Ik, in common Mayan usage, means wind. Its glyph is a short T inside of a square. Its energy brings spirit, breath, presence, and unseen forces to the matter. It offers the opportunity for co-creation and the integration of polarities.

Kan, tone 4, holds the purpose and intent for measure, for bringing ideas into form, and the use of measure as a tool to mold time, space, and form.

White is the color of the North. Its element is air. Its vehicle of expression is the mind.

So, the message for today is:

Spirit is behind you. You have the ability to make what you see in your mind’s eye. Take the steps you need to today to get crackin’!

My 5th semester in design was very rewarding in terms of the knowledge I gained or the diverse new experiences that I went through. We had two courses under Avinash Shende – Form Studies and Product Modelling & Simulation. The first aimed at making us more intimate with forms, develop a sensitivity towards them and learn to appreciate the emtions that forms convey.

I chose to work around the form of corals and used filled balloons with plaster of paris to generate organic forms which could then be finished by hand.

The finished forms before painting looked like this

Now to give it the really sleek and finished look, I used high gloss paint on it and this how the baby looked after the paint  job.

So over with form studies. Well not really because I carried my experience of corals further into the other course dealing with product modelling and simulation. Here I chose to model and simulate a webcam. Initially I went for just a simple webcam and its detailed modelling because that is what the purpose of the course was.

Initial Attempt

But then Shende Sir pushed me to go for a completely different approach. He asked me to make the webcam not just a deadspace product but more pro-active, more like a character. Thats when I started explorations and taking inspiration from the coral form. The aim was to make the product a point of conversation- much like Starck’s  juicy salif

I finalized my concept called “Budi”. I even attempted to make a physical prototype with silicone but due to limitations in availability of materials and moulding facilities the attempt did not succeed.

But anyways I gave an effort in coming up with CAD models and renderings which were realistic enough to provide the viewer a feel of how the finished product would look. This product was designed keeping in mind the dimensions of standard webcams, weight distribution and housing for internal components. The neck portion houses a flexiwire to make the neck flexible.

So that is the story of Budi. For a person who is shown the final few images he will never be able to guess that this product was born when its designer got too engrossed with corals .  Infact even I did not have the slightest hint that I would end up doing this. But every time I look back I feel, it was one awesome experience.

Coming off another frustrating loss the same day they lost one of their top scorers to a season-ending injury, the last thing the Edmonton Oilers likely want to do is hit the road.

The Oilers hope to avoid a fifth consecutive road loss when they open a season-high, six-game trip Saturday night against the surging Vancouver Canucks.

Ahead by a goal in the final two minutes, Edmonton (10-12-4) lost 5-4 in a shootout against San Jose on Friday to conclude a 2-2-1 homestand. The Oilers have four wins in their last 17 games.

Friday’s loss came hours after the team learned second-leading scorer Ales Hemsky will have season-ending surgery to repair his left shoulder. Already dealing with shoulder problems, Hemsky was injured Wednesday night in a 3-1 loss to Los Angeles. He had seven goals and 15 assists in 22 games.

“Obviously, when you lose a player with the stature of Ales Hemsky it’s difficult, but there is nothing we can do,” general manager Steve Tambellini said.

The Oilers appeared in good shape to win Friday despite Hemsky’s absence.

Ryan Potulny had two goals while Dustin Penner and Gilbert Brule each added a goal with an assist, but San Jose’s Patrick Marleau tied the game with 1:26 left in regulation. Edmonton missed all three attempts in the shootout.

“There is no way we should have lost this hockey game,” Oilers coach Pat Quinn said. “We did some really good things, but what has been our problem here from day one is we don’t cover well against our net. We have a group that stares at the puck and doesn’t recognize danger.”

Though Potulny has scored three of his five goals in the last two games, and Penner’s recorded five points in his last four, Edmonton hits the road where it’s 2-7-2. The Oilers are 0-2-2 away from home since winning 5-3 at Colorado on Nov. 8.

While the Oilers are 1-1 against the Canucks (13-11-0) this season, they lost 2-0 at Vancouver on Oct. 25.

Henrik Sedin scored a goal in that contest and had one with an assist in Vancouver’s 4-1 victory over Los Angeles on Thursday.

VANCOUVER EDMONTON 

L1: Daniel/Henrik/Burrows L1: Penner/Gagner/Brule 

L2: Raymond/Kesler/Samuelsson L2: Jacques/Horcoff/O’Sullivan 

L3: Hansen/Wellwood/Bernier L3: Moreau/Potulny/Cogliano 

L4: Glass/Johnson/Rypien L4: MacDonald/O’Marra/Stortini 

D1: Mitchell/Bieksa D1: Souray/Staios 

D2: Edler/Salo D2: Smid/Visnovsky 

D3: Erhoff/Schneider D3: Strudwick/Gilbert 

G: Luongo G: Deslauriers 

NOTES: Rypien (upper body) is a game time decision, if he can’t go then Hordichuk is in. Glass would move up to the third line and Hansen would fall to the fourth. 

Kyle Wellwood and Alex Burrows also added a goal and assist each as the Canucks won for the third time in four games since losing three in a row.

Vancouver has outscored its opponents 17-6 in its last four games, which included a 1-0 loss to Chicago on Sunday.

“We’ve got to get on a roll and start feeling good about ourselves,” forward Ryan Johnson told the Canucks’ official Web site.

Sedin, who has a team-leading 14 goals and five in his last four games, has just one goal but 11 assists in his last 15 games versus the Oilers.

Vancouver’s Roberto Luongo made 31 saves Thursday to improve to 9-8-0 with a 2.45 goals-against average this season. He’s 13-7-2 with one tie and a 2.30 GAA against the Oilers.

Edmonton’s Jeff Deslauriers made 27 saves against San Jose and could make his sixth straight start in place of Nikolai Khabibulin, who’s day-to-day with a sore back.

Deslauriers, 3-3-2 with a 2.58 GAA, made 27 saves in the October loss to Vancouver in his only appearance against the Canucks.

Rested Canucks host suddenly struggling AvsLa Liga round-up

Every time I begin to transcribe something – anything – it’s difficult to overcome the inability to completely answer the question “why.” This is, I think, one of the biggest challenges for anyone who strives to answer that question in their writing, but often only comes up with slanted structures, distant slippage, unresolved tension, unexplained actions, emotional barricades, uprooted and dislodged metaphors, progressive sadness, and, sometimes, the detail that we *hope* will explain the whole beautiful mess: that which makes us nostalgic for a future we haven’t yet experienced.

Thus, despite my attempts to the contrary, on my third reading of the Transcendentalist  tract Nature I feel a real affinity for R. W. Emerson - because, deliberately or not, his search for the answer to why we need Nature -  and why we need others, as he often includes society within Nature - next to our inclination to hide in our own skins has him perpetually looking to the horizon, to the sunrise, to specific and synchronic moments of joy which are *almost* irreconcilable with human nature’s propensity for self-destruction. And the end result is a stack of explanations which search for hope in the beauty of the detail, but ultimately indicate the egotism and isolation of the artist’s thwarted love for others which is never fully explainable, never fully reciprocated. Why, Emerson asks, can we not understand ourselves in relation to others anymore; what function does unworked nature play in this comprehension; why are we perpetually blocked from fully experiencing communion with others? He tries to answer these questions with a formal figuration of man’s soul in relation to all that is outside his soul. A bourgeois 19th century figuration of man’s “nature” and “natural” instincts to explain man’s “natural” inclinations for progress and industry, Emerson ultimately comes face to face with increasing industrial*ism* of America, that which he cannot explain away as natural, that which cannot be commanded by any perspective within society itself but only from a perspective outside of society: only through untouched land can Emerson see the complete effects and implications of commerce which distances man from himself and others; and only there can he attempt to repair this distance with aesthetics.

Does Emerson’s synchronic detail speak to the whole, though? Can he explain the relationship of one man to society, one action to universal law, one wrong move to universal corruption, one correct responsible reading or “eloquent” thought to universal redemption? His struggle with this question is *why* he cannot: what is the slippage between the particular and the universal which he continually grasps at. The metaphors he keeps coming back to are man’s relationship to the horizon, and man’s relationship to property.

Can he transcend the mind in order to achieve universal absolution of responsibility?

“There are new lands, new men, new thoughts” – 7

Man’s soul vs. Nature: how to repair the rift? Nature includes:

                                Nature

                                 Art

                                Man

                               Man’s Body

In the beginning of the essay, in the Chapter 1, “Nature,” Emerson proposes the possibility of beholding the landscape without wanting to own it, and thus being able to transcend the self through aesthetic, poetic efforts and commune with nature. Yet property interferes with his vision even at first glance of the landscape: “When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title” – 9. The poet leaves nature untouched and in that way “owns” more “property” than if he had actually owned it: by not wanting to own it. Thus the landscape is, in its poetic qualities, not to be owned by anyone but the poet, who only possesses without legal possession.

Yet Emerson cannot get past his own self when attempting to transcend the self to access nature’s property-less qualities: “In the woods, we return to reason and faith…Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God…In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature” -10. Soul (man’s self) can overcome body if the egotism of the body is not in the way: but only with distance can man behold something as beautiful as his own nature: because if distant, he does not have to confront the egotism of the self. Emerson will proble the causes of this egotism of the self, the grasping, greedy “debt” of the self, later in the essay.

Nature is still, Emerson insists, connected to man, because it is not only worked on by man to create commodities but is also the cause of man’s desire to work on nature’s material, and the result of man’s material products. And man’s relationship to society should mimic man’s relationship to nature (13). Man shapes his view (his consumption) of nature with his eyes, but leaves nature untouched  (14) – or at least he tries to. When he cannot do this anymore, create on his own, though, he tries to *own* nature itself.

“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough” (15). But this distance between man and the horizon is necessary so that  man can maintain enough distance from himself. What happens when man must examine the particulars, the particular aesthetic details which could allow him the passage from the self to Nature and thus a path to the horizon? Are these particulars, up-close, uncorrupted? E. writes, “A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in minature…A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace” (18). But these single objects do not always show universal grace.

Emerson wants to argue for the universal as shown by the particular, but cannot reconcile this with the possibility that not all parts are pure; that man is not doing enough to create and is simply taking from nature: “Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men” (21). This universality indicates “natural” causes for social life and organization, which is attacked by scholars like Marx later in the 19th century. Emerson wants to attribute individual’s life to natural patterns, but cannot, ultimately, completely divorce man from his surrounding society and society’s corruption. Reason, according to Emerson, is Spirit in man: Man needs Reason or Spirit (the force of the aesthetic instinct, the creative instinct) to overcome himself and access nature: Man –> Reason/Spirit –> Nature.  Reason or Spirit is that which creates art, which does not take away from nature by ownership but reflects on it and is a combination of man and nature. Is this possible?

Emerson then confronts the overwhelming egotism and greed of  society, which he cannot escape and overcome. “A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, – and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults” (22).

Understanding = Logic

Reason = Spirit or Aesthetic Instinct = Culture – 33

Emerson writes in “Discipline,” Chapter 5, that Nature disciplines man to understand the order of truths and the structure of truths. Discipline is differentiation: “of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces” (26). But social property also disciplines man to understand truths and himself: and property’s lesson is not benign, signalling the fact that nature has already been corrupted by property, and that we must confront the lessons that property’s discipline teaches us. The implication is that Nature can never be Property, but that if we view Nature as property, wanting to possess it irresponsibly, we will be taught the same lessons:  ”The same good office is performed by Property and its filial systems of debt and credit” (27). Therefore man needs to discipline himself and take lessons from Nature in discipline to not want to possess; yet Emerson is already suggesting that it is too late, that Property is teaching us lessons which nature should already have told us but which we ignored.

Emerson then proposes that Reason (Culture) can help us connect with Nature again, if we are eloquent and produce an American literature based on experience and not on the past; an American literature based on the new landscape we are encountering. But he constantly raises the problematic of the perspective of the horizon which might already be tainted by man himself - which the poet can shape and change and leave physically unaltered, but which others have invaded and corrupted and which the poet himself might not be able to remedy. Man –> Culture/Reason –> Nature. If done appropriately: “By a few strokes [the poet] delineates…not different from what we know them, but only lifted from the ground and afloat before the eye. He unfixes the land and the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his primary thought, and disposes them anew” – 34. By this means man and the poet *could* transcend the self and connect the self to nature.

But in actually, transcendence seems to be more difficult than that for Emerson: details are not only indicative of the unity of nature, but they are also cumbersome, and some do not point to beauty: “In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observations in a single formula”  (37). If this is the case, if the particulars are now cumbrous, what does that say of the ostensible universality of the whole: that this universality is not as well-ordered, not as solidly structured, in society as it is in the natural world, as much as Emerson wants it to be: and one cannot transcend society to attain communion with nature if society is corrupt and its own details do not correspond to nature’s structures.

Emerson now comes down on the corrupton of man, and the metaphor of the distance between man and the horizon is once more employed, but now to demonstrate that this distance is instructive because we insist on maintaining distance, and do not even desire to overcome it: ”The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man…But it it differs from the body in one important respect. It is not, like that, now subjected to the human will…It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure. As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident” (42) and thus the space between us and nature to be shaped by the poet is greater and greater. Often culture cannot serve to bridge this space, and society overtakes man’s individualism.

Then Emerson directly sketches the outlines of laborers on the horizon, a synecdoche in visual metaphor of the social problem he has been leading up to, that of increasing industrialization and indiscrete ownership and possession: “Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him? Yet this may show us what discord is between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds something ridiculous in his delight, until he is out of sight of men”  (42).

Emerson then takes the Enlightenment to task, stating that empirical science inhibits man from comprehensive knowledge of the entire relationship between man and society. Thus his constant emphasis on the particular’s relationship to the universal and the necessity of continuously identifying this relationship, as we have seen. But, he has demonstrated that the particular can be corrupt: that man himself can be corrupt in relation to other men, that the universal of the horizon has been tainted by the presence of the particular laborer.  He would like to “behold a rich landscape” and not have empirical science stratify his appreciation of the whole, so that he can commune with it; but as we have seen in the previous section Spirit, there is already a laborer on that landscape: so it is neither here nor there to appreciate the landscape anymore, though it is possibly a *result* of empirical sciences and thus of industrialization that the laborer exists on the horizon and that “it is less to my purpose [when beholding a rich landscape] to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. I cannot greatly honor minuteness in details, so long as there is no hint to explain the relation between things and thoughts” (43).

Man now, Emerson writes, “works on the world with his wisdom alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. His relation to nature, his power over it, is through the understanding [logic]; as by manure; the economic use of fire, wind, water, and the mariner’s needle; steam, coal, chemical agriculture [industrialism]” (46). Thus a man now labors in the world without thinking of the implications of his labors; without comprehending his own alienation and further alienation by this laboring within society, and the results of this are increasing industrialization, which further alienate man from himself. He cannot “satisfy all the demands of the spirit” (47) when working in the world so fully.

Thus corruption has already occurred in the form of excessive and meaningless labor, which has led to alienation of man. “The ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not transparent but opake. The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself” (47). Man is thus alienated from himself, and Emerson still cannot answer the question “why” materially, except to continuously gesture to labor, to property, to half-attempts at creation and wholehearted attempts at ownership, consumption, and possession.

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common” (47). And only, Emerson states, aesthetics – “eloquence” (47) invarious forms – can see the miraculous in the common. Why, though, is this so difficult? Because man is alienated from himself, because property interferes on the line of the horizon, because laborers invade aesthetic perspective, because through man’s alienation with himself, his own “egotism” blocks his transcendence into nature. Why is the particular corrupt? Because man has allowed his life to be pervaded not by nature but by society, which has become corrupt. Why has society become corrupt? Because man has labored without understanding why, and has therefore allowed the empirical sciences and all that drive them – neverending progress, as opposed to historical cycles of reason – to define his labors for him, and to define his Reason and his Spirit (his own production) in relation to others rather than in relation to himself.

We have a chair that’s bleeding.

Each time I walk past it, I remember my Medieval lit classes where we read of statues or religious icons that would upon occasion spontaneously start hemorrhaging.  These seemingly miraculous events would increase the tourist trade in small villages throughout early Europe.  Flocks of pilgrims would pack up their bags and take off on foot, traveling long and arduous journeys to go and stare in wonder and awe, and if lucky, to come home with a tiny relic or tee shirt as a souvenir.  The villagers were often extremely proud of their bleeding statue for it was a significant money-maker for the village or church that owned it.

Unfortunately, we have no pilgrims knocking at our door, begging for a piece of kapok.  If only I could invest the trail of chair stuffing that dots the living room carpet with the power to fill husbands everywhere with a love for furniture shopping.  Women would journey far and wide to our apartment for a tiny piece of the chair’s stuffing.  Ticket sales would land me on the cover of Forbes.

This chair was doomed from the start.  I had just purchased and remodeled my first condo when I bought it.  I filled my new space with lots of cool angles and shiny surfaces of glass and mirror–obviously this was my pre-DH period.  In fact, I overheard the delivery men laughing as they delivered my dining table. “She obviously doesn’t have kids living here.”  His partner quipped, “Or a man.”  I didn’t care.  Form and style are supposed to be a single girl’s hallmark.

Form and style are like those super cool pals who show up at 2 in the afternoon bearing bottles of champagne.  You know nothing good can come of this, but at least it’s going to be a lot of fun, and in this case, pretty.  I found a postmodern table that deconstructed the whole notion of what defined a dining table; namely, function.  My new table consisted of a thin sheet of clear glass that rested on two clear glass sawhorses…practical?  Functional?

Hardly, but the table was totally amazing to look at.  It reminded me of a sleek fashion model.  Unfortunately, I soon discovered how high maintenance that chick was.  She turned the seemingly simple everyday occurrence of sitting down to eat a bowl of cereal into a nightmare.  Any meal or snack ended with 45 minutes spent with a cloth and a bottle of glass cleaner, to furiously attack smudges.  And just like some severely underweight but elegant super models, the table was more than a little unstable.  The sheet of glass precariously shifted whenever more than one person sat or walked past it.  I quickly developed the habit of eating at the kitchen sink while looking over to admire the table.

Before I got married, Function was that poor second cousin who lived out in the country.  The second cousin who was rarely invited to come visit, except for holiday dinners, and only then, because in your heart of hearts, you felt sorry for his lack of vision.

Clearly, Function had gone back home to his well-stocked and sturdy cabin when I bought the now bleeding chair.  Like my super model dining table, this chair could have easily posed for the cover of Architectural Digest, or one of those spiffy Italian design journals.  You know the ones with pictures of kitchens or bedrooms that never see children, cats or straight men.  Unfortunately, at least for the chair, I soon acquired two of the three, a straight man and cats.

The chair, I hate to admit, was doomed from the start.  Its fatal beauty is what lead to its early death.  Now, ff you look closely at the remaining upholstery, you can see that it still has hint of glam from its subtle shimmer of deep bronze raw silk from Thailand.  When I saw the chair in the show room, it was love at first sight.  I wanted to hug it.  I later learned that doing so, as would sitting on it, would be a bad thing.  Raw silk stains with dizzying speed.  I would have a series of mini-strokes when friends would plop down, a glass of red wine or box of chocolates or anything edible propped on their lap.  One hand would instinctively clutch my chest while the other would reach for the fabric cleaner —I soon stopped buying anything but bottled water to serve guests.  But stains were the least of my worries.

Patrick, our big fluffy one, is a Birman, a breed that can be traced back to ancient Siam, present day Thailand.  I had no idea the silk chair would make him homesick.  Our other cat, Bongo is a tabby with street smarts and a sense of cocky arrogance.  While Patrick is more demure, choosing to shred when humans are well out of screaming range, Bongo prefers an audience.  With a quick glance to see if anyone is watching, and if satisfied by our turnout, Bongo will start shredding.  Once his audience starts to shout, he runs and zips around behind the chair for an encore performance only to skitter out of the room with (I swear) a huge grin.

The chair could still do a cover shoot; just now it would be one of those covers for a grocery store tabloid depicting the horrid remains of someone who had met their untimely end by being mauled by a pack of wild beavers from outer space.

When I got married, Function left his cabin in the country and came to live with me and DH.  In a fit of disgust, poor Form and Style have left for sunnier, if not sleeker vistas.  At one time, I was convinced that a room had to say something to you upon entering.  The décor should whisper, “The people who live here are cool”, or “These folk all mid-century warm and cozy.”   Clearly, like whistles only dogs can hear; that voice is beyond the auditory range of most men, my DH chief among them.  I put fingers in both ears to prevent what tales the chair says about us.

He’s content to push the chair up against the wall to hide the shreds.  This just caused the cats to refocus and work on the front corners.  DH even invested in nifty cat toy-festooned scratching posts that we line up to form a perimeter around the chair.  These are merely warm up stations before they get to good stuff.

For poor DH, Form and Style are strangers to be avoided.  They speak a strange language and laugh when he orders a coke at dinner.  Ironically, DH will fuss over shirt seams that fail to match, he will move pieces of a carefully arranged table-scape of candles and bowls, to a jumbled heap on a bookshelf, in order to make room for his feet as he watches TV.

I blame Function for all of this.  It’s not for lack of funds that the chair continues to bleed in the living room.  DH just brought home a huge flat screen TV—Function and he agreed that it was time to replace the old model.  Function convinced him that the new TV would work better with our cable system.  Whereas, my complaints about the chair are simply aesthetic, harkening back to my old companions, Form and Style.

Not giving up, I have lately started to encourage the cats to finish the chair off—a mercy killing, as it were.  When the final puff of kapok rolls across the carpet and a pile of shredded silk remains where the chair now sits, perhaps we will go shopping.  I know it!

No recipe today!  We ate like porkers—I can’t even think about food.

I’m keeping my blogging to a minimum this Thanksgiving week but I couldn’t help but enjoy the following piece in today’s NY Times. The form is what really struck me, but the content is great too.  I don’t know what to call it — a Op-Ed photo journal essay article?

The piece is entitled “Back to the Land – And the Pursuit of Happiness” and is a — I don’t know a “photo essay” — with compelling prose and a fun electronic format.  According to Wikipedia, Maria Kalman, the author, is an “an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer.”  She’s done children’s books, New Yorker covers, and even Strunk and White.

Check it out!

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I have ever known.”
-Chuck Palahniuk

Family functions always make me feel unsettled. It’s not the family (well, ok part of it is. The fact that my seven year old niece was trying to attack me with her pink DS—yeah. At least I’m still faster than her and can still grab her by the wrist and give her a spanking). It’s not the forced smiles and polite conversations. It’s…

Well. I feel less like myself than I do when I’m around my family.

“You look more like your dad everyday!”

“You really take after your mom. Look at you cleaning up.”

“Oh, your sweet potatoes taste just like your Aunt Ester’s before she died.”

“Applying to PhD programs? You’re so ambitious like your grandmother!”

My response:

“…..pass me the green beans, please.”

I’ve always prided myself on being myself. Being an individual. Not quite an independent yet, but being…well. Myself. Family functions tend to whittle that sense of self (and esteem) down.

This brings me to the idea of blended genre. Lately, the line between poetry and nonfiction and fiction has blurred. Ever since the James Frey incident, the idea of truth and “T”ruth has undergone a re-definition. When you write nonfiction, there’s also the idea of the “creative” nonfiction. The things you omit to make a better story, the dialogue you don’t remember as well, things that are meant to add to the agenda you have as the author. Then there’s straight reportage nonfiction, although supposed to be unbiased, contains the thoughts and point of view of the one writing. There’s all in how you tell the story.

This is made true even more in poetry. Consider this:

Poetry can be narrative, lyrical, experimental, or confessional (Combinations within these are made. However they tend to have one more dominant than the other).

Now if you consider this, there’s also form:

free, blank, form poem (sonnet, sestina, etc.), and prose poem

If you take the confessional/narrative prose poem and take a short creative nonfiction piece, what is the difference?

Isn’t writing meant to share an emotion or an experience? Entertain while evoking some sort of resonance? If writing is meant to do the same thing, what is said of the lines that separate them from each other? A fictional piece can be based on true experiences and accounts. What does it add to say that it is fiction as opposed to “truth?”

Poetry, I believe is in a strange space, as poetry is instinctively set as “truth” and personal. When it is seen as invented—or a construct, well. I was told that “if you’re going to write a bunch of lies, write fiction.”

But what if these lies are true to me? I don’t have to have seen an actual pair of burnt children’s socks lying in the road to feel the slight sadness and fear the image brings up.

Does what I imagine or think make things less true for myself?

I don’t have the answers. And until I am told that my writing falls under different guidelines or rules, I’m going to work to produce the best damn writing I can produce, whether it be “poetry,” “fiction,” or “nonfiction.” Whether it be “truth” or “The Truth.”

This brings me back to the whole thing about being told that I am made up of the traits of my family members before me. Whether I am “my mother’s child” or really “so much like [my] father.” Whether it be because I have the blood of my grandmother and the spirit of my aunt and/or uncles—I am myself.

They all do agree about one thing though about me.

“So…what do you do with a creative writing degree? Do you want to teach?”

My response:

“……..excuse me, I think I hear my sister calling me.”

The first introduction of the TAO Metaversity and its newly announced  campus @ Kayenta, Utah came to fruition on the 19th of November. Many of those who attended have commented on this blog, facebook, through e mails and over the phone. They are expressing their sincere excitement about this “Sanctuary in the Desert”.

All that  attended this meeting, whether physically there or through the reading of this blog, mirror  the “Running Ambassadors” of the Mayan civilization. The “Running Ambassadors” were those who after receiving   new understanding, would then run to the villages delivering the new knowledge through personal conversation from one person to another. Each  of us have the choice to become a clear vessel to what has been introduced.  Referring to a past and present linage of  ”Running Ambassadors”, those attending this meeting received an image of the TAO Metaversity and  can now begin to share that knowledge by giving it voice. Through each Running Ambassador’s sharing, the TAO Metaversity keeps on gaining strength thanks to the help of other people’s thinking.

After the meeting, one of the present day Running Ambassadors recognized , “The statement you made about, ” The TAO Metaversity is already here”, was so true. It lives in all of us and what a beautiful place to have it.”  Another Running Ambassador stated, “I’ve got the folder telling all about the TAO Metaversity right here on the table with me. I’m so excited about what is already in action.” And  an exerpt from another Running Ambassador, who’s comments in their entirety are shared under recent comments on this blog, “I applaud the vision and energy- keeping the fire lit and gleaming brightly. Congratulations on this latest Development.”

Wendy Mendenhall
Founder

TAO Metaversity, Kayenta Campus

http://www.taometaversity.wordpress.com

Luego de varios atrasos finalmente llego a las tiendas la favorita de muchos Fate en su versión Shin Sonic gracias a Alter y esta estupenda figura.

Esta figura de Alter que desde que fue anunciada causo mucho de que hablar por ser uno de los personajes más populares de la serie Nanoha además por el gran tamaño de la figura, sus detalles y su precio 12800 yen y por lo que he leido de gente que la compro han tenido que pagar 6000 yen de gastos de envio lo que al final hace un costo de 18800 yen

Fate aparece cuando su Barrier Jacket se ha transformado en la forma Shin Sonic (True Sonic o Sónico Verdadero) en la Sonic Form su defensa se ve debilitada sus velocidad se ve aumentada en la Shin Sonic además su magia es aumentada.

Aunque la figura es de 1/7 de escala su pelo extendido asi como sus armas

Su fiel Bardiche viene en forma Riot Zanber donde se divide en dos Riot Blades unidas por un cordón amarillo. Las cuales Fate puede combinar para crear una versión mas grande de Zanber (la cual es grande de por si) y que se puede ver en la figura y que por ello incluye un soporte adicional.

Que más decir pasen por foobarbaz y vean las fotografías de esta magnifica figura

Unique features will create original experiences.

What will make your playground different than others in the area? Will it be the color scheme or the site theme? Will it be the layout? Perhaps the best way to distinguish your site in the community is by utilizing unique features that contribute to an individual playground identity. By checking out the other playgrounds in the area, you can get an idea as to what may work well, that you could build off of, or what they missed, that you could include. Features that are exciting, fresh, and aesthetically pleasing are your best bet in designing an original site.

Fresh forms and shapes will impress visitors.

Interesting forms will also help your playground stand out. Although some designs look new age, they are still very functional and will impress a client and community with their contemporary appeal. Step out of the box and include shapes and formats not usually seen in the standard design. Go above and beyond the norm and implement entirely new shapes in your playground. Play around with unique concepts. It is almost guaranteed that the more creative you get, the more a child will enjoy the site… let’s face it, a young imagination will take whatever you put it front of it and multiply it by ten with their growing mind’s eye—so start with something big and really get the creative juices flowing.

Go beyond the usual and develope original layouts.

Make your playground an original experience with fresh shapes, features, and forms. Keep pushing the envelope with design… playgrounds are in no way meant to be boring. If a design looks bizarre, but its functionality can be proven, chances are the site will be way more effective in entertaining children that the standard pony show. Take the time to create new playscapes that are fun and unique. Have fun!

Watched Objectfied today, a film by the same person who directed Helvetica. I’m just going to post some key phrases I noted down.

“form bears no relation to function“

“wear-in rather than wear-out“

“why does something have to be built to be permanent?”

“remove, remove, remove, bit by bit, anything that is not necessary“

“design is about mass consumption”

Obviously there’s loads more choice quotes, but I think the most interesting section to me was the form relating to function part of the film. We used to live in a world where form followed function, but the introduction of the computer chip has completely changed that, we now live in a world where the objects look gives the user no indication of what it does, the example given was Apple’s iPhone.

Anyway, comments and thoughts on this subject would be interesting.

Roughly 120 days from now I’m teaching a workshop in Peru.

My planning has already begun. You might find that a little surprising, but it’s very true. And while this might seem like a lot of prep time, let me assure you, it isn’t. Not by a long shot.

And when I say planning, I don’t mean dragging out my suitcase or beginning to prepare lecture notes. Those will come, in time. I mean, one of the basic questions is which camera will I take – my Leica or my Hasselblad?

At the moment, I’m beginning to prepare the logistics of my photographs. My personal introspection of what I’d like to make while in Cusco for the first time – what I’d like to make while there, not what I’ll be teaching. In fact, this note is somewhat of a primer on what we will be considering while there.

You see, in many ways, I’m in a similar position to the students who will be attending the Peru in Book Form photographic workshop. I’ve never been to Peru. I’ve never witnessed Easter in Peru. I’ve never seen Cusco. I’ve never been to this hotel. I’ve never flown through Lima. So, it is difficult for me to know exactly what will happen, which is what is so exciting.

(For those curious why the heck I’m teaching a workshop in a city I’ve never visited, I’m working with the producer of the PhotoExperience workshops who specializes in photography in Cusco. Between the two of us, we’ve got it covered.)

I think one of the most difficult things about doing an event like this is fighting the urge to preconceive what will happen or what I will see. More seasoned photographers might stand over my shoulder: “been there, done that“ trying to share the easiest solution with me, but again, my mind is telling me otherwise. I have grand visions, but there is always a catch.

In my editorial and newspaper days, assignments NEVER appeared like the concepts I’d preconceived. On the one hand this was frustrating. My visions were always incredible, and often times the visuals in front of me were not. I’d find myself cursing the assignment editor or saying to myself, “Gotta make chicken salad out of chicken sh%$.”

But on the other hand, arriving at unexpected things was fantastic, kept me on my toes, challenged me, and in the end made me a far better photographer. Heading into unknown territory with my camera became second nature, which has helped me tremendously when it comes to shooting weddings or even portraits. I don’t get rattled.

So today I find myself dreaming about Peru and also trying to figure out how I’m going to “design” my photographs – better yet, create my story.

I don’t know what I’m going to see in Peru. I could go online and look up Easter and try to find something specific, and part of me wants to do that, but I’m fighting the urge. Perhaps I don’t really want to know. I want to see with fresh eyes, knowing that what I see has never happened before. Each year brings something new, something I learned from photographing Sicilian Easter over a four-year period. I would return to the same towns, shoot the same events and see different things each time.

I’m thinking about other aspects of my images: how do I want them to look? In what format? Color or black and white? What size prints will I make? Will the prints be digital or traditional? Am I shooting for more of an editorial look? Gallery look? Or a book?

The specific goal of this workshop is to photograph Easter in Peru with the idea of producing a book from the material. What size book? What format? Will this be a commercial book? A personal book? A limited edition? Softcover? Hardcover?

What if I shoot two different ways and make two different books? Can I even do that? Will it water down the images if I try to do two things at once? Should I research previously published books on Peru? Of Easter?

Okay, by now it is evident I just finished my morning coffee, and that perhaps I’m a little fixated on this issue. Guilty as charged.

But this is my reality. You see my “design” on my images changes. I’ve got more than one look, and I’m trying to predict the future.

The easiest thing to do is shoot my Leica and Tri-x. I’ll love it. I know because I’ve done it so many times, in so many places. But I could also use the Hasselblad, which I love for portraits. Maybe I could shoot the action with the Leica and the slower stuff with the Blad?

It would be so great to board the plane with two small bodies, two lenses and a small bag of film. Light, easy, simple. But my mind tells me I can do more, make more, but this might just be another trick.

But in the end I can’t allow the concept of a book, or what a gallery might like, overpower the basics of light, timing and composition. I need to put myself in the best position to make the best photographs that are most reflective of me as a photographer.

It’s so easy to get lost in the “design”.

So, today my planning and designing continues. Soon I will work on lecture notes, slideshows, etc. I will curse myself for losing at least half of my Spanish ability. But I will also relish the idea of what will happen 120 days from now. I will dream about the moments and the happiness we will experience.

Like a fire burning inside, keeping us creatively warm, until that moment when the starter gun says,” Go!”

www.santafeworkshops.com
www.photoexperience.net
www.milnorpictures.net

Teklif ekranındaki menu barda bulunan Adres Ara ve Müşteri için teklif çıktısını yazdır butonlarını gizlemek için aşağıdaki kod kullanılabilir.

Aşağıdaki kod formun onload’una yazılmalıdır.

 var adresAraButon = document.getElementById(‘_MBLookupAddress’);

var teklifYazdirButon = document.getElementById(‘_MBprintQuote’);    

if(adresAraButon !=null)

adresAraButon .style.display = ‘none’;

if(teklifYazdirButon !=null)

teklifYazdirButon .style.display = ‘none’;

Bu kod formun onload’una yazılır. Id değerlerini bulmak için kaydı açtığınızda ctrl+n ile yeni bir sayfada gösterdiğinizde browserın menu barından View→Source özelliğinden açılan txt dökümanından görünen başlık adına göre ararsanız id değerini bulabilirsiniz.

I have this javame library I have been compiling for a while. It has a lot of small small code snippets and classes I use often, there is a database part where I have tried as much as possible to encapsulate parts of the saving/retrieving parts of RMS, there is also the UI part, which is what I want to talk about today.

This part contains a TickerForm, which is a form that can show scrollable contents pulled from database or URL at intervals(I am yet to finish it) and the second thing is the Controllable form. This form has a Controller that you can use to service the form(just like posting a form through POST). You call the submit() method of the form and the service method of the controller is called. The service method stores the values of items of the form in a Properties object(which is basically a key-value pair). A code is worth more than a thousand words they say, so here we are

/*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/
package com.trinisoft.atpay.forms;

public void commandAction(Command c, Displayable d) {
if (c.equals(ok)) {
submit();
if(getResponseCode() == 200) {
display.setCurrent(loginForm);
} else {
Alert l = new Alert("Error Occurred",getResponseText(),null,AlertType.ERROR);
display.setCurrent(l,d);
}
} else if (c.equals(cancel)) {
mainForm.notifyDestroyed();
}
}
});
}
}

You should draw your attention to two places, the contructor and the commandAction in the init() method. In the super constructor, you pass in a Controller, the controller have a service method, which handles the forms submit() and stores response-code and reponse-text keys and values in the Properties passed to it. These keys are used in the commandAction to get the response code and value. Any other value(or object for that matter) that you want to send back as response can be stored in the Properties object.

I think this suite of classes would be useful for anyone interested in Java ME development. Try it out and let me know your feedbacks.

Code hosted at www.gitorious.org/~trinisoftinc

ciao

Georg Jensen Henning Koppel Masterpiece Kanna

Eva Solo Kandelaber Golvljusstake 3-armad

Fredericia Stingray gungstol Svart

Like Most Revelations
by Richard Howard

(after Morris Louis)

It is the movement that incites the form,
discovered as a downward rapture–yes,
it is the movement that delights the form,
sustained by its own velocity. And yet

it is the movement that delays the form
while darkness slows and encumbers; in fact
it is the movement that betrays the form,
baffled in such toils of ease, until

it is the movement that deceives the form,
beguiling our attention–we supposed
it is the movement that achieves the form.
Were we mistaken? What does it matter if

it is the movement that negates the form?
Even though we give (give up) ourselves
to this mortal process of continuing,
it is the movement that creates the form.

Urban Traces of Düsseldorf.

An installation in an old goods depot.

We took photos of various vacant sites of the city and made a collage to design a new virtual skyline. In the corner of an old and abandoned building we projected the outline of that skyline. With the aid of barrier tape we formed that outline and filled it with a regularly coloured moiree-pattern.

Kraft Makes $16.3 Billion Hostile Bid for Cadbury – DealBook Blog …
Kraft on Monday formally made a ?9.8 billion ($16.3 billion) hostile bid for Cadbury, just ahead of a deadline imposed by British regulators. Cadbury said the bid undervalued the company.

Kraft& Hostile Bid for Cadbury Expected – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com
Kraft is expected to make a hostile bid for the British confectioner Cadbury on Monday, making official its attempt to create an international food giant after more than two months of posturing, The New York Times reported.

Cadbury awaits Kraft bid deadline, shares tick up
Cadbury’s shares edged up by early afternoon on Monday as the clock ticked towards a 1700 GMT deadline.

Market Awaits Kraft& Cadbury Deadline – MarketBeat – WSJ
Kraft is expected to officially launch a hostile bid for Cadbury Monday, setting in motion a tussle for control. The lack of counterbids for Cadbury ahead of Monday’s FSA-imposed bid deadline for Kraft suggests Cadbury is “not as good a …

BC News: Kraft makes Cadbury takeover bid – the Benche | Trade …
US food company Kraft launches a hostile bid for UK confectioner Cadbury worth ?9.8bn. More…

Kraft said to formalize hostile Cadbury bid : Ghana Business News
cadbury Kraft Foods Inc is expected to formalize on Monday a hostile takeover bid for Britain’s Cadbury Plc valued at roughly 10.2 billion pounds ($16.7 billion), sources familiar with the situation said on Sunday. …

Kraft makes hostile bid for British candy maker Cadbury – Chicago …
Kraft says the price “represents a substantial premium to the unaffected share price of Cadbury,” referring to a surge in the British company’s stock since Kraft’s previous bid was made public in Septber. Analysts had said that Kraft …

Cadbury rejects new Kraft bid – Nation & World – The Olympian …
Kraft Foods Inc. launched a 9.8 billion pound ($16.4 billion) hostile bid for Cadbury PLC on Monday – refusing to sweeten a previous offer rejected by the British candy maker.

Cadbury awaits latest Kraft move | Stock Market News – Business …
UK confectioner Cadbury will soon find out if it will be the target of a hostile bid by would-be US suitor Kraft Foods.Under Takeover Panel rules, Kraft has until 1700 GMT on Monday to make a new offer or walk away for six months.
Kraft Foods, shareholders, Takeover Panel, Irene Rosenfeld, merger, takeover bid, hershey, confectioner, synergies, confectionery company, deadline, pence, United Kingdom, United States, cash,

Some miscellaneous notes about the concept of form, which I sketched (ahem) in  a series of posts TDMO1,  TDMO2,  TDMO3,  TDMO4, TDMO5, TDMO6, TDMO7, TDMO8 and TDMO9.  This series builds up to an explanation of the concept of form in the paper Graph-Based Logic and Sketches by Atish Bagchi and me.  I am now embarking on a series of posts with further explanations and comments.

More about a model of a form

For any constructor space (which will be the sketch for a kind of category, a special case of a doctrine), take any object in the FL Cattheory of    and adjoin a new arrow where 1 is the terminal object.  is what we call a C-form and the enhanced category is denoted by .  In TDMO9 I described the node for reflexive function spaces in a cartesian closed category; it is an example of a CCC-form.

A model of a -form   “in a C-category ” means that is a model of . In particular, in  , is nonempty.

The connection with sketches is this:  If you have a sketch in some doctrine , the sketch consists of a graph with some diagrams, cones and cocones.  There is a node in the FL Cattheory of each of whose elements in a model of (in other words in a -category) will be such a sketch.

Example: The FP sketch for magmas

A magma is a set with a binary operation defined on it (Note 1).  It does not have to be associative or commutative or anything.  In the FP doctrine its sketch consists of one diagram

(Diagram1)

and one cone

(Cone1)

and nothing else.  The FP-Cattheory for this sketch is (equivalent to) the Lawvere theory of magmas.

The FL-Cattheory for FP categories, described in some detail in TDMO8, contains a node whose inhabitants in any model of (in other words in any FP-category) are all such sketches (the diagram and the cone).   This means that the FP sketch for magmas corresponds to an FP-form.  In this way you can see that all sketches in Ehresmann’s sense are forms in my sense.

This node can be constructed as the limit of a cone over a diagram in as was done in previous posts.  You have to make the diagram become a description of the diagram and cone above, using the arrows in the constructor space , for example , , and others, and including formally commutative diagrams that say for example that Cone1’s projections go to the same object (using and ).   Maybe someday I will produce this diagram in a post but right now I have a cold.  (Excuses, excuses…)

Adjoining a global element to this limit node will result in an FL-sketch which contains the FL-Cattheory for along with that global element.

So a model of the form for magmas in an FP category is a model of for which the model of the underlying cattheory is ; in other words it is the category with a distinguished element f of the node .  That distinguished element is a particular diagram and cone like the ones shown above for a particular object (because the projections onto include a particular projection to ).  That object with the arrows corresponding to and is a particular magma, a model of the sketch for magmas given above.

Notes

Note 1  “Magma” was the term used by Bourbaki for this structure.  As far as I know, very few people ever used the word until it was published in [1].  When I was a grad student in 1962-65 it was called a “groupoid”, which means something else now (something much more important than a magma in my opinion).  Now the name occurs in examples all over Wikipedia.

References

[1] M. Hazewinkel (2001), “Magma“, in Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopaedia of Mathematics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-1556080104

For your review and use, I am presenting a free HTML/CSS form that has been tested on all major browsers (on a Windows computer).  Here is what the final form looks like (view live version here – http://bit.ly/8aVJ6R ):

HTML Source Code

1. <!DOCTYPE html
2. PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0Transitional//EN"
3. "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
4. <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
5. <head>
6. <title>EMPTY</title>
7. <link href="form-style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
8. </head>
9. <body>
10. <div id="form">
11. <form action="#" method="post" >
12. <fieldset>
13. <div>
14. <label for="title"><span>Title</span></label>
15. <input type="text" name="title" class="title" value="Lorem ipsum dolor sitamet" />
16. </div>
17. <div>
18. <label for="title"><span>Enter Description Here:</span></label>
19. <textarea name="description">Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus etmalesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget,tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu libero sit amet quam egestas semper. Aenean ultricies mivitae est. Mauris placerat eleifend leo. Quisque sit amet est et sapien ullamcorper pharetra.Vestibulum erat wisi, condimentum sed, commodo vitae, </textarea>
20. <input type="hidden" value="foo" name="foo" />
21. <input type="hidden" value="bar" name="bar" />
22. </div>
23. <div>
24. <input type="text" size="28" readonly="readonly" class="readonly" value="This text is Read-Only"name="pubDate" />
25. <input type="hidden" value="baz" name="baz" />
26. <span class="pad-left"><button type="submit">Send</button></span>
27. </div>
28. </fieldset>
29. </form>
30. </div>
31. </body>
32. </html>

* This source code was highlighted with Source CodeHighlighter

 

The CSS

1. body {
2. background-color:#797979;
3. margin:0;
4. font:13px Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
5. }
6. #form{
7. background:url(formdesign.png) no-repeat top left;
8. width:469px;
9. height:332px;
10. position:relative;
11. float:left;
12. margin-top:55px;
13. margin-left:15px;
14. }
15. #form form{
16. position:relative;
17. float:left;
18. margin-top:55px;
19. margin-left:15px;
20. }
21. fieldset{
22. border:none;
23. width:330px;
24. }
25. div{
26. padding:0 0 5px;
27. }
28. input.title{
29. color:#3399FF;
30. font-size:14px;
31. font-weight:bold;
32. width:400px
33. }
34. input.readonly{
35. color:#999;
36. }
37. label span{
38. color:blue;
39. }
40. textarea{
41. color:#3399FF;
42. width:420px;
43. height:160px;
44. }
45. .clear{
46. position:relative;
47. clear:left;
48. }
49. .pad-left:{
50. padding-left:35px;
51. }
52. .push-30{
53. position:relative;
54. float:left;
55. margin-left:30px;
56. }

* This source code was highlighted with Source Code Highlighter.

 

The form looks the same in all the latest browsers (tested in IE7, Firefox 3.0.14, Opera  10.01, Safari 4.0.3)

*Download the source code here (includes .PSD for the form background) –  Link

Kalim Fleet is a professional web designer and blogger with over 6 years experience. The web is his passion as he splits his time between blog writing, software development and social media. He loves using and developing new applications for the web, mobile, and desktop.

We had a lecture about 5 design principles (balance,movement,emphasis,contrast and unity) and how they effect each other in an image and that if you have a perfect balance of them 4(cause we didn’t have enough time to talk about unity really…) that an image is more suiting to the eye and more likely to keep the viewers attention

Balance: That you don’t want allot of things  in an image cause its hard to see the focus point and the eye doesn’t know where to look
Movement: That you show that an object is moving by say having speed-lines or its aligned in a certain way so that your eye looks from one point to another
Emphasis : By giving something a certain color or shape so it stands out and you know thats the object of focus
Contrast: To have like a big white square in a black image or vice versa  to make it stand out