the incredible lightness of being

Yes let me set the record straight. I'm an artist on a number of fronts...one being computer, graphic image distortion, a kind of pop-art, poster art; I don't do vector art (yet) and have moved beyond xerox art which was an old passion. I also write and play music but you can read about that on other blogs...

I owe a lot to Blogger for providing me a place to get started with this genre- and it's also amazing that digital photography has made it possible for one to simply take pictures and waste no more than batteries, no powerful developing chemicals down the family sewer anymore. What a time to be alive! Businesses like Google may want to make money off of people like us (low-down free-blog-using image panhandlers) but they've been very generous so far and I've been able to 1) write volumes in hopes of becoming a better writer; 2) store photos that I've distorted, saturated and sharpened, 3) download & upload photos I've taken, taking up mbs of bandwidth, all free; and this is what, because someone thinks I'll click on a google ad? I might. But so far I've been taken with the opportunity to be part of the media in my free time. I'm a content producer...and I don't care if nobody notices me. It's just nice having an outlet...

As for pop art/poster art, I'll get it together. I plan to have a few exhibits- posted deliberately and prominently- in spaces that are genuinely and unequivocably mine. You see, I also owe a lot to SIUC- which provides most of my images too btw- by that I mean, it's the place where I see shapes, images, views, angles, and somebody, I'm sure, put in the gardens for just that purpose...but it also has given me a job, a place to go every day, and as part of that, web pages, a corner, a domain- all these old pages that nobody uses. I feel that as long as I'm using them for siuc- which I am, I'm helping them out. I'm here to help SIUC see itself from a different angle; hopefully a good one, but definitely a colorful one. It's a beautiful place, a garden; a paradise of its own.

But, back to the original problem, I got onto my own image uploading, and found out that I've only used 35 out of 1025 possible mb, or whatever. Plenty of space up there. Blogger obviously sets the terms, and does what it wants; simplifies the images because it wants to save space; doesn't let you organize what you put up there, because it wants to encourage you to sign up for Picasa and thereby draw you into its paid services. I've never signed up for Picasa simply because I don't want it immediately grabbing all the photos in my computer, which at any given time, any given computer, are both personal and work, two different kinds. I'm sure someone from Picasa will tell me, no problem, you simply organize after you have an account- but how can I know that from here? Since I find that to be hard to do on my present image host, I have to assume it's hard to do wherever one goes...

Signed up for Bubbleshare the other day because I like those moving carousels. But I never put anything on my account. This will either happen or it won't. It could be like one of those hundreds of accounts around there that I have but barely use & steadily recede into oblivion. Someday all the free providers in the world will band together and make "george washington slept here" pop art monuments in my name...

"I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money." -AW

images on blogger

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/06/free-image-hosting-on-blogger-issues/
Free image hosting on Blogger- issues

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/01/host-your-images.html
image hosts and comments

http://cranked.me/2008/06/how-to-post-image-in-its-original-size.html
how to post an image in its original size on Blogger or "Blogger scales down my images"

blogger & the artist's easel

My problem here is that I've been using blogger to store temporary pictures, to decide if I like them enough to save them and hang onto them. And to some degree, it's worked fine. They sit on my blog for a few days; I open the blog several times; in the course of those days I either keep liking them, or give up on them and let them go. Letting them go often means letting them sit in the blog indefinitely, as opposed to storing them in a place where I'm more likely to have active use, more likely to pick and use them.

Now here's the problem. Even with my weak and weakening eyes I can tell that blogger is skinflinting on the pixels. In other words, in order to save space, blogger has been reducing everything it's asked to store, since it's just on the free blogs anyway. It's actually a problem I've noticed on the wider web too. Really nobody likes to store the really big-bundled pictures, even though they are clearer; they take up tons of space. And on a daily basis it's even hard for some computers to grab them and focus them; for blogger, carrying a lighter-bundled picture might mean that people like me are aggravated about their vagueness, but Joe OldPC out in the bad-(connection)-lands can at least get his weblog-view in under five minutes. And it will keep him on blogger, using the carousel, taking the world tour of blogs.

So for me, the question becomes: what can I use as a desktop, where I can look at my pictures, mess with the colors, decide if I'm done or not? The actual computer desktop now has hundreds, and I can't see them all, because they have little icons instead of thumbnails. But even the thumbnails wouldn't work for the purpose I'm talking about. I'm actually better off using my photo storage itself- and I've had some trouble here too- to have a place where I can open them up and take a look at their color.