Taking a poke (or two) at the 2012 election

I know, I know, enough with the election stuff already. Maybe some pokes at the election issues will neutralize the vitriol a little.  Of course anything I say will be biased, because it's about a biased situation -- kinda like trying to defend your honor after being accused of lying:  "But, but it's the truth, I swear it..." Then again, I have my favored outcome, too.

When looking for cartoons about the 2012 election, I found collections at two long-established American publications and a publication founded in 1995.  Since I've found a number of cartoonists are featured on GoComics, here's some info about it:

GoComics is a website launched in 2005 by the digital entertainment provider Uclick. It was originally created as a distribution portal for comic strips on mobile phones, but in 2006, the site was redesigned and expanded to include online strips and cartoons. GoComics publishes editorial cartoons, mobile content and daily comics; thus its subtitle toon in daily.

A collection of 29 cartoons by a variety of cartoonists was found at the Washington Post in a slideshow under the heading or "The best cartoons on election 2012." One of the cartoons I like (but am unable to present here) is by Chan Lowe, so here's another of his from GoComics:

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From a now unavailable collection of political cartoons at the New Yorker here's one by Frank Modell that pretty much describes the political thinking this year.

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This one's by John Cole, editorial cartoonist for the Times-Tribune:

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That's a wrap for today, Folks.

-- Marge

Checking out Sketchup

SketchUp, a program previously offered by Google but now run by Trimble, is used for 3D modeling and has a number of different types of products.  Follow the Wikipedia link above to get an idea of its capabilities.  The basic program is free; there is a Pro version available.  Look here for the program's hardware requirements.  A Google account is required for some of the functions described below.

Assuming that most of us will be trying/using the free version, that's what I downloaded and installed.  Not having given it a real try, I'm hesitant to make a judgment on its overall usefulness for modeling.  There are some nice features like a tape measure and a protractor.  It took me a while to figure out that I had to tab when creating a line to enter the line length.  Curious thing, no sphere is available as a primitive, you have to build one (tricky) or download one from the 3D Warehouse.

Speaking of the 3D Warehouse, it's the features available through Sketchup that I find more intriguing.

For an example there's Building Maker (accessed through an icon on the upper task bar).  Google describes it thus:

Building Maker is a 3D modeling tool for adding buildings to Google Earth. It's fun to use, and an easy way to get on the 3D map. Here's how it works:

• Select a city from around the world.
• Make a building with photos we provide.
• Save your building and it will be reviewed.
• See your 3D building in Google Earth!

And there's SketchUp Island, a blog where contests and challenges for SketchUp are featured.

You can preview your model in Google Earth by clicking the Google Earth icon, also in the upper task bar.  A word of warning -- I didn't have a place set so my model showed up in Boulder, Colorado; in fact, it always shows up in Boulder, Colorado. Hmmm....

An image of an area you find in Google Earth is available by clicking on the "Add more imagery..." icon in the upper task bar.  It can become the terrain for your model.

If you tire of trying to build your own model, you can download models built and uploaded by other users by clicking on the cardboard box with a down arrow next to the Google Earth icon.  Then you can adapt them (not all are adaptable).  Some require unlocking, some have the unlock function disabled. Upload your own finished model by using the cardboard box with the up arrow.

What I've listed here are just some of the features in SketchUp and I've only touched on how to use them.

Take a look for yourself -- it's free.

-- Marge

Gone fishin'

Researching the metaverse and Google/Trimble Sketchup, I went into overload and bailed for the day.  So...gone fishin', although I've never caught a fish big enough to keep.  I just like to get out and watch the sunlight dance on the water and listen to the trees rustle.

In the meantime you can play a game at National Geographic Kids.

Or you can listen to Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong sing about it:

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Or you can take a moment for meditation:

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Gone fishin'...

-- Marge

Rainy Bluesy Monday

Here in Anchorage winter's moving in.  Yesterday the wind howled and rattled the trees and it rained most of the day.  In keeping with the mood I'm serving up some blues 'cause I like them.  My friend Shal, who sang with a band called Java, is my blues mama; she recommends artists and sends me links to their music.

Here are five for Monday, plus an irresistible cut from the movie "Blues Brothers":

Bernard Allison - "Chills and Thrills" (2008):

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Jonny Lang - "Lie to Me":

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Coco Montoya - "It's My Own Tears":

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Bonnie Raitt - "Love Me Like a Man" (live):

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Blues Brothers - Think (Aretha Franklin):

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Hmmmm, the sun just came out.

-- Marge

Trying-to-stay-awake Friday...

...need more coffee.

Ah, coffee, where would we be without it.  It has benefits, y'know.  Amanda Chan at The Huffington Post says:

But studies show that we may be benefitting [sic] from more than just the energy-boosting caffeine in coffee -- we might also be reaping its cancer-preventing and depression-lowering effects, just to name a couple.

A number of sites are dedicated to coffee or feature coffee humor pages.  Examples are CoffeeFair and ivman's blague.

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Cartoonist Randy Glasbergen must like coffee a lot; from his coffee-humor pages there's this:

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Funny how you suddenly wake up at the end of the "it's my Friday" workday.


-- Marge

Documentary photography

This post was inspired by photographer J.J. Bentley, who posts regularly to Google+.

JJ's work reminds me of that by Dorothea Lange, Robert Frank, and Elliott Erwitt.  Many of Dorothea's most memorable photos come from work done during the Depression.  Robert Frank traveled across America taking photos; his major work, a book titled The Americans, is said to have redefined photography and documented "the tensions between the optimism of the 1950s and the realities of class and racial differences. (Wikipedia, Robert Frank article) "  Elliot Erwitt is one of my favorite photographers included in the exhibit, "The Family of Man" (which is also available in book form).  This exhibit was shown worldwide and drew crowds wherever it was shown according to MoMA's blog, Inside/Out.  Here is an Erwitt photo from The Family of Man exhibit that is featured in an article in the New York Times blog Lens:

All of these photographers work in a field called documentary photography.

JJ's work is augmented with interviews of his subjects and comments on what he sees.  He has a website that's pretty cryptic; but his posts to Google+ are far more illuminating:

The Worthy Xavier:

The Unguarded:

Leave It on the Ground:

To me it's the substance of documentary photography that makes it beautiful.

-- Marge

Cartoons for this moment: Anarchism

Anarchism is the trending topic at this hour (9:00A Alaska Daylight Time).  For this Friday post I'm offering cartoons on the topic.

As background:  In response to a Russian court handing two-year sentences to 3 members of the feminist rock band Pussy Riot for staging an anti-Kremlin protest in a church, thousands of people have expressed support.  Here, from the article "Petitions and pranks as world supports Russian female punk rock band" by Olzhas Auyezov and Andrea Burzynski for Reuters:

Inside Russia, many people were offended when the three women stormed the altar of Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February wearing bright-colored masks and clothes to hold a "punk prayer" to get rid of President Vladimir Putin.

Sensitivity inside the overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian country is not shared overseas, however, where media coverage of the trial ahead of Friday's verdict has often cast the women as victims of an oppressive state led by an authoritarian leader.

Disclaimer:  While the topic is not funny for the members of the band and those protesting or members of the Orthodox Christian community, a little humor helps ease the tension and may illuminate in ways we didn't expect.

The 3 cartoons below are from Sidewalk Bubblegum, the Comics about Authority, Police, State Control category, and drawn by Clay Butler.

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Yikes, another trend to chase -- BP stock is shooting up.

-- Marge

Kinetic sculpture

Alexander Calder is probably best known for creating the first moving sculpture in modern times, dubbed mobile by Marcel Duchamp (a truly interesting character).  This example of Calder's work comes from the Park West Gallery blog; it shows one of his mobiles installed in the Guggenheim Museum.

Alexander Calder:  "Red Lily Pads" (Nénuphars rouges), 1956.

Kinetic art/sculpture has come a long way since then.  Often artists work to make their installations as immersive as possible.

This first video shows several works installed in Atlanta.  It's one of the best videos I've seen on art with each artist telling what he/she had in mind when creating the work and talking about the viewers' responses.

This next video shows the world's largest kinetic art sculpture, installed in Singapore.  How it was created is quite different from those seen in Atlanta.  The technological level is very high.

Excuse me while I go collect the parts for my next piece.

-- Marge

Truthiness and the art of Stephen Colbert

Last week Stephen Colbert reported in his "Who's Honoring Me Now?"(August 9, 2012) segment of the Colbert Report that a study reported in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review verified his concept of  "truthiness."  The researchers, scientists from Canada and New Zealand, said about their work:

"We wanted to examine how the kinds of photos people see every day — the ones that decorate newspaper or TV headlines, for example — might produce ‘truthiness,’” the lead researcher, Eryn J. Newman of Victoria University of Wellington, explained. “We were really surprised by what we found."

You can read about their project and findings in the article -- Cognitive researchers find truth in Colbert’s ‘truthiness’ -- by Eric W. Dolan at the Raw Story.

Stephen Colbert

Political satirist Stephen Colbert can sometimes be hard to watch -- he does his satire very well.  Truthiness was the subject of a segment called "The Word," presented during the pilot episode of his weekly program.  You can view that episode on his site Colbert Nation.
Since that initial broadcast the word "truthiness" has gained a foothold in the English language:

Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2006:

1. truthiness (noun)
1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)

2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

And it has been analyzed in the NY Times by Ben Zimmer in his column "On Language."

Not bad for an improv comedian from South Carolina.

-- Marge

Nuts and bolts of visual arts, part 1

Most artists like the freedom of creating whatever they damn well please, however they please.  But to communicate effectively in a visual medium, a little learning is a good thing.  There are rules for composition, and design elements to consider.  Remember though, some of the best art breaks at least one of the rules, but probably not all of them.

Marvin Bartel speaks of composition and design from a teacher's perspective. It all boils down to what you want to emphasize in the work and how to present it cohesively. As an artist, you must consider the viewer and direct the viewer's eye.

Meaning in art can be elusive.  It's pretty clear in Goya's "The Third of May, 1808" what the artist intended.

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Van Gogh's rapture is pretty clear in "Starry Night." Note that the Moon isn't in the center of the image; it's almost off the edge. What is in the center is the flow. The trees act as a counterpoint to the Moon.

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But what do you take away from viewing Mondrian's "Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow"?

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Piet Mondriaan, "Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, Wikipedia

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Seems to me that some works are done with a message in mind or result in having a message, but some may be just eye candy (or they may have messages few can interpret).  If you have something to say that is larger than what you're working on, that needs to be practiced too.  For an excellent discussion of meaning in art, check out this from a forum at xkcd.


-- Marge

Managing color on your PC or Mac

A number of factors contribute to the quality of the images and their color as rendered on your PC or Mac.  Devices and applications such as the monitor, the video card, the operating system (OS) and applications for producing and/or editing digital images.  If your machine is out of calibration, you probably won't know it unless you check how your latest webpage or uploaded photo renders on another computer, your smartphone or tablet.

In my humble opinion (IMHO) it's best to adjust your monitor to settings that you find comfortable, then color calibrate using the functions available in your OS.  Then, if using an graphics application, point it to the color, aka "ICC", profile produced by the OS.  In the case of Windows, this is usually a file with the letters "sRGB" in it.

For calibrating your monitor, here are two references:

• Mac color calibration  
• PC color calibration  

For calibrating color in your OS and producing a color profile:

•  Mac display calibration (same link as above) 
• Windows 7 display calibration  

Since I don't have a Mac, I don't know much about them.  The article by Kirk McElhearn at Macworld recommends a color calibration device.  This link loads a search on "color calibrator" at Amazon turned up.

In closing here's a mind-bending article on color rendering index (CRI) I found while researching this post and a quote:

Film and video high-CRI LED lighting incompatibility

Problems have been encountered attempting to use otherwise high CRI LED lighting on film and video sets. The color spectra of LED lighting primary colors does not match the expected color wavelength bandpasses of film emulsions and digital sensors. As a result, color rendition can be completely unpredictable in optical prints, transfers to digital media from film (DI's), and video camera recordings. This phenomenon with respect to motion picture film has been documented in an LED lighting evaluation series of tests produced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences scientific staff.

-- Marge