My own private art gallery

As I noted earlier, I've been thinking of dressing up the stark and barren wildernesses that are the walls of my office. A hunt around in the dark void that is the space under the stairs where outdated artwork, the odd exercise machine, and the luggage are all kept revealed absolutely nothing useful, unless you count dodgy floral prints and a beer poster or two. So, on to plan B, which was asking you lot for advice. After receiving a large number (note 1) of very useful (note 2) suggestions, I've decided, for now anyway, to put the following bits of my own digital art on my wall (thanks, Debi, for the encouragement).


Some kind of music collage multimedia thing.


The same thing after extensive Photoshoppery monkeyshines.

Printed at 8 and a half by 11 inches with a cheap HP inkjet on matte brochure paper, and displayed in frameless glass picture mounts from the local dollar store, they look rather attractive but a bit small and lost. It's a start, though. My co-workers have very kindly hidden their confusion and made only polite noises so far (at least in my presence).

I've since added these two, which the discerning of eye will realize are simply slightly processed negatives of the others:





Actually, I reduced the contrast on the last one and applied a bit of warming filter, to make it a bit less stark black and white than what's shown here, but you get the idea, I think.

All of these were derived from this awful piece of, and I use the term loosely, multimedia art, which I made in late 1987 or possibly early 1988:


Paper, markers, crayon, paint and glue.


Next up: photographs. Of birds' nests, rocks, fence rails, flowers, and the like. You've been warned.


Note 1: not.
Note 2: not.

Scaryduck moment

Junior Ricardipus #1's joke of the day:

Q: What kind of wild cat needs to go to the toilet?
A: A poo-ma!!!!

For those who don't get it, it's a pun. Puma.

It's a non-stop laugh-fest around here, I tell you.

YYZ to FL and back, in six easy photos

As promised, here are a few photos I took on my recent Florida trip, disposable film camera in hand.

It was snowy before I left, although I got out of Toronto in a window between the ice pellets in the morning, and the 30+ centimetres of snow that started in the late afternoon. This same storm pounded the midwestern US, causing all kinds of problems for people changing planes in Chicago, Detroit and similar places.




The hotel was rather nice, with quaint little round balconies:





The view in the other direction gives you some idea of the flatness of this part of Southwest Florida:




The beach was nice too, and I even managed to find a couple of shells to bring back for the kids.




The flight back was uneventful:




And, of course, it was snowing again when I got home.





So there you go. These and a couple of others are in this Flickr set.

Family Day

Family Day. Your new Statutory Holiday in the Province of Ontario.

Yes, it was Family Day on Monday, a day I got to stay home from work. An extra day of running interference and deflecting the kids from Mrs. Ricardipus as she wades through her mounds of lesson plans, assignments, essays and readings.

This, as far as I can tell, came about for two obvious reasons: as a public relations move by the current Provincial Government, and because there's been low-level griping for years now that "there just isn't a statutory holiday in February". Nobody seems to have remembered that there usually isn't one in March either (unless Easter is particularly early), not to mention June, October or November. Unless you're a government, post office or bank employee, in which case you get days like Remembrance Day off, even though the rest of us have to work. Possibly, it was also instituted as some of the other Canadian Provinces also have one, and gosh, why doesn't Ontario as well?

Naturally, some companies have responded simply by trimming one "float" day (a kind of free-use, paid day off) from their employees and replacing it with this new holiday. It still costs the company more, since they have to pay holiday pay for the new day, but the impact on the employee is negative - basically, he or she is now forced to take February the 18th off, instead of a day some other time in the year when it might be a lot more convenient, or necessary.

For a lot of businesses, of course, this is a windfall - what was previously just another dead Monday is now an opportunity to be open and actually expect to see customers coming in the door. Restaurants, the Science Centre, places like the local reptile zoo, kids' play parks - all are probably doing better as a result of this new holiday.

However, if we think about it a bit further, we begin to find all kinds of other people who don't benefit. Federal Government employees, for one (including the post office - ah, the delicious irony!), all of whom have to work. The self-employed, who now have another day of child care expenses (or just plain being distracted by having the kids at home) to deal with. Business owners who need to stay open, and who now have to pay their employees another day of holiday pay (and endure the grumbling that they should be at home enjoying the holiday). And then there are those who object simply on ideological, or even semantic, grounds - people without children who may or may not consider themselves a "family", people who resent the implication that they don't already spend enough time with their families, people in non-traditional relationships that are already a sore point when terms like "family", "spouse" and "common-law" get used.

Ah well. I spent the morning with the Junior Ricardipi at said reptile zoo, and if you'd like to see some photos, do feel free to look here.


My new Family Day buddy.

Then lunch out with the kiddies, and scooting JR#2 off to a birthday party later on (at one of those now-happy-to-be-open businesses). The rest of the holiday weekend? A delightful mélange of replacing the smoke detectors, scrubbing the laundry sink, and purchasing some spiffy new cordless phones to replace the old V-Tech, some parts of which can now be found here.


Part of the phone's guts.

All in all, an average holiday weekend, I guess.

Ye Olde Snowman Tayle

From Junior Ricardipus #1's homework assignment, February 13, 2008:


One day, I was walking home from school. I was walking in a field. It was snowing gently. Then I saw a snowman in the field. When I got to the road, I heard a thump, thump thump behind me. I turned around and saw a snowman moving! It looked just like the snowman I saw in the in the field! I walked more and heard the thump thump again. I turned around and there was the snowman. I said "what an annoying thing" and told it to go away, but it just scrached it's head! I screamed as loud as I could in his ear, but it didn't hear me! So, I just walked home to think of a solution there. When I got home I decided to crush it with my hands. And I did.


Now that's good reading.

Collection

for _____.


"This kiss is for the whole world" - Schiller


I will build an icon of you,
a shrine. In it I will put
all the things you have given me:
hours of time, one kiss or many,
two dried tears,
a loving look. In it
I will put my hope, my
fear. In it I will put
all of you I still have
when you are not here.
I will roll these things into a
ball, a blinding orb, a marble
small, hard and brilliant,
set in my palm.
I will roll it from me,
up a mountainside,
into the dark sky.
It will glow there like a star.
It will perhaps remind us of love.
And you,
you will still be here.

Together, we start again
our collection.

Florida

I'm in it, it is warm, and as usual I'm sleeping poorly in my hotel room as the bed is too springy and the pillows too soft. But as I say, it is warm, and unlike some of my colleagues from British Columbia, the midwestern USA and other points in that general direction, I actually got here more or less on time.

One acquaintance, who lives in Iowa, arrived here in the middle of the day on Friday. Having left home on Wednesday. Seems there was a bit of snow.

However, all is mainly well, I am learning lots about complicated and newfangled DNA sequencing technologies, and am slated to return home tomorrow, nearly-full disposable film camera in hand, so we'll see whether that yields any halfway decent pictures. I have high hopes for the shots of the fireworks on Thursday night, but realistically they'll probably be all out of focus and useless.

Not much else to report... might go for a nap now. Later, all.

Ow. And also, argh.

To quote myself over at another web forum where I probably spend waaaay too much time:

Ow: my neck is fankled up and sends shooting pains down under my right shoulderblade every time I move the wrong way (i.e., about once every two minutes on average).

Argh: there is a winter storm watch for tonight and tomorrow, which will probably result in me getting stuck in the airport with a delayed or cancelled flight. On my way to Florida, of all places.

That is all.

Saturday morning after the snow.

Pecking away on the laptop, as I do, while thinking a bit about shoveling last night's somewhat anticlimactic winter storm out of the driveway. Thinking about it, I said. Not doing it.

Second cup of coffee, and hunger's setting in. Computers and breakfast... a combination that might reasonably result in this kind of nonsense:


Egg and chips, of course.

One might argue that I should be working on my government funding agency report, rather than taking silly photos like that one. One making such an argument would, however, get absolutely no sympathy from me. I am an accomplished, unapologetic and highly inventive procrastinator. Today's efforts have reached new heights, through the use of various tweaky applications such as Vexer, the bewildering Djuhn, and even dear old IrfanView:


Djuhn, followed by cut 'n paste, followed by Vexer. More or less.


Some lame mixed media thing, scanned and hacked to bits, then coloured with Vexer.


The same thing again, grayscaled and sepia'd and processed in IrfanView, etc. etc. etc.

Deadlines? What deadlines?