WOW that last post was from me and I just realized I was logged in on Brianna's name on my computer. WOW sorry Brie!!!
anyways...MISS YOU!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
two amazing videos...
i dont know if you guys have seen these but saw them at work today and died. wait for the telephone one to pick up..it's worth it. i miss you all!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHXgFU7qNI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NOPhzXwW0
***Moments to note in "Tyrone Goes Shopping"***
a. objects continuing to fall on him after he breaks through ceiling and hits head
b. upon entry, he immediately grabs a shopping cart.
c. the attempt to pry the door open with dolly
d. smoking the cigarette and fully surrendering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHXgFU7qNI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NOPhzXwW0
***Moments to note in "Tyrone Goes Shopping"***
a. objects continuing to fall on him after he breaks through ceiling and hits head
b. upon entry, he immediately grabs a shopping cart.
c. the attempt to pry the door open with dolly
d. smoking the cigarette and fully surrendering
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Ridiculously Cool Kid Cudi Cover - Check it out
Awesome Kid Cudi cover - gets cooler the longer you stick around (minutes 2 and 3 are awesome)
Thursday, June 3, 2010
the happiness project
really cool idea and worth checking out- maybe not for this week but in general. enjoy :)
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2010/05/think-about-your-routines-daily-weekly-yearly.html
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2010/05/think-about-your-routines-daily-weekly-yearly.html
Monday, April 26, 2010
Check out this article on Jessica Park... pretty cool, right?
For an artist with autism, precision is all - The Boston Globe
WILLIAMSTOWN - Much of what matters to Jessica Park can be found in a small room on the second floor of a rambling old house in this western Massachusetts college town. The walls of Park's bedroom, which doubles as her art studio, are covered with posters of rainbows, lightning, Las Vegas, and astronomical phenomena: the constellations, galaxies, the moon. Perfume bottles and body creams, dozens of them, are lined up on a dresser. Trays of paints fill the shelves next to Park's drawing table, which holds a sketch for the artist's current commission, a painting of the Taj Mahal.
In a couple of months the architectural jewel will be rendered in Park's signature style: each spire, minaret, balcony, and dome transformed with a meticulous hand and mysterious vision into a precise riot of color.
"I use acrylics. Sometimes come straight from the tube, but usually mix them up," Park says of her brilliant hues. "I like how they look!"
Park is autistic, and her room is a window on what she calls enthusiasms and others call obsessions. Her previous enthusiasms - the subjects of Park's early paintings - include radiators, dials, and heaters. In recent years, Park's artwork has been dominated by Victorian houses surrounded by weather anomalies and set against night skies made of "purplish black," her favorite color. The skies are invariably filled with stars, painstakingly depicted in their correct positions and dimensions.
It would be hard to overstate just how keenly, and to what powerful effect, Park's art is an extension of her autism. As a small child, largely uncommunicative, Park was fascinated by abstract shapes and color gradations. She is also a mathematics savant, able since she was young to create her own complex number systems. (It took a mathematician to recognize the seemingly random series Park wrote on a piece of paper when she was 12, which turned out to be the squares of the numbers from 51 to 100 arranged according to the number of powers of 2 they contain.) Order, as it is for many autistic people, became a driving force in Park's life.
And so it is in her artwork, a selection of which is now up at Endicott College in Beverly. The well-defined edges and controlled patterns of brick, stonework, clapboards, and shingles appeal to the 50-year-old artist, according to her mother, Clara Claiborne Park, a former English professor at Williams College and author of two highly-regarded books: 1967's "The Siege: A Family's Journey into the World of an Autistic Child" and 2001's "Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism."
During a recent visit to the Park family's home, exchanges with Clara, who is in her late 80s and has speech difficulties, were limited. Jessica's sister Rachel, who imports Asian art and artifacts for sale online, facilitated an interview with Jessica. (Another sister, Katharine, is a history of science professor at Harvard.)
Conversation focused on the tasks that make up Park's days: working as a clerk in the mailroom at Williams College's Paresky Center (in 2007 it was officially christened the Jessica H. Park Mailroom), a job she's held for nearly 30 years; taking care of household chores in the home she shares with her mother and her father, David Park, a retired physics professor; and cooking.
"Spaghetti sauce. Fish chowder. Eggplant. Tuna noodle casserole. And chocolate cake," Jessica Park says, when asked about her favorite dishes to make. Unable to engage for long, she regularly jumps up from her chair to look at the Las Vegas photos she and her sister Rachel have collected, or check the WeatherBug on her computer, or bring more tea and cookies to the living room. And while the formerly mute child is now capable of some social interaction, Park suddenly becomes agitated - as she has all her life - when a visitor asks a question that begins with the word "what." No one knows why.
Park's art is displayed throughout the house, a patchwork of well-worn rooms and narrow hallways, as is an honorary doctor of fine arts degree she received in 2003 from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Her father says that Park's evolution as an artist has played an extraordinary part in forming his daughter's identity.
"There are so many things she can't do, and we've always tried to emphasize the importance of this thing that she does well and use it as a support for her ego, her sense of self, her sense of her own value," David Park says. "I don't know how Jessy's mind works. But I do think this has meaning for her."
Jessica Park works slowly. One of her large pieces, which can be up to 24 inches by 18 inches, will take several months to complete. Park receives around $2,500 for a commissioned painting, according to her brother Paul, a science-fiction novelist, and around half that if the client is a family friend or affiliated with the autistic community. Park is also represented by Pure Vision Arts, a New York exhibition space for artists with developmental disabilities.
"It's not exactly a living," says Paul Park, "but that's because my mother hasn't run it as a living. If Jessy is working and being productive, that's what's required. The selling part of it is big, but not because Jessy likes to spend money. Jessy likes numbers. And she likes them to go up, not down."
The earliest work included in the Endicott show is a childlike abstraction made when Jessica Park was 10. But as the show's catalog notes, even this simple painting is characterized by a striking degree of order and precision - no overlapping of colors, strong patterning, and decisive composition - that is the key mechanism by which Park relates to the world around her. Noted neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, who told her story in a 1998 documentary film for the BBC series "The Mind Traveller," wrote the foreword to both of Clara Park's books as well as the exhibit catalog.
"For Jessy, artwork is not a hobby or a pastime or even a profession or a vehicle for expressing herself to others," Sacks writes. "It is, for her, a crucial way of exploring the varieties of life, within the tight constraints of her methodical systems. It is a way of balancing her life."
Everyone around Park agrees that her artistic development made a dramatic, and perhaps life-changing, leap when she met schoolmates Anna and Diana Saldo at Mount Greylock Regional High School, which Park attended for nine years. Intrigued by this girl who would rock and scream uncontrollably in class but could also, by that time, really draw, the twin sisters (both talented artists who would later go into special education) took Park under their wing. They became, in Anna's words, like peer tutors, accompanying her to gym and art classes despite jeers and teasing from other kids, and they spent two summers living with the Park family on Block Island.
"We didn't have a lot in supplies, little watercolor sets and cast-off printer paper, but we did art lessons that also went into life skills," recalls Anna Saldo, who lives in Williamstown and has Park over for dinner every Monday night. "Initially we modeled what to do, and she would do the same. Jessy was very withdrawn and socially inept, but there was obviously raw talent there. It was nurtured and cultivated, and it bloomed."
Park's artwork may be the gripping subject of books, a film, and gallery exhibitions, yet the artist herself couldn't be less interested. She would rather talk about the difference between perfume and eau de toilette. Her brother Paul can't say whether she actually uses the lotions and potions that hold so much fascination these days. All he knows is that they spend hours at the mall looking at containers, and that for Park skin care isn't so different from numbers, or rainbows, or painting.
"It's an autistic person's paradise, 50 products at each counter. Is this one a.m. or p.m.? Before or after bath? Cream or powder? Everything has a category with tiny gradations, and because she's got a powerful intellect Jessy turns it into a system that she invests in. She's the same way with bathroom cleansers and appliances and vitamin pills," says Paul Park. "It's the way she does her art."
Saturday, April 24, 2010
haha wasted guy vs. flip flop at coachella- you HAVE to watch this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Au_8GMUxVs&feature=player_embedded
Friday, April 23, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Microsoft Courier
I hate Microsoft but as much as I try I can't seem to hate this product. It looks amazing!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Howard- gym swipe guy- the story of his life
So I never read this, but it was published last year and is pretty amusing- who new Howard was in the air force?
Man on a mission to protect life, liberty and Lasell Gym
If you have ever graced the entrance, nay, the hallowed gates, of Lasell Gymnasium, I can say with categorical certainty that you have in some way interacted with Howard Garbarsky, athletic facility monitor. How can I be so unconditionally assured of this fact? The reason is simple: Garbarsky defends his territory with the persistence of a starving mosquito, the vigilance of Obama’s security force and the perseverance of Lance Armstrong.
If his name does not spark any recollections, perhaps the words, “Excuse me ma’am/sir, you forgot to swipe your card!” spoken in an annoyed but resolute tone, will resonate in your memory and match the legendary face with the less known name. His calling voice, always heard as you attempt to escape into the depths of his athletic kingdom, has been heard by all, and has been a habitual source of frustration on behalf of the student body since at least 2004, when the Record last published a profile of this uncommon and pedantic man (“Swiping cards and spaceships,” February 17, 2004).
However, a mere halfhearted attempt to get to know Garbarsky a little better debunked my personal suspicion that he sustains himself solely on student inconvenience. Rather, conversing with him as he was stationed at his Lasell fortress, I discovered a calculated and dynamic man of many trades and experiences who wants nothing more than to have a positive impact on the College while keeping us all out of harm’s way.
“I’m responsible for the safety and security of people on the Williams campus, and to me I just don’t know how I can take that too seriously,” Garbarsky said, in an almost exact replication of a quote he gave the Record five years ago. “If something’s not done right, if it’s not kosher [he asks me to note that he’s Jewish], I just can’t live with it. Back in the day, when I wore sneakers and didn’t have a laptop, I’d even hop over the counter and chase delinquents down, although I’m too old for that now.”
Legend has it that last fall Garbarsky even hunted Kevin Rose ’11 of the football team all the way into a football film session when Rose, who was late for practice, attempted swipe evasion. “I usually lose sight of him when he goes down the stairs, but I imagine that he frequently follows people a lot further than that,” said Charlie Cates ’10, who works with Garbarsky. “No one slips through the cracks.”
When I pressed him on why he felt such a compulsion to assure that people didn’t get into the gym without swiping, Garbarsky answered emphatically: “People think Williamstown is perfect and all, but I have news: It’s still part of the real world.” Garbarsky proceeded to cite examples of real threats that we face here in Williamstown, including one story in which a student’s debit card was stolen from his locker and ran up over $5000 before the student knew it was missing.
“The students here are definitely academically smart, but when it comes to street-smarts, well – many of you are lacking,” Garbarsky said. “I mean, [he interrupts himself to yell after a delinquent, who turns out to be an oblivious professor] I can’t protect you guys from yourselves, so I just do my job and hope that you guys benefit from the mistakes and experiences that I’ve had in the past.”
Some of those experiences came during the 28 years that Garbarsky spent as an active reserve in the Air Force. “I got to see a lot of things, go to a lot of places that not too many people get to experience,” Garbarsky said. But he instantly warns against equating his perfectionism working for the College with past experiences in the Air Force. “I definitely feel like my obsessive compulsive nature was something I brought into the Air Force. I fit right in when I got there.”
Garbarsky’s passions, however, aren’t limited solely to obsessively ensuring that gym-goers swipe. When the gym empties out at night, Garbasky often takes advantage of the quietude by working on one of the various screenplays that he is currently writing. “Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always been fascinated by cinema,” he said. “So writing screenplays for me is a chance to follow a passion that I’ve had for a long time.”
Garbarsky trained as a screenwriter at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) and wrote a number of screenplays, even helping conceive and realize the Williamstown Film Festival. “I came up with the original idea for the festival here,” Garbarsky said with a hint of lingering bitterness. “But let me tell you a life story – people are always ready and willing to co-opt and take credit for your ideas.” He didn’t care to elaborate.
Listing his all-time favorite films – Seven Samurai, Dr. Strangelove, Forbidden Planet and Monty Python and the Holy Grail – he stated that he liked them because they all contained the common theme of guys who are on missions. “They remind me of my career in the Air Force and of the ‘mission mindset’ but also of my other endeavors,” Garbarsky said.
Garbarsky’s other ongoing hobbies include bladesmithing and architecture. He even has plans to one day build himself a zero-net input energy house, a “slightly more sophisticated Earthship that would be a total ecological system within itself.”
As the conversation skipped between Garbarsky’s numerous absorbing passions – from science fiction writing to bladesmithing to a number of other subjects – I realized that the same perfectionist tendencies that make Barbarsky our athletic department nemesis also render him a dedicated and creative artisan outside of Lasell. Quoting the wisest of Jedi Masters, Yoda, Garbarsky added, “Do or do not do, there is no try.”
Most impressive about Garbarsky though is the rapport that he has with the various students who greet him throughout our interview. “The students here are all really smart, so I love hearing about what they want to do, and feel flattered if they ask for advice,” Garbarsky said. “I tell them to do what makes them happy, that if they simply follow their passions and dreams, they can’t go too far wrong.”
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
READABILITY
READABILITY The single best tech idea of 2009, though, the real life-changer, has got to be Readability. It’s a free button for your Web browser’s toolbar (get it at lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability). When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else. Times Square just goes away.
You wind up with a simple, magazine-like layout, presented in a beautiful font and size (your choice) against a white or off-white background with none of this red-text-against-black business.
You occasionally run into a Web page that Readability doesn’t handle right — no big deal, just refresh the page to see the original. But most of the time, Readability makes the world online a calmer, cleaner, more beautiful place.
Go forth and install it.
Oh, yeah — and happy high-tech new year.
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