Category: Uncategorized

Okay. Black, black, black. Lots of black. Black border on Screw Moo, black undercoat on … melty thing. Black on my hands. Black-y black black. Black.

Almost out of various mediums. Running out. Need more. Almost out of canvases. Which may be why I’m working on plywood for a couple of pieces. But I do have … two or three canvases left. Small, small, huge. And I have some paints. Some paints I’ve never used, donated from a friend. May try using those. May just work with what I have left of everything else. No money for new paints. No money for new canvases. No money for new mediums. No money … blah blah blah … until you buy more paintings! You should buy them! They’re GRRRRREAT!!

Yeah.

Like cereal.

The low, low prices of the Spring Cleaning Art Sale are available through the end of May (ie: through Monday, May 31st, 2004), after which time prices will return to normal. Yes, “Screw Moo” is available through Monday for the low, low price of $40 to Arizona residents (or people who will agree to pay an additional shipping charge). Email now!

OR, come up to Pine, Arizona for Memorial Day weekend! All my art and furniture is available for low, low prices – if you ask for me by name. You know my name, right? It’s “Teel McClanahan III”. Heck. If you just ask for “Teel” and then make me a reasonable offer I’ll give you the art you want for that price. We’ll be open 9-5 all weekend. Not to mention the other half-dozen shops we have right here on our property, and the huge arts and crafts festival just three doors down, right in the heart of Pine, Arizona.

It’s fun. You should come.

I’m going to go … I don’t know. Not paint more black, I think.

More work on art to do tonight. Have been fiddling around trying to get a frame made for “Screw Moo” for a couple of days to no avail. Will … work something out with it tonight. Probably the same-old same-old, paint the edge black, tack a hanger on the back, and put it out for sale anyway. What else can I do?

Also going to be beginning the painting part of the work on the … project I haven’t described here before. The melty one, for the two of you who have seen it. I want to get it out for sale for the Memorial Day Weekend (we’re trying to get quite a bit of things done for the weekend despite the fact that the huge influx of people looking at the stuff on these holiday weekends does not typically correlate to an increase in sales) which means I need to get a lampshade bought for it. Which is more money going out without money coming back in. Hopefully I’ll be able to achieve a paint effect on it that I am pleased with. Hopefully someone will see it this weekend and love it so much that they simply can’t live without it and take it home. And the other three lamps I’ve already got done. And the three tables. Because seriously. I needs me the money.

What else?

I suppose I ought to spray-paint the black on the GWB today and bring it up here to dry. Takes about 3-5 days, it seems. How can taggers get any work done with rates like that? Quality work, I mean. I suppose their work is usually in places where it isn’t touched for days, weeks, and more. Oh well. The spray-ness of the paint serves my purposes well.

Of course, once the black is dry I’ll have no choice but to figure out a way to to the stenciling work.

Which I’ve not really begun.

Maybe I ought to do that today, too. As long as I’m doing art projects instead of furniture (ie: money-making) projects all afternoon. Fiddle around in Photoshop making stencils. Or just on paper. Or whatever. But figure it out. Because seriously. I can’t even begin to screw the thing up until the paint is dry, and there’s three colors after the black.

Sigh.

My upper lip is messed up. I blame you.

Am I rambling yet? Let me try harder.

So then the guy who was supposed to be here today to pick up the trusses and what-not for the roof isn’t going to be here today, but will be here tomorrow morning. Perhaps at the same time as the county inspectors, which could be an amusing complication. And standing around waiting to get thousands of pounds of steel dropped on me will certainly pass the time tomorrow. Wheee!

And one of the tables we’ve been working on is almost entirely done (legs on, now it just needs some touch-up work and waxing), and DAMN if it isn’t ugly. To me, anyway. I guess I still don’t like this whole “rustic” furniture thing. Then again, I’m not the one buying it. I’m just the one making it. And I’ve seen this style of stuff in people’s homes … of course, when I did I always thought it was ugly… Oh well.

I’ll be sure to try to get some photographs of the tables taken … before the weekend … since they’re TOTALLY going to sell this weekend. Yep. Totally.

I’m thinking I may have to put the three new lamps (two by me, one based on my design but crafted by Heath) in the store without lampshades… at least until something sells. You know. Because lamp shades cost money. Money which I do not have. Because my lamps haven’t sold yet. Damnit.

Anyway, I’m still downloading OS updates. I blame the ISP up here, what with the frequent random disconnections, the slow bitrate, and the devil. Wait. I always blame the devil – it doesn’t have anything to do with the ISP that I blame the devil. Of course, it’s all in jest – the devil didn’t have anything to do with it – only the ISP.

Would you believe that the bulk of the four hours I spent yesterday “working” on furniture was basically just cleaning up after the foaming expanding glue that dad decided to use to glue the legs into the table? And that it kept foaming for hours after I left and that’s why the table needs to be touched up? How about this: Would you believe that my father wouldn’t give up on this particular glue until it had damaged one of HIS pieces? See, he’d bought it before and it had foamed up and caused havoc with all three of my lamps, irrevocably staining the wood in one place (that most people won’t notice, we hope, since it’s “rustic” furniture) and being disturbingly ugly in others. But that wasn’t enough to stop him from using the glue. So he used it on these table legs. And it did exactly the same thing, but since it hurt one of HIS pieces, now he’ll never use it again.

Anyway, I’mm off to unload some wood. Wheee!

So … I hate to admit it, but after only two and a half years of use and up-to-the-minute upgrades with little in maintenance or up-keep, my iMac (one of the first flat-screen models off the line) had begun to freeze up with semi-regularity, and some applications had become unstable. Sigh. I think it was the two major OS “upgrades” instead of clean installs, first to Jaguar, then to Panther, that allowed little problems to slip in.

I’ve been working for a while to get everything in order for a buckup, format, and clean install of Panther (Mac OS X 10.3), and last night I did it. Actually, last night I spent around 8 hours fighting with trying to get my entire iTunes library backed up (which would have taken 10 minutes or so, had I an iPod) to DVDs and CDs. I eventually worked out that the problem was related to 2 corrupt MP3 files, but I’ll be sending a detailed email to Apple to explain what could have been done better, the errors I got, and as much information as I can about what went wrong. I “coastered” 6 DVD-R and 3 CD-R discs before I got all (ok, probably all) of my music backed up. Sigh.

I started copying music around 5PM. I started the clean install around 1AM. I went to bed at 3AM, after I’d started it downloading all the updates. Sadly the ISP up here disconnected me not long after that, so I’m still downloading updates now.

But I’m up and running, everything looks to be okay. I’m restoring data as I need it… I don’t just want to drop everything back in place, in case some of it was part of the problem. So, as I need something restored, I restore it. We’ll see how this goes, how much I don’t restore. And if the problems come back.

…

I’m pretty certain that part of the problem is that I am not simply a casual computer user. Not that I’m the sort of geek who gets in and re-writes the OS or runs terminal commands all the time, or who is constantly looking to add new cards and memory and whatever to upgrade an onld computer. No. I … I use applications that require intense amounts of system resources, and I use several of them at once. And if I’m not using resource-hungry apps like Photoshop, Quicken, Excel, Garageband, and various applications for copying DVDs, I’m running all the other apps at once: Safari (with a dozen tabs open), Mail, iChat, MSNIM, iTunes, iCal, etc… and realistically it’s some combination of the more intense and less intense, probably seven or eight at a time.

And I bought the top-of-the-line model of the flat-screen iMac on the day it debuted, but … well … I just need more computer, I think.

And I could probably do the same stuff I’m doing now on the top-of-the-line dual-G5 and still max out the system resources accidentally all the time.

I keep looking forward to the day when computers are so ridiculously fast that I’m the only person left in the world who wants more processing power, more memory, more resources, because then the industry will just stop and I’ll be left frustrated forever.

…

I’ve been dreaming for the last few nights … I’ve been developing in my mind a new computer model from Apple that is modular. The base unit would be a configurable (low through mid-high range) system that could stand alone, but would be partnered with additional purchasable modules that could be connected or disconnected from the base unit easily. The modules could represent, theoretically, any sort of components you wanted to upgrade, from memory to hard drives to processors. But what I want is for it to be processors. So that I’m working along, my computer isn’t going fast enough, I just order/buy another processor module, click it onto my base station (without shutting down) and I instantly have additional processing power. And I keep clicking modules onto my base station for years to come, keeping up with my needs.

See… there’s been some speculation recently by … knowledgable minds … that Apple may work with IBM to put together Mac OS X -compatible machines that run on Cell processors. This would not have to be to the exclusion of the “G5”-type processors (which are based on the Power4, and potentially soon to be based on the Power5 processors from IBM), but could power entry-level and mid-level machines… that could be modularly upgraded to high-end machines and beyond, since Cell processors work together effeciently in parallel, and can be combined … effectively in very high numbers.

…

And now I’m babbling.

I just want my computer to work faster.

Which it seems to be.

We’ll see if it continues.

And perhaps I shall post about something more “personal” in the near future. Or not. We’ll see.

I’ve been working on that bigger project, featuring GWB, for a while now, and it’s a while yet to go before it’s done. But to test some of the techniques I’ll be using on that, I decided to do a smaller piece. Thus, Screw Moo:

(click to see more images, or to buy “Screw Moo”)

It began as simple plywood. Aha! But then an artist got his hands on it, and it was transformed. Nearly seven hundred holes were drilled into a careful pattern in a carefully selected area of the wood, based on a series of computer simulations and artistic interpretation thereof. The wood was then sanded and prepared and spray-painted black. Three hundred and thirty three screws were carefully punched through sheets of paper so that they would all be facing head up, and their heads were spray-painted red. After the paint had dried sufficiently, the long and tedious process of carefully screwing hundreds of tiny screws into an intricately planned two-color design began. Last night, around four in the AM, the final screws were in place, and the piece was signed, dated and serialized.

…

Seriously though, I’m glad there’s only one color of screw to deal with in the GWB project. It makes the whole process a little easier, since I don’t have to refer constantly to diagrams and guides to determine where I am and where I am not supposed to put one type of screw or the other. Also, since it’s about 48″x32″, although it will be a lot more screwing, the end result should be more satisfying. Look for it in around a month. I hope.

Anyway, enjoy “Screw Moo” – a proof of concept, from which I gained some valuable experience.

So … yeah. Comment here if you can see what’s different and care. If you don’t notice and/or don’t care, don’t comment.

If you do notice and you do care, let me know.

I’m thinking and re-thinking some things. There are more changes down the road. We’ll see what happens.