Michael R. Barrick

The Finished Hat

2008-09-27T06:04:28Z

Here's some better pictures of my latest hat, as it appears at Art of Adornment.

Attention Sports Fans

2008-09-26T06:19:10Z

Here we have the latest news from the world of sports:

Coming Very Soon

2008-09-25T06:52:14Z

Coming very soon to Art of Adornment - another Time Traveller's Top Hat. This one is based on a much taller "caroller's" style top-hat. I just finished it tonight and Elaine still has to get a good picture of it for the store before it's officially for sale.

Photoshop Has Limits

2008-09-11T05:44:00Z

No matter how hard you try, you can't clone-brush dust off your monitor.

D'oh.

Gothic Anachronaut's Top-Hat

2008-08-27T05:53:41Z

Another steampunk-inspired top-hat. This is a bit more goth, though. I'm actually not a big fan of brown.

The hat itself is premium wool felt with a white satin liner. The hat-band is distressed vintage leather. The gears and clockwork are vintage brass and steel German clock parts painted with gloss-enamel rust paint.

The hands on the clock gear can be moved to any position and the spring steel "feather" has a really fun bounce to it when you move.

The hat was made for sale at Art of Adornment and as of this posting is still available here.

Mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald (August 25, 2008)

2008-08-25T19:11:54Z

My Steampunk Keyboard Mod is mentioned and I am quoted in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia).

Thoughts on the Evolutionary Success of the Domestic Chicken (Gallus Gallus)

2008-08-01T18:35:19Z

Whilst eating a teriyaki chicken burger yesterday it occurred to me that from a evolutionary point of view, chickens are a wildly successful species. I cannot think of any other bird that exists in the numbers and with the truly global range that chickens have. There are in the neighbourhood of eight billion chickens on Earth. They are the only bird that can be found on every single continent, including Antarctica. No other bird can match that.

Chickens have found a niche that ensures their survival as a species that in the mere twenty-thousand or so years it has been around that has elevated them just another humble bird living in the forests of India to spreading across the entire globe. The simple secret to the success of this species success is providing tasty eggs and being being tasty to humans.

Of course, for individual chickens this mostly doesn't work out too well, but it unambiguously has allowed the species to flourish in a way it would not have otherwise. There is the argument that it is not a "natural" niche because it is dependant on humans, but that presumes that our species is somehow "unnatural", which is a premise that I reject. We evolved into what we are and to do what we do just the same as every other animal.

Blocking My View

2008-08-01T06:31:45Z

For an explanation of the title see this post.

Black Sea Cake

2008-08-01T05:02:10Z

Fun Weird Stuff From the Weekend

2008-07-30T03:09:14Z

There was more to this weekend that just throwing my back out. There were moments of sublime absurdity, like a girl in the group of people I was chatting with outside the club at the "7 Deadly Sins" party going to pitch a can of Red Bull over her shoulder and over the construction hoarding behind her and not succeeding. The can hit the wood just shy of the top and ricocheted back to bounce off the top of the top-hat of my greed costume. Also in the realm of the sublimely absurd was being approached by someone in the film industry about making some fake money for a TV show because they were impressed with the quality of the fake money on my costume. I'm waiting to hear back about the price I quoted, which may be more than they were expecting, but designing a realistic series of fake banknotes is going to be a fair bit of work (albeit bizarrely fun). Just being asked is fun enough considering the only reason I made my own fake money was I didn't want to use money that looked American like most play money does.

And in other weird news, I was contacted this weekend by a technology columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald doing an article on steampunk. He asked me about my keyboard mod and requested some good high-res photos. I'm not sure when the article is going to run, but hey, I'm getting press in Australia!

Magic Crunch

2008-07-29T23:58:17Z

Why do things always work like this?

For the last 50 hours or so I've been in agony, barely able to do much of anything. I was barely able to get out of bed. I've been hobbling with a cane. I hobbled into work around 12:30 hoping I'd be OK in the fairly decent chair I have at my desk and gave up in pain around 3:00. Elaine been trying to get me to go to the doctor since yesterday. I've been resisting, saying, "it just needs to pop back and I'll be fine." At 3:30 after giving up at work and an excruciating hobble home, I relented and called the doctor and got an emergency appointment with my doctor's alternate for 4:30 since my doctor is on vacation. At about 4:10 I went to stand up off the chaise and there was an audible crunch that Elaine heard from the other side of the room. I felt a series of small pops in the small of my back. That was it! That's what I've been waiting for for two days. The nerve that was pinched is no longer pinched and I feel infinitely better.

I called back and rescheduled a non-emergency appointment to talk to my doctor about my back when she returns from her vacation. I'm still sore, the muscles in my back are cramped and spasming from the strain of the last two days and my lower back feels very, very tender, but compared to not being able to walk, sit or stand for any length of time plus stabbing, shooting and searing pains in my hips and down my legs, and the especially fun treat of having my right leg randomly buckle while walking... compared to that I feel amazingly good. It does not hurt to sit here and type this. I can sit up straight and even arch my back a little - that would have been impossible half an hour ago.

And before you say, yes, I realize this is not normal having sciatica to the point of losing muscle control - that's why I'm going to see the doctor about it as soon as she is back.

Nonetheless, right now I am very happy this episode is over!

I Broke Myself

2008-07-28T16:39:37Z

I've no idea what I did to bring this on, but I am effectively crippled with a very unhappy back.I can barely walk.There is no position sitting, standing, or lying down that doesn't hurt. It hit me yesterday afternoon. My best guess is I weakened something with twisted wrong while putting my camera gear in the trunk Saturday night and Sunday afternoon the simple act of getting up from my desk took it over the edge.

My back hasn't been this FUBAR'd since the injury that left me hobbled for a week during basic training.I hope I'm not down for a week this time! Elaine is going to buy me a cane today (my old one disappeared years ago) and hopefully I'll be up to hobbling tomorrow.

December 31, 1991

2008-07-26T05:32:39Z

Another ancient find:

...back when the VPD didn't bust raves and the editors at the Sun had no clue what "a state of ecstacy" alluded to...

Bunch of Fireworks Photos

2008-07-24T06:57:41Z

On Facebook because I couldn't be arsed to put any effort into this...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=138504&l=9f85a&id=569695225

Brilliant Dreams #1

2008-07-24T06:18:33Z

Brilliant Dreams #1
September 1989

Click the image for the a PDF version, 412 KB

Featuring my own terrible poetry, mostly typewritten (remember typewriters?) markup on an old copy of the Buy & Sell, and my co-editor Sara's failure to grasp booklet page ordering so the page numbers are all wrong. Other contributors were my art-school comrades and members of my army of pen-pals from the glorious days before e-mail and Crackbook took all the fun out of correspondence.

In a way these 'zines were the precursors to Gothic BC.

Apartment Archaeology

2008-07-23T05:41:08Z

Last night I finally dug into a long overdue task: clearing out several banker's boxes of material retained from my university days. When I was in university the commercialization of the Internet was in its infancy, and the web was only just invented. State of the art when I graduated was at 14.4 modem and Netscape 1.1. The idea of conveniently calling up "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" or ""The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" in a fraction of a second when ever one desired was unthinkable. So I kept everything for reference. I had boxes full of photocopied articles of inscrutably dense Modernist and Postmodernist theory that I was sure I would want to reference along with my own painfully sophomoric hand-written essays that I was certain were of lasting brilliance. I also squirrelled away some delightfully bizarre bits of pop-culture and souvenirs like old rave flyers and tickets, the 'zine I put out in the 80's and whatnot. Most of it has now been relegated to the garbage, but some of was too kitschy to pitch. As time permits I will have to share some of best/worst of it here.

Self-Macro-ing Cat

2008-07-15T05:42:43Z

Behold Jazz, the self-macro-ing cat.

Power's Out!

2008-07-14T21:49:11Z

Wee bit of trouble for BC Hydro today...

More fun details in Logik's journal.

Extraterretrial's

2008-06-29T05:30:35Z

You've been warned.

Device for Rooting Out Evil

2008-06-05T17:32:19Z

What we really need is a device for rooting out stupid.

The upside-down church at the foot of Bute street has been removed. Why? Because a handful of thick-witted Christians thought it was blasphemous and a few whiney condo-owners said it blocked their view. Apparently the Vancouver Parks Board reported, "public response to the work has been mixed, with a greater proportion of the response being negative."

Because people, as a rule, don't go out of their way to praise things they like. And people never go out of their way to share that they don't have strong feelings one way or the other about something. I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of people for whom this artwork was part of daily scenery either liked it or had no particular opinion about it. It's easier to complain.

In fact I am absolutely certain that the voiciferiously offended Christians are a minority because, in Vancouver, Christians are a minority. According to the 2001 census 57.6% percent of Vancouverites aren't Christian. Of that minority 42.4% what percentage was offended by the artwork? Probably a faction of a single percent, but let's say 1% for the sake of round numbers. So then, here we have 0.424% of Vancouverites offended enough to spout off the Parks Board. That would mean that if you took a random sample of 250 Vancouverites and you'd find one person bothered by the artwork on religious grounds.

Now let's consider the condo owners who complained that the artwork was blocking their view. The piece was about two storeys high. Anyone with a condo above the second floor could not possibly have their view of the mountains blocked. The building to the immediate east of the park has no windows facing the park below the level of the top of the artwork, there is no view to block. The building across Cordova Street to the east of Bute Street is an office tower (incidentally also with no windows below the level of the artwork). The building across Cordova to the west of Bute has a grocery store occupying the first level to a height well in excess of the artwork, so no view to block there. There are three or four ground level townhouses to the immediate west of the park. Only one of those, the one closest to Cordova street could possibly have their view obstructed. But what view? Given the placement of the surrounding buildings and the curvature of the waterfront, the only thing that could possibly be obsured from the view of the one townhouse that can possibly have its view obscured would be new Trade and Convention Centre. So, in short, we have no possible valid complaint from any condo owners whatsoever. My guess is a small number (amounting to a truely insignificant fraction of Vancouverites, perhaps 0.0005%, give or take a ten-thousandth of a percent) of condo owners, who probably don't even live in Vancouver, worried that the artwork might potentially offend a potiential buyer, potentially impacting the potential resale value of their speculation property. That's hardly a reason to remove an internationally significant work of public art.

I enjoyed that sculpture, it was part of my view from my apartment. Now it is gone. And now I am offended.

Vancouver Sun article
PDF version, should the link above fail

November 2006, Stanley Park

2008-06-04T06:46:45Z

Snow in Stanley Park, November 2006.

A couple of months ago I bought a slide/film scanner that just arrived today. Trying to get the 5P-format frames that my Stereo Realist makes developed as prints was just too much of an ordeal. Taking them to an 1-hour lab was a total crap-shoot, taking the film into a lab was hideously expensive. My back-lit flatbed can do a good job with sides, but negatives never quite worked right. I think this will work out nicely.

What I got is by no means a top of the line scanner (Nikon CoolScan V) but is seems like it will be more the adequate for what I want to do with it.

Empirically Establishing that the Correlation Between Stupidity and Athleticism is a Two-way Dynamic

2008-05-22T01:20:43Z

It is a well established truism that athleticism often directly corresponds to thick-wittedness. I discovered today that the converse is also true, thick-wittedness can lead to athleticism.

I decided it would be a good idea to get a little extra exercise by walking down the stairs after work. I stupidly did not plan this and discovered that the exit door at the bottom of the stairwell is alarmed and only useful in an emergency. I subsequently discovered that all the stairwell doors on every floor require either a pass-card or key to open. I wound up walking all the way back up to the office and calling a coworker to let me back in so I could get out of the building without setting off an alarm. It should be noted that I work on the 24th floor.

Walking down twenty-four floors is a moderate bit of extra exercise. Turning around and walking back up twenty-four floors is a workout. By being stupid I got far more exercise than I bargained for, ergo the subject line of this post.

Tangentially though, I'm a little annoyed that the option to use the stairs is not a viable one. I've worked in other towers before and was never barred from using the stairs like this. Mind you, that was all before the terrorists won and the Western World became wrapped in paranoid idiocy.

Life Lessons from Water #1

2008-04-29T05:53:24Z

There are three bridges over the river that runs through the small town where I grew up. Each has been cleverly named by the hard-working colonial sorts that carved the town out the wilderness at the far-flung westernmost end of the British Empire. Furthest upstream of the three is a bridge that is painted white, known as White Bridge. Furthest downstream is the bridge that has always been painted metallic silver, known as Silver Bridge. Between the two is the oldest bridge, the very reason for the town's existence, the black iron rail bridge known, of course, as Black Bridge.

Before I get into the story I mean to tell, understand the character of this town. In the 1980's the Ministry of Highways, presumably because of a good deal on green paint, decided that all bridges under their mandate were to be painted the same colour green. The citizens of my home town were livid, very nearly up in arms. How dare the ministry do something so absurd as paint Silver Bridge green? Rallied by the owners of the Silver Bridge Inn the townspeople wrote angry letters to the provincial legislature, the local papers, and the "important" newspaper out of Victoria, the Times Colonist (formerly the British Colonist, which merged with the Victoria Times) - a sure sign that this was a big deal. The people prevailed and to this day Silver Bridge is the only bridge on a provincial highway in British Columbia that isn't green.

The same spritus mundi maintained strict traditions around Black Bridge as well. Black Bridge crosses the river at a point were the river bends sharply and swirling winter floodwaters have dug out a very deep pool, making Black Bridge ideal for the daring to jump off. My mother used to jump off the bridge when she was young, and new to the town and Canada, sixty years ago. My siblings all had their turns jumping off the bridge. Everyone did it. It was a necessary right of passage, particularly for boys. Every possible platform suitable for leaping from was named with the same inescapable pragmatism that the bridges themselves were named. There was the lowest-most point, the protruding bottom portion of the I-beams supporting the bridge deck, "Bottom". The rails next to the bridge deck and tracks, "Rail". The points where the torsion bars criss-crossed between the superstructure were "First Cross", "Second Cross" and "Third Cross". The top of the superstructure was "Top."

"Bottom" was about 10 metres above the water. "Rail" 12 metres, "First Cross" about 15 metres, "Second Cross" about 18 metres, "Third Cross" another three metres higher, and "Top" about 25 metres or so over the water. Bottom was considered only suitable for small children, girls, and those ancient folk over 30 that insisted on embarrassing themselves. No boy over the age of 12 would consider the humiliating climb down to rail and those that did were guaranteed to be - literally - spit upon by the older boys standing on Rail.

Rail was by far the most popular place to jump from. Rail was about a metre above the bridge deck and tracks and was really a number parallel rails about two centimetres wide and about four centimetres apart that bound together the pillars that supported the I-beams that supported the bridge deck and the criss-crossing torsion bars that kept the bridge stable. Altogether Rail was about a metre and a half wide and an easy place to stand and talk with your friends, finish the smoke you lit before walking on the the bridge, and to moon the Day-Liner passenger train full of tourists when it went by. Jumping from Rail was easy, just a running step and then a glorious second of gangly, flailing, teenage arms and legs before hitting the cool water and climbing up to do it again.

First-time jumpers were always given the same advice by the more experienced. Just look once to make sure you won't hit anyone or anything, take a deep breath, and jump. One you hesitate and start to think you'll think yourself out of it and never be able to go. And chickening out from rail was another sure-fire way to find yourself being spit upon. And understand we are talking about the most disdainful lougies and greenies that teenage boys could muster. Those that hesitated usually did jump eventually simply out of the overwhelming compulsion to wash and never hesitated again.

That was the lesson. After the practical moment of planning one's trajectory came the Zen instant of launch, then flight. The fear never went away, that's what made it fun. It was always there in that split second when the unnamed Zen master inside pulled the arms and legs that weren't really your own and flung the eyes in your head into the sky between the bridge and water. Fearless action is no fun. That fear was the thrill. That's what brought you back.

Jumping was all about learning to face fear. Just take a deep breath and jump. The better you got at it, the higher you could go. You couldn't jump from the crosses without facing the mortal fear of failing. Just climbing the torsion bars took a kind of lunatic courage, let alone flinging yourself off. And above Rail there was no one to spit on you. Going higher you only had your own fear to face—and that was the whole reason for doing it.

Golfers in front of Black Bridge, c. 1920.

Old-Fashioned Promises

2008-04-27T01:44:24Z

Elaine and I made a promise to each other today. We made a promise about where we want our relationship to go. We made a promise about what we want out of our lives and how we each see the other in that picture.

We both know that it is going to take time to gain confidence that we can both keep this promise. We both know that life isn't always easy and doesn't always go to plan, and it takes time to ensure that a promise like this can stand up to the vicissitudes of mundane fortune. We plan to put in that time and the effort it takes to build a really solid foundation. Right now we are both working to become the people we need to be both separately and together, and some of that has been very difficult to do and there is more hard work to come. We don't know how long it will take, but we both know why we want to. This a promise to stay on the same path to the same end.

There is a word for binding to this kind of solemn promise, but like so many things in these modern times it rarely gets used the way it used to be meant anymore.

We're engaged.

mbarrick @ 2008-04-22T00:02:00

2008-04-22T07:02:21Z

Happy Birthday evilyn13!!