Monochromatic Outlook

I fin­ished this draw­ing about a week ago. I’d thought I’d fin­ished it the week before, but I gave myself some time away from it with the notion that it was pos­si­ble I’d want to go into it again. I went through the whole process with this, col­lect­ing ref­er­ence pho­tos, draw­ing her in pen­cil, going back to var­i­ous parts of her face in my sketch­book and work­ing out the treat­ments I might want to use both with pen­cil and then … Read the rest

This morn­ing’s DSE run was the Rain­bow Falls 5K. My left metatarsal is killing me—I limped the last half of the run.

It’s odd how dif­fi­cult it can be some­times to gauge my pace. Since today’s race was a 5K I fig­ured that I’d be able to turn up the heat a lit­tle bit and run faster. I got out there and was imme­di­ate­ly breath­ing hard­er than I like. I think if the air is a lit­tle cool­er … Read the rest

For years I’ve used the Palm as a lap­top replace­ment. As tempt­ing as the con­ver­gence devices may have been, I kept to a sep­a­rate phone and palm­top, and relied on cables or Blue­tooth to keep them in touch.

In the last cou­ple of years I’ve found myself using SMS mes­sag­ing more and more. It’s main advan­tage is that it takes lit­tle ded­i­cat­ed atten­tion with much less over­head than a quick cell call. Coor­di­nat­ing plans, check­ing sched­ules, touch­ing base can be done … Read the rest

In try­ing to make the deci­sion whether to run the US Half Marathon in eight days, I took the last chance to do a longish run to try it out before I have to take it easy with short­er dis­tances for the next week. I ran rough­ly eleven and a half miles at a 9:40 pace. I don’t think I’ll be beat­ing my 2004 time, but for most of the 11.55 miles I felt like I … Read the rest

It both­ers me that it’s so hard to find good fast reli­able ser­vice for a motor­cy­cle. My Tri­umph has been in the shop for over a month wait­ing on a fan.… should be a pret­ty sim­ple part to get a hold of, but there it is. Six weeks lat­er and it’s still sit­ting in the shop. The Moto Guzzi is just get­ting reg­u­lar main­te­nance plus a replace­ment for the fend­er that spon­ta­neous­ly cracked in Jan­u­ary. It took eight months for … Read the rest

I’ve just installed ver­sion 7 of iTunes, and for the last few min­utes, the sta­tus win­dow has been list­ing all the music in my library along with the words, “Deter­min­ing Gap­less Play­back Information.”

This has been my biggest prob­lem with dig­i­tal music play­ers for years. The MP3 for­mat in par­tic­u­lar has poor gran­u­lar­i­ty. The files are lim­it­ed in length to incre­ments of some­thing like two-tenths of a sec­ond. So play­ing one next to anoth­er inevitably leads to a pause … Read the rest

After last Sun­day’s dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance at the Cable Car Chase, yes­ter­day I went out for the DSE Run­ners Potrero Hill Run. I pushed hard, had fun, and broke the nine minute mile on a course with one par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty hill. It’s been a while since I’ve seen eight-some­thing instead of nine-some­thing on my pace, and it’s quite welcome.

The trou­bling hill in ques­tion is the South side of Ver­mont Street, which most peo­ple don’t real­ize is the real twisti­est … Read the rest

On Sat­ur­day I signed a lease to share stu­dio work­space at Art Explo­sion. I’m going to spend some time there today with the friend with whom I’m split­ting the space and I’ll get my key after the lock­smith opens on Tues­day so I’ll be able to come and go as I please.

I’ve final­ly bro­ken out of the block I’ve had for far too long and I’m draw­ing again. Most­ly I’m doing exer­cis­es to try to regain con­trol over … Read the rest

The pre­view for the new Jet Li movie quotes Lao Tsu as writ­ing, “know­ing oth­ers gives you strength, know­ing your­self makes you fear­less.” That caught my atten­tion, because I’d nev­er seen a trans­la­tion of chap­ter that put it that way. My friend Peter Shark says there is no such thing as an accu­rate trans­la­tion of the Tao Te Ching, and I tend to agree with him, but I hope that by study­ing mul­ti­ple trans­la­tions and ask­ing that I might learn … Read the rest