Category: John Otter news

this week feels a bit off. Not sure why. Things aren’t lining up right. Folders are disappearing, numbers that should match don’t, and the weather is nice. Damn the nice weather (not really).

[edit] – whoa, so I’ll be headed to San Diego Friday (not Saturday), just found out – party with friends. Some friends are here visiting from Colorado & leaving Sunday. I saw them a bit last weekend & it will be good to see them again before they leave. I guess Colorado could go on my list of places I need to save money to travel to. I’ve got quite a bit saved for a trip to New York now – next I’ll start saving for Peru (which will happen one day).

the weekend was spent camping with friends, beautiful forest, brilliant sun, gorgeous clouds, amazing people, unbelievable music.

today some new hardware and software was delivered to my office. External hard-drive which should delay the inevitable data-crunch crisis I’ve been fighting and monitor color-calibration hard/software from Pantone (Spyder2).

Thinking more and more about digital preservation. I don’t think enough people, who rely heavily on digital information, understand digital preservation much beyond making a back-up…which is a good first step – but the rabbit hole is deeper than I ever imagined.

I haven’t painted in several days. Time is passing quickly and I feel I have a lot more work to do on one particular commission before the approaching summer. This week I plan on painting 20-30 hours. (It always seems to help when I write out a specific goal)
I’ve saved over half of what I’ll need for my trip to New York, which will probably happen in autumn. I’m hoping to push it to about a two week stay – there’s too much to do and see there.

Dia Beacon is one place I really want to see.

“Dark cloudy bars

Shiny Cadillac cars

And the people on subways and trains

Looking gray in the rain as they stand disarrayed

All the people look well in the dark”

“question everything” type of day. Could be good. I might come up with better ways of doing things, but its a bit unsettling. Watched a dvd about Henry Darger, it was very interesting, and a bit sad. Painted lots this weekend, and drew a lot as well. Didn’t get my house as clean as I wanted to. Tonight is laundry & music night, but not sure about shooting pool – we went and did that last night. I played fairly well but won mostly by having my opponent lose.

these things are cool…I want to draw them or abstractify them.
[edit 4/24/06 – I just uploaded a better photo than the camera phone pic that was previously in this post]

a week or two from now I should be calm and collected, but until then its freak out time. I enjoy a good freak out now and then, so its not all that bad – like when someone enjoys being sad. I’m approaching a data crisis and it seems I’ll have to take drastic measures into my own hands, not uncommon. I like taking drastic measures into my own hads too. I’m figuring I just need to transfer about 100 Gb from one machine to another – and hope everything goes smoothly. Painting has been a great release from these crazy times, but I think tonight its back to the sketchbook – work out some ideas and some demons. Any moment now someone should walk in and make my day a bit more frantic (I’m hoping only one person will do this & not two or more). I bought a book on “language” today, its from the 60’s and looks pretty interesting. I also bought a used copy of Goethe’s Faust (German & English) which I read a long time ago, when I opened the book a lot flooded back into my mind & I figured I should re-read at least some of it.