general

My conversation with Jeanette Hayes about computing styles continued at last night's Speed Show (one of a series of exhibitions in internet cafes; last night's was organized by Lindsay Howard).

Brian Droutcour reported this dialogue on his twitter:

Tom Moody was talking about Apple and Flash and then Jeanette Hayes walked in and said "it's so weird to see my blog on a PC!"

Jeanette: "this is such a fun keyboard!" It's beige. Tom: "welcome to my life."

Joking aside, an awkward aspect of art shows in internet cafes, I think, is having artists who are there by choice (using those clunky old PCs) displacing people needing to check emails, do e-commerce etc. Some of the regulars got a bit testy having to look for unoccupied workstations. Was impressed, however, to see that the computer chosen to host Erik Stinson's essay about the New Creativity (the focal point and inspiration for the show) was running Linux!

Not to take pleasure in others' misfortune but let's note this announcement in the online magazine Salon about an ad on its site that automatically redirected Apple users to a page that commenced loading the "Mac Defender" malware. Sorry about that, Salon says, and here's a security alert from Apple telling you how to "avoid or remove" Mac Defender.

In the past we Windows users learned to keep our virus woes to ourselves around Mac acquaintances lest we hear a smug speech about "Oh, gosh that sounds terrible but I don't have those problems because... I'm on Mac." Surprise, about the time Steve Jobs overtakes Bill Gates as the world's premium software provider we start reading stories that the Mighty Immune Tech Whiz company gets the same kind of cooties as Brand X users. Just wanted to put this down for the record.

Change is wonderful; continuity also doesn't hurt. The desire for continuity isn't the same thing as conservatism or clock-stopping; it's ultimately efficient not to reinvent constantly. One might ask: Does the change improve or does it just create anxiety so someone can sell you a solution? "If it ain't broke don't fix it" may be the most violated truism in modern society.

For drawing I sometimes use a Wacom tablet. After I installed Windows 7, concentric circles began appearing on the screen whenever the pen touched the tablet--like little animated pond ripples. Yuck. Besides looking horrible, it was incredibly distracting if you were trying to draw, and even slowed down the rendering speed of brush movements!

On a European Wacom forum I learned that the ripples are a Windows, um, innovation called "pen feedback." There is no equivalent effect for the mouse--just pens. The only way to turn them off is with preferences buried deep in the OS. One user suggested the following:

Type "gpedit" in the command line window and press enter. Now, at the new window that opens, navigate to
User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Tablet PC > Cursor.

Now enable the Turn off pen feedback setting.

If this doesn't work for you there are other settings in the tablet pc folder you can deactivate. [Not that I could find - TM]

Done, this way you deactivate the annoying circles without losing the other windows tablet features =) [Not that you want any of those features - TM]

I can now draw again! This is a perfect example of where a software designer/engineer who is obviously not an artist steps all over users to add bells and whistles justifying your expensive upgrade.

Andre Breton was the pope of surrealism - who is the pope of GIFs?

lack of broader fame is no impediment to having stalkers

i may actually finish that Huysmans book I started in my 20s...

when you put your artwork out there and people talk about it, they are not trolling

the beauty, tragedy & hilarity of modular synth ownership http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu-spR1M55o

sophistic reasoning, editorial elisions, and logical circumlocutions to avoid saying you misspoke

dreamed I poured out my life story to my dentist

the old, angry artist calls the critic names after the show; the young, angry artist does it beforehand

exhibition idea: the Poor Image ( http://bit.ly/5AwXpU ) vs the Weak Universal Gesture ( http://bit.ly/apxW6f ) - which is paltrier?

high correlation between artists who talk about the impossibility of sorting high and low and those looking upwards for validation