Read this

Possibly one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64459-2005Mar24.html

w00t

my program works. Except that its still randomly segfaulting (goes to fix it..)

(25 minutes later)

Man, gotta watch that code. IT WORKS. OMG. I AM SOOO TIRED. I'ts almost 6 am. I'm almost done. The thing works. All I need to do now is fix my formatting to make it look pretty.

More about art

I've always struggled to create Art. Because the thing about art is that it requires skill, Painting is difficult, requires training. Poetry is walking a thin tightrope between beauty and pretensiousness. Writing music requires a lot of practice and knowledge of theory. These are all skills I wish I had but don't. So how does one cope with this? I like Allen Ginsberg's approach. Not that he couldn't rhyme or write normal poetry (you know, with meter), but his free verse is soo free. However, that opens up another can of worms for people--a line between writing absolute *shit* and beauty, like that created by Ginsberg. Ginsberg creates beauty while most attempts at free verse poetry are just so "look at me I'm free and I don't have to rhyme" meaningless shit. But see, thats another thing: People think that Art has ONE meaning: whatever meaning the artist intended. This is absolutely wrong. Art means whatever you think it means, even if it isn't what the artist meant. That's what art is. And most artists acknowledge this I think. So for a person (and LOTS of people do this) to go up to some Jackson Pollock painting or something and say, "that isn't art, its just paint splattered on canvas" is absolutely wrong. I don't particularly care for Mona Lisa, but I don't go around saying that it isn't Art. It just doesn't really have much meaning to me. Mark Rothko painted squares on canvas, but to see those squares makes some people weep. Art is about perspective. Like my photography teacher told me in high school, "the measure of a good photograph is not that you like it, it is whether it moves you." I think that Pollock and Rothko knew this, and understood art for what it is. Pollock thought he was a terrible painter (in purely technical terms anyway), but yet he was able to produce something profound.

While I'm on the topic of art still and before I forget, I totally forgot Rembrandt yesterday.
Rembrandt is amazing: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rembrandt/

Some photos

I just remembered just now that I can sync my bookmarks here on my parents' machine, so now I have my blogpost thing. Anyway, I don't really feel like saying much, but here are some photos that I found to be moving:

From Time Magazine
From Daily Dose of Imagery
From CHROMASIA (This guy is amazing, I recommend livebookmarking his blog)
More from CHROMASIA
From "Ground Glass"

On a similar note, I apparently forgot my camera (along with my heavy jacket) in blacksburg. damn. I've got like five rolls of film I need to get developed. I remember I used to get annoyed at my mother for not getting film developed for years after it was taken. I guess now I understand. I swear, I've become my parents in so many ways.

While I'm at it with these links, I realized recently that in my search for interesting art, I've always tried to not be too concerned in what other people seem to like or what seems cool or what seems interesting to everyone else in a lot of areas, especially in regards to art. Not always, but quite a bit. I mean, I've always thought the Mona Lisa was a much overrated work, really not much more than a portrait. Of course I'm aware that da Vinci invented sfumato, and the mona lisa is probably the first time he used it (maybe not, not sure), but I don't see this as any major cause for alarm. Caravaggio invented chiaroscuro and although he's certainly very famous, neither his name nor his work are now part of popular culture. And even still, Brunelleschi (sp?) invented PERSPECTIVE and many people have never even heard his name. Anyways, here are some paintings:

Jacques-Louis David - The Death of Marat
(this might be my favorite painting ever. Like damn. Not the stuff of desktop wallpaper certainly, but I think David was a genius. It's called Death of Marat)
Jacques-Louis David - The Sabine Women ( think that's what its called)
(another David.
His works have such a dark, nightmare quality to them. Its insane.
Repin - Unexpected Return
(I think repin is another little known genius.)
Salvador Dali - Anthropomorphic Cabinet
(Dali is my favorite artist, and this is no doubt my favorite work by him. Strangely enough, its quite difficult to find good pictures of online. Even this one has some tone issues, but many of them cut off a good bit of the right side. Also art.com and allposters.com don't seem to sell any posters of it, though they are happy to sell you posters of every other obscure thing that Dali ever did. Here's my latest thought about this thing though: Its always kind of bothered me about the figure's legs, and how they seem to be folded correctly according to physics, but they still look like they're kind of floating. Did Dali do this intentionally? If you look at his working working sketches for it, the legs don't look floating there, but as soon as he put it on canvas, it looks kind of weird. I'd post links, but I can't find the sketches online. Anyway, just a thought.)