Projects

Projects that I’m doing

Frankenfridge

Projects, Stuff and Things

THUD!

The Frankenfridge lands with power upon the scene. dominating all other forms of refrigeration. We had an old fridge donated to the house and it needed a little work. I decided that since it was old, dented, and rusty it called out to be Dr FrankenMark’s Monster. It’s definitely not perfect, but it only took 17 dollars worth of spray paint and about a half a day to finish. So who could ask for more?

Now if I could only replace the rest of the parts to make it run a little more efficiently.

Later!

Finishing, Starting, Abandoning.

Art, Projects, websites

I’ve had a few projects in the works for the last few months. I had some graphic design work for Amar, a nursery mural for Will, some comic book style portraits for Ellen, and a cardboard boat. I actually got paid for one of these.

Not that Will won’t pay me, but I haven’t actually finished yet. That’s coming next Sunday. I’ll post pictures when I finish. Which brings me to my next project, well not really a project more like an outlet. I’m turning Swalrus.org into an art blog, somewhere I can post in progress pictures/videos/pieces. So now I’ll have 3 levels of websites that I may or may not maintain. Professional, Personal, and Art.

I think this will help me finish more projects instead of giving up in the middle.

We’ll see!

Cardboard wet, good times were had by all.

Projects, Stuff and Things

Well the 4th annual gathering of creative nerds went off without a hitch. Of course I’m referring to the Cardboard Boat Race. I’ll link to the pictures as soon as Jesse posts them online. It seems to be becoming a bigger and bigger event in my family, but less popular with the actual comminity of Stafford. But we have fun doing it so that’s all that really matters.

Updates Later!

Mark

Frankenfridge

Projects, Stuff and Things


Frankenfridge – frontside

Originally uploaded by mark5four0

Weekend Project! Frankenfridge is alive.
I Spent Saturday painting this, I tried to get it done in one day so I wouldn’t run out of motivation. It took 3 cans of charcoal grey, 2 cans of army green and a half can of black for the lines.

We moved it to the deck on sunday and bobby cleaned it out the rest of the way. My pointer finger and thumb are still numb from holding down the spray nozzle. I could never be a graffitti artist! Also at one point I almost took a sip from a can of black paint ( I forgot which hand I was holding my drink in, I remembered when I spilled black paint on my face.)

But I think the project was a great success!

Later!
Mark

Switch… to Linux…

Gone Bad, Projects

So last night I thought I’d try something that I’d been thinking about for a while. I read an article about Linux MCE, specifically Ubuntu and Myth TV and thought I’d give it a try. Especially since my copy of Windows may not be as genuine as it should be. So I downloaded the Ubuntu installation and got ready to go. I put my hair in a pony tail and put on my most ironic t-shirt. It had been a while since I played around with Linux so it was nice to see that the installation process had been sped up. You could boot from the CD and try out the environment without installing and then choose to install it if you wanted, which is much easier than installing windows. I was very excited.

I set up some basic options, it comes with some software pre-installed, Firefox, Open-office, all stuff that I’ve used before. I was thinking that I’d be over at Micro-Center(nerd hq) in no time conversing with my new friends about how great Linux is. But then they pulled the bait and switch on me. They make it so easy to get started but when I wanted to do the simplest thing it suddenly got very complicated. All I wanted to do was install a program, MythTV. On windows there’s an executable file… not in Linux. Which is fine. On Mac OS you just unzip the files and put them into your programs folder… not in Linux. Ok then how do I do it? So I did a little searching around and found a guide on how to do exactly what I wanted. After following the first 5 steps which involved using the command line and setting up permissions for new users and installing MySql… well I sort of gave up. I will be back because I think Ubuntu has promise. But it’s kind of like decorating a moped like a Ducati. You may get 95mpg, but you’re still a dork.

Now let me just explain that I know computers. I do Java programming for a living. I work on computers every day, I have websites, blogs, I have a degree in computer graphics. I could and will probably figure this out. But it should be easier, my recommendation for now… If you want to switch… switch to Mac.

Later!
Mark

UPDATE – it turns out mythTV isn’t just a program, its a new front end for the operating system.

256… um 257

Projects, websites

as of a few seconds ago there were 256 posts on this site. This making it 257. My first post was from December 2004 a long time ago in a small office in Arlington. The old blog has come a long way since then.

Two hundred fifty-six is also:

* The number of characters in the new Braille 8-dot system.
* The number of different values in one byte, which makes it the typical number of different values in each color channel of a digital color image (see color space encoding).
* The year AD 256 and 256 BC.
* The Split-Screen Level in Pacman
* The number of counties in Texas.
* The number of characters in Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita.
* An area code in Alabama.
* The number of regular season football games in the NFL.
* The frequency of Middle C on a piano in hertz.

Later!
Mark