michael fulk’s blog

RebelliousFlaw asks: Below are 10 words. I would like you to take these 10 words and write the first word that comes to mind which you associate with the words.

These are mine, feel free to copy these ten words to your blog and do the same—link back so we can see your word associations.

1. Pineapple — upside-down (cake)
2. Hammer — saw
3. Guitar — string
4. Telephone — ring
5. Swiss Army Knife — useful
6. Hamper — clothes
7. Dolphin — graceful
8. Lighthouse — rock
9. Camera — pictures
10. Oven Mitt — protection

Today just wasn’t that great of a day for many here in Pittsburgh. My emotional roller coaster has hit all the points from low to high today.

Sad

After work tonight, I found out that my grandfather died this morning. It wasn’t a particularly great shock as he’d been succumbing to alzheimers slowly over the past couple years and in the last few weeks had gotten noticeably worse. Still, I don’t think the fact that he’s gone has hit me yet.

Melancholy

This morning I learned that one of our favorite Pittsburgh bloggers has hung up the hat. The author of The Burgh Blog, PittGirl, had successfully stayed anonymous for the last three years but due to being discovered, she’s had to quit. She’d said from the beginning that if her anonymity ever was compromised she would stop immediately.

We’ll miss her random and somewhat snarky commentary on happenings in Pittsburgh, quirky nicknames for politicians and celebrities, hatred of pigeons and everything. Hopefully she’ll be able to start some new blog project and join the rest of the Yinz Team at Podcamps, Blogfests and other social mediæ events without fear of being unmasked.

Glad

This afternoon I was involved in conducting my first W|W content management system training. Sure I was a bit nervous, especially as I hadn’t built the site myself, but the CMS is consistent so once we began to go through its features things settled somewhat. The client was able to get how it works quickly and with a minimum of questions. At least we could start from the, “You know how to use M$ Word - you can use this” stage rather than having to begin with the, “What is this Internet you speak of?” stage. So this was pretty much the one bright event for the day.

This week I want you to tell me who this woman is by what is in her “Junk Drawer.”   Imagine that she went rifling through that drawer in a last ditch panic looking for her misplaced keys the morning this picture was taken, and she, instead, found something she had forgotten about.  What was it that she found that is making her smile like that and changed her mood 180 degrees?  (I assume I don’t have to say this, but, “and why”)

In her hurry to find her lost keys, Lili rediscovered her charm bracelet, a token of her relationship with her grandmother. Each of the many silvery charms represented a special time or place they had been together. Some weren’t especially happy times, but most were wonderful times of exploration and fun. The charm that caught her eye prompted her to recall her happiest memory with her grandmother and family.

It was a carousel horse, a proud, prancing horse in mid-step. For summer vacation Lili’s family picked up her grandmother and went off on an adventure on the eastern shore. They rented a beach house and spent much of the time on the beach soaking up the sun, playing in the surf and collecting iridescent sea shells to take home. One afternoon, Lili and her grandmother took a walk into town where there was a small community park. The main attraction was the classic carousel with its beautifully preserved menagarie, shining poles for the mounts and mirrors all around the top. The two spent a long time getting dizzy by riding almost every animal.

To rest, her grandmother bought her a funnel cake and they sat on a bench looking across the park at the gazebo and watched the other children enjoying themselves. Before long, it became nearly time to go back but Lili begged for one last ride on the carousel. She picked her favorite charger, a golden brown bay with a jeweled saddle and rode up and down until the sunny strains of the carousel music stopped.

On their way back to the house, Lili’s grandmother gave her the charm bracelet and her first charm—the carousel horse. And that was the beginning of a beautiful chain of memories.

Lili decided to put on the bracelet, and as she was fastening it, she noticed in the mirror that her keys were hiding behind the cup she kept her pens and pencils in by the telephone. Today was going to be a good day after all.

• Hello again, Monday #
• Finally home from work. We’ll see how much writing I get done tonight. #
• Long day so far. Lots to get done yet. #
• Time to go home…I’m starved #
• Middle week. More fun stuff to work on! #
• Squeeze in a few words…then off to bed. #
• Working. Refresh Pittsburgh tonight. #
• On the way over to Refresh PGH. #
• Refresh Pittsburgh is about to start. #
• Home and back to writing. #
• Oh, hello sun. Nice to see you too #
• Thai lunch on the roof today. #
• Off for a quick stop @ AiP then on to MF for this month’s PGH tweetup. #
• Home from the gallery opening/tweetup. Gotta write. #
• Excited…the Watchmen graphic novel is at the library waiting for me. #
• Cold and a bit of flakes today. #

This month’s Pittsburgh Twitter meetup (or tweetup) occurred in combination with the Mattress Factory’s opening reception for PREDRIVE: After Technology, an exhibit in the annex gallery, just down the block from the main museum space. Similar to the last gallery opening I attended at the Mattress Factory, those in social media (bloggers, etc.) were invited as press and were given free admission.

The three floor gallery became quite crowded rather quickly and it was difficult to determine who was there as a blogger, a twitterer or an art admirer. It wasn’t a fruitless effort however, as I was able to meet in person @mindbling and her friends, added a couple of others who I’d met previously but somehow missed following them on Twitter, and met at least one other Twitter user/blogger whom I had not previously known.

I didn’t pick up any material explaining which art pieces were part of the opening exhibit and which were permanent, so I’m just guessing that all the of the brightly colored, video and projection ones probably are the ones for the new exhibit. Generally everything on the first and second floors and one on the third. In the main room on the first floor, many of the pieces were constructed of loud colors, symbols and shapes. One was an amalgamation of various stereo equipment and speakers. Another looked like it was a programmed Rube Goldberg sort of visual and sound display.

On the second floor were two video pieces, the first appeared to be two separate (possibly live) television shows mapped to a three-dimensional blob shape. The other was a video which looked like it was of some neighborhood kids, but the artist emphasized the compression and artifacts significantly.

Found on the third floor are several pieces, one a curved space that looked like it was lit with near-UV light, but occasionally flashed and changed colors. Another was some sort of 3D rendered video. One was appeared to be a huge egg stuck into the room. And the last was something to do with the kitchen (didn’t really look as I’d run into some people to talk with at that point).

Overall an interesting experience, glad to meet and hang out with some people. Should have gone out afterward with my classmates from AiP who’d come to visit the exhibit but it was late and I wanted to try getting home to write stuff.

(Visit my gallery for the remainder of these photos)

This week’s Friday 5 is all about using stuff in ways they weren’t originally meant to be used but come in handy that way anyhow.

1. When did you last use the edge of a coin (or a knife blade) as a screwdriver?

A couple weeks ago: the batteries in my bike light had gone kaput and a penny is the best way to open the battery compartment.

2. When did you last use a wire coat-hanger to break into a car?

It sure seems like I’ve done this in the past, but maybe not. I kinda learned to be a bit more careful when trying to unlock a car some time ago: I was attempting to be helpful and ended up breaking the window accidentally.

3. When did you last use food or drink as medication?

Not sure.

4. When did you last use your cellular telephone as a flashlight?

Actually fairly often since the battery in my Photon Micro-light has died. The hallway when I enter my apartment is rather dark and I keep my bike there (for now) so, inexplicably, rather than turn on the hall light I’ve used my cell to light the way. Or just fumble along the side of the wall so as to avoid my bike.

5. When did you last use a paper clip for any purpose other than to clip paper?

Most likely, as a CD-ROM drive tray ejector. That is, unbend it and poke into the small hole on the front of the drive to eject a stuck disc.

Tonight was quite possibly the best and most well attended Refresh Pittsburgh events I’ve been to. We met at the AlphaLab offices on the south side of Pittsburgh. They have a nice open middle portion of the space that works out quite well for medium to large group meetings. In all, about 40 people were there to hear our two presenters.

Val Head talked about the client-designer/developer relationship in a talk titled “Observations on Client Relationships.” In summary, there isn’t going to be the ‘perfect’ client, but with some work you can bring your relationship more towards a partnership level. This allows for better communication and less hassle on both sites.

Samantha Warren discussed Web typography in “Typography — Foundation of Good Web Design.” She is an enthusiastic web designer from DC who blogs at Bad Ass Ideas. One of the biggest differences between web and print typography is that on the web, type is in an interactive interface. This means things aren’t set in stone. It also means that there are much greater limitations. Samantha shared three ‘pillars’ of web typography: Legibility, Hierarchy and Expression. And to demonstrate some of her thinking processes, she gave an example of a particularly bad design and how she would redo it only utilizing type and textures.

Both of these were quite helpful to me in trying to think through how I will work with various freelance projects in the future.

On the afternoon of September 27, after the Podcamp Plugin session at Northland Library, I finally was able to visit the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (which are actually in the same building/complex as part of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh). I’ve had a membership for quite a while and figured it would be a good idea to at least visit once all the museums it allows entrance to. I was especially interested in the Life on Mars exhibit because I spent a couple months or so working on the website for the exhibit.

The museum building from across the street.

Entrance to the museum, with the signage proclaiming the Life on Mars exhibit in bold three-foot high letters.

This is probably one of the most favorite pieces in the exhibition, I Wish Your Wish by Rivane Neuenschwander. Each of the colored ribbons has some sort of wish written on them.

This is A sheet of paper on which I was about to draw, as it slipped from my table and fell to the floor by Ryan Gander. I was especially looking forward to seeing this piece in person. It’s made up of forty crystal balls laser-etched with a piece of crumpled paper in the interior, spread out on the floor (not the painting on the wall). The etchings looked like they are pixelated or at least made up of lots of little dots.

This is a view of several in the Kandor series by Mike Kelley. Apparently Kandor is the capital city of Krypton, Superman’s home planet, which got miniaturized.

I spent the majority of this trip exploring the art museum portion, but thought I would try to take a super-fast wander through the natural history part of the museum. Just to get a general idea of what all is actually there. The stars of the show of course are the dinosaur skeleton dioramas.

This may help give some bit of an idea of the scale of these Brontosaurs.

And probably the main attraction is the T-Rex vs. T-Rex display with some variety of flying dinosaur overhead. Definitely wouldn’t want to get in the way of these guys.

I really enjoyed exploring all these amazing resources, art and displays. Certainly going to have to go back and spend more time on different portions of the museum.

Find details about the Neighborhood Walk on the Rust Belt Bloggers site as well as a list of others’ walks.

With my job, it makes it difficult to get outside and take photos of the neighborhood where I have my apartment as it’s dark when I get home. But I figured I’d take a few photos to give a quick glimpse what the street looks like from my second floor front deck.

I live on the main drag of Millvale, which is the first municipality/borough outside of Pittsburgh proper to the northeast. Even though I’ve been in Millvale for nearly a year, I honestly haven’t really explored a whole lot. Drive past but not actually stopping to visit the stores, shops and bars.

The borough has put a lot of work into re-working the street: repaving and painting lines, re-doing portions of sidewalk, and installing classic styled street lights, parking meters and signs. Probably my most favorite part of being in Millvale is the close proximity to the river trail. Being on the same side of the Allegheny River as the office makes it particularly convenient to bike to work without a whole lot of competition from motor traffic. I just have to get some cold weather gear so I can make the trip when it’s cooler than 40° and not freeze my fingers and toes.

Millvale seems to be a nice, cozy, if still trying to become a more classically modern small town. Since it’s pretty close to almost any place I go in the Pittsburgh area, I’m planning to stay for a while.

View Larger Map

With the Colts winning their game against the Steelers yesterday, it reminded me that I really ought to finish up this book review post.

Back in April I finally got around to finishing Comeback Season: How I Learned To Play the Game of Love, by Cathy Day. I first heard of Comeback Season after Cindy read and reviewed the book. Then after meeting Cathy at Blogfest 13, I bought both her books and later attended her reading at a local book store.

In this modern dating memoir, Cathy shares a fictional account of her experience as a single professional woman, an expatriate Hoosier and Colts fan living and looking in Steelers Pittsburgh. Being semi-autobiographical, she tells the story of how she deals with being unsure with trying to find dates through online dating services, the hassle she had with a brick-and-mortar dating service, and being frustrated with finding dates. All the while the Colts are making their way to the Super Bowl one game at a time. Her candid style of telling about her dating experiences is both fun and encouraging.

If you’ve never lived in or been to Pittsburgh, being a fan of any football team besides the Steelers can be difficult at best because it seems everyone is a fan. So much that probably the most popular car color in Pittsburgh is black which then is festooned with Steelers stickers and such. They’ll even wear Steelers jerseys to the Penguins games — likely because both team colors are the same. I’m not much of a sports fan of any variety, but I am still a Hoosier at heart so I root for the Colts in spite of the overwhelming near-rabid Steeler fans.

When I heard the premise of the book I was particularly excited to find out how a fellow Hoosier had fared in Pittsburgh beginning about the same time I’d moved out to the city for school. I rather enjoyed the book which is even more interesting because I have been to, lived in or at least heard of most of the places Cathy talks about. Highly recommend the book, especially if you are a Hoosier living in Pittsburgh or someone looking for proof that women really are football fans. =)