One of the things I learned on the Alice Street drawings was about the awesomeness of working non-photo blue, and then ink. Using blue as the base when I know I’m going to ink later saves me from sweating the pencils too much. It also will allow me to scan this guy and then color him down the line.

My robot anatomy and perspective are off, but it’s working for me.

Those of you paying attention may notice this guy is a Getter Poseidon derivative.

Any judicial decision quoting Groucho Marx, William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, and Frank Sinatra is fine by me. It’s not too dry. I was a bit surprised that I can’t seem to copy and paste from it, which was a bit frustrating.

Historically I’ve been interested in this issue for a variety of reasons. Here’s some prior posts:

• No On Proposition 8 ~ 18 Aug 2008
• California’s History of Miscegenation Laws ~ 28 Oct 2008
• LDS and Proposition 8 ~ 15 Nov 2008
• Prop 8 Trial Coverage ~ 25 Jan 2010

And I recently saw this graphic bouncing around on Facebook and tumblr, and I added it to the smorgasborg: Traditional Marriage Infographic.

I also found this analysis interesting: Proposition 8 Unconstitutional, 9th Circuit Rules: An Analysis by Ari Ezra Waldman.

Not the last we’ll hear about this topic. This feels like something that will go to the Supreme Court. We’ll see.

I put together a website for him in February 2007. I think it’s a great little site that does precisely what it needs to. It introduces you to an artist’s work. I worked with him this week to provide something interesting on the main richardgate.com page. It’s a view of a large group of his paintings that display as you move your mouse over the browser window, or, in the case of mobile, as you move your finger over the display.

Technical Detail, for Programmers only

When I first built this site, I used PrototypeJS and Scriptaculous. In fact, it was one of my first usages of that library, and I was amazed and impressed with how it allowed me to do what at the time I called simply “DHTML” so easily. Still, the syntax was pretty ugly, and I had a large number of inline event handlers in the code. It was not a lot of fun to make changes to it because of that.

In 2010, I converted the site over to using jQuery instead, and that change has been great. The underlying HTML is now cleaner, and the attendant JavaScript is easier to read and maintain. And, when Rick wants to add something new, like a dazzling bit of animation on the main page, I can do it in just a few lines of code.

I invite you to visit richardgate.com and enjoy his work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the various Jumbo Machinder I was exposed to in the Philippines. And one, with a stout body and a jetpack keeps coming back to my mind. I believe when I was 9 years old I had a vinyl toy. It’s bothered me that I never saw it again, and anytime I’d look at sites with a lot of giant robots on them I never saw him.

I always thought this robot from this was an original creation of mine. As it turns out, it’s not, really. as a matter of a fact, it appears to be a pretty close rendering of Getter Poseidon, who looks like this:

Robots with that basic format, with a head shaped like a “rolo” candy, a stocky torso, a jetpack, and tubular arms and joints is something I used to doodle a lot.

And now I know it’s Getter Poseidon. This is more interesting to me than it is to you. Ha.

You can see Mike’s handiwork on modernpots.com, here. On some of the individual pieces, like this one, a short video with Dodd speaking about the pot is included.

In the short both these videos, there’s an attention paid to the utility and appropriateness. And also, a secondary importance placed on symbols placed on the pieces.

Pottery is a very pure form of design, and one of the oldest human crafts. There are pottery artifacts from around twenty-five thousand years BCE according to Wikipedia. The potter’s wheel, a technology seen in the first video, is one with us since sometime between 6,000 and 4,000 BCE in Mesopotamia.

It is inspiring to see people with a love of craft work, and speak about the meaning of their work. Lately I’ve been paying closer attention to my own craft. I have a notion about my work being a vocation as opposed to simply a job. The distinction provides me with meaning–not that I am my work, but that my life is informed by a devotion to craft. I have a renewed enthusiasm for revisiting websites I’ve not thought about in a long time. I am updating them, improving them, and adding to them. I am taking time to examine my own humble craft and pushing toward a higher level of quality in my work. I examine the suitability of purpose of these websites and web applications. Do they do what they are meant to? Do they do them well? Can they be improved?

I look in the mirror at the side of my head sometimes.

I see enough silver that I’m reminded of Reed Richards.

In 2010 I got an e-card that made me laugh enough I kept it around. I was scarcely blogging then though. So, here it is now.

It cracks me up. Thanks Susan.

Cleaning up hard drives. Revamping websites. Settling old issues. Making progress on a number of fronts.

For the first time in a long time I’m feeling like there’s forward progress. There’s difficulty too. There’s real stress sometimes. But there’s joy too.

So, like, that’s cool, right? Regardless, I think it is. I’m 40+, so I can make a determination about cool.

This is the 3,586th post on this blog. This is my 12th year of blogging. This is my 16th year of having a personal website. This is the 9th year of my marriage. This is the tail end of my 41st year of life. I’m expecting all these numbers to continue incrementing. I’m anticipating continuous quality improvement. I act willfully to push all this forward.

That’s it. Thanks for reading.

This is a screenshot of a somewhat useful, great looking web development tool. It’s called Tilt and it’s an add-on for Firefox. What it does is visualize the various elements, or tags on an HTML page in a 3-D space. You can interact with it and click to see what HTML and CSS makes each component. I find it useful sometimes to help me understand what’s why on the page.

It’s overkill, but it’s very pretty.

Sublime.

Responsive web design
A website that responds to the device that accesses it and delivers the appropriate output for it uses responsive design. Rather than designing multiple sites for different-sized devices, this approach designs one site but specifies how it should appear on varied devices.

Check it out in this animated GIF, or by visiting the site in a current browser and resizing the main window.

Basically by including bootstrap.min.css and bootstrap.min.responsive.css, and adding a few @media queries in my CSS, and a meta tag like: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1"> I get a responsive layout nearly for free from Bootstrap with their upgrade to version 2.0.

Big Big Sale!

Whole House Sale Sat-Sun 13-14 Nov 2009 [9am-4pm]

[REDACTED], Moorpark, CA

We are selling EVERYTHING in our house this week and this weekend. EVERYTHING MUST GO

EVERYTHING MUST GO FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR OF THE ORIGINAL VALUE!

We have:
     refrigerator (viblis by whirlpool – $200)
     several desks
     tall bookcases (pine, unfinished, great condition)
     shelves
     treadmill
     kids games and toys! lots of fun stuff
     misc furniture
     mattresses – several one
     decorative items of many kinds
     clothes
          medium teen boy clothes
          women’s large and plus size
     christmas
           ornaments
          misc
     ps2 game system (ps2 slim, 2 controllers, 2 guitar hero guitars, many games)
     gamecube game system (2 controllers, many games)
     vhs machine
     older console tvs super cheap
     ladder
     kitchen table + chairs
     kitchen
          appliances
          dishes (lots of nice dishes)
          silverware
          cooking pots
     art supplies
          canvases
          paper
          pens, pencils
          paint LOTS OF PAINT
     craft supplies
          fabric
          beads
          miscellaneous
     frames – $1.00 a piece
     books galore!
          art
          fiction
          science fiction
          comics
          graphic novels
          religious
          computer programming
     musical instruments

If you have questions about what we have to offer and get a feel for items and prices feel free to call [REDACTED] or send an email via craigslist!

We did sell almost everything, but we still have a lot of stuff. 1% of a lot of stuff is still a lot of stuff, as it turns out.

Also, this ended up driving us to Virginia, where, unbeknownst to us, we ended up spending the last year of my Mom’s life with my Mom and Dad. These are the kind of serendipitous acts of Grace and what you might call divine intervention that have acted in our lives in the past few years. It’s quite a run.