All posts by keith

Paint

What (sometimes) amazes me is how different the different manufacturer’s paints are.

F’rinstance–today I went looking for some Pthalo blue acrylic paint, which I haven’t bough in several years, but decided that I needed for some paintings that I’m working on/thinking about. At my local craft/art store they carry three brands of artist’s acrylics–Liquitex, Winsor-Newton, and Golden–all very fine paints, and I use all of them, but… Here’s something to note, Golden is more expensive than W&N (about $2 for the Pthalo–and W&N calls their pthalo blue “Winsor blue”), and W&N is about $2 more expensive than Liquitex. W&N only has one shade of the pthalo blue, where Liquitex and Golden have 2 a “red”, and a “green”, which just means which way they slide on the color scale, and which way they go if you mix them with white.
All OK so far. Open the tubes up, and compare them. W&N and Liquitex look about the same for richness, and plastic-y look that acrylics have. So not too much difference there. Not so with the Golden. It has a richer blueness about it, and doesn’t have that plastic look to it. It’s beautiful. There’s definitely more pigment in it, and the acrylic polymer formula is obviously different then the other two brands.

Yes, it costs more, but with all that pigment in there, it’s obviously worth it.

So there you have it, sometimes more costly does mean better, and always comparison shop.

acrylics

I’m Baaaack!

Well I’m back from my 2 month excursion.

It was interesting to say the least. I met some new friends, and got reaquainted with some old ones.

Old ones–if you’re ever in Barcelona, you must go to the Museu Picasso, you won’t regret it.  An amazing collection.
New ones–In Cork, Ireland, The Crawford Museum, and Louis Le Brocquy, Mainie Jellet, and Harry Clarke, among others.

I even did some artwork, which I’ll upload to the gallery at some point–when I get pictures taken of it.

Hola! from Barcelona

Well I see from my little venture yesterday, that pictures aren’t
working–I’ll fix that when I get a chance.
We are in Barcelona, and I love it. A city built for people.
Went to the Museu Picasso yesterday, and had a great time.
Wish you were here.

Day 6

Hello Fans. 😀
Another day at sea, and not much going on. I got a pic
of sunrise this morning, which came out really good. I’ll attach it
here. (I don’t know how things look here, I hope the pics aren’t
killing the looks too bad.) We are/have passed through the Azores, and
passed by one of the southernmost islands tonight at about 1900. It
was right on the horizon, and just bejeweled with lights. At first I
only saw one light when looking out, and thought it was another ship,
but I got outside, and saw more lights, and figured it out. Too dark
for pics on that one.
Well that’s it, probably no more excitement, until we hit Gibraltar.

Day 4–at sea

Well we saw a whale last night. I didn’t get a picture, because didn’t
know when it was going to come up, but I saw it’s flume (or spout), and
then it breached–not very far out of the water, and then a few minutes
later we saw it’s tail. Pretty neat. We went through a storm last
night (just rain, no heave seas), but it’s sunny today. There’s always
a wind out here it seems. I can see why it was fairly easy for sailing
ships to move about on this ocean. I can, also, see how much balls it
took for them to sail further away from their homes, when they had no
idea whether or not there was anything over that horizon.
We are headed for the Azores right now, should be passing by them in a
couple of days, heading for Barcelona, via the Straights of Gibraltar.
Never been through there, and can’t wait to see it. There will be
pictures. 😀

Day one

Hey, hey! Day one of our voyage, and we’re stuck at the pier.
Something to do with the Engine Operations Systems–someone said the
navigation, but there’s no “official” word on that.
It was hard leaving Jenny this morning, esp. since I found a scrapbook
she made for me in the stuff I carried on this morning. This is the
longest time we’ll have spent apart since we’ve been together. More
soon.

Design

macbooklogic 5in1 tool

One is a mac logic board, one is a painter’s 5 in 1 tool. Both designed for their own (completely different) purpose, and utility, and yet so similar in profile.

From the “Do No Evil” Dept.

Can I just say that Google sucks
To bad they’ve forgotten point #6 of their philosophy.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

..and, no, I won’t link to them, and I use Jeeves as my default search engine.
I really can’t believe that they think that this is a good move for their stockholders/business. Is the business they do in China enough so that all the flack they’ll get from this is worth it? Can you really trust any search you do using Google? (Can you trust searches you do from any other search engine?) This is a whole giant can of worms on trusting that results of searches are not censored, or compromised in any way. Google thinks of themselves as gatekeepers of the flow of information (or, atleast to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”) on the internet–who watches the gatekeepers?

From the Ben Franklin lives department

Hurrah!!! for students at Georgetown Univesity who turned their backs on Alberto Gonzales (*affectionately* known as the Inquistitor around here) and holding up a banner quoting Ben Franklin, to protest his speech defending the President’s domestic spying program.

GU Protest

Mainstream news sources are reporting “more” than a dozen protestors (looks like most reports came from the same wire service report.), some didn’t even mention it. Non-mainstream sources (Hammeroftruth) report up to 26 (including the 4 in black hoods holding the banner). I say any amount is good–the more the merrier.
It’s good to see that some law students remember what the Constitution is.