Sidewalk in the Sky
This is My Clump of Descriptive Textural Info-Data that Supposedly Defines Me as a Person. Also Known as a “Profile.”
Guest Writer: AngryAndrew™
This month we allowed AngryAndrew™ to write a post for our peaceful Cerulean Sphere. Don’t worry, we told him to behave … and he does have a relevant point or two, if you can weed through the snark and sarcasm.
This article is just a little bit of scratching-my-name upon the ever-wet concrete of the Virtual Sidewalk of our modern “NetWorld.” A stream of consciousness reporting (if consciousness is even a thing) here in my never-questing-end to find some little bit of immortality…
…Or is it something else I’m actually looking for?
The Inspiration:
I saw an old-school physical version yesterday, in downtown Los Angeles under an old bridge. There scrawled in the dusty, cracked, old concrete it said “Robert” (then something scribbled for the last name I couldn’t read nor remember) and “1953” The handwriting was particularly bad, with thin, jagged letters, and no hand print or other mark.
I’m guessing the concrete was close to completely hard when he wrote it. He probably used a pen knife, and I’d guess without fear of consequences. (That was back in the 1950’s, and in those care-free days citizens were less likely to get themselves shot for carrying a pen-knife).
Oh and yea, apparently the consensus back then was “if we cover-up nearly all of our skin with cloth, then maybe no one will realize we’re really just a bunch of wild animals with dental plans & plenty of napkins.” (Example: see the minimal skin exposure of the idealized 1950s housewife in the adjacent image)
A brief aside to acknowledge political correctness: Yes I am assuming Robert was a male, I’ll mention again it was 1953, the “Leave It To Beaver” era when Americans plodded through life as dutiful Seed-Pod Zombies™ hiding their true animal-selves in neatly-pressed suits or long flowing dresses, grinning tightly to suppress their inner struggles with conformity that demanded they appear like a perfect-plastic-mannequin, sanitized for your protection. I think it is therefore safe to assume “Robert” was a male for the purposes of this post-modern storytelling — if he did or did not wrestle with identity issues is unknown, which relates to a point I will get to later. In the meantime enjoy your Starbucks triple-decaf-mocha-latte-frap, and let’s continue…
So in our story, thinking back so many decades, there was Robert, scrawling his name in the nearly-hard semi-wet concrete under a train bridge — and this Robert could easily be dead now. Gone to ash… or dust… or (hmmm, what’s a poetic-sounding term for “worm food”??) Nevertheless, there it is, his name memorialized as an ugly, jagged, barely legible scrawl in the concrete:
This is his masterpiece. His shout-out to the universe that he was HERE. That he EXISTED, at least for some short time. He breathed air and made himself known. Maybe loved, maybe quarreled, maybe he was hit by a bus just after marking the concrete. But either way, he made a little mark. Well good for him. I guess. I wonder if that’s all he ever accomplished. I wonder if I actually care. Oh, if you don’t mind me asking, can I have a sip of your Starbucks?
See, there is no moral to this story. No sense of conclusion. No happy, nor sad, nor even poignant ending. Well except this, and it’s essentially unrelated — I really have to use the restroom pretty bad right this very second as I write this. Back then, if Robert had to relieve himself mid-scrawl, well he would have had to go find a bush or something. But today? We are far better off…
…Thanks To The Miracle of Modern Technology…
I can just carry my laptop with me to the bathroom and keep right on typing while I sit semi-comfortably to to relieve myself without distractions affecting my concentration.
…I just realized that this means the Russians marked Mr.Trump as their territory … that explains a lot.
This modern advance of portable wireless computing devices has the untouted benefit of further reducing the incessant annoyance of bodily functions, so today they are minimized to nothing more than a blip on the AngryAndrew Annoyance-o-dometer™.
Now if you think I am oversharing regarding a bodily function that Mr. Trump pays Russian prostitutes to perform, remember that this article is about making a mark on the world. Many animals mark their territory with urine, so the discussion is at least tangentially related… Hmm, I just realized that this means the Russians marked Trump as their territory. Well. That explains a lot.
But back to the point.
As technology progresses we are increasingly able to hide, even ignore, our true animal-selves. The more we can disguise our true animal nature from our own prying eyes, the more we can pretend we’re not animals at all, but instead some Nietzschean Superperson on our way to a Zarathustra speaking-engagement amongst the monolithic office buildings of our sprawling urban cityscapes.
And yes, this is our typical over-reaching entitled sense-of-self brought to you by our frail human ego.
Nevertheless you have to admit that Strauss wrote a great overture for us humans to use as our theme song:
🎵 Duhh, Dahh, Deeee... Bum BUMMMMM…🎵
🎶 bim boom bim boom bim boom bim boom bim boom bim 🎶
Back here on earth as a mere mortal man (my ego notwithstanding), I was surprised at my recent discovery of the usefulness of the fold-down toilet seat when using a laptop, as it allows one’s hands to continue typing unabated and unconcerned with any of the traditional “aiming” dynamics that are characteristically involved in male bladder elimination procedures. And I subsequently realized that there’s an exciting side-benefit for my female friends: there is now a far lower chance of the seat being up when (and if) you ever visit and need to use my restroom.
Yes, yes, I know, that’s a BIG IF (my receiving a visit that is) being as the rest of my house is a frightening Hannibal Lecter-esque example of a potential reality-TV-show entitled “SURVIVOR: Crazy Man’s Apartment. You can run but you can’t hide.” On the plus side I won’t make anyone eat one of those giant-sized 4" long Hollywood beetle/cockroach things this city is plagued with whilst running backwards on a log in the hopes of not getting “exiled” from the island so they can return on the show the following week for a chance at fame, fortune, and being known as “that weirdo that was on that reality TV show and ate a cockroach.”
Which brings us back to my current plight, writing my name on this virtual sidewalk of the interwebs. Marking my spot. Proclaiming loud and clear:
“I matter AND I energy … in fact I just a bunch of massless-strings vibrating at different frequencies in a multiverse-existence, with ample bosons that we don’t particularly understand.”
Or something. Hmmm. Actually that might have been my last girlfriend I’m thinking of. It gets confusing.
Nevertheless I suppose I shall continue and hereby present:
AngryAndrew’s Internet Profile
A Modern-Day Name-On-The-Sidewalk Waste of Space.
Who am I anyway, and what am I into? What am I about? Apparently I’m an annoyed writer that enjoys spending an inordinate amount of time solving other people’s problems. (Problems I have no real need to solve except the warm fuzzy feeling of helping someone I will never meet in real life while jousting around the occasional troll that attacks me for overuse of bold italics).
Occasionally that effort even provides income in the form of money which I can exchange for things like more computers so I can continue to write more things and satisfy my addiction to technology and computers. Kinda like a modern day Ouroboros (the Dragon that is eating it’s own tail).
The truth is I’m obviously just avoiding solving my own loathsome issues for myself, and fixing others is an easy-to-justify distraction. Maybe I should consider hiring someone to fix the things I need fixing.
Isn’t it much more fun to help other people while simultaneously ignoring oneself?
Consider color theory, colorspaces, and visual perception. Vision may seem simple on the surface — three cone types sensitive to red, green, or blue light. But after those three simple cone types, there are over a dozen ganglion cell types that encode visual data through a bizarre fight-to-be-seen between color opponents. This “color battle” compresses visual data to fit over the optic nerve, and it’s sent to the brain where over 60% of the brain’s processing power is involved with various aspects of visual processing. It is a subject that is deep, complex, and abstract.
So it should be no surprise that most people partially or completely misunderstand how our vision process functions. As it happens to be a large part of my expertise, I find myself answering these questions daily. In fact, I am in the middle creating new research in this field, and am writing a book on the subject of visual perception and color theory.
It seems to be my underlying motivation. I’m out there using my limited time on this planet to spread hopefully useful information about technical things on the StackExchange-sites or CreativeCow.com or GitHub or Twitter, or my own growing bunch of sites, Myndex.com, or GeneralTitles.com, or Tangled Web,or BlahBlahBlah, not to mention AngryAndrew.com and this one… as I have been for decades in one form or another.
The subjects range from Film & Filmmaking, Digital Imaging, PHP, Computers in general, and more lately to Human Vision & Color Perception. The latter being a growing, massive research project aimed at shaping the future of standards for graphically-rich content displayed on computers and mobile devices. (See the Myndex Perception Site).
You affect everyone you encounter, everyday.
In a sense, you “Echo” through them…
The work I’m doing researching perception is fascinating, and has the opportunity to change the quality and readability of websites and apps for all — but it has also grown into an all-consuming project that has left me with little time for much else. My laptop is never far from my grasp, taking it literally everywhere I go, and multi-tasking with every waking hour of activities.
I even sleep with my MacBook, though that is often accidental. I find myself falling asleep while writing, often in mid-paragraph with my hands on the MacBook keyboard half-way through typing something like “perceptually-uniform-colorsp…” or “the sRGB colorspace is inherently acces…” later to find myself waking up, MacBook on my chest, hands on the keyboard right where I fell asleep, writing.
Truth is something you have to find for yourself — and it’s out there, hiding in little cracks and crevices…
Since starting with photography at age eight, making my first and-animated film at 10, stumbling through line-numbered Fortran IV at 11, broadcast radio, theatrical lighting design, pre-press & typography thru high school & college, finally plopping down in the Hollywood film industry… I’ve been involved in light, color, imaging, design, and visual perception for the vast majority of my life— in fact all forms of human perception have fascinated me from a very early age, and that continues to this day.
The majority of our brain is devoted to processing perception signals from our senses. Not thinking, not dreaming, just dealing with sensations. Our consciousness resides in a little annex tacked on the front of our brain, almost as an afterthought of nature. A tiny home for our ego to ride without a saddle on the wild animal we inhabit.
And in 2013, I Found Myself Legally Blind
Early Onset Cataracts.
I like cats. So I was disappointed when my doctor told me that here was no purring kitteh involved, the cataracts being instead that the natural lenses in my eyes had gone bad, as if someone smeared vaseline on my eyes. In other words, he told me I was becoming a blind old man, and needed surgery.
I have reason to believe I developed cataracts in my 40s due to sitting in front of three wide-gamut computer monitors for 12 to 16 hours a day. Half a dozen surgeries later (including retinal reattachments) my vision is partially restored. But that experience eventually led me to joining the Low Vision Task Force of an international standards organization, as well as my current research into the visual perception of metameristic light combinations.
I am fortunate to live in a time when such vision problems can be effectively addressed and corrected, at least to a reasonable functionality. A thousand years ago I’d just be a blind old man of little use to anyone, probably reduced to begging for a bowl of gruel and unable to even scrawl my name on a rock.
Today, the wide access the internet provides can allow nearly anyone to reach out, see a problem and make a change, Be a voice for what is fair and right, fight injustice, and promote truth & understanding. But who am I kidding? The internet was created for distributing cat pictures and videos of people falling off skateboards.
Truth is something you have to find for yourself — and it’s out there, hiding in little cracks and crevices.
MY PERSONAL PROFILE:
Do the things I do define me? Perhaps. I once had a long convesation with my friend Zin, when first meeting her I asked “what do you do?” For which she got slightly bent out of shape with “what I do does not define me!” Okay. What does define any of us if it is not the things we do and/or the actions we take?
Personal Interests aka Things I Do:
- Writing (self-evident, as I clearly like bashing my fingers on buttons).
- Filmmaking (making them, not so much watching them — I’m still waiting for Kubrick to release his next picture. Where’s he been?)
- Acting (even better, I can shout loudly and get PAID for it. In fact I was shouting particularly loudly in my role in the film “Clemency” which is due out this fall and recently won grand prize at Sundance).
- Computers (when have I ever been away from technology? Like never — what would I do without it? Like, get an actual life or something? Yikes!)
- Politics & Law (activism provides a good excuse to shout, very loudly, at protests, rallys, and IN PRINT TOO! With Politics there’s an added bonus of the number of people I can point at and laugh, ridicule, and identify as colossally retarded idiots).
- Art (shouting through some other medium, often not vocal in nature. Consider for example, the Pope asking Michelangelo to paint a billboard advetising God on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, but Michelangelo instead painting a bunch of guys lounging around with their penises dangling about, and an insufficient number of naked women to balance the composition).
- AND DESIGN (there, see? SHOUTING THROUGH THE INTERWEBS. Hear me ROAR. Or something. Design as in ID, ME, SE, UI/UX — design and engineering as an equal and symbiotic system, with form and function interdependently following each other, responsively).
- Other Stuff (Life, living, food, exploring deep intimate personal relationships within the open structure of polyamory, and then contemplating the validity of using cross-linguistic latin and greek origins in the creation of the word “polyamory,” and imagining it was probably done just to annoy people like me on purpose. And also, cats.)
- Also I was formerly involved in the following career:
The Art and Science of Applied Probability
In this career, I was using Applied Probability Methodologies for the Risk Assessment of short term ROI predictions related to high-variance cash-flow opportunities in finite-sized, non-cooperative bidding groups where information is obliquely concealed as a function of multivariate strategies facilitating the predominately range-based tactics driven by randomized but nevertheless deterministic outcomes…
(…So… this is more commonly known as Texas Hold ’Em Poker…)
• And That’s the Story on That •
The above profile article is indeed one long rambling story with little to no useful meaning (just like an episode of Gilligan’s Island). I suppose I should apologize for absorbing your time so wastefully, knowing you can never get it back and will probably resent me for at least a few minutes. Sorry my bad.
But if there is one takeaway, there is one actual point I am aiming to make here. 65 years ago some human named Robert Something scribbled his name in wet setting concrete. Who was he? No idea. We see a name, but we know nothing other than he had very bad penmanship (or knifemanship). The mark was made, but it is meaningless.
CONSIDER TODAY: We Make Marks on the Virtual Sidewalks of the Internet.
But our “marks” can make a difference.
Spread knowledge, help someone, affect opinion, be proactive. Make change.
Do things. Answer questions accurately. Make a difference in someone’s life with some guidance in an area of your personal expertise. That’s a mark on a sidewalk that many will see, and even search for. It’s bound to be more meaningful than some scratches in the street.
Those who don’t are destined to simply become nonessential parts of this chaotic machine, sleepwalking through life. If you want to matter, then MATTER!
You Affect Everyone You Encounter
You leave a trace bit of yourself, your essence, your ideals everywhere you go, every time you interact with another. You echo through others, and the reach you have, especially today, is farther than you can imagine.
Echo. And Echo Well.
Leave a positive lasting mark …. An echo that ripples across our Cerulean Sphere.
Oooh, Starrrrbucks…
Oh hey, could I have another sip of your Starbucks? It’s quite tasty, and I like the idea of consuming products that are so overpriced they are essentially shipping money to gigantic corporations, allowing said corporations to purchase ample toilet paper for all the little animals wearing neatly pressed suits that run amok in those tall, glimmering, monolithic, buildings while pretending to Also Sprach like Zarathustra, but mostly just screeching like monkeys while looking for some form of wet concrete to mark as their territory. Or just to pee on.
🙂 HAVE A NICE DAY 🙂
In fact have two — they’re giving them away all week.
— AngryAndrew, This month’s Cerulean Sphere Guest Writer. Don’t worry, the kinder gentler Andy will be back next time…
