aisles, not paying attention to styles or colours, just working out which racks actually have something in my size.  In the bigger department stores working that out is an epic task in itself.  Even in medium size stores, it takes a fair bit of searching.  By the time I actually find something that fits let alone something I like, I’m fairly frazzled and often ready to go home not buying anything. 

So what I’m suggesting is not a huge thing, but it would make shopping for people like me so much easier. 

Why don’t they arrange shops according to clothing size? 

It would be marvellous to be able to walk to a designated area of the shop and know that every item of clothing you see will (more or less) fit you!  They’re all there… if they don’t have your size… you won’t be seeing it.  (Nothing worse than seeing the perfect pair of pants, only to find them in every size but yours.)

If the shopkeepers were really careful, they could even account for different brand sizes, I mean in some brands, I might be a small, in others – a medium.  The sorting should be based on the size of the body it’s going on and not the number on the tag. 

If someone told me a store had opened that was arranged like that… I suspect I would never shop anywhere else again!

Better yet!  (…and this probably applies to big department stores more so) they could group all the different types of clothing in my size in that one location… shoes, undies, gloves, T-shits, suits, jumpers… the list goes on.

Once I see a shop like that, I’ll start my campaign to start a supermarket that arranges their shelves in terms of recipes instead of individual ingredients.  Ha! – The recipes could be listed at the end of each aisle.  Soups to the left, soufflés to the right!!   Hey don’t laugh! – Many supermarkets let you shop online now. Online, this sort of thing would be a cinch to arrange.