July 2005

This is a drawing from my days as a Respiratory Therapist.

What are these objects?

Oxygen Key

The first one, the one you probably have never seen before, is an O2 key. Hospitals with organized systems for the distribution and maintenance of portable cylinders. Typically these are E cylinders and are brought along during patient transport. To open these things properly, you need a key, to crack the cylinder to get any dust and grime out, and then later, to open when you have a regulator to put on the top. A regulator measures what the pressure inside the cylinder is. Usually there’s a flowmeter built into the regulator as well.

O2 keys are usually chained to regulators. Usually. When they are not, and your friendly local Respiratory Therapist needs to open an O2 Tank, well, this gets him or her perturbed. Having a spare in your lab coat is a score for the home team. It gives you that air of the boy scout. You’re prepared, ready for action. Oxygen is my business, and business is good!

Guard that O2 key with your life. You may be asked to lend that sucker out to someone else. Don’t take that bait man. Nurses will just lose them. Transport personnel? Who knows where it’ll end up if they take it. Guard that key, because it’s very necessary to have that key for emergencies.

Scissors

Prosaic, yet essential, the next item is a pair of scissors. Standard stainless-steel hospital scissors. Keep ‘em clean. These are good for cutting tubing, such as that used for mechanical ventilators, or maybe a pressure line. Also good for cutting hospital tape to prepare hospital tape to secure an endotracheal tube.

Screwdriver

The last item in this drawing is a small, flat-head screwdriver. This is rarely used, but can come in handy when servicing and cleaning various pieces of very durable medical equipment. And the dude with a screwdriver is appreciated when that screwdriver is necessary.

There are lots of other items in the arsenal of an RT, but I don’t have drawings of those for today. But remind me to tell you the story of suctioning out some teeth from a guy’s lungs. (Teeth do not belong in the lungs, by the way, in case you were confused).

Have a good fourth? We did. We went to the Reagan Presidential Library for about a nanosecond, but that was petering out. So what we did was go to the Simi Valley High School event. We hung out and brought a picnic lunch and it was a good, mellow, fireworks-filled event.

Have a great day!

About The Drawing: I notice that I used different treatment in the various Star Wars characters drawings. I wonder if I was copying something, or if I made that up to suit each character. If I made it up I’m a little impressed that I took the time to get the characters typography to be distinctive.

Basilone, aka “Mr. Bas,” drowsy and handsome.

I’m almost done posting these Star Wars drawings from my 7-year old self.

If you’re getting sick of them, take heart, I’m running out.

Han shot first, you know. He’s trigger-happy in this image.

I like the texture on Luke’s cloak here, though the two misspellings: “Luke Skywaker” and “Star Warss” dismay.

It’s a beautiful morning.

I really like that 7-year old self of mine.

Princess Leia smiles, though I think she only smiles one time in that whole Star Wars movie.

I saw that movie 5 and a half times, by the way. I mean, in the theatres, that Summer.

Kids did indeed keep track of that.

I might update this entry later, or I might not. It’s time for breakfast.

(Yes, I will)

The one half of Star Wars part was I went one time with my Dad after he got home late from work. I have no idea /why/ we went, but in those days, kiddies, if you went in for part of one show, you could stay for the next. Granted, this was 28 years ago, but I think we went in around the time that the Millenium Falcon was being dragged into the Death Star by tractor beams. We sat and enjoyed the movie. We stayed to the end, and saw it again. My father is very proud of having taken me to see Star Wars at Graumann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood on the first day. He had read the buzz, or heard the buzz, and knew it would be cool. I am thankful he did this, as it was perfect for a 7-year old kid with a big imagination. Thanks Dad.

You see, kids, in those days, there was no such thing as a VHS cassette, or a DVD, or buying a movie. You had to go to the theater, or see it on a plane, or see it on one of the three tv networks. And believe me, it was a big deal when a movie you liked showed up on TV. I think I remember thinking it was a big deal when The Rescuers showed up on Wonderful World of Disney some Sunday night.

It’s a whole different world in terms of media consumption. I guess you knew that already though. I mean, to those of you who read this blog, I’m like, another media producer. That blows me away, that in some sense I’m broad-narrowcasting some entertainment out there to people. Am I performing? Am I just keeping a diary? I guess the answer to both those questions is yes, which is a bit crazy. It reminds me of reality TV, which is voyeuristic for the watcher and exhibitionistic for the participants. Some of you may remember that I auditioned for one of them a year ago. I have no doubt that there’s exhibitionism in me. It’s not one of my better qualities.

So this morning was great so far. It feels very much like a vacation. Hey! It is!

A lovely lazy languid morning. Tony helped with breakfast. I started this post. Then we all enjoyed a good breakfast. Tyler mowed the lawn. Put a pot roast in the Crock Pot for later. Then everyone got their showers and dressed for the day. Leah wore curlers this morning and looks amazing. She’s so beautiful.

The unexpected thing I did today was hand the laptop to Ali and said “Hand this to your older brother, Alex”

What was I handing her to give to Dev? Why, it was a web browser opened to Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, which is a wonderful book about programming, of all things. Ruby is a computer language, and a peculiar and interesting one at that. And that book, free online, is funny and witty and instructive. Dev was rivited, and was giggling at it immediately—quoting passages to me and Leah as he would find funny bits. Like this one

An array is a list surrounded by square brackets and separated by commas.

[1, 2, 3] is an array of numbers.

[‘coat’, ‘mittens’, ‘snowboard’] is an array of strings.

Think of it as a caterpillar that has been stapled into your code. The two square brackets are staples which keep the caterpillar from moving, so you can keep track of that end is the head and which is the tail. The commas are the caterpillar’s legs, wiggling between each section of its body.

Once there was a caterpillar who had commas for legs. Which meant he had to allow a literary pause after each step. The other caterpillars really respected him for it and he came to have quite a commanding presence. Oh, and talk about a philanthropist! He was notorious for giving fresh leaves to those less-fortunate.

Yes, an array is a collection of things, but it also keeps those things in a specific order.

Those are some seriously silly words there. I dug it. And Devon dug it too. It’s moments like this I really treasure, to share the little bits of ephemera in my brain.

Sometimes one is just right on, and a link pops out to me to share. Sharing something that I enjoyed with someone else.

A few hours ago we went up to the EATM at Moorpark College. It’s small, but it was a lovely time. I thought of two people, Meg, and my cousin Jessica, who aspires to a career veterinary care. They have these beautiful mountain lions there. Even in cages, they are majestic animals.

The boys loved the monkeys, with their expressive eyes, inquisitive nature, and colorful butts.

Later, I finished this post.

Meta

I changed the tagline on the site. I’m making my goal one scan a day. I did some scans this morning so I can post at least one a day. So, you loyal visitors have that look forward to.

Okay, have a great Holiday!

I have always liked symbols, icons, pictographs, signage.

An oddity here, just a bit of watercolor, saying… what? I have no idea my intent here. Was I working on a logo? Was I trying to tap into symbols? I have no idea, but it’s a pretty little composition.

Today was pretty good. Got the brakes fixed. Went to Medieval Times. Back home now. Sleepy.

Have a great weekend y’all.

I really loved Star Wars as a kid.

I used to go to a lot of art supply stores. You know, to browse.

I would look at the foamcore, and expensive watercolor paper, and acrylics, and fancy pens, and exotic inks, and lust after them. Oh, and the exotic “letraset” sets. Man there were some really cool things that I just /knew/ would help me make the best thing ever.

I definitely made some cool stuff. But items like this, it’s like I’m working on the behind-the-scenes work that needed to be done to create a comic, or an animated film or a painting. Why do we need to see the monster and see that he’s 18 feet tall compared with the man, who is 6 feet tall.

There’s something about my mania for architecting things, rather than really building things. It’s a habit I have that I have great and interesting ideas, and sometimes even say things that are visionary, but I never quite do anything with them.

In 2000, I started saying “the web is not a screenshot” which some people on mailing lists thought was insightful. For a long time I intended to write an insightful essay about how the web works, and what makes it great, and that we should not be so fixated on pixel-precision when it comes to the web. I regret never having put these thoughts down, because it was something that needed saying. The needs of the web its users have moved on, but I wish I had contributed that.

That said, I am very proud of my contributions to websandiego.org and to the web standards project. WebSanDiego, after all, still lives. I have built many cool things and I am happy to have worked on them.

I was talking about the piece here. So I /like/ this piece very much. Though I feel it represents the incompleteness problem I have with finishing what I start, I do like it. I like the look of the monster here. He has a quality I like.

But as you’ve seen in the drawings so far, I have many individual figures, and not so much in the way of complex compositions and interactions between those figures. This is a shortcoming I hope to rectify in the years to come as I develop as an artist and illustrator. I do consider myself to be those things, although I do not claim to be great at either. I do intend, though, to continue along the path of development in these talents. I mean, “art” is my middle name, no? It’s also the front half of this domain.

It’s 11:30 at night. It’s been a long day, I’m tired. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend and Fourth of July Holiday.

I know I’ve been all introspective and it’s all about me and all lately, but this is too cool not to share.

Stew (& Heidi, he says “we”) wrote a song for the SpongeBob Squarepants TV show!

It’s a little thing called “Come Home Gary,” here’s what the man himself said on the negroproblem mailing list:

yo,
spongebob thing is sposed to happen in november… i think. his snail runs away from home and we wrote a song called “gary come home.”
/s

How damn cool is that?

It’s DAMN cool.

I know I shouldn’t swear in here, but that’s exciting stuff. And yes, Leah, I am a fan, and I’m not ashamed of that.