Clubberjack's Unfocused Ramblings

A New Home for Clubberjack

This blog is now located at www.clubberjack.net. Enjoy!

posted by Clubberjack @ 11:47 PM 0 comments

Art I would like to collect

I have a small collection of artwork, some pieces made by artist friends, some bought at various street fairs or shows (and some of my own work as well). I would like to expand my collection, and there are a few artists whose work I've seen online that I would love to purchase from. Here's a few of my favorites:

• Mike Libby's Insects
  I like the spiders, cicadas, and beetles.
• Lockwasher Design
  Beautiful retro robots and rayguns made of recycled parts.
• Audrey Kawasaki's Paintings
  I really like the one with the octopus arms.
• El Rey
  I've bought work from El Rey before, but never for myself. His krylographs are pretty cool.
  
• James Jean
  I came to Jean through his work on the covers for the Fables series. His Recess prints are quite striking.
  

posted by Clubberjack @ 12:25 PM 0 comments

Getting it Wrong (the price of security)

Perhaps you've heard about the brouhaha surrounding the bomb scare in Boston. You know, the one set off by magnetic LED graffiti that was part of a marketing campaign (and so on...).

What I think is lost in all of the rush to assign blame (on all sides) is that this is the cost of having a bomb squad. Bomb squads get called in on false alarms all the time (like this). Sometimes you get it wrong. What happened in Boston was simply a false alarm; someone mistook an object for a bomb. Everyone clamoring for lawsuits against Cartoon Network or decrying the overreaction of Boston officials needs to step back and remember that there's no point in having a bomb squad if they're afraid to get it wrong some of the time.

Of course, that assumes that you believe in the relative merits of having a bomb squad...

... and that the security response is timely...

... which, in this case, it wasn't (the "bombs" had been up for 2 weeks prior to this incident).

Then, of course, there's the two actual fake bombs that were found the same day (with no arrests made yet).

[UPDATE] Here are a few more interesting comments on the situation:

• Boston's Weekly Dig
• Connection to actual graffiti art

posted by Clubberjack @ 5:50 PM 0 comments

Guitar Hero: What exactly are you doing?

Jesper Juul made a smart little post about Guitar Hero over at the Ludologist. He makes the distinction between playing music and performing, and identifies GH as the later (as opposed to Singstar for example). This seems like a pretty good way of thinking about games like GH, they let you feel what it's like to perform, which is what the fantasy of being a guitar god is all about anyway. GH isn't about the skill of actually playing guitar. Singstar on the other hand is about the skill of singing.

On the flip side, completing a difficult section of GH does feel a lot like some of my memories from Middle School band, struggling through difficult measures of music on my trumpet. The elation of getting to the end without screwing up (much) is the much the same.

posted by Clubberjack @ 5:38 PM 0 comments