.carolinecblaker.

Oil Paintings, Latex Paintings, Data Art.

Rants and Raves -

A casual blog reporting on the life and times of Caroline C. Blaker

  • Marketing, newsletters, projects. Oh, my!

    Marketing, newsletters, projects. Oh, my! image And suddenly, as Eric Meyer eloquently put it on New Years Eve, we have passed yet another “arbitrary gregorian boundary condition.” Out with 2010, in with 2011. While I’m glad it’s over, 2010 was a revolutionary year; marriage, career independence, all in the span of two months and continuing now and into the future. God Almighty, I’m free at last. And since 2011 is here, I shall declare that this year will not be about improvement, yearning, or gaining freedom as last year and years past have been. This year is about engagement. It’s about full-throttling on connecting with people, an audience, and introducing the world to my bodies of work on its terms. What do I do? How is it contributing anything to anyones life? There is very specific language being used for artwork and web development; I have learned it for web development but not yet for art. It’s a new palate of research- one that has to be approached by appropriating the use of descriptions from several existing worki...

  • Bigger than Pink - actually being aware of Breast Cancer

    Bigger than Pink - actually being aware of Breast Cancer image As you and I have both been bombarded with pink fabrics, billboards, store items, and apparel as far as the NFL, we both know that it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s a month that is either officially dedicated, or unofficially dedicated, (not quite sure here) to some particular cancer that women get in the breast, and that by buying said pink stuff or by being reminded of some cancer you’ll probably never get (or whatever, you might, but who cares?) you are being told by some charities and some other authorities that by just seeing or spreading pink in any way possible, you are making the world a better place. At the inception of my adult life around 2003, all of this became the rage every October. I mostly ignored it. I did pick up a credit card that promised donations to Komen, without having any idea what Breast Cancer was. So what? Its a charity. They gave me a high limit. That was okay with me. And what was Breast Cancer anyway? I quietly put up with all of this crying a...

  • ExpressionEngine and how I ranted for 1 hour about it

    ExpressionEngine and how I ranted for 1 hour about it image On September 1, 2010 I gave a Webuquerque Presentation extolling the virtues of the content management systems I use, religiously, for client sites, ExpressionEngine. Using ExpressionEngine, I've never been able to say no to a client feature for any lack of the system's capability to handle the request, as it has enough built-in that its easy to add functionality on as a PHP programmer. Turns out I was giving a presentation to a group of hungry webbies who had been fed up with Content Management Systems of all walks mainly due to their 1) high barriers to entry and 2) their lack of support and never having quite enough stability to support deployment of projects. Who could blame them? I assured them that with ExpressionEngine, deployment and support are assured, and the barrier to entry is just low enough to be affordable yet high enough to keep the code out of the hands of hackers and/or other unsavory types. The video The Photos Notice some PSYCHED winners of Twitterscapes as doo...

  • Rick’s “Roll” in our wedding

    For our wedding song, Travis picked out In this life by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (get) and one night played it for me before I even knew what it was. It was so romantic and sappy, yet totally accurate, that we both burst into tears. It took listening to it a couple of times before we would ultimately be able to make it through the song without waterworks, but there would be no way to give our guests this advantage. Even if we could, many of them hearing the song for the first time would actually listen to its words and knew what it meant to us. The only way to avoid a sappy, heavy feeling would be to follow the song with something funny, upbeat, or otherwise bizarre. The father-daughter dance was not going to cut it. Then along came this idea that we would Rickroll everyone. Ha! Perfect. Rick Astley’s Never gonna give you up (get) would not only be in tune with the theme of our gathering, but after such a sap-filled song, this eighties megahit turned rock paradigm would enliven our gu...

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