Hoboken Arts - Artifications

I first met Roland Ramos a few years ago when he wandered into a little open mic I co-hosted called Welcome Words. He was able to jam on any instrument and was happy to take the lead or backup anyone in the house. The fact that he's talented was almost outshined by his ability to get the crowd excited and involved. I was always happy to see Roland walk in the door because I knew it would be a good night. Now he's doing something for all of Hoboken that I saw him do for small crowds. Check out his blog to learn more. Also, he put together a video of one of his songs that's worth checking out.

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Call an audible

After reading about calling and audible I decided to write a letter to amazon.com. Below is the letter I sent to them about "MP3 Downloads".

At the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference this past winter there was an image that was so obvious to everyone that even though there were proponents of DRM in the audience they laughed when they saw it. The first image was of a sidewalk that led in an indirect path to a library with a dirt path worn through the grass of the more direct path that obviously most people walked down. The second image was the same as the first but there was a chain link fence around the grass and dirt path forcing walkers onto the indirect cement path. The chain link fence is DRM. What those images don't drive home is the difference in digital versus physical. In the physical world it would be a rare person who got wire snippers and cut his way through the fence to the other side. In the digital world it is still the rare person who would do that, but with digital snippers can be given to anyone who wants them. Even if there are only a few hackers that can defeat your DRM, they can create software and send it out to everyone on the internet. If you up the ante and make better DRM, you put the legitimate paying customers at risk because now their legitimate activity has been disabled in order to thwart hackers. Hasn't the success of Apple's iTunes store proven that most people want to be honest and will pay for content rather than steal it? If you create DRM that doesn't work as well as the stolen content (which already there are compatibility issues with certain devices), honest people will wonder what they are paying for. Usually pirated content is either equal or less than the original. Don't reach a tipping point by making the legitimate content so difficult to use that the pirated content is better than the legitimate content.

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There's a flower in my yumlet

Another R&B adventure day results in a flower in my food. We went out for brunch this morning and I had the Huevos Verde (no ham) and it was as good as it looks. The restaurant does artful plating for all of their dishes, but the carmalized tomato flower... wow!

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B by Steve

Here's a pencil drawing of me by local JC artist Steve Singer. It's from last year. That's exactly what I look like when I'm reading. The drawing was a gift from a friend of ours.

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Brush & Ink

I've been trying to paint a little recently. I've so far just done some copies of other artists' work, but hopefully I'll ease myself back into my old ways. It's been so long that my confidence isn't high enough to tackle original work, so it's just some reinterpretations for now.

The girl eating toast is from the comic Black Hole published by Kitchen Sink Press. The monkey (upper left) is from a blogger's business card (he said it was from a collection of free images). The sitting woman with her head on her knee is a Schiele from 1918.

The fun thing about posting them is that my camera has face detection software and the little box appeared for the two women, which is a vote of confidence in my art ;)

The monkey didn't get face detection. I'll head to the zoo and see if real monkeys get face detection. Then I'll know if I paint good monkeys.

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Haunted Cup Cakes

Years ago we were invited to a Halloween party and told to bring a food fitting with the night's theme. We decided to bake cupcakes haunted with the ghost of a KitKat, which meant before we cooked the cupcakes we dropped bits of KitKat bars into some of the cupcakes. They turned out to be a hit, because R is a great baker and because they have a great built in excuse. If you eat a cupcake and there's no KitKat inside, well you just need to eat another one so you can have the unique pleasure of cupcake and KitKat. At the next potluck type party we went to the host was someone who'd been at the Halloween party and she mentioned the cupcakes. We figured we had a hit on our hands. We brought them and did the same thing, although I think we used a different chocolate bar than KitKats, but the same idea. We announced that they were special and some had a hidden treat. Innocent us, we had no idea why some people went crazy over them and stuffed their faces. We didn't really know a lot of people there and had a good time, but hit the road and didn't think too much of our success. However from then on we always brought the cupcakes when asked to bring food. Fast forward a few years to present day and finally a friend of ours let us in on the joke. Apparently when you bring baked goods to some gatherings you shouldn't announce that they are special baked goods with fun inside. Oh well, Hershey works for us. For the Fourth of July we baked some cupcakes for friends and we decided to bake a special cupcake for us -- just devil's food cake, eggs, a little oil, and a Mr Goodbar.

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Rethinking the blog

I decided to open the focus for this blog to be ... unfocused. I was segregating all of my thoughts on Judaism into my JBlog, creating mini blogs in iLife, and limiting this one to just career focused topics, but I've decided to just put everything here.

Also my wife and I will be posting, so posts by her will end in her first initial, R, and mine will end in my first initial, B.

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