Free Floating Screed

signonpdx: Nothing Lasts Forever Prophecy fulfilled on...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:20:04 -0800

Nothing Lasts Forever

Prophecy fulfilled on Mississippi

A Dictionary in the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:37:35 -0800

A Dictionary in the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose:

Project Gutenberg just released 1811’s Urban Dictionary. I am immensely pleased. Chronologically-disparate connotative lexicographers unite!

theartofgooglebooks: “A spectacular calibration failure.” From...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:52:47 -0800

theartofgooglebooks:

“A spectacular calibration failure.”

From various pages of Wohlgemeynte Gedanken über den Dannemarks-Gesundbrunnen by Johan Gottschalk Wallerius Johann Daniel Denso (1751).

Submitted by Monoskop via Patrick Hochstenbach.

Julian Oliver: Föhnseher rises from the scrap heap of analog...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:45:38 -0800

Julian Oliver:

Föhnseher rises from the scrap heap of analog TV. Unlike other televisions, Föhnseher captures and displays images downloaded by people on surrounding local wireless networks. Phones, laptops and tablet computers all become broadcast stations for this device, replacing the forgotten television towers of old.

(quite indirectly via Metafilter)

Photo

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:02:49 -0800

jgspdx: Where it all began. Great workshop field trip today...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:39:36 -0800

jgspdx:

Where it all began. Great workshop field trip today with Matthew Coolidge from http://clui.org (Taken with Instagram at Willamette Stone)

theartofgooglebooks: Small pages left uncropped, with...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:38:40 -0800

theartofgooglebooks:

Small pages left uncropped, with employee’s fingers and blue ground.

From The Rising Sun: or, Verses Upon the Queen’s Birth-Day (1690).

Today at this moment, the King Albert celebrates its 94th year...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:45:05 -0800

Final approval Feb. 11, 1918

Today at this moment, the King Albert celebrates its 94th year of completion. From G.L. Thornton’s conditional inspection approval:

2/11–18 2:45 Complete + O.K. except that there is no fire door in bsmt. opening in div. wall.— Letter to owner. —G.L.T.

For the record, they never did add the metal lining on the dumbwaiter doors.

For the past few months, I’ve been working with Antoinette...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:37:00 -0800

A slightly wider view

For the past few months, I’ve been working with Antoinette Lettiere of PSU’s Department of Architecture as she developed her historic preservation graduate thesis on Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, a magnificent building that (like most of Las Vegas’ surviving structural history) is threatened by the distasteful view most have today about mid-century modern design. Yesterday, her memorial to Memorial Coliseum was hung from the picture rail on the second floor of Shattuck Hall—a complete series of rubbings of names inscribed in the war memorial walls in the all-but invisible garden beneath the building’s ground level. Wikipedia has a little more context:

The war memorial consists of two black granite walls below ground level and near the main gate. The names of the dead are inscribed in gold paint, now faded with age. There are no dates given, only the names and an inscription: “To the memory of a supreme sacrifice we honor those who gave their lives for God, principle and love of country”.

YouTube’s oisiaa: This animation covers over 14 years of...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:37:00 -0800

YouTube’s oisiaa:

This animation covers over 14 years of United States weather. It is composed of 120,900 individual frames spaced 1 hour apart.

Sean Click and I are thinking somewhat along the same lines...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:26:00 -0800

Sean Click and I are thinking somewhat along the same lines lately:

McDonald’s X California Poppy Seed Bomb Ad

(Since the California poppy is the state flower, the legislature has protected the plant. It is illegal to pick, destroy, or dig up a California poppy. Any person caught picking, destroying, or digging up a California poppy runs the risk of being fined for breaking the law.)

(I’ll explain later.)

A full report

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:18:00 -0800

In December, my brother obtained for me tickets to see the Batman movie sequel, which is to say, my brother obtained these tickets for himself and could not go to see it because it would have required him to fly 700 miles here to see an inscrutable five minutes of IMAX film. My commute was slightly shorter, but the nature of taking a bus ride and walk in the cold to a place to see what is essentially a commercial in a spherical science museum, I produced a strange, rambling, incoherent piece of drivel that I then emailed back to my brother to explain what happened. I think there is something of the movie left in there, though I can’t say I completely remember anymore.

Hello, fine sir.

I hope that the night is treating you well. I expect you are still awake awaiting a full report from me, and I hope to be able to deliver it while the experience is still fresh in my mind. I have written it as a bulleted list, because apparently that is all I am capable of at this point. However, I think you will agree, the fact that I got a picture of a raccoon eating my garbage more than makes up for this. The report follows.

After purchasing a ticket, I stand and wait for the 6 bus. This is, I would later realize, a 35 minute ordeal. Why I choose to ride the 6 is anyone’s guess, but at least the driver was quite nice.
The bus stops on the bridge and I somehow manage to take the longest possible route to the ground. You would not think this is a challenging ordeal, but I am clearly not a competent person. For example, upon reaching the ground, I realize I am on the other side of the Union Pacific railroad tracks and have to wait for a train to pass.
I arrive at OMSI, which I recall now is a partially reclaimed power station. The part that is reclaimed looks much nicer than the “new” part where I am going—a strange brown rough cinderblock fiasco that looks like far, far too many Las Vegas movie theaters.
The lobby is crowded and the line snakes out of view toward the theater. I am at the end of it. At least, though, it is warm. A gentlemen who has brought his wife, son, and four friends asks me if I have an extra ticket. ”Not that it’ll matter,” we only half-joke as we stare at the parade before us. “We’ll never get in.”
The line begins to move after some time has passed to emphasize just how late we are by how no one else gets behind us. As we inch forward with the queue, the man and his wife retreat into the company of their friends, and I retreat into the excitement that is the National Railroad Heritage Foundation stand. Eventually, even that does not stir my interest, and I turn to the exposed projection booth across the snaked line. This is an OMNIMAX theater, I see for the first time, despite the fact that it appears to be printed on every surface that can take ink.
Finally, the line moves again. I hand my ticket to a docent who clearly does not want to be there. ”I checked your ID… Sean,” he tells me. I wonder what strange confluence of fates has plopped this popular feature film into a theater that appears to show footage of raccoons all day long. Also, I secretly hope to see some footage of raccoons.
The docent calls my new friend who took my spare ticket “Sean” as well. He tells me, for the last time, “We’re both Seans!” Even with all the time now passed for reflection, I do not know if he was saying that his name actually was Sean or what.
Since the internet will surely be abuzz with it come morning, I will tell you now: patrons of the theater did receive some lovely complimentary “swag”. We each got a glossy 8x10 photo of a raccoon, personalized to gnaw on a piece of our own garbage. A frame was not included, which I found to be a terrible disappointment.
Finally, I entered the theater. I will not lie: it was spooky. I am sure you remember the old Caesar’s OMNIMAX still, and this was its exact interior double, but mirrored. I did not look for any busts of Julius Caesar with a goatee or eyepatch to show that he was an evil twin, but I didn’t need to: clearly, a casino themed on antiquated imperial debauchery is the evil version of the science and technology museum. I was the one with the goatee to them.
Despite the crowded line, most of the theater was empty—a testament to how terrible that queueing arrangement must be. The head docent brought the crowd to a hush, then began reading the script provided to him by Warner Brothers as sarcastically as possible. It was clear that he had already seen what we were going to see momentarily, and there were no raccoons in it for some reason, and that we should be very disappointed because of that already.
The film began. Immediately I realize why OMNIMAX is almost exclusively used for nature programs. It is a weird experience looking up through a fisheye lens at a 40’ tall bald head.
I am sure this is the part you are wanting to know about: the commissioner appeared for roughly 3 seconds. Then, we are in an airfield in what appears to be South America. There are people with bags on their heads, and one nosy gentleman wants to know about Bane. He puts the bagged-head gentlemen onto his plane and proceeds to effetely threaten to throw them off for not talking to him. He is not a very good villain, but his mannerisms and encouragement to get people to talk to him at inappropriate moments would surely make him a good dentist.
One of the bagged-head men speaks, but with an even less threatening accent than the dentist. This man sounds like Eric Idle purposely failing at imitating a female Dutch tourist. It is really off-putting. Needless to say, this is the main villain: Bane (I think). Hopefully, this will either be fixed, or the actor will actually be replaced with Eric Idle in drag in the final cut.
Another plane appears and somehow hooks onto the first plane in mid-flight. The second plane disassembles the first in a way that is simultaneously confusing and nauseating (thanks, OMNIMAX), then drops it and its human contents to the ground. Bane, grasping a rope, hangs from the second plane with (I think) the dentist in tow. Bane wears a tight-fitting piece of headgear, which received some attention in the dialogue; he may need emergency oral surgery or a pair of Invisaligns.
The lights are raised. It has been five minutes to be generous. Everyone looks confused—including my new friend from earlier, to whom I have not spoken in quite some time—but yet we are all hesitant to leave. I, however, do. I am not scared of science docents anymore. I run back to the right staircase onto the Hawthorne Bridge and wait for the 6 again. It takes me to Safeway, where I then walk home from.
As I pass the dumpsters across from my window, I see glint out of the corner of my eye. It is a raccoon, gnawing on a piece of trash that I recognize from earlier. This is the scene we received in photographic form as our gift for attending the screening, but somehow it was right in front of me. It was a snapshot of that present moment, transmitted back to my past, distributed by a dyspeptic bald gentleman who had neither an eyepatch nor a goatee. ”Oh my.” I say. I pull out my camera and attempt to take a picture of the raccoon. Needless to say, I must not have been the one who took that shot.
The raccoon looks at me like I am some sort of jerk. He is right to do so. ”Carry on,” I say, as if I am in charge of the raccoons. I am ignored.

I hope that has satisfied your hunger for raccoon-based facts. I hope you all are having a good night and I hope you dream of raccoons sifting through your garbage cans all night long.

"The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights..."

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:57:26 -0800

“The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost. …We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.”

- Aron Swartz’ Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto.

Places I Haven’t Been (North America) by Evan Drolet Cook

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:56:00 -0800

Places I Haven’t Been (North America) by Evan Drolet Cook

22,400 22,480 by Alie Kouzoukian (Taken with Instagram at PSU...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:00:00 -0800

~~22,400~~ 22,480 by Alie Kouzoukian

(Taken with Instagram at PSU Art Building North Annex)

Greetings from ______ (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:09:30 -0800

Greetings from ______ (Taken with instagram)

"If you see strict DRM and copy protection that threatens the preservation of history, fight it: copy..."

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:50:03 -0800

“If you see strict DRM and copy protection that threatens the preservation of history, fight it: copy the work, keep it safe, and eventually share it so it never disappears. Some people may think ill of your archival efforts now, but they’re on the wrong side of history: no one living 500 years from now will judge your infringing deeds harshly when they can load up an ancient program and see it for themselves.”

- Benj Edwards for Technologizer on the importance of piracy as a tool of preservation.

“Astronomical” is a representation of the Solar System across...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:08:00 -0800

“Astronomical” is a representation of the Solar System across 6000 pages of a 12 volume set (video). Each page represents one million kilometers of distance from the Sun—for example, Earth shows up on page 155 of volume 1. The “Astronomical” set is by UK-based artist Mishka Henner. It can be ordered from his website.

The history of the universe, depicted by Daniel Libeskind and...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:15:09 -0800

The history of the universe, depicted by Daniel Libeskind and his astrophysicist son Noah Libeskind.

Part of me hopes they keep those windows plywood-clad, in...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:50:00 -0800

Part of me hopes they keep those windows plywood-clad, in deference to the less-auspicious recent history of the old Meier & Frank Warehouse.

Also, I guess I am on Instagram now. I don’t know why either.