As I stated in a previous post, I have recently taken up residence in a trailer in Campton, purchased by my cousin Matt Benedix. He is a year older than me and we've been kickin' it since we were wee tots, so it goes without saying that our preference for depravities is near identical. So when Matthew began unpacking his possessions on the day of the move-in and revealed to me his current project, I was nothing but elated.
I guess for 3 or so months now, unbeknownst to me, he has been fermenting two Poland Spring jugs of apples. Mind you now, Matthew has been unemployed all winter long, so what better way to occupy yourself than attempting to make free alcohol for yourself...right? Now we've made a batch or two of beer before - nothing very technical, just one of those pre-made kits you can buy at the Fermentation Station - but never have we attempted anything like this from scratch.
Apparently, out of sheer boredom (and supposedly after watching one of those "locked-up" prison shows on Msnbc), he decided to research a simple tutorial on how to make cheap "prison wine" on the internet. He found a good recipe involving a few apples (high in sugar!), some water and lots of time. He cut up the apples and threw them into two plastic jugs, filled it with water - quite haphazardly - and let it sit. After a week or so he realized that the process was taking much longer than he had first hoped, so he decided to go out buy some yeast from the Campton Cupboard and drop it in with the batch.
That next morning Matt said he went to check on the jugs and they nearly doubled in size due to the carbon dioxide pressure from the newly added yeast. Matt has not implemented any sort of depressurizing system, so for the last three months, several times a day, he has been slightly unscrewing the lid of the jugs, and manually depressurizing them himself.
As of now the fizzing has subdued a bit, and one jug even looks like it has ceased producing carbon dioxide altogether (and the apples are significantly browner than the other one - we have no idea why that is). We're thinking maybe these things have got another month until they are adequately fermented. The question is, whose gonna drink the damn stuff when it's ready...I'll keep ya informed :\
Posting more about homemade prison wine tomorrow - hoping this will tide things over until then.
--oh and maybe some cool music from Portland locals (Maine that is (far less pretentious)).
...for now though, like I said, enjoy a science fiction short somehow related to Ridley Scott, directed by Carl Erik Rinsch(?):
...I realize the video is cut in half - just refer to it as a link...there are robots for godsake, just do it!!!!
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...ok, the the above excerpt, if you haven't been paying attention, is a 3 day old post which purpose was to inform you of upcoming posts of, you know, actual content. I threw in a short science fiction clip and thought I was done with it. But no, as I returned to view my recent post in all it's pink background-ed glory (and to survey for grammar and spelling mistakes(god knows why I don't perform this task BEFORE I finalize the post)) I noticed the embedded youtube video I threw in was wider than that of the main column of which it was embedded. This was highly annoying and, as a temporary fix, I disclosed my awareness of the mistake - figuring that most people would just use the clip as a link to the full-sized youtube page. But, unsatisfied I remained.
Deftly, I googled "blogger in draft" - as I have been aware of its existence and capabilities, though never warranting a need for its services. Cracking open the fancy new template designer featured within, I was presented with a myriad of new layouts - all well crafted indeed, but all including some sort of complex flashy design, no matter how "simple" their titles touted them to be. However, aside from their dissuading appearance, just as I suspected, there was a convenient little tool enabling me to re-size the widths of my main column and sidebar - just what I needed in order to fit that goddamn video to the column width. So the next two thousand hours were spent with me attempting to recreate a similar, if not exact, look of my old template (minima?) - color continuity and all. But I ran into so many problems during this process I was awfully close to breaking something very unimportant within my nearest proximity.
My old design was simple, concise, mundane - everything I could have ever asked for really - and here I was endlessly fiddling with a dozen separately color-designated sections, ugly encoded gradient effects, and mysterious alignment issues. Maybe I didn't put in enough time, maybe I should have learned to love the new templates and grown and a blossomed, settled down and had some template children - but at this point it was far to late for retrospective assimilation, my preconceived hate for these new templates were unbridled. So I did what I do so skillfully in any overtly frustrating situation, and totally gave up - that is until I inspected the embedding code of the youtube video itself.
Why didn't I think of this earlier? The definitions for the size of the clip are of course within the code, and with a bit of math, to adjust the proportions effectively, I could adjust the size of the clip to fit my column rather than vice versa. So without further or do, here's the work around, just in case you ever encounter this problem yourself:
a) First, determine the size of your templates column. From your Dashboard/Layout/Edit Html you will find a bunch of HTML nonsense defining the essence of your current template. Scroll down methodically until you find a section entitled "Outer Wrapper" and then shortly thereafter the subsection "Main Wrapper" - there you will see the width in pixels; probably close to the number 400, depending on your current template.
b) If your video isn't fitting within this size, then the adjustment for the code defining the width of the video embed must be slightly smaller. Take this video embedding code and copy it as you usually do, and once pasted within your post you will notice that within its entirety there are two definitions of both the width and height of the clip - a height and width definition at the beginning of the code and a height and width definition at the end as well.
c) Now get a calculator and a piece of scrap paper. Write down your new desired width for said clip - so that it fits within your 400px sized column (let's sat 390). Multiply that number by the videos current height number and then divide the sum by the original width of the video (400). The result is a proportionate height for the newly assigned width - this will avoid any unsightly pixel err that could result if configured in a disproportionate manner. Take your newly acquired pixel sizes and replace the old sizes with them in the embedding code, between the quotations, after their respective Height and Width titles.
d) Done. But in my case not really, because soon after I made the fix the video was "removed due to terms of use violation"....in this case the publisher is a dickhead, but I don't want to turn this into a copyright debate, otherwise I will never stop writing - however, the workaround was fun, wasn't it?!?!?!?!?!?!
-- here's the clip from the OFFICIAL PhilipsCinemaTV, ya know, the guys that are owned by a company that owns another company that controls all intellectual property ever produced by anyone...EVER.
LIBRE GRATIS
p.s. I know I said 3 days ago that I was posting more local(ish) art content the day after that post, but I am really doing it tomorrow instead. Pretty cool, huh?
Boy, I've certainly been neglectful of this place for the past couple weeks. But my excuses are aplenty: uncomfortable amounts of homework, comatose-like vacation, and I moved from my parents house in Plymouth into a trailer with my cousin in Campton - the latter taking up the majority of my time, but will hopefully prove to be a fruitful decision, as far as productivity is concerned, as there is far too much traffic in my Plymouth home for me to ever assemble anything of any real importance. Unfortunately we don't have any internet hooked up yet, probably because Time Warner Cable wants to stunt my internet piracy growth...for now I'll just commute to Plymouth every time I want the internet and save anything of any significant importance as "Web Page, complete", drive back to Campton and use my fucking imagination.
So yea, I guess I'll just throw some more Myspace music sites at you, of friends and acquaintances of whom I respect their work most highly, for the next couple posts (as I have a notable quantity of them at my disposal). The first being a buddy of mine, Forrest Kameron, whom I work with at the dinning hall. Usually he's cookin' burgers (and sneakin' tabasco sauce in yer buns), but internally he's computing intricate pieces of avant GARbage liken to, and I quote (him), "Getting lost in an abandoned building during a trip to whales with five of your friends and finding a trap door in the bottom and climbing through it into a bottle full of tiny mechanical monkeys clapping symbols in your ears until you pass out and wake up in a carnival without any elephants, while sipping tea.". He goes bySteal Trombone Wheels , or at least in this particular interpretation, and all the apparent separate tracks on the page are actually a singular song split into several tracks as to not drive you batshit insane, so, if you can, listen to it all in succession.
ENjOY:::@:!:!::!::::
Sometimes I get bored. Sometimes It's 12:39 AM. In the spirit of spirits and music creation, I bring to you a middle aged British man and several dozen birds exercising the methods of chance:
THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE PEAK AT THE ASTONISHINGLY SHARP, TRANS-PROGRESSIVE AUTOMATON, whom I often strictly refer to as, but not limited to, Americo Semprebon's partially internet based and mostly digital (but sometimes not) art gallery. He is like totally one of my best friends and has probably made you a killer sandwich at the Prospect Hall - that is if you knew what was good for you. He has been drawing since as long as I can remember, and I admire that sort of hardcore determination in any genre of creation. Sometimes the sheer amassing of one's work, over a long period of time, can define itself alone as qualifying professionalism - even if the works themselves are of no notable quality. But that is not to say that Rico's pieces are not of the utmost quality! In fact, they are more refined with each passing brush stroke. So let us take a moment to view some choice pieces, handpicked by the Fresh_Emerald, by process of aesthetic selection. Most of these are done with pen and Wacom tablet (unadulterated product placement) on a FREE image manipulation software known as Gimp (similar to Photoshop Elements, but not as complex as Photoshop complete), but their are a couple of acrylic based paintings which I will note explicitly to diffuse any nasty confusions that may arise as a result. Give him your time, patience, and ingredients of desired sandwich (bread first please!).
The above was printed on 11x17 inches of the most expensive paper ever created, and then matted to a cozy piece of foam board and nestled within a futuristic looking black frame...sorry ladies, it's sold.
These last two are actually different stages of the same collaborative painting, by Americo Semprebon and Tom Perkins (whose artwork was featured two posts ago). It's crazy acrylic paint on an even crazier piece of cardboard. Oh so crazy.
...so that's it. Americo works for a living, but we might as well be getting paid in seaweed for all the good it does us, so if you would like to inquire about buying a piece, or having a piece specifically made to match your bathroom decor then you may contact me personally, or look up Americo Semprebon on Facebook and go straight to the source. You'll find most of these pieces on his Facebook - he is working on an official website, but you'll just have to wait for that.
2.23.2010
I should be writing down anything and everything that I ever mentally formulate, because I can barely remember what I ate for dinner last night (default: cereal). That said, there were periods in my life in which I followed this mantra explicitly - most prominently after some mind altering dream sequence - but that, much like my exercise routine, has been routed to the "what i ate for dinner last night" portion of my brain.
Here is an excerpt from a dream that was feverishly written by the light of my alarm clock - I just unearthed it from the depths of my computer whilst deleting some unwanted clutter. Bear with me, I got excited.
“You’re trying to do the lotus…but it’s just not making me feel welcome anymore”.
Sheepishly she threw her chin to the side, tilted downward, and turned into her right shoulder. Her sweater (which I have previously mentioned to be a fantastic display of colors from exotic origin) twisted into a disfigured cockatoo.
"Dinner has a funny way of looking nylon tonight," she seeded with utter disinterest and proceeded to re-cross her legs again. My hands caressed the underbelly of the cedar table noting several pesky blemishes - pretending to listen, but secretly cursing the faulty craftsmanship. She took notice of my reaction; leaned in; posed correctly, and begged longingly for money. The sweater flew off with a natural confidence.
I have a friend who has a face that wears a beard that drinks a wine that is imbibed and then embedded within a nest he made of straw. Tom Perkins is a graduate from PSU, and if he knew I was talking about him in a blog he would swiftly disassemble me - he is a Fine Arts major. He works hard during the day, but for the most part never leaves his computer - the result is a display of various digital arts. He has made a website that features most of his current work (acting as a sort of resume/portfolio). There you will find all sorts of images of his, as well as programs (c++) and animations (some as a result of said programs). Check it out - its cool, he's local. Here are a few of my favorite animations of his -- the first actually being a video demonstrating the execution of his most recently written program, BSP tree.
Start the reactor. I used to be in a band. We almost never played music together, but we existed in concept and the idea held a considerable amount of water. We called ourselves Quaid? - a reference to our hometown (your current locale) hero, Randy Quaid. He's not of Plymouth origin, or New Hampshire for that matter, but he did record a pilot for a failed television series, "The Brothers Poland" (or something dull like that) here - and we think we saw him eating a doughnut once.
Recordings were often unintentionally lo-fi, as they were input via laptop microphone using a pretty rudimentary, but free, audio editing program known as Audacity. Thanks to the internet we were able to share our recorded data with each other via email and such, prompting one another to add accompaniment to the shared track, thus enabling us to retain a significant amount of slothfulness for whatever was leftover. Most of the tracks on the myspace page are composed and performed by my other two friends in the band, in fact, I think the only tracks in which I contribute anything at all is on the track "Nermal", in which I sing and play bass (and my cousin guest appears on guitar) - that track is completely improvised. The other being my half drunken rendition of Hank Williams' (first generation) "So Lonsome I Could Cry", in which Jack crashes a symbol and I perform the rest. Everything else is everyone else.
Two other affiliated projects, Pseudomatter andLullaby, were birthed during Quaids? lifespan. Pseudomatter was my site, intended to purge myself of song ideas and the like - nothing very formal in the least. Lullaby is, well, uh, immersive, to be as off-termed and vague as possible. Mind you, all of these projects have reached abandoned warehouse status - people get married; people have kids; people go to California and cut trail.
Aside from obvious academic obligations, the individual pretext of this virtual-establishment originates from a dusty objective which I have conceptually designed (though rather haphazardly) one thousand times over in thought, throughout various editions of my life. Over the course of my youth and young adulthood I have made some very significant connections, with some rather talented people, whom I now may consider, very close friends. Whether it be a calculated prerogative of mine, or just some sort of congenital magnetization, each one of these sustained, and nurtured, connections I have made all display an almost frenzied compulsion to represent their experiences and ideas in a uniquely decorative manner - that is to say they each produce mass quantities of seemingly meaningless bits of intellectual property, as if only a means to keep themselves regular. However, this is not to imply that their productions are entirely dysfunctional - therein lies the fundamental motive for this bloggg. This space is intended to communicate the works (in a variety of artistic categories) of my closest friends (myself included) that are, as we speak, being offhandedly manufactured for no one in particular.
Fresh_Emerald is the prism in which the unrecognized creative output of my local network will be legitimately reflected and refracted onto a digital landscape, in hopes of being observed, recognized, and most ideally, utilized. A means of distribution for local oddities.
