Letters From Home

Tom Terrific used via Creative Commons license from the artist

I was, my mother always said, one of Captain Kangaroo’s first audience.    It’s probably true; we did have a TV in 1955 when we lived in a housing project somewhere near New York City while my dad worked on his Ph.D. at Columbia.  (I wish I knew where that place was–it’s the only childhood address I can’t remember, other than we were in apartment 3E.)  The TV most likely belonged to, or was on loan from, my dad’s parents, since it was one of those huge cabinet models with two front doors.

One of the features in the Captain Kangaroo show was a cartoon called Tom Terrific.  Tom Terrific could transform himself into anything, and he was almost always accompanied in his travels by Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog (who was a doggie doofus from the get-go).

I don’t remember a lot about those cartoons, but I do remember one in which an elephant who was supposed to remember everything, forgot the combination to a lock of some kind.  And it wasn’t till Tom said something about “being the one to free them” that the elephant realized that the combination was “one two three.”

All of this is by way of my musing that we modern-day folk have to remember a lot of combinations, with far worse mnemonics than the elephant got.  I personally don’t have much trouble remembering all my passwords, which is why I never write them down.  It’s not so easy for other members of the family, which is why I ended up having to unsnarl the bank web site today.

It’s not supposed to be safe to write down passwords–but if you can’t remember them, what else is there to do?  I know there is plenty of password-keeper software out there, but you still have to remember the password to the “lockbox” they create.  And if the password for that has to be easy to remember (or guess) then it’s not particularly safe.

I wonder if it’s a matter of brain chemistry or brain priorities that produce some people with the ability to remember just about everything, and others who fall into the “CRS” category without half trying?

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I’m a command-line kinda computer user.  Always felt that the point-and-click interface was rather like taking a shower in a raincoat, and got in the way of efficiently getting work done.  I stuck with DOS up till very recent times, precisely because you could Get Things Done with it.   Alas, my favorite word processor (Word 5.0 for DOS) ended up with severe Y2K issues, and CompuServe went to a brain-dead system that wouldn’t allow for automated access any more.  So the best of the best DOS software wasn’t enough any more and I had to start using Windows.

Bleah.

It’s odd, then, that I didn’t take to Linux sooner than I did.  It has a wonderfully efficient command-line interface in addition to its GUI overlay, and the commands themselves are logical once you learn the language.   It’s my kinda stuff.  But Linux is the tenth operating system I’ve learned and I guess I thought my poor old brain would leak if I tried it.  So I didn’t experiment with it at all until very recently.

My daughter kindly gave me her HP Pavilion laptop when she got a newer one, and finally I got annoyed enough at Windows XP Home (on that computer–won’t sully another one with XP of any variety) that it dawned on me that it would be a good time to work with Linux a bit more.  We’d put Ubuntu on the server, and I’d fiddled with that a bit, so I installed that on the HP dual-booted with XP.

But it was slooooooooooooooooooow.  I don’t really know why, either, since the laptop is in no way underpowered.  And I wasn’t thrilled with the burnt-orange color scheme, either, to be honest.  So when I saw a mention of Xubuntu on the Lifehacker site, I decided to give that a try instead.

I like it, so far.  It seems to run faster, the blue color scheme is better (yeah, I know, I could have changed the other one but I didn’t) and the sheer joy of logical software with a whole universe of free apps is still very much apparent.  I could definitely get to like this stuff.

Unfortunately I can’t dump XP completely because there are some apps that won’t play nice with Windows 2000 (yes, I’m looking at YOU, Amazon music downloader) but I can assign XP to as small a partition as I think I can get away with, and have the laptop boot into Xubuntu.  Thus, I will learn more.  I will be the Queen of the Command Line once again!
photo credit: coxy

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I put the tag-cloud widget into my sidebar here to remind me that most of my tags are junk. That’s what happens when you’re slow to grasp the concept.

I found a good tag-editing plugin, and will be wending my way through the tag (thunder)cloud trying to remove junk, consolidate, and generally make the tags mean something. I’m working on this blog first to get the hang of it, and then I’ll tackle my other blog which needs a revision more. I hope by the time I get to it I’ve got the game plan figured out! (the IGNORANCE tag is the biggest not only because it’s the most used.)

photo credit: double-h

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There were a couple of things about this theme that I didn’t pay attention to when I installed it. However, I was smart enough to ask my eagle-eyed (and very web-savvy) daughter to take a look at it, and she spotted something that I had missed. Links came out way too close to the regular text color to be readily visible.

Fortunately, the theme’s creator has a very helpful web site, and after some experimentation with various colors I got the links to stand out better. And I changed some of the other colors to be more harmonious as well.

And then I noticed that I could use my own custom header graphic instead of the one the creator supplied, and that opened up a lot of possibilities. The current graphic is the result of much experimentation and color-fiddling, plus my daughter’s advice on the look of the background.

I kinda like it, but then again, after all that work with Photoshop Elements, one would hope so.

I may change the typewriter graphic to something else, eventually, but for now I think it fits.

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My book arrived yesterday. It is amazing.

I had never seen the photo of the supermodels on which the cover is based, so I did a Google image search and found it. You can see it here, among other places (copyrighted image by photographer Herb Ritts). Those poor things look so scrawny and apprehensive and freezing cold. Just compare that to the photo of the relaxed, confident, anything-but-cold women on the cover of the book.

I think my favorite photo inside is the one on page 91, which was inspired by Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase.” Nimoy’s photo (protected by copyright, so I can’t reproduce it here, but that’s all the more reason for you guys to go find the book) shows a group of beautiful women having fun.

In fact, all the photos show beautiful women having fun.

Anyone who has looked at standard-issue nude photos and who has come to the conclusion that a lot of women have pretty near exactly the same shape should look at this unique group of nudes. No two are alike, and that’s how it should be.

I’m so glad I watched the Colbert Report the night Leonard Nimoy talked about this book!

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Although I have been using computers since 1969 (well, if handing a stack of punch cards to someone else to feed into a computer can be called “using” it, of course) and online since 1983, I still prefer to get my news from the daily newspaper and from weekly newsmagazines rather than from online sources.

Thus, when the newspaper we’ve subscribed to for years fails to deliver, I get annoyed. The Monday before the election we got no paper, despite the fact that we called them on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Every time we were assured that they’d “send one right out.” Every time, I said “That’s what you told me the last time I called.”

So, this Tuesday the newspaper had some kind of “press problem” that meant pretty much nobody anywhere got a paper. The canned message said that both papers would be delivered on Wednesday.

Wednesday, we got no paper at all. So we called and they said they’d send them right out.

Today, I called to inquire about the status of the two papers we didn’t get yesterday and was assured they’d send them right out. I’m betting they won’t. If we haven’t gotten the papers by the time I have to leave for class, I’m calling again and this time, I’m going to ask them to at least be honest about it if they don’t plan to send us a paper. Saying “We don’t plan to send you out a paper, but we’ll give you credit on the bill for not delivering it” would be the least they could do.

We shall see.
photo credit: qnr

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I just saw Leonard Nimoy on the Colbert Report talking about his new book.  I am bound for Amazon to order a copy.

No matter what Colbert says, I don’t think Nimoy should have included nudie photos of himself as well.

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I spent a long time browsing through the WordPress theme viewer and previewing everything that looked likely.  I downloaded several and then spent some more time installing and uninstalling and looking and considering and asking family members to look and consider too.

It boiled down to a choice among five themes.  I tried each in turn, adjusting the various items on the page to coordinate.  One three-column theme turned out to be just too busy when all was said and done.  One theme that I really liked turned out to have missing pieces and wouldn’t install.  One had a sidebar that was way too wide.  One looked really good, but there was no “edit” function for the posts and the borders around my images disappeared, so the text butted right up against them.  And then there was this theme, which excited no one, but in which every component actually worked.

So I have installed it, for now, and will continue to look around for something I like better.

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…or the blog by its theme.

I love this [ie. the original] theme, called “Travels with Evelyn,” but it hasn’t been updated for the newest version of WordPress, and some things I try to post mess it up something terrible. Sigh. So I suppose that the best thing for me to do is look around for a new theme, at least in the short run, and hope the designer fixes this one.

I thought about making my own unique theme, but my programming skills are WAY short of what I’d need to do that. So I’m going to start going through the theme browser, and see if I can find a new one that I like well enough. I did the same for my Multi.Colored tattoo blog so I’m sure something good will come along.

Anyone have any suggestions?

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I did very well in art classes in high school, and went into college with the intention of majoring in art. I survived the 8am art history classes (80% slides in a darkened room) and I survived the introductory classes where the main goal seemed to be to suck up to the professor just right. It had been my intention to specialize in printmaking and jewelry.

Then I found out that if I did that, my advisor would be the obnoxious prof who’d wanted all the intro students to suck up.

So I changed my major to anthropology and history, and never looked back. Well, not till years later, when I wondered if I shouldn’t have tried to stick it out in art. The thing is, I wasn’t (or thought I wasn’t) good at drawing, or painting, or ceramics, or any of the other specialties, so I thought I had taken the path of least resistance by moving on. The down side, of course, is that I no longer had to do any actual art, and that’s the kind of thing that if you don’t practice, you can’t do it as well any more.

I have a sketchbook from the Pharaohs of the Sun exhibit several years ago. I sketched some of the statues, as best I could. I looked at those sketches the other day and they were terrible. Amateur artwork. But then again, if you don’t sketch anything for 30 years, you kinda forget how it’s done.

At any rate, I never stopped looking at art. F’zer and I went to museums when we could, and I always enjoyed reading articles about art in various magazines. Naturally, as with all things where there is a vast range of techniques and talents, there were some artworks I liked and some I didn’t.

Yesterday, we went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where we’ve had a membership for several years, to see the members-only preview of the new Eli Broad building that houses the collection of modern art.

I enjoyed being out with my husband, of course, and it was nice to have the run of a brand-new, three-story building full of artwork. But I doubt I’ll ever set foot in the place again.

Am I an old fuddy-duddy? Could be. I certainly liked being able to see some very famous Andy Warhol works up close. And there were some marvelous chrome sculptures that I thought were absolutely delightful, and one wall-filling collage of china dishes and paint that was amazing. But I just don’t happen to think that a glass case holding a dead lamb in a formalin solution is “art.” It made me queasy, to tell you the truth, and I got out of that gallery as fast as I could. And there were the usual “scribbles and random blotches on canvas” panels, and “here’s a stretched piece of canvas that is just painted one flat color” and other stereotypical examples of the genre.

It’s a shame, really, because it’s things like that that make people stay away, when they could be appreciating the talent of people who create, say, giant chrome sculpbures that look like balloon animals, or a wave-form sculpture made of massive panels of rusted steel that filled up two rooms and made one marvel at what it took to create it.

Too many pieces where the ick-factor rules supreme dull anyone’s appreciation. They sure did mine.

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