Archive for the ‘General Nonsense’ Category
Flash 10 Demo
Grant Skinner (gskinner.com) just recently posted this Flash 10 3D music visualizer demo on his “gBlog”. It’s crazy awesome, and even after examining the source code, I’m still not sure how it all works.
For what it’s worth, I went and edited it a bit, removing the music visualizer stuff and just making it spin according to your mouse position over it. Fun stuff. Check it out (P.S. Get Flash 10, Now!):
Hot Air Balloon Ride
This past Saturday, I went on a hot air balloon ride! We went over a mile high, and it was awesome!
My business partner, Chris Tingom, came along (he rode in the other balloon) and he took a video of the experience, and a few photos. I took a video as well, but he beat me to the punch in getting something up online, so I’m just going to show you his stuff for now. At some point, I’ll eventually get mine all edited and up online for viewing, but that could be a while.
Bowling Shoes = Higher Score
Much to the amusement of many of the people I have bowled with, I can’t bowl in a straight line for the life of me. In an attempt to solve the problem I took up experimenting with throwing curve balls, and, after a lot of trial and error, eventually learned how to *occasionally* get the desired effect.
Now, I just want to take a moment to emphasize the fact that I’ve never been a good bowler, probably only bowling a couple of times a year (if that). Even with my best attempts, I have never really averaged more than around 115.
I *do* enjoy bowling, though, so I was pleasantly surprised when my Aunt Pam bought me a pair of bowling shoes as a gift. They are extremely comfortable (maybe even more so than my normal shoes), and fit me perfectly. Bowling shoes usually rent for $3-5, so bowling just got that much more affordable.
Since receiving the shoes, I have gone bowling a couple of times and have been amazed by what a difference they made. Each time I bowled, everything just seemed to click… Literally overnight, my average game went up over 20 points!
At any rate, last week I went bowling with my two buddies, Brian Shaler and John Murch, and I bowled a 201!! Now, I know that a lot of people out there bowl around 200 all the time, but for me that was a big deal (the highest I’ve ever bowled). I even got a print-out of the scores (upon Brian’s recommendation) as proof!
So, yeah. Go get yourself some bowling shoes! 
New Project Finished
I just finished putting together this fun little web site:
100 Facts About Literally Anyone
Basically, you put in someone’s name, and it returns 100 (funny) “facts” about the person.
Let me know what you think!
What is “Art”?
Art, in my mind, is defined as the manifestation of creative expression. By “creative”, I mean “invented from nothing”. Creativity is a by-product of our intelligence, self-awareness, and seemingly random, un-explainable imagination.
If someone paints a picture by number, this is not art. They are not “creating” something from nothing. They are only following directions in the same sense that your printer might follow instructions from your computer. Would you call your printer an artist? No. It’s just a machine following instructions.
If a young piano player presses the keys on a piano in exactly the manner he/she is instructed to and hammers out a musical sequence, this also, is *not* art. It would *only* be “art” if the student were to connect with the music on some level and create a *new* song or variation using their imagination.
So when you ask someone what art is, why do you get so many different responses? Why is there so much ambiguity in the overall definition of the word? If you ask one person if a trash can is a piece of art, they might say “yes”, whereas another person might promptly reply, “No!”
I believe this problem arises from the way how humans arrive at definitions in their mind largely from context. They see an amazing painting and they hear it referred to as “art”, so they assume that “art” is defined only as “an amazing painting”. Another person might hear a piece of music or poetry referred to as “art”, so they come to the conclusion that “art” is defined as “music and poetry”.
As a result, if you stick the two people together, they might hem and haw and argue for days about what “art” is and what it means. Eventually they might arrive at the conclusion that “art” is defined as “amazing paintings, music, or poetry”.
The problem is quite simple. They’re failing to look at the true underlying concept that all these items share: None of these things would have been possible without human imagination and creativity.
So what about all the other paintings? You know, the crappy ones that never make it to a museum? Are they art? The people that created them would most certainly argue that they were! After all, many of the most famous paintings weren’t given proper credit until long after the artist was gone. It appears that “amazing” isn’t necessarily a requirement for something to be “art”.
You see, there are many different kinds of “art”, some of which are fascinating and amazing (the Mona Lisa, etc…), but there are countless other day-to-day creative expressions (an email written to a friend or a new spin on a pastry dish, for example) which are largely ignored.
However, just because a “creative expression” is ignored as “art” doesn’t make it “not art”. All it means is that it’s not intriguing or amazing art. It’s boring art. It’s every-day art. Or… something.