Hurray! I finally started recording short tutorials on useful web development things. I’m tired of listening to men’s voices in tutorials all the time. It’s time for some women’s voices.
I’ll start adding short videos to my playlist on a semi regular basis.
More About Laura Wheeler Waring
Born in 1887 in Hartford Connecticut, Laura Wheeler Waring was a teacher and artist. She taught art and music at Cheyney University for more than 30 years. She was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She’s most known for her portraits and many of them are part of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery.
This here is a post about my residency at the Sou’Wester in Seaview Washington in January 2019.
I just spend two and a half years busting my ass with VergePDX. I was curating art at the Red Fox, Akemi Salon, Flickerbox, Inc., and both of the Joinery locations in SE and SW Portland, Oregon. It was a fantastic experience and I loved it, but last summer I ran into health issues and the stress that Verge was putting me under at the time was too much. So I decided to put Verge on hold and found new peeps to take over curation at each location. The kingdom was divided and I decided to hang onto Verge for future tricks up my sleeve. That was hard to split things up. It was like giving my pets away. It still stings sometimes.
Anyhow, around the holidays, I was finally feeling better and was able to take some deep breathes and look around. Turns out I was pouring so much of myself into Verge and my day job, that I had pretty much stopped making art. This is a very bad thing, art has been very important to me. So I thought, I’ve always wanted to do the Sou’Wester artist residency, let’s apply. I can get some solid jump start art making time. Lo and behold, they accepted my application and I packed up my art supplies, my guitar, and my dog, and headed to Seaview Washington for six fruitful days of art making, beach walks, and napping. I also drank a fair bit of vodka.
Many years ago I started a series about chairs. I love chairs. They have so much personality. I feel like our energy rubs off on them and we leave a piece of ourselves embedded in our favorite chairs for all times. That’s why when I see a chair on the side of the road, I feel both sad for the abandonment of what must have been a special chair, and a sense of possibility. That energy has a chance to go somewhere else in the universe and stir things up. Maybe it will get to be someone else’s favorite chair for a while, or maybe it’ll get ground up into bits and each tiny bit of energy stored will get released back into the world.
It all started with this messy little watercolor sketch from August 2005:
This is my husband’s old chair. We struggled with getting rid of this damn thing for years. We loved it but honestly it was really uncomfortable and one of the wheels was broken and unfixable. We finally let it go into the universe by leaving it on the San Francisco sidewalk but I felt like I needed to capture it’s essence. Here’s my attempt:
I quite like it. I did a series in 2005, all in pastel. Here are some of them:
I’ve missed working on that series, and since living in Portland, I’ve taken maybe hundreds of photos of chairs that have been left out on the sidewalk. Some of them really awesome. I guess it’s my way of capturing something I love and want, but don’t actually want to take into my home, because, stuff. Am I right? Too much of it.
Anyhow. I revived that series and you can see it here.
More later. I’m tired.
Javascript, truth and truthyness is something my students struggle with. So I’ve gathered some resources.
Double Equals and Triple Equals
In my PSU class I’ve got several students who want to use licensed fonts. They are students, so purchasing licenses just isn’t an option. So I’ve found some handy resources for finding close replacements for fonts as well as some handy links for font pairing recommendations.
Futura recommended web font replacements
The website: What is the closest Google Font? has several font recommendations for Avenir, Gil Sans, Cambria, Rockwell and a few more.
My new favorite thing
The Panama Fruit Feeder Cam is located on the grounds of the Canopy Lodge in El Valle de Antón, Panama. This site is just over 2,000 ft above sea level in the low mountains of Cerro Gaital, with a mild springtime climate year-round. A small stream called Rio Guayabo runs past the feeders in the background, and the lush landscaping of the Canopy Lodge grounds grade into the forested slopes around them. The feeding table is around 40 feet from the main lodge, and is one of several feeders provisioned throughout the day so that guests to the lodge are greeted to spectacular views of many of the common birds found in this ecosystem.
I was looking for image inspiration and ran across this blog post about 1970’s native american ledger art. Beautiful drawings.
I recently changed my github password and had trouble figuring out how to reset my password locally. So here’s the answer:
git config --global --unset user.password
Then just do a git push on any repo with a github remote and you’ll be prompted for your github username and password.
Did you know there’s an easy way to set up your terminal app to open things in atom or sublime? You just have to create a symlink.
I keep needing this for my students so I’m keeping it here so I can find it!
For Sublime, In a terminal window type:
ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/Shared/Support/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl
For Atom, In a terminal window type:
ln -s /Applications/Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/atom.sh /usr/local/bin/atom
Then you can open a whole directory from the terminal by typing either
subl .
or
atom .
or a specific file by typing either
subl yourfilename.js
or
atom yourfilename.js
AW Awards
https://www.awwwards.com/websites/bootstrap/
bootstrap Expo
http://expo.getbootstrap.com/
Bootstrap Bay
https://bootstrapbay.com/blog/built-with-bootstrap/
Color Lib – Bootstrap portfolios
https://colorlib.com/wp/bootstrap-portfolio-website-templates/
Handy Bootstrap pieces and parts on tutorialize
https://tutorialzine.com/2015/06/12-time-saving-bootstrap-examples
Flex Order in bootstrap
https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/utilities/flex/
A presentation I made for prospective students at Franklin High School
Jason Berlin and I, along with loads more artists were interviewed for the 2017 Big 500 Aty Show. Going on until December 24th at Pioneer Place Mall, Second floor. Three shops, thousands of pieces of art, all $40 each.
From Wikipedia: Crab Mentality:
“Crab mentality, sometimes referred to as crabs in the bucket (also barrel, basket or pot), is a way of thinking best described by the phrase, “if I can’t have it, neither can you.” The metaphor refers to a common pattern of behavior seen in a group of crabs when they are trapped in a bucket: Their focus is on saving oneself rather than willing to cooperate to save the entire group. Individually, any given healthy crab could easily escape, but when grouped with others, any individual’s escape will be hindered by others. They will grab at each other in a futile “king of the hill” fight for survival, which eventually ensures their collective demise.
The analogy in human behavior is claimed to be that members of a group will attempt to negate or diminish the importance of any member who excels far more than other members or achieves success that overshadows others’, out of envy, spite, conspiracy or competitive feelings.”
Also from Wikipedia: Allegory of Long Spoons:
“The allegory of the long spoons is a parable that shows the difference between heaven and hell by means of people forced to eat with long spoons. It is attributed to Rabbi Haim of Romshishok, as well as other sources.
In hell the people are unable to lift food to their mouths using such unwieldy cutlery, and are starving. In heaven, the diners feed one another across the table and are sated. The story can encourage people to be kind to each other. There are various interpretations of the fable including its use in sermons and in advice to lonely people.”
Great project! Over 55 artists from the Pacific Northwest. Put together by Jereme Westom who was in my grad program. There are still early bird specials on the book for $15.
I have been experiencing vertigo off and on for a year. I have a Dr. Appointment but I always have to ask Dr. Google. This is what Doctor Google told me:
This is what BPPV is:
“Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is a disorder arising from a problem in the inner ear.[3] Symptoms are repeated, brief periods of vertigo with movement, that is, of a spinning sensation upon changes in the position of the head. This can occur with turning in bed or changing position.[3] Each episode of vertigo typically lasts less than one minute. Nausea is commonly associated.[6] BPPV is one of the most common causes of vertigo.
BPPV can result from a head injury or simply occur among those who are older.[3] A specific cause is often not found. The underlying mechanism involves a small calcified otolith moving around loose in the inner ear.”
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benign_paroxysmal_positional_vertigo
Try this treatment at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQR6b7CAiqk
I’m doing some research on how to run productive sprint retrospectives.
Mountain Goat Software has a good structure that breaks down into how to encourage good habits:
Start: What needs to be added to the team’s habits
Stop: What needs to be changed or removeed
Continue: What working but needs to continue in order to become a habit.
Once something becomes adopted as a habit, it drops off the list. Otherwise the list would grow.
The key is, keep it short, keep feelings out of it. I also like that in each sprint retrospective, there is a sheet of paper with last week’s retrospective points so the team can see them. They don’t need to be discussed but having them as a reference is helpful/
I’ve had other weekly retrospectives that were like this:
Each person takes a turn listing:
Round One: 3 things that worked
Round Two: 3 things that could be improved upon
Round Three: Any blockages
The meeting ends with a quick list of what’s happening the following week, plus a shout out to someone or something exceptional that happened that week.
This style works well on teams with new employees because it forces everyone to become part of the discussion from their very first week. I like tat the feedback is given in rounds instead of having the first person go through the pluses and minuses before moving on. It allows for time to think about your own list and modify it.
Most importantly, I think, is to get the retrospective done fast, record what’s been discussed, and move on. We’re smart humans, a quick check in is usually enough to plant a seed for future improvements, or when necessary, a follow up conversation off-line.
As we build out our site infrastructure and document our development process in our github wiki, I’ve been learning a lot about Markdown.
I’m loving the simplicity of this Markdown cheat sheet by Adam Prichard. It’s a boiled down version of Github’s documentation on writing markdown. It gets straight to the point. Gotta love a good cheat sheet.
I should also mention he’s built a tool that lts you write email in markdown. Pretty nifty.
I never remember how to do this so I’m adding the quick steps here. I know there are ways of auto generating a Table of Contents in Google Docs, but I don’t know, I just like making my own. Don’t judge me.
Here’s mine!
