plantimals.org

I'm attempting to turn this website into something that is, at the very least, useful to myself. I've certainly learned more about php and mysql than I expected. Anyways, if you have any suggestions or better yet, criticisms, please leave me a comment.

I've recently come across conceptart.org via a link from boingboing.net. The concept art website is a community for artists who use many mediums, and is designed to allow artists to post their work and get constructive criticism.

Here's a good example cityscape battle. The Image.

The view from an RC airplane. This is the most interesting project I've seen in a long time.

"The old anvil laughs at many broken hammers."

Referenced by Bruce Sterling in a talk given at the South by Southwest conference.

Well, I've been busy with work, classes, and life in general. I am glad to get a post in for the month of July, but not too worried about it. With the news feeds flowing now, my tiny bits of linkage seem much less worthwhile. I'm not sure where plantimals.org is headed, but it seems to be improving slowly but steadily. The successful move to drupal for the main site has been great. I've added video capacity, forums, etc all through drupal. It's nice to have one CMS to worry about.

After being pointed to this article by Jaron Lanier on edge.org by checking the collection of feeds on the front page of plantimals.org and finding a link to it from a post on boingboing, itself a collection of links, I read it and enjoyed the irony.

I did enjoy the insights provided by Jaron Lanier on the topic of "DIGITAL MAOISM:The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism". Lanier points out that people are often over-eager to see their "meta" projects succeed and will therefor lower their standards to accomodate the sub-par performance of such projects. There is a deeper insight, though, that there seems to be an expectation that such efforts will yield new, desirable content. Lanier uses the example of Wikipedia to point out the unreliability of info gained on topics other that science and math.

Before RSS, I had a morning routine of sites that I would check regularly. This included the usual gambit of news, pundits, blogs, etc. Until recently, I just accepted the fact that I had a certain threashold of sites I could digest in one sitting. However, with RSS feeds I can now check over 100 sites without flinching. The RSS feed provides headlines, and either a snippet or the whole article associate with that headline. No ads, no navigating the website. Each article comes with a link to the original. If there are any pictures included they will show up as well. I had heard about RSS feeds for a few years, but never found a program that suited me. For some reason I would load a program up with feeds, but it never seemed to work out. I'd never check them, and it couldn't be established as a routine.

since the the last update. I've been busy with a honeymoon, working, studying, etc. Also, I've been contemplating a major overhaul of plantimals.org, involving the drupal content management platform.

I've not been entirely idle though. I've collected a decent stack of images taken from various collections and compiled a collection of my own. The subject is retro-futurist designs, with some plain old design. graphic, industrial and other, thrown in.

I've recently taken a Gradius NES cartridge, removed the ROM, and added a 2.5" 40GB laptop hard drive. I borrowed the idea from a boingboing referenced article in which the author makes a NES drive from a Zelda cartridge.

In a previous article, I mentioned a metropolismag.com story on a photography technique that makes real sized landscapes appear as dioramas.

I've attempted to mimic the diorama style landscape photo with a method found here.

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