In a twist so good it can’t be made up, cartoonist Don Trachte, owner of “Breaking Home Ties”, stuck it to his ex-wife during a messy divorce by hiding the real painting behind wood paneling in his Arlington home. He made a copy of the painting, and fought for rights to keep it during the divorce, ready to give the fake up if needed, knowing the real one was safe at home. A year after his death, his sons uncovered the real painting in his home, and everyone finally realized why the painting hanging in the museum looked a little different than the tear sheets from the Saturday Evening Post, where it was originally published… Here is the link.
Tag Archives: people
Stop-motion animation with people
This is an interesting video of stop-motion animation with people. Looks like it was done by students, but the low-tech effects are refreshing – although I should mention the illusion of floating through the air was first done (to my knowledge) several months ago by some teenagers on Google Video. I can’t find the link now, but this video will suffice to demonstrate it.
Bring your own laptop
Stumbled onto this at Boing Boing and had a look at the original site. The idea is very simple. The employer provides the employee with the money to purchase a reasonable laptop, and lets them take care of the support and other issues. Or lets them use their existing laptop, if they so choose. Here’s the link.
I think it’s great! As a matter of fact, I was thinking of doing this with my next job – if the company’s policies weren’t too stuffy. I know first hand the pain of configuring laptops with group policies meant for desktops. Laptops are very different beasts from desktops. For one thing, they move around so much. For another, users often need to install software when they’re away from IT. Why hamstring their performance with a laptop that’s just been neutered by bad group policies?
At my last job, I wasn’t in charge of the business side of IT – instead, I handled academic IT – and I would cringe every time I saw a laptop that the business IT folks had touched – the users were constantly complaining they couldn’t do this or that, they couldn’t even print, they couldn’t connect to wireless networks, etc. The complaints were without end. Why do this to people? There’s no reason for it, other than the immature need to feel in control at all times… So okay, if you’re working with secret/classified materials, it may be a different story, but that’s a small subset of the work population, not everyone.
Quotes of the day, by William Hazlitt
Stumbled onto this today, by William Hazlitt:
“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.”
Then read up on him and discovered these as well:
“He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies”
and
“Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.”
Smart man!
Designed by Braggadocio
I do web design and development consulting in my free time. I always strive for quality and originality in my designs. It never fails to amaze me how people always fall for cheap, imitative designs, simply because they’re flashier.
These “web designers” promise more traffic, more exposure, better looks, more and better everything, and of course they don’t deliver on any of those things, except on the surface. Yes, the designs may be flashier, and buttons might move, or the top banner might be in Flash, and it might do something that’ll make the site owner go “Wow”, but that’s all empty. It doesn’t do anything for the site’s substance, nor does it do anything for the search engines, because the site hasn’t been properly coded for them. Or, they’ll design the site in Frontpage… The telltale signs are easy to spot: _vti files are everywhere, the page weight is large, and the graphics just aren’t that good. But people fall for this stuff!
It never fails to amaze me… It leaves me speechless, really. I compare the bragging with the product delivered, and I can see the wide gap between what’s been promised and actually created. Yet the site owners don’t see it. How can I make them see where the real value lies?
Raoul Pop 