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Furry Companionship in March 2001 |
3/30/2001: I finally got around to taking the day off today. Seems I've got some vacation time that needs to be used up, and the best way to take a vacation is to spend it just hanging around and doing art and wandering around all those places at the University that one doesn't get to visit when one is just working there and hence in the cube farm from 8 to 5 daily.
The glorious adventure started last night, in the Main University Library Stacks. Backing up a bit more... in some conversations I will leave nameless for the moment, the subject of the current provost and his enthusiasm for undergraduate education (or more to the point, his lack thereof) came up, and so I decided to look him up. Turns out he's only been here since 1998. At any rate, on his page was a link to the latest accreditation report for UIUC. I started reading it, and it goes on and on about the need for better library facilities. They ain't kidding. Now, UIUC has all sorts of interesting books (I noticed the Encyclopedia Tibetica while I was in there last night, for starters) but they sure aren't easy to get to. To be permitted to go into the main library stacks at ALL, you have to either be a staff or a graduate student. Regular plebian students have to request exactly the books they want and have someone bring them down - no browsing, and not nearly as much fun. So, I whipped out the ol' blue staff ID and went on in. They gave me a map, which is good 'cuz it's a maze in there. You enter on the fifth floor, and then go down, if you want to find old LIFE magazines, which is what I was in there for. The floors are sort of half floors, and staggered. The shelves are big, and metal, and there's no one around, and there is tape outlining where you can walk, and where I was, half the bulbs were burnt out, and the ceiling is anyways right above your head, and then every so often there's a bathroom with a special area outlined in dark blue tape that is marked as being a "tornado safety zone." Luckily the light blue tape outlining the fire safety zone exactly coincides with it 'cuz I'd hate to have to make such a tough choice. A coupla floors away from the Mysterious Bathroom in the Middle of Nowhere was a copier, and it was at that copier that I made all manner of delightful copies out of the LIFE magazines. Yes, they have LIFE magazines, Ladies' Home Journal, Collier's, Look, all those, plus copiers. Dream world, this is. Of course, the copier was reminiscient of the sort of aging, featureless, low toner, dusty thing you find in the lobby of the local A&P, but at least they had one. Still, I gotta wonder - this place has enough bux to pay the basketball coach $900K a year, and they can't get some better copiers? Geez. You'd almost think this wasn't an Institute of Higher Education, or something...
I'd gone after the LIFE magazines in search of more collage fodder. Copies are fine for that, because the final products of my collages usually end up as photocopy art anyways. But, last weekend, I hit the motherlode of collage fodder at the Caffe Paradiso. Someone dropped off stacks and stacks and stacks of old magazines, no LIFEs but lots of women's magazines, tons of old Newsweeks from the 1970's (back when it still had content). I saw the issue with George Will's first column, every bit as annoying as his current stuff, but a bit more entertaining, read about the 1976 election (last time I read about the 1976 election it was in the Weekly Reader at school). There were Better Homes and Gardens from the 50s, 60s, 70s... and they were ripped up, people had taken pages out, so the coffee people said sure, I could cut them up, no problem. There went Sunday, I spent the entire day in there, just me and the X-acto knife, harvesting. Mmm. Great stuff.
Today I spent some time using the above stuff to make some collages and informational handouts about the Free Trade Area for the Americas (now, you'd think such a big deal negotiations committee would have information on their official web site from later than 1998, but no, of course not, it's all under wraps and I had to go all over the web to copies of stuff on other sites. I know this page gets slow, but geez, they have actual PEOPLE. Anyways, that was some pleasant time spent, and then...
I saw a talk about architecture in Japan, particularly after the "bubble" burst. Wow. It was truly great. On the one hand, it was incredibly inspiring, wondrous stuff, the light, the plants, all of it was great, and the best part is, it's all public space. Yep, they have amazing sports stadiums there too, but they're all designed to be multipurpose community spaces, hold meetings, have lots of plants on and around them, and yeah, they manage to squeeze in luxury boxes TOO. Then, on the other hand it made me depressed thinking about the ugliness going on around here, but more than that, the fact that over here, at least right now, everything is private space - we're told that we're supposed to be okay with a lack of a public plaza because of course we have the mall, which is a simply perverse idea.
After THAT, I got some new ink for my pen, the bright blue that is my favorite color but that no longer comes in cartridges. Got a whole bottle of it, wooo. And finally, printing out the Asahi Shinbun for the day to read later, it turns out that they are changing format, but as part of it, they are going to add a dictionary feature right there on the site. Not only that, but it will be the one from goo, which is the very one I use now. So I won't have to open up a special page for it, cool.
All told, a good day off.
3/14/2001: Wow. Most amazingly wow. I have found a page that lets me manipulate a live camera in front of various places such as the east exit of Shinjuku station in Tokyo, Sakuragicho, Hayama Marina, etc. Wow. It requires a viewer which is easy to install, from Canon. The site is in Japanese but there's links to an English site which is probably similar. Once you install the viewer, you can surf on over to sites like in front of the Shinjuku station or even Maiko net live camera. No, that's NOT any kinda cam on ME, that's a cam in the Maiko section of Kobe, showing the Akashi Kaikyo Ohashi which is the longest suspension bridge in the world that I visited on my vacation last summer. You can view a picture we took of the bridge right here. Live camera. No kidding. You can control the camera, or if you aren't controlling it, you see the panning of whoever IS. Looking at it while at work, it's mainly night, I can see all the neon and crowds thronging around and then it dies down to taxis, and the neon is turned off, and there's a big clock saying it's 3:34 AM and there's one lonely person crossing the street, then stuff starts to wake up again around 5 AM, right now there's a huge construction project going on. Wow. I will never pick my nose on that street again, that's for sure... I've been on that street many, many times. I used to walk right by that building on the way to a job. Makes me wanna jump right through my screen, it does, or at least start planning this year's visit...
Then while I was surfing around I found another cool site that has MIDI files of all the "train is leaving now" music played on the JR train lines in the Tokyo area, and a site that has .rm files of all the announcement voices, and the sounds of the tracks, and saying what station is next. Wow. Combine all that with some old Japanese TV show theme songs I found on napster last week, and we can time travel right here from the desk. Hoo. Gotta love the internet.
In other news, I have finally finished cleaning/organizing my living room and front room. Yep, all the books are put away, the music is put away, the shelves are all up, filled with art stuph, my desk is cleaned out and files organized in there... finally I can do something at home other than clean my house.
