Art of World of Warcraft

After starting, then abandoning, a post about all the products Google now offers that began to look like an advertisement for them; and then trying to figure out why my machine gets lost in the ozone when I leave it for 5-10 minutes (I think it's one of Microsoft's September updates), I've decided to find something more fun to post about today.

About two months ago I started playing World of Warcraft (be very, very careful -- it is indeed addictive).  Besides its intriguing quests and multitude of environments, it has some of the most beautiful artwork I've seen.  Take a look at this trailer for the new expansion pack, Mists of Pandaria:

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In WoW, as in many MMORGs (Massive Multi-player Online Roleplay Games), there are races, mobs (aka creatures), and non-player characters (NPCs) that advance the storyline.  The members of each race have a dance that can be initiated by the player.  The following video, uploaded by ShadowRoxas87, shows the origins of these dances. I'm guessing that this is the uploader's version of history, but it's amusing just the same.

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Here's another one of the dances from Patricia Rosa that was filmed in game:

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And here's a video I found that is just too funny.  It was uploaded by thesolekeep, and is an ad for Mountain Dew.

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OK, OK, back to work.

-- Marge

Climate and extreme weather and flight delays

This is the third day of high winds in Anchorage and I don't remember when we had winds that lasted this long.  And we're in for more, according to the Fairbanks Daily News - Miner, "A third windstorm takes aim for southcentral, Interior Alaska."  Thoughts turn to climate changes.

According to Wikipedia climate

...encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, precipitation, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these elements and their variations over shorter periods.
A region's climate is generated by the climate system, which has five components: atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, land surface, and biosphere.

Whew!  What a lot of science. What a lot of words.

Today I'm offering links to sites that track Earth's climate changes and offer ways for you to participate; some links for getting extreme weather alerts on your cell phone (if you haven't gotten an app for such already); and a site that gives information on flight delays/cancellations.  A word to the wise -- step lightly around the predictions, no one knows the future.

U.K.'s The Guardian has a Climate Change page that offers up-to-date news from around the world.  A webfeed via rss is available.  For measures proposed and being made to find ways that work to help the environment, take a look at Environmental Defense Fund's site. ScienceDaily offers Earth & Climate news, articles, videos, images, books and more.

If you're in the U.S. and want to speak up on the topic of clean energy, sign up at One Million Calls for Clean Energy.

This article was updated in May (2012) -- "Extreme-weather text alerts set to begin" -- by USA Today.  AccuWeather offers weather apps for most of the major operating systems/devices; they also have severe weather and climate change (also has breaking news about conditions) web pages.  Explore the site to find info on world conditions.

If you're planning to fly somewhere, FlightStats is a handy site.  They have mobile apps, too.

As for me, I'm staying home -- it just might be safer there.

-- Marge

A laugh on casual Friday

Casual Friday is here for many of you, so how about a little humor with your day.

Cartoonist Doug Savage does chickens -- on sticky notes.

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Randy Glasbergen really understands the concept of casual.

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And what would Friday at the office be without Scott Adams' Dilbert?

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-- Marge

Whether to protest or not to protest

This morning I received a request to sign a petition protesting HR347, passed in March 2012.  This is some of the text in the email:

Imagine an America in which the government can prevent protest in any public space it deems fit. Where wearing a dissenting shirt around an elected official could be construed as a felony. Where First-Amendment protections become privileges subjectively doled out by the state. Sadly, that America is pretty much here.
In March, Congress passed HR 347, a bill that limits Americans' ability to protest in public and on government grounds. Mainstream media didn't raise peep, but now there's finally some anger building. The bill, passed almost unanimously, makes it a federal offense punishable by up to ten years in prison to "knowingly" protest in the vicinity of the Secret Service -- that is anywhere the Secret Service "is or will be temporarily visiting."

Considering some of the crazy decisions government has been making in the last few years, I jumped on the band wagon -- signed and posted the following to my Facebook page [note: format altered]:

10 years in prison for peaceful protest, thanks to the "Anti-Protest Bill" HR 347 -- Let's change it
act.watchdog.net
You walk into a campaign event holding a dissenting sign. Or you wear a shirt critical of a senator in the airport she's passing through. Or you organize a peaceful protest at a government building. All of these could be deemed felonies by Congress's new "Anti-Protest Bill." Act now to amend it!
Then I started wondering -- if it was passed in March and no one said much, what's it really about then?

If anyone would speak up about it, it would be the ACLU.  Their one article, titled "How Big a Deal is H.R. 347, That “Criminalizing Protest” Bill?" by Gabe Rottman states

Recent days have seen significant concern about an unassuming bill with an unassuming name: the "Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011." The bill, H.R. 347, has been variously described as making the First Amendment illegal or criminalizing the Occupy protests.
The truth is more mundane, but the issues raised are still of major significance for the First Amendment.
It's important to note — contrary to some reports — that H.R. 347 doesn't create any new crimes, or directly apply to the Occupy protests. The bill slightly rewrites a short trespass law, originally passed in 1971 and amended a couple of times since, that covers areas subject to heightened Secret Service security measures.

Here's a copy of bill H.R. 347 (PDF format).

While looking around for info, I did find an interesting and relatively new site called the Inquisitr; this is from the about page:

The Inquisitr offers a constantly updated mix of the latest stories to hit the web, covering a diverse spectrum of topic areas including technology, news, sport, entertainment and offbeat stories.
Founded in May 2008...

The quote below is from an article, "President Obama Signs 'Anti-Protest' Bill H.R. 347"

Occupy DC protesters are calling the modifications an infringement on their First Amendment rights, because of the areas of D.C. that have been added to the protected areas portion of the act. Approximately 80 protesters organized a silent march to symbolize their Freedom of Speech being taken away–some even taped their mouths closed to visually show their feelings about the bill. The part of the Bill of Rights they are referring to is the following:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Here's a toon commemorating an Occupy Wall Street event from John Cole at the Times-Tribune:

I took the notice off my Facebook page. Now I'm wondering if the bill has set a precedent.


-- Marge

Online art magazines revisited

A while back I came across a reference to Juxtapoz magazine which describes itself as the "Online version of the leading monthly contemporary and underground art bible..."  Being of the curious sort, I surfed on over and took a look.  It has an interesting array of topics available -- Videos, Illustration, Erotica, Street Art, Tattoo, Graffiti, and Music -- to name some.  I'd show you some samples of what I found but the popup ads for vodka were too insistent to read any of the content.  Apparently the original Juxtapoz, which was started by a group of artists, has been "acquired" by Complex Media, an extensive network of vodka-dominated sites geared for 20-something males. Moving on....

There are many magazines related to art online.  For a list to use for exploring, try this link.  The ones that looked most useful to me are the following.

The Art Newspaper where you will find information on recent shows. One piece shown this year at the Sydney Biennale was an interactive one, described thus:

Philip Beesley’s “Sibyl”, 2012, is a magical multi-media installation which responds to visitors’ touch with flapping feathers, lighting bulbs, and inflating balloons. Inspired by the Greek concept of “hylozoism”, the belief that all matter has life, the work consists of a system of interconnected mechanisms recalling a human neural system

Artist Beesley explains his concept of hylozoism and it is demonstrated in the video below.  It seems to me most interesting that he is using his art as a precursor to architectural innovation.

Absolute Arts appears to be mostly a site for selling artwork, but there are some features useful to artists, as well.  (Face it: galleries are a necessary evil for the artist who would like to eat and have a warm place to live.  They take a large percentage of the sale price.)  Artist portfolios are hosted and the art patron/collector can find news on latest art trends.  Here's a piece by Cheryl Hrudka titled "5276 Self Portrait" (2012).

Art News presents all kinds of information about art; the main categories are new, investigations, features, trends, profiles, market, looking at art, reviews, and books.  Here's the headline for one of the articles:

Charting a New Course

By William D. Cohan Posted 09/06/12

Under the leadership of its founder’s son, Vienna’s Leopold Museum is attempting to identify potential war loot in its collection 

 I'm closing with a quote that has been coming to mind a lot lately:

Research means going out into the unknown with the hope of finding something new to bring home. If you know in advance what you are going to do or even find there, then it is not research at all; then it is only a kind of honorable occupation. 

--Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

-- Marge

Wikipedia Takes America

While watching the movie "Troy," the one with Brad Pitt, last night I noticed an Egyptian influence in the architectural design of the temple to Apollo.  Wondering if this could be so, or it was the producer's idea, I began to research. This is some of what I found.

Troy was probably in modern-day Turkey, and that it was a cultural gateway between Greece and the Mid-East.  The period of Greek History to which this story refers is called the Greek Dark Ages, because little tangible evidence is available.

More importantly I found that there is a Wikipedia campaign this month "where participants compete to take photographs of as many local sights as possible for Wikipedia articles where they are needed."

Wikipedia Takes America is a campaign throughout September 2012 to organize Wikipedia Takes Your City photo scavenger hunts across the United States, to coincide with the international Wiki Loves Monuments architectural photography contest.

 The Wiki Loves Monuments page states:

In the U.S., the contest will focus on sites on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), which have been organized on Wikipedia by state and county.

BTW, if you're looking for something else to do, this map of archaic Greece needs to be replaced with an SVG version.


-- Marge

Frenemy Friday

Lately conversations and thoughts have turned to friend-or-foe considerations.

Wikipedia points out that the term frenemy "can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or someone who's both a friend and a rival." The Urban Dictionary has 3 pages of definitions for frenemy.  The one that I like is

Someone who is both friend and enemy, a relationship that is both mutually beneficial or dependent while being competitive, fraught with risk and mistrust.

This cartoon, found at CSL CartoonStock, is by Kieran Meehan and is a good presentation of how female frenemies experience this phenomenon:

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In a business setting this cartoon also from CartoonStock by Bradford Veley brings up the issue of trust:

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It seems to me that the best approach to dealing with a friend/enemy is to stand back, if you can, and view the situation as a game, much like the relationship between cartoon characters Tom and Jerry.

As Machiavelli said, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."


--Marge

Motion Capture

Motion Capture, aka mocap, is a technology that transfers the real-time motion of actual people and objects to virtual counterparts.  When you see mocap versus someone's idea of how something moves it's a pleasure to behold.

One of my favorite movies and the "first photorealistic computer animated feature film" is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.  A truly fine example of motion capture is James Cameron's "Avatar":

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There are many sites offering motion capture services and a variety of software and tools, as well as differing technologies.  To get an idea of the variety, take a look at METAmotion.  For more information, there's also the Motion Capture Society.

If you want to try motion capture yourself, one of the easiest ways is to use Microsoft's XBox Kinect.  Here's some sample output, using iPi Soft desktop motion capture software (30 day free trial, $295 for express version in 2012):

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This last video is long, but shows in detail the process for producing a photorealistic, mocap game.  The game being produced is "Beyond: Two Souls" by Quantic Dreams; the release date is estimated to be Jan-Mar, 2013.

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Small white balls are dancing in front of my eyes, LOL.

-- Marge

Happy Labor Day

Cartoon found at NBCNews (one of many)

-- Marge

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