Archive for the Random category

Note: This is cross posted on the TOKY blog as part of a new series about artful trips our staff have taken.

The Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in 1970 by Robert Smithson. It’s located in the remote Rozel Bay on the north arm of Great Salt Lake in Utah. Even though this is one of the most unique works of art I’ve ever seen, I primarily remember it because of the adventure it was just to get there.

In 2006, my wife (girlfriend at the time), Rachel, and I took a trip out west. We love National Parks, and always manage to base our vacations around them. This vacation was no different, with an itinerary that featured Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, and a drive through the Grand Tetons.

With some convincing on Rachel’s part, we added one more park to the list: Golden Spike National Historic Site. To be clear, though, her primary objective was to see the Spiral Jetty.

After leaving Jackson, Wyoming, we took Highway 89 south through the beautiful Bridger National Forest, passed through Logan, Utah, and made it to Brigham City, where we stayed in a classy 20-room Howard Johnson’s, one of the few hotels in the area.

We woke up early the next day and started our pilgrimage. After about an hour driving through a desolate, arid landscape, we finally arrived at Golden Spike; the temperature was already in the upper 80′s. At this point we had not seen a single sign for the Jetty. The only reason we knew we had 15 more miles was thanks to the Dia Foundation’s somewhat comedic directions (“Immediately you cross a cattle guard. Call this cattle guard #1”; “If you choose to continue…”).

Even with Dia’s instructions, we weren’t sure if we were going in the right direction. Every fork or cattle fence made us stop and question if we missed a turn. Thankfully, there was one sign that let us know we were not on the right path.

As we got closer, I started to feel as though we had driven to another planet. In the distance I could see the lake, which was blood-red. It’s color is “due to the presence of salt-tolerant bacteria and algae that thrive in the extreme 27 percent salinity” (Wikipedia). The land around the lake was extremely arid and covered with large volcanic basalt rocks and the occasional rusted shell of an automobile.

The road came to a stop, and we went on foot down the only trail we could find. After about a mile we came to the Jetty. At the time of our 2006 visit, the water was high and the tops of the rocks were barely sticking out over the red water. Stopping on a hill, I had one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had. TheJetty was in front of me, abandoned oil drills in the distance, dried salt beds to the east and volcanic rock behind me. I felt as though I stumbled into Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan. Aside from Rachel, it seemed as if no other person existed.

The website for the artwork explains how it was built: “Using black basalt rocks and earth from the site, the artist created a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that stretches out counterclockwise into the translucent red water.” While the rocks were originally black, due to the salt, they are now primarily white.

It’s worth noting that the Jetty is only visible when the level of the Great Salt Lake falls below an elevation of 4,197.8 feet. Since the Jetty was built during a drought, it was submerged for three decades until 2004, when it was exposed for almost an entire year.

After walking out as far as we could on the rocks, we meandered a little east of the Jetty to some dry salt beds. The Great Salt Lake has a history of oil drilling, and this area felt like a graveyard for it. The horizon was decorated with abandoned oil rigs while the foreground was scattered with rusted-out oil drums.

To be honest, I hadn’t been very excited about this part of our trip. The Jetty looked interesting in photos, but I wasn’t sure if it would be worth the two days of my precious vacation time. However, after being there, I can honestly say it was one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had.

If you find yourself a day or two drive from Utah, I highly encourage a visit. You won’t forget it.

An endnote: In 2011, the Dia Art Foundation’s lease on Spiral Jetty expired, and the state of Utah took it over. There were many fears over the future of the Jetty, including threats of oil drilling nearby. But just last week, the Dia Foundation announced that it has successfully reacquired the lease from the state, for at least the next 10 years.

If you’ve perused this blog at all, you’ll noticed I’ve had a couple ‘Best of…’ lists that featured my favorite albums from a particular year. I love music. In college I hosted a show on the college radio station, and a good deal of my income has always gone to buying cds, and now mp3s.

In case you haven’t heard, Spotify seems to be all the rage. People are blogging about how great it is and friends on Facebook are handing out invites. I caved to the peer pressure, signed up, and gave it a try. It’s truly a nice service. Granted, it doesn’t have nearly as much music as it claims. For instance, it didn’t have Radiohead’s In Rainbows, Jens Lekman Oh You’re So Silent Jens, any Black Lips albums…etc. 

The lack of these albums isn’t what dissuaded me from using the service. That’s bound to happen. What bothers me is that I’m afraid of what a service like this will do to the music industry. I know that if I paid $10/month for a service like Spotify, I’d be much less inclined to buy more music. And therefore, my music taste will be shaped completely by what is available on Spotify. If an artist isn’t on Spotify, I won’t hear them. I’m afraid that if a service like this becomes popular enough, then labels and bands will have to bend over backwards to play ball with them. Creating music isn’t the most profitable venture one can sign up for. And something like this could make it even harder.

For example, check out this infographic by InformationIsBeautiful.net:

For the sake of music, please keep buying music. Preferably from the artist themselves.

Over the past couple years I’ve had a bit of an about face regarding eBooks. When they first started becoming popular, I loathed them. I was an active participant in the group of people talking about how much they “loved the feel of a book” and how they “loved their bookshelves”…etc.

Fast forward to right now… and I LOVE eBooks. I absolutely love them. And I will tell you why.

I recently got back from a long vacation and loved being able to bring as many books as I want. I read two books in their entirety and dabbled in 3 others. Before eBooks this wasn’t possible. Well, it would be, but my back would be killing me!

I also love taking notes while I read; with eBooks (at least with the iBooks app on the iPad, I don’t know about other platforms) I can do just this without having to decipher my chicken scratch at a later point in time and all my notes, along with the text of the book itself, is instantly searchable. I’m horrible with remembering little details or fabulous quotes. Being able to instantly search for them is a godsend.

I love that I can read in bed late at night with the lights off so that I don’t keep my wife awake.

And the wanna-be eco friendly human inside me is happy that a tree doesn’t have to be cut down just for me to read a book. As lovely as my bookshelf is, I think I can get past that vanity.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love physical books. In fact, I collect old books. I really do love how they feel, as well as the type treatments, illustrations, and most importantly, that smell. And I will continue buying them. In my mind, though, there is a clear difference between old books made by hand and modern books made by a machine in a factory. I’ve purchased too many books where chapters were upside down, or completely missing. These books aren’t, in my opinion, an object that I need to hold onto and pass down to kids or have take up space in my apartment. And after moving to a new city this year, I think I’m ready to ditch almost all of them so that there will be fewer boxes to move next time.

Now, though there are a lot of things I love about eBooks, there is one big elephant still in the room that I haven’t talked about - DRM, or Digital Rights Management. For some reason the publishers didn’t learn a thing from the Apple/Record Label discussions 5 years prior. People do not want DRM. It’s akin to buying a DVD on Amazon and you then have to play it on an Amazon branded DVD player. It’s ridiculous that they want to control what I can do with a product after I’ve purchased it. And this isn’t just Amazon, it’s everyone, including Apple. The publishers (big and small) demand it. This means that I have to have an app for each group selling their book. This is outrageous and completely unusable. I don’t want to have to learn 4-5 different eReading apps.

Now, there are some publishers who sell DRM free eBooks, but they are few and far between and they aren’t offering many New York Times bestsellers.

DRM was one of the leading issues of why I originally disliked eBooks and was the primary reason I never bought a song off of iTunes. So what changed my mind? This article by Wired. I don’t want to post the instructions here due to legal issues, but if you want to start buying eBooks - and you don’t want the hassle of DRM - then this article is for you. It will give instructions to help you strip out the DRM.

And since I’d like to end this on a good note, a new eBook was just announced by a former Pixar designer. This is, in my opinion, the future of eBooks…and it looks pretty amazing.

Every two years, Venice hosts a biennale. It takes place in the Giardini, a beautiful park on the southern tip of the island. Thirty countries have permanent pavilions (dictated by international politics during the 1930′s and Cold War) in the park, and within each pavilion is a curated exhibition to present contemporary art from that country. More countries are added each year, with galleries sprinkled throughout the city.

This year, the US Pavilion is curated by the Indianapolis Musem of Art. My wife started working for the IMA last January, and is part of the team that the IMA has sent to Venice. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to tag along for the week and see what the Biennial is all about.

I’ve been to many, many museums and exhibition openings. However, I’ve never been to an opening quite like the Venice Biennale. It’s a great experience to see the best that the art world has to offer right now. There’s so much one can see. In particular, I loved the political photographs at the Danish Pavilion, as well as Mike Nelson’s work in the British Pavilion.  I will admit, however, that my favorite was the U.S. Pavilion, the three performance pieces and one interactive piece in particular. I’m not usually a fan of performance art. In fact, I usually despise it. So it takes a lot for me to really love it. The artists behind these pieces are Allora and Calzadilla.

The main performance piece, called Track and Field, is outside the entry of the Pavilion. It features an upside-down tank with a treadmill mounted over one of the treads. Throughout the day a runner gets on the treadmill and runs for 20 minutes. The tank and the treadmill have been synced to go the same speed.

Just inside the pavilion are the other two performance pieces, Body in Flight (Delta) and Body in Flight (American). They feature old American Delta plane seats. During the day, a gymnast from USA Gymnastics performs an 18-minute routine on the chairs. With the background of the stark white room, it is amazing to watch these gymnasts flip themselves around these chairs with such grace and beauty.



Another piece was called Algorithm. It featured a custom-made pipe organ that had a Diebold ATM built into it. Anyone can insert their bank card and withdraw money (no fees, even!). The pipe organ then produces a custom score based on the keys the user has pressed on the ATM. It’s an extremely clever, interactive work. The artists collaborated with composer Jonathan Bailey.

I’ve been to Venice once before, a couple years ago, and it was for only 48 hours. I’m quite glad I was able to be here for a full week. It really allowed me to explore and absorb the city, from Tintoretto’s at Scuola Grande di San Rocco to the seafood on Burano (another island in the lagoon).

The Biennale opens to the public on Saturday, June 4 through November 27. If you are planning any trips abroad, I highly recommend stopping in Venice during these dates!

Please note!: I am a programmer, I am not an artist or a designer… let alone an art critic. If you’d like a thorough review, please check out the The Daily Beast review.

This post was cross blogged at the TOKY news blog.

For the past week, I’ve been preparing for a trip to Italy. I’ll be going with my wife to Venice for the Bienalle. Afterwards, we will drive up to Castelrotto for some hiking in the Dolomites.

As I’ve been preparing I took stock of all the amazing tools available to travelers today. It’s crazy how different travel preparation is today than it was 10 or 20 years ago, let alone 40 or 50.

Every trip, for me, starts with TripAdvisor. I can’t imagine staying at a Holiday Inn while in Europe. I want to get off the beaten path and try a local bed and breakfast. TripAdvisor, along with other online resources, help me find those places. In addition, we can get live satellite weather feeds, along with weather history to get average temperatures - always useful when figuring out dates.

Then it all comes back to Google, as it often does when talking about things online. Google Maps. Satellite View, Street View as well as the Google Earth browser plugin. I’m in no way planning every moment of my trip. However, it’s nice to know that I can preview something before hand. I’ll then create a custom map, add about 40 markers of potential interest and then use an iPhone app like Cartographer to download it for offline use.

Then of course, there is the wonderful iPad. Travel companion extraordinaire! From playing movies, to loading up a couple This American Life podcasts as well as downloading 4 or 5 different books for the flight. No longer will I choose my reading material based on size and weight! And I can also include all my music as opposed to my disc man and binder of 25 CDs.

And last but not least, which really isn’t a ‘new’ tool. It’s just my favorite so I thought I’d include it here. A robot headphone splitter so Rachel and I can listen to podcasts or watch movies together!

I know these things won’t work for everyone. Some will probably feel that this takes the ‘adventure’ out of it. However, I’m too OCD in that I like to have things planned. I’m unable to simply get off a train, wander around and find a place. I’d be stressed every minute prior to settling on a place. All these resources let me find places I never imagined. And, therefore, make my trip a lot less stressful and more enjoyable.

What do you know, it’s a blog post talking about launching a new site after a year of inactivity. This is probably the 6th or 7th time I’ve done this. It’s a habit I hope to actually break myself of. To launch a site, and to stick to it! Not that I have many faithful readers or anything, but more so for my own sense of self discipline! I can do this! And I will! (i hope).

It’s a new year, and a new town. For those that don’t know, I now live in Indianapolis, Indiana. I still work for TOKY in St. Louis. My wife is now the Director of Publishing and Media at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

So…. fellow readers. I shall start again!

About every 5 years or so I get an itch to build a computer. Well, with great after holiday flat screen sales, I decided to get a TV for the bedroom and to build a custom home theater pc (HTPC). Building computers has always been fun, even if it can get a little stressful.

In my opinion, building computers is the best way to learn about computers. As a web developer, I don’t have to worry about the hardware that goes into a computer. However, I have a  better idea of how servers work and how certain things can go wrong or cause problems.

This time around I went with the Antec NSK2480 case. It’s a little bigger than the average micro ATX case, but it was made to run cool and quite. A lot of detail and thought went into wire organization (great for my OCD tendancies) as well as padding between hard drives and the top panel to minimize any vibrations.

The rest of the hardware:

• Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 HDMI
• Intel Celeron E3200 Wolfdale
• Crucial RAM
• Scythe Mini Ninja

I also purchased a wireless logitech joystick and a Cideko Air Keyboard. So the only wires are to the tv and to the power.

I am no financial expert. So I will refrain from giving up too much advice. However, there was one item I should of included in my best of 2009 list. And that was paying off my car. And not just paying it off, but paying it off 2 years early.

It started about a year into my loan. I started putting 50 bucks extra with each payment. I’d start realizing that the 50 extra each month didn’t hurt too much. So before I knew it I was paying off two or three payments at once. Now, I know that two or three extra payments at once isn’t possible for everyone. But even just mailing in 20 or 30 bucks extra with each payment can help.

Paying it off, and paying it off early is a very, very good feeling

It’s the first day of 2010! What a better time than now to make a post about my favorite music of 2009? Just a quick note, I am not making a claim that this is the ‘best’ of 2009. Just my personal favorites.

Top 10 Albums:

1. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle. Bill Callahan (aka Smog) has been around for a while. I’ve always enjoyed his music. However, this one just put me in a trance. I found myself listening to it more than any other album that came out in 2009. It’s relaxing with a good hint of darkness to keep it interesting. Sadly he doesn’t have a video out, but you can listen to some tracks on the Drag City link above.

2. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion / Fall Be Kind EP. This was going to be number 3 on the list until Fall Be Kind came out. While technically it’s another album, I see it as a companion piece. Both the album and the EP are amazing and should be checked out.

3. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orcca. Another Domino release! I’m a programmer, not a writer. So, I’m going to end my descriptions here and just post the video :-)

 4. Cass McCombs – Catacombs. Domino Again!

 5. The XX – XX

6. Micachu – Jewellry

 7. The Monks – Black Monk Time. Yes, this is a re-release.. but it needs to be appreciated. The founders of punk.

 8. The Mantles – The Mantles. Sadly no video for these guys. But you can download their single off of their site here.

9. The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa. No clue if this is an ‘official’ video

 10. The Sandwitches – How to Make Ambient Sad Cake. No video for these gals either. But you can listen to the track ‘Back to the Sea’ here.

Apologies for going MIA. I had a bout of the swine flu and then came Thanksgiving, getting slammed at work and then Christmas. So least to say, it’s been quite busy.

And now, we are at that time of the year. The ‘year in review’ post. I’m a music junkie and I am an internet geek. That means I love making lists, and especially love making year end lists.

However, I don’t necessarily love writing a blog, so I’ll keep this short and quick. 3 lists. That’s all.

Top 6 things of the year:

1. Getting married. Yes, as cheesy as that sounds, it’s number one. It was a great time, and I couldn’t be happier.

2. I finally made it to Europe! For the honeymoon we went to Italy. We hit Venice, Rome and Cinque Terre. I can’t recommend Cinque Terre enough. If you want to go somewhere amazing, that isn’t packed with tourists, and isn’t outreagously expensive, I recommend Cinque Terre. You can read more of my thoughts on it on a past blog post.

3. I’m not going to put anything here. The first two deserve some separation from the rest of the pack.

4. Seattle. I have wanted to go to Seattle for more than 10 years. The climate always appealed to me (I have trouble breathing in humid/warm air, so cool climate gives me more energy). The beautiful scenery and all the national parks in close proximity sure doesn’t hurt either. It was all that I hoped it would be.

5. Pentax 6×7. While I’m a tech geek, I like to dabble with the old as well. I like collecting old photos, and I like taking photos with old cameras. For christmas my wife bought me a Pentax 6×7. I was borrowing one from a friend, Mark Katzman, and to my surprise, it is the one she bought me. So I was lucky enough to try the camera out before deciding that it was what I wanted. I have been looking for a medium format camera with a built in light meter for a while. And this one is perfect. The quality of the photos it takes are amazing. Now I have no excuses when I take bad photos! Also, the shutter sounds like a pump action shotgun, which makes me feel pretty bad ass.

6. Dropbox. Dropbox is by far one of the best tech finds of the year. It makes backing up files, quickly sharing photos, or moving files between home and work easy as can be.

Top 3 things I’m looking forward to next year:

1. MYOS. It’s a CMS I built at my work. It is still pretty young and immature. But it’s coming together better than I hoped. So far, it is making building CMS based sites infinitely easier, quicker and more solid.

2. Boxee. My wife and I just bought a tv for the bedroom. I had an old micro form computer sitting at my parents. I built it a couple years ago. It’s all passive heating and is super quiet. I plan on dusting it off and putting Boxee on it!

3. iMac. I think this may be the year I upgrade my iMac. The 27″ iMac’s look stunning. Hear’s to hoping the solve the flickering and the shipping problems that end up with a busted corner.

The final list, my favorite albums of the year will be coming shortly (i mean it).