Updated Brain in Bed (With Dog)
The dog is supposed to be nestled in the curve of the temporal lobe, pons and medulla.
(When you know very little either about the brain or art, and are working on an iPhone, it’s hard to get those details.)
Archive for the ‘iPhone art’ category
Updated Brain in Bed (With Canine Companion)
January 25, 2011You Can Find Them Anywhere (With a Careful Eye)
January 22, 2011
You Can Find Them Anywhere (With a Good Look)
In my beautiful home city of Washington, D.C. today, walking by the Potomac–amazing what you can see down here.
PS – ManicDDaily elephants make no particular reference to Republican party symbol. (I just happen to like elephants.)
PPS – remember to check out “Going on Somewhere” by Karin Gustafson, Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin at Amazon.com.
Working With Layers (Brushes App)
January 20, 2011
Working With Layers
Working with “layers” not very successfully on the iPhone App Brushes. The app allows you four different levels of content! (Almost as many as a distracted mind.)
Gratitude for Steve Jobs – Unplugged
January 18, 2011
I like to think of myself as fairly technologically advanced. This is primarily because I type well and practically live on a computer.
Even so, the one area where I’ve definitely been behind the curve is the iPod. I’ve never had one before my current iPhone. I don’t much like ear phones (or ear buds). My brain feels invaded by sound at close range; the inner monologue gets panicky when drowned out.
So I was surprised tonight when I tried, for the second time, to use my iPhone as iPod at the gym and found it not to bother me. I could hear my book on tape perfectly, without my brain feeling invaded. I could get used to this, I thought, happily pumping small amounts of iron. My enthusiasm even seemed to be catching, since the few other people I saw at the gym all seemed to smile at me.
On my way back to my apartment, however, as I took out the ear buds, I noticed that I had not plugged them into the iPhone properly and that they were playing at a relatively normal pitch, i.e. they were not broadcasting into my head but at large. (As in no wonder the other people in the gym were smiling at me!)
A failed attempt. Still it brings up what I truly wanted to write about tonight: my gratitude to Steve Jobs, who has recently announced his decision to take another medical leave.
Even without using an iPod, Apple’s iTunes has been a major fixture of my life for the last several years. My family and I have listened to endless music, pod casts, and audiobooks. (I feel sometimes like a small child, getting solace from having the same books read to me again and again.)
But with the availability of so many iterations of music–different singers, composers, pianists, iTunes allows for broadened horizons as well as comfort food.
Then there are the computers themselves–so fast! And pretty! So many things that you can make with them!
A phone that you can draw with! (See above.)
And the stock. I was lucky enough to buy a few shares some time ago. That act has made me look like a smart investor (even as so many other choices have tanked.)
So now, with the earpods out, but still listening to iTunes, I want to thank Steve Jobs, who has brought me comfort, fun, productivity, and all kinds of both mild and profound enrichment. I wish him well.
(Disclosure–writer still owns some Apple stock.)
King’s Birthday – Private Epiphany
January 17, 2011
Attempted Portrait
One of the great things of not watching much TV is that you get to have your own private epiphanies–sudden realizations that would probably be hammered into your brain if you were habitually tuned into to some 24-hour news channel, but which you get to somehow happen upon in non-television meanderings.
I happened onto one of these realizations today–I was lucky enough to receive an email from Leonie Haimson who runs Class Size Matters, an organization that focuses on trying to improve the New York City school system, in part through reduction of class size. In today’s email, Ms. Haimson embedded a video of an interview of Martin Luther King Jr. with Martin Agronsky in 1957.
The interview, conducted at Dr. King’s church in Montgomery, Alabama (made only a couple of years after Rosa Parks’ arrest) is incredibly impressive. King is articulate, thoughtful, carefully analytical, profound and generous. And so so young.
My “revelation” (undoubtedly more of a remembrance than a true epiphany) was about King’s youth–the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at 35, assassinated at just 39, in his twenties in this particular interview.
I always think of him as having that kind of slightly rounded face that doesn’t show age, but the fact is that he didn’t attain a very old age. Just 39 at death. So impressive, so young.
The interview (embedded in Ms. Haimson’s blog) can be found here.
PS – Sorry to self-promote, but please please please check out “Going on Somewhere” on Amazon, and if it’s not a strain, get a copy! (If it’s a strain, drop me a line and I’ll send you one at a heavy heavy reduction.)
“Improvements” On the MTA (From Lonely Elephant’s View)
January 14, 2011
I happened to be on a nearly deserted subway car the other day. This is an increasingly unusual circumstance on the New York City subway system; even on weekends, trains are jammed, and weekday evenings–forget about it. (Yes, I did try to write that with slang spelling, but it looked weird coming from my computer.)
One problem with a deserted car is that the debris really shows up.
Without other passengers, however, there is plenty space to look at the signs. A new series posted by the MTA itself gave me a clue as to why the system is so decrepit.
There is, for example, the sign detailing a seemingly new repair policy: “If it’s broke, fix it!”
The sign explains: “instead of waiting to fix everything in a station at once, we’re fixing critical parts as soon as they need fixing.”
Wow! What a great idea. Fixing critical parts! Instead of waiting for complete break-down!
“Can our buses go faster? You bet!”
(Then, um, why don’t they?)
Another: “Improvements don’t just happen.”
I’m concerned that they reversed some words on that one. How about “just” and “don’t”?
PS – the above illustration is more iPhone art, which allows for endless iterations. There, the elephant’s in a hoodie. Here’s two earlier versions – it’s a bit like playing with paper dolls.
Florida Mid-Winter – Strange Mix of Warm and Cold
January 6, 2011
Effect of Global Warming? (Or iPhone "Brushes" App?)
I swam for some time in a very calm Atlantic this morning. Amazing. (Brrrr….)
Flight Downs and Ups
January 5, 2011It’s never a good idea, when traveling, to forget a Swiss Army Knife in your backpack.
Oops!
Either you have to give up the knife, or stay off the plane.
It only works for some.
Redwing Blackbird Mystery
January 3, 2011
What's happened to them?
Getting A Solid Foot In Real/Virtual 2011
January 2, 2011
I'm trying to be decisive, but its just not working.
Part of the problem may be that the foot's not on the ground, at least not on real ground,
but hanging out in space somewhere, iPhone space.
Stuck (stubbed) in an App.
ManicDDaily 
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