March 2005 Archives

Mon. 03.14.05 - Gawker Party - The patio wall at the Side Bar had lovely ghost images of vines from days gone by.

Wed. 03.30.05 - The neighbor's garden from another angle.

Wed 03.30.05 - On a walk with my mom and the dogs today. Everything is in bloom.

Wed 03.30.05 - Visiting the Callis'.

ArtLex defines Horror Vacui as:

The compulsion to make marks in every space. Horror vacui is indicated by a crowded design. In Latin, it is literally, "fear of empty space" or "fear of emptiness."

My mom has refigerator horror vacui. Every nook and cranny must be filled, even if the condiment or leftover is 4 years old. When I was a teenager, the only time leftovers would leave the family frig is when I would eject them into the trashcan before they evolved into sapient beings.

As an adult, I love a minimalist refigerator. Other than a few condiments, an onion or carrot or apple or two, I like to buy my food as I am going to cook it. I generally don't keep leftovers past a day or two or three.

Whenever my mom comes to visit for longer than a day or two, the items in my frige multiply. And multiply and multiply, until one can't get anything in. Last night Lauren and I looked in the refrigerator with horror as it was overflowing with food we didn't recognize: a whole cooked chicken, fruit salad in a bag, a large container or milk (both of us are lactose intolerant), a case of beer, etc. etc. etc.

Here is the thing: my mom won't be back to collect the food when she leaves to go home tomorrow. She will leave it. She will take Freckles and his dog accroutrements, she will take her clothes and towels, but she will leave the chicken, the milk, the beer, etc. whether we will eat it or not. These items will join the whey protein shake, the 2 or 3 jars of olives, the pickles, and other items she left last time or the time before.

She will leave happy, knowing that my refigerator is full.

The last few days, I have been running through the various technologies, tricks, and tips that I learned about at SXSWi this year and have been pondering if I should start using the sIFR method for better designed banners and headlines, when I noticed that Andy Clarke debuted the MIR (Malarkey Image Replacement) technique today.

I tried both tonight and MIR won for ease of use, cross browser compatibility and the complete lack of evil Flash. Thanks to Andy, I now have a new and improved logo banner for Black Phoebe.

with my Nokia 7610!

On Dec. 10th, 2004, I received my Nokia 7610 from Sandy and Kristin in a little white padded mailer bag at the scoop out of a high-end hotel in Beverly Hills. That afternoon I had a new sim chip inserted and took my first picture with the cameraphone. The next morning I made my first post to Wasabi from the phone.

The first time the phone actually rang, I looked at it in horror - what!?!? Why is my fabulous new camera / email / internet / PDA device ringing?!?! Ugh.

In the intervening 3 months and 17 days, I have taken 1913 photos with the phone, a few videos, made numerous posts to Wasabi, emailed photos to this blog via Flickr, have sent and received email, surfed the 'net in traffic, texted like no tomorrow, and actually made a few phone calls.

I have done side by side feature comparisons with Sidekick, Blackberry, and Treo owners, with all conceding that the Nokia 7610 trumps all. Until I met Marc from Buzznet at the Gawker Party at SXSWi and he had a new Nokia 6630. Ok, so his phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera rather than the 7610's 1 megapixel, but the 7610 still has the far superior design (aka way cuter!) and has a mirror on the back! But he also had to borrow my flash a number of times over the course of the party, as he had left his at the hotel and the 6630's on-board flash was not enough.

My recap is... This smart phone rocks. Ok, bad slang aside, it really is a wonderful phone that is a mini-PC, digital camera, and PDA all rolled into one internet connected device that is well designed both physically and in terms of its interface.

Sun 03.27.05 - Four images from Easter morning.

Update: 03.27.05 8:50 pm (PST) - And it did. Yeah for Martin!

Ever since I got my lovely little Nokia 7610 phone with the LifeBlog software, I have wanted to use LifeBlog to post directly to Black Phoebe from my phone. I have nattered on extensively in comments over on Charlie's LifeBlog blog asking (nee...begging) for the ability to post to Movable Type.

On March 7th, Martin emailed me that he fixed up the MT AtomServer.pm script to allow the cameraphone with LifeBlog to post to an MT blog. I tried that night and the next day to no avail. I tried again tonight and it worked. Yeah! Here I go!

Second Update: Wed. 03.30.05 - As of yesterday, I have been unable to post from my phone's LifeBlog to this blog and I have tried multiple times with the same post and different ones. Sad. I reloaded the script and checked my permissions and no go. ;o( So, back to Flickr for Ms. Jen.

Sun 03.27.05 - Scruffy & Mom.

Sun 03.27.05 - A lazy Easter afternoon, looking up at the backyard elm tree which is starting to leaf out.

Michael asked that folks describe their website's orgin.

Here it goes...

For my first two years of publishing on the 'net (1995-1997), I used my staff 6 meg allowance on the BU ACS servers. For the next two years, I published to my 10 megs on Earthlink.

In Jan. of 1999, Alex West and I reserved Barflies.net and started publishing all things related to music, life, the world and the universe, as well as a contentious message board & mailing list.

In late 1999 or 2000, I decided to reserve a personal domain whose name derived from the name of my favorite Western bird - the Black Phoebe. During that time, a black phoebe nested in my brother's backyard and we all discovered that not only was it a beautiful bird, but highly fierce belying its small size and cuteness factor. I decided that it was my totem bird.

When I reserved Blackphoebe.com, I tried to convince Barflies.net contributors that it would be a great place for us to publish personal and memorior style writings / art that would not fit Barflies.net's music and culture focus, to no avail. I had not yet heard of Blogs.

In Nov. of 2001, I finally posted a front page (a flash version of a Malevich piece) and some manifesto about what I wanted to do here. In 2001-2002, I used this space to publish websites for college art / art history classes I was teaching at the time.

March 2003, SXSWi... I caught Blog Fever, I came home and decided to set up Movable Type on my underused blackphoebe.com. One year and eleven months later, this is my primary web publishing space. I love it.

I just went to download the newest Quicktime so that I could watch the Puppy Film that I downloaded by BitTorrent, when I found out that Apple has a very abbrievated "Country" list at the Quicktime download site.

I wanted to be from Uzbekistan tonight, to no avail. No Tajikistan, no Afghanistan, no Kurdistan... I had to be from Iceland instead. Stymied! Dang!

But they did list Tuvalu... hmmm... no props for Central Asia, but the Central South Pacific gets props? hmmm...

Malarkey started it... So, I had to try... ;o)

If you haven't seen them yet, download Dunstan's puppy films.

Photo Friday : Tiny

Sun. 03.10.05 - Tiny yellow flowers at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands Reserve.

Hello to all the Folks who visit Black Phoebe via a RSS or Atom feed reader...

Can you tell me what client / website / software you prefer to use to read and deliver your RSS / Atom feeds to you? And why?

I am now to the point that I need to move to a feed reader to keep up on the updates at my favorite sites and blogs. Need good references.

Thanks!

Photo Friday : Glow (the SXSW edition)

Left to Right: The Hampton Inn, The Gore Gore Girls, The Transformer Building
Taken with Ms. Jen's Casio Exlim-Z40. Click on images to see full-sized version.

Sun. 03.20.05 - Spring blooms in Austin. Line of tea trees on 2nd St. between Congress and San Jacinto. Walking back from my last meal at Las Manitas until next year.

Sat 03.19.05 - As soon as I got back to the hotel after the last band I was going to see, I borrowed a pair of scissors and set both of my cameras free.

Sat 03.19.05 - Creme Brulee & Pinot Noir at Louie 106.

Fri 03.18.05 - My dogs are barking... How women wear heels all day and/or night is beyond me.

Thurs 03.17.05 - Heidi's Beauty Party.

Wed 03.16.05 - A Type Conversation.

Tues 03.15.05 - The last night of SXSW Interactive. Bruce Sterling and Wired's party at the American Legion Hall, west of MoPac off of Lake Austin Blvd. A Photo Essay by Ms. Jen.

Tue 03.14.05 - Austin Music Hall security staff can kiss my two cute green photo passes... #340, my Nokia 7610, as seen in #341's view screen. ;o)

Big Thanks to Elizabeth and the fine ladies at the press booth.

Julie Wanda and I will be blogging the Music portion of the SXSW conference over at the Barflies.net News and Tidbits.

Mon 03.14.05 - After the last panel of the day, I went over to Finn & Porter at the Hilton for dinner with The Brits, Kyle Bradshaw, Anders Pearson, Cindy Li, and others. The food was delightful and so was the company.

Mon 03.14.05 - The audience at The Bloggies.

Mon 03.14.05 - First panel of the day. The sign writer has renamed Jason.

Mon 03.14.05 - First panel of the day. Shaun taking a photo of the panel. Rob and his fabulous red beard in the backgound.

Mon 03.14.05 - First panel of the day. Leslie's new Crackberry is small, well designed and can actually fit in a woman's hand.

Mon 03.14.05 - First panel of the day. Jeffrey Zeldman and Kelly Goto.

Sun 03.13.05 - A grackle in the windowsill of the escalator landing at the Austin Convention Center.

Sat. 03.12.05 - At the Lounge.

Sat. 03.12.05 - At lunch.

Six years and two months after they met. Four years and 11 months after they officially became "girlfriend" and "boyfriend"...

This Wed. March 9th, 2005, at sunset amongst the once in a lifetime wildflower profusion in Death Valley, Mr. Thomas Bertling asked Ms. Erika Gieschen to marry him.

Congratulations!

Sat 03.12.05 - Lunch at Las Manitas with computer folk means that when one person pulls out their camera and/or phone, so we all do to document the moment. ;o)

Folks are posting their SXSW photos to Flickr.

All photos by Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610 phone.

Fri. 03.11.05 - The First Day of SXSW 2005 - Travel Day.

Last night Erika and I went to a celebratory dinner at Sofi in West LA, a delightful Greek restaurant. I crashed on her couch last night and this morning she took me to LAX for my flight(s) to Texas. I misread my flight times and mismanaged my meals, as I ended up in Austin at 6:20pm with only breakfast and some soup to eat all day.

By the time I checked into the Hampton Inn Downtown, it was 7:25pm. I trotted over to the Austin to convention center to get my badge and then from there to the "Break Bread with Brad" at the Ginger Man pub on West 4th St.

After a glass of wine and a nice chat with George, I realized it was 9pm plus and I was starving. And I was babbling to poor George. I won a door prize from Brad's stash of DVDs, an Original Star Trek with Joan Collins (Wahoo!). I chatted briefly with Brad and Doug, before heading off to find food.

I hit P.F. Chang's, across the street from my hotel, for my solo 3rd annual First Friday dinner at the bar. I had Cantonese Chow Fun and a glass of Pinot Noir, as well as a nice chat with my bar neighbors, Joey and Elizabeth. Lizzie is the store accountant for the brand new HUGE Whole Foods Mother Ship Store. I will visit for lovely gluten free foods before the weekend is over. My local Whole Foods, Tustin, is the smallest store in the chain and carries few gluten free items, and none that are FRESH BAKED GOODS, like the Mother Ship does.

I am tired. Tomorrow is Kick! at 10am. Yeah.

03.11.05 - Waiting at LAX. I am on my way to SXSW!

Wed 03.09.05 - Ok, maybe red-out in a red room...

Today is Wednesday, on Friday at 11:17am I fly out of LAX to go to Austin, Texas, for 10 BIG days of SXSW. Yep, I am a glutton for punishment - once again, or more accurately for the 4th time - I will be doing both Interactive and Music.

As with last year, I am most excited for the Interactive portion of the conference.

Tue 03.08.05 - Today I downloaded the Music showcase pdf from the SXSW website and set Alex to marking the bands he most wants to see. The print was so small that he had to put his glasses on.

Photo Friday : Obsession

Thurs. March 3, 2005 : Purple

Ugh. Working the door at Alex's for a Manic or Cad Tramps show is a nightmare. Tonight is Manic.

We completely sold out at 9:27pm and for the last hour and a half it has been beg-beg-plead-plead-yell-yell-wheadle-wheadle. Ms. Jen melts down.

About 20 mins. ago I had a group of about 15 rush the door after they convinced Big Mike they were with a party on the list. They weren't. I kicked most of them out, it was bad.

I didn't have time for a real dinner. Scruffy is stuck in the car, because there was no one to dog sit and I was not in the mood to come home at 3am to pee and pooh. Now I am hungry and crabby.

Wed 03.02.05 - Blooming freeway off ramp, Euclid & the 91 fwy.

From PhotoJunkie:
Off the Wall
Bike Streak
Made in Canada

From Wasabi:
Ms. Jen's Bike (photo by my nokia 7610)

From my students:
Jules pointed me to Jesse Diamond.
Nicole showed me Elinor Carucci this evening.