Just thought I would give a personal update in the spirit of things! I bought a house! No just kidding… still homeless. We will be leaving Cairo July 22nd and heading to New York. Me an Lizzie are going to stay with her sister a week and poke around New York. Going to see the Lion King, Monty Python Sir Spamalot, the MET (which I plan to spend 2 days in), and maybe some crappy modern art museum that will make me puke (in a modern way I swear). Then heading back to Fayetteville around July 1st. I plan on being in Fayetteville through November and not sure after that.

I’m planning on seeing Daniel in July when me and Joel drive that direction for Grub. And I’m planning on visiting Seattle at some point to visit M and Zmurder. Especially Zmurder considering I haven’t seen him in a hella long time and owe him some fooseball games (even if I have to go to the cheese state?). Me and Joel will be in C town around July 28th to 30th for a computer conference if anyone wants to fly in and hang out! Small possibility I’ll be in San Jose and Vegas during the next six months for conferences too.

After November I’m not sure what I will be doing, I’ve been looking at the visas for southeast Asian countries like Hong Kong and Singapore but I will figure that out once I get back to the States. I made a small blog post on Egypt which you can read here and some pictures here. It is a nice play to visit for a few weeks but a hard place to live in when you are so outside normal society. Anyway, hope to see you guys soon!

ps, anyone been watching the TV show jericho?

In the past six months or so, I serendipitously have stumbled upon two artists that have really captured my imagination.

Aya Takano. I first came across Aya Takano in Barcelona, during a visit to the Miro Museum. It was kind of strange, because I went to the Miro Museum to see the work of its namesake, Joan Miro. But the museum also has some gallery space dedicated to visiting exhibits. During my visit, they were featuring the work of Aya Takano, who made much bigger impression on me than Miro.

I think I’m drawn by the soft, playful colors and the cosmic strangeness of her scenes. You have to be careful though, as she depicts a lot of skinny young women, often undressed and often in superficially erotic contexts, so it can be mistaken for kiddie porn.

James Marshall (Dalek). I discovered James Marshall just this week, on a walk through my old neighborhood in Washington, DC. Apparently, the dodgier parts are now thriving with wine bars and art galleries. One, the Irvine Contemporary, is currently featuring Marshall’s work.

I was immediately drawn to his bright colors and intricate compositions. You can spend hours finding new details in each of his designs.

What do both Takano and Marshall have in common? This guy:

Takashi Murakami. Evidently, both Takano and Marshall spent time at Takashi’s Kaikai Kiki gallery before venturing to do their on exhibits. There’s a name for Takashi’s style of art: loosely, Superflat, and it’s really my thing.

Today, I taking a train to New York, and luckily for me, the Brooklyn Museum is featuring a temporary exhibit of Takashi. Man, I hope I wake up in time…

Ladies, gentlemen, Daniel Marsh, April Johnson:

I deposited my thesis last Friday, meaning I’m done and set to receive my M.S. in Cartography (”the Degree of Champions”). You may have heard that I was going to D.C. this summer to be an intern at the Post. Plans have changed, and I’ve taken a job with Universal Mind, a sweet company that makes rich internet apps, including a couple cutting edge mapping/geoviz apps. Technically, I’m a “Software Engineer”, but I’ll be doing a lot of cartographic and infoviz consulting while I get up to speed on Flex. I start June 2nd.

I can work from anywhere, so Lauren and I are sticking around Madison for the summer, and then moving in August, probably to Seattle.

But it’s funny anyway. Plus, maybe Ben wasn’t convincing enough.

“Battlestar Galactica” Top Ten List

Depending on which day you catch me, I say that I have 3 or 4 goals in life, one of which is to seek the abolition of customary or English system of measurements in the United States. Like day-light savings time, it seemed like one of those no-brainers: the only reason it sticks around is because of (i) cultural inertia, (ii) an anti-intellectual, anti-Europe streak that runs through the American psyche and (iii) old people.

But for the first time, I’ve come across a reasonable argument in favor of the English system:

The metric system is based around base 10 numbers. Why? We have ten fingers, so our counting system is based around base 10….. With only two factors, two and five, it’s a bitch to subdivide measures. Why couldn’t we have twelve fingers? Twelve is a beautiful number—breaking down into factors of two, three, four and six. Ahhh! Grab a ruler and try to measure a third of foot. Easy! Try to measure a third of a meter. A total pain in the ass! Nothing like an infinite repeat (33.3333333333333333333333333333333333… cm) to ruin a perfectly pleasant day.

That’ s kind of a good point– not enough to make me think we should keep the English system around, but maybe enough to demote its abolition as a all-time life-goal.

I posted to the main page yesterday evening, but it didn’t appear as the most recent post. At first I thought it was the work of those Nazis, but then I realized that it posted at the time that I saved it as a draft.

Just FYI if you didn’t know, saving a post as a draft will cause it to post to the site at that time as opposed to the time you publish.

If this is not news to anyone, then I’ll wear the dunce hat for the day.