INTRAMATRIX

Zenwalk Sunflowers

Originally uploaded by intram

My first attempt to make a wallpaper using gimp. This photo was taken by my fiance when we were visiting Thailand last year. Of course, I added the logo myself.

As of July 1st, we (Californians) are required to wear hands-free devices while driving.  Not all the time, just while talking on the phone.  As you can imagine, cellular providers are marketing wireless headsets more than ever.  Not that we need one, we have to have one now.  I’ve got this one made by LG (since my phone is by LG), I forgot the model.  Verizon was selling it for 80 dollars, and I found one for 50 so I snagged it.  I’m now wondering if I should’ve spent 100 or more, because the quality of wireless headsets is apparently lame.  If I’m driving over 60mph, I just don’t bother answering or calling anyone.  I can’t hear them, they can’t hear me.  Irritable situation avoided.

Instead of making residents jam expensive plastic in their ears, the state should put money towards training drivers just how to talk on the phone while driving.  I did it just fine for years and would like to continue, but no.  It’s the handful of people who couldn’t that messed it up for the rest of us.  Train us how to talk and drive, and then hand over the beer, please.

Thank you.

"Terminus: Resurrectus IV", (c) 12/94

Bleeding works of art
Seething work so dark
Seering words from the heart

“Heartwork“, Carcass, 1993

I’ve always had a fascination with the human heart. Or any mammal’s heart. Okay, birds, too. Whatever. I’m just amazed at how there is such a strong neural impulse between the heart and brain, that when the rest of the body dies, the heart can still substantially keep going. Or not. Watch an open heart surgery video and you’ll see what I mean. It’s crazy stuff.

"Love & it's Victim", (c) 1/95

I’m a little bothered that my scanner isn’t big enough to scan the entire images; these have been chopped considerably. I know I could scan them in sections and crop them together, but I don’t think the extra effort is necessary.

I look at these now and try to relate to how I was thinking when I made these. At that time, I was ingesting heavy doses of NIN, Clive Barker, H.R. Giger. I looked to the works of M.C. Escher for views of normalcy. And Salvador Dali was too easily accessible for me to consider “cool.”

A lot of the thoughts that spurred these images aren’t with me anymore, and that’s a good thing. Nowday’s, railing against one’s self would be considered Emo, and that would be the worst. I would become the type of person I just don’t care for. I personally wish my lawn was more Emo so it would cut itself.

I’m glad that art has progressed heavily into the digital medium that it has, contrary to my former beliefs that it should always be “hand-made.” Not only am I sparse on ideas, I’m sparse on time in which to implement ideas. But of course, I’ve always got time to fart around on the computer. I should probably start considering more practical investments.

“He said, what?!”

perspective sketch. no point, really.

My first screen capture ever. Using Istanbul video recorder.

And my first YouTube video upload.

9 seconds of Compiz-Zen-Fusion bliss. Don’t blink, or you might miss it.

Ironically, one of the main reasons I got into Linux was because I couldn’t get my venerable Epson 1640 scanner to work in Windows XP.  It worked just fine in Windows ‘98, but in XP, even with the install disk, it would just not go.  The only option I had was to pay forty dollars for some software I found online.  Well, many months later I have finally hooked up my scanner and it works great with Xsane for zero dollars.  Yay for Linux. (again)

I plan to get more of my works in digital format when time permits.

dragon (from sketchbook)

I did art “full-time” about ten years ago, I was still living at home and going to school.  Not really working, I had plenty of time and space to be creative.  Sadly, for many people, real life catches up.  You become heavily disappointed for what the real world is.  War, injustice, cheap beer, etc.  Even worse, you have to go out and find a job.

artichoke/heart

For me, from 1993 to 1995, everything was art.  I’ve done some other stuff since then, most notably Kramer Wetzel’s “Fishing Guide to the Stars” character, as I perceived it.  The book is available on Amazon.

snippy

Most of my stuff was done using rapidograph pen, ink, colored pencil and shaded marker. I had a lot of ideas churning in my head, but was probably not around enough creative people to keep those ideas going. That’s pretty much how the inspiration ran out.

"untitled" (too warped for even that)

If you’re looking at this and have an idea, suggestions are always welcome.

Idea box ==> greg@intramatrix.net

It all started back in November, my Linux addiction that is. Being now that it’s August, I’ve officially been using Linux for 10 months. It feels like a long time, and I’ve learned a lot. For the past 6 months, I’ve been using it as my main OS. In fact, the company I work at runs entirely on Linux which can be heavily attributed to it’s success, but let’s not go there. In the land of Linux, I’m still a newbie.

I still fumble with xorg.conf and fstab files. Granted, I didn’t even know what those were last year. At least now I know where to go, what to edit, and when to prepare for experimental shutdowns (ie. major screw-ups & reinstallations) “Oh, I meant to copy the files, not the entire directory. Crap..” Navigating through a command line, to me, has the same suspense as jumping from one rock to another with a sea of rabid badgers below.  Pretty dramatic, huh?

As advertised, I’m a big fan of openSUSE. But lately, I’ve noticed that it’s taking a long time to boot, even longer than 64 bit Windows Vista. And when Vista starts outpacing Linux, I start looking around again. I really do like openSUSE 11.0, but the bloat, even on my Acer dual core laptop with 4GB of RAM is really starting to bug me. I’d like to try something different that isn’t Debian based; I use that all day at work. I’d like something fast, looks cool, and doesn’t demand too much of my free time configuring stuff, but challenges me to learn something.

For speed, the fastest from what I’ve seen in Linux-land is Slackware installed on an XFS formatted file system. Benchmarks would suggest that the ReiserFS format is faster, but I get the creeps when ReiserFS is given as a formatting option. I will stick with XFS and keep the blood off my hands.

For the ‘looks cool’ element, Slackware has a few derivatives, namely Vector and Zenwalk. Granted, I could try the original, but I’m still in the ‘preconfigured & looks cool’ market. I tried Vector last Christmas, and I really did like the speed and stability, but Zenwalk’s dolphin icon has me for the ‘looks cool’ factor. True Linux nerds probably don’t care about these things, but I’m still a noob, and if I’m ever going to replace the chameleon logo, it will have to be another animal.

Two weeks into Zenwalk 5.2, dual booted with openSUSE and Vista (okay, triple booted) I’m really amazed at how overqualified my computer is for Zenwalk’s i486 architecture. It’s that fast. And very functional. Looks great, with many options for changing appearance. I’m also very accustomed to using the GNOME desktop, but Xfce, in this case works really well. Zenwalk’s packages and updates also appear to be well maintained, nothing is going stale behind the curtains. No flashing update icon lets you know what’s available, which is probably better. You can update, install or remove anything as you see fit without any prompts. While a part of me really enjoys getting update prompts, like getting something new in the mail, a system will probably be better off when you control what goes in and what goes out.

And no, I didn’t make that.

Zenwalk also doesn’t have official support for Compiz-Fusion, aside from a Wiki How-To page. It does have a built-in compositor, but it doesn’t really have 3-D effects which does put a damper on things. Sure, the 3-D cube is fun, but also very practical when you have limited screen space on your laptop. Granted, I could try compiling Compiz from source but that has always been very hit or miss with me. Either way, it’s a time consuming process with no guaranteed results.

My decision on whether to keep Zenwalk triple booted was confirmed when my laptop started giving real signs of heartburn, having to run 3 different operating systems, and each OS using it’s own filing system. No sir, it didn’t like it. It was nice while it lasted, but I’ll be happily running Zenwalk on VirtualBox within Windows for the time being.

With it’s great design principles, I think Zenwalk is a very well thought out distribution. I like the fact that it doesn’t really remind me of other distributions (aside from Vector) and that it just seems to be it’s own thing. I wouldn’t consider it for novices to disk partitioning or Linux in general; as in don’t let the playful and happy artwork fool you — prepare to spend time with it to get it set up. I personally hope it comes out with a 64 bit edition, and after some digging, that option appears to be on the horizon.

“Like, far out, man…”

One of the biggest ‘WTF’ pieces I’ve seen yet.

Right, I say that every time I come across one don’t I?

“Rock me, Dr. Zaius”

I never would have seen this coming, but I figured I’d go a little “Pro-Mac” in this Mac attack.

The reason is encryption.

When you work for a company, with, say over 50 people it’s generally a good idea to encrypt your hard drives. Wouldn’t it feel awful if the laptop containing all your dark, dirty secrets fell into the wrong hands? It’s an all around good security practice.

From a support standpoint, it can be a real nightmare if that drive fails to boot. How can you repair a disk that can’t really be seen to outsiders? It’s encrypted. Utilities won’t even recognize it as a drive. They’ll report back, “Nothing is here.” It’s an awful, frustrating feeling when it’s your job to FIND that missing data. There’s a tedious solution, it sucks to execute, and it’s not fun. Why would anyone want to hear the gory details?

Enter the Mac.

When an encrypted Mac hard drive fails, you just plug it into another Mac. One says, “Hi, how ya doin?” The other smiles back. They shake hands. They are brothers. It’s really that simple. A few mouse-clicks later, the problem is solved.  I know I’ve mentioned it before.

This solution is so awesomely easy, I just want to go out and buy a Firewire logo t-shirt.

Unless, I have to settle for USB.

Made a quick visit for Kathy’s niece’s 11th birthday party.  Caught Penn & Teller live at the Rio.  Excellent nail-gun trick.  And real-gun trick.  Good stuff, very entertaining.

Then, back to work as usual.

*sigh*

There’s always a nice feeling when an imminent Star Wars movie is about to come out.  Forty year-old men begin to crawl out from their parent’s basement.  The seasonal section at Rite-Aid becomes colorful like Christmas as a whole new slew of goods made in Chinese sweatshops for Americans to blow money on comes alive with sugar and cheap plastic.  It’s unmistakably Jedi season again.  Mind tricks galore.

Okay, so it’s an animated movie.  Only kids and true geeks will probably go see it, myself included.  IMAX, dead center, day one.

So, in honor of this great rare feeling, I’ve decided to post a couple amusements that fell through the tubes.  Such as Lego’s re-enacting a great piece by Eddie Izzard.

And this one is just a little too true.

And last, for posterity, we have some BBC footage about a Drunken Darth Vader being spared jail time. Yes, the finesse British sense of culture never ceases to amaze me.

My work here is finished.

For now.