Brian Yoder's Stump-o-Matic

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 12:43:10 GMT

The Latest News: I have decided to migrate this blog to my GoodArt site (http://www.goodart.org/). It's not done yet, but before long you should be able to see the latest GoodArt postings (especially nice paintings and sculptures) via RSS and at the site there. For those who like the old main page better, it is still available at http://www.goodart.org/art.htm.

Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:22:09 GMT

The Church Sign Generator has great potential. [Scripting News]

Mon, 23 Jun 2003 08:20:19 GMT

More from William Paxton: I have scanned a few more Paxton paintings for your viewing pleasure. There were a couple which I could only find in black and white though. I normally don't scan black and whites, but I had to make an exception this time...

The New Necklace, 1910

Leaving the Studio, 1912

Glow of Gold, Gleam of Pearl, 1906

Portrait of Mrs. Charles Frederic Toppan, 1935

The Sisters, 1904

The Samovar, 1926

Nausicaa, 1937

Child in the Sunlight or The Chinese Parasol, 1908

In the Studio, c.1905

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 13:03:55 GMT

William McGregor Paxton Discoveries: William Paxton was an excellent and historically important figure who was an important link between the best painters of the 19th century and the survival of their techniques into the 20th and beyond, but it is very difficult to find prints of his paintings or much of anything else about him. After searching for several years for a book on him I have found one at last in the form of the (long out of print) William McGregor Paxton by by Ellen W. Lee, R.H. Ives Gammell, and Martin F. Krause, Jr. and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Here are a few images from there. You can click on them to see a larger verison...

Pretty Girl or Idleness, 1926

The String of Pearls, 1908

Portrait of Louise Converse, 1915

Portrait of Mr. Charles Sinkler, 1928

The Yellow Jacket, 1907

Cherry or The Gay Nineties, 1906

Mollie Scott and Dorothy Tay, 1895

The Crystal, 1900

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 00:26:10 GMT

Alan Kay Interview: Here's an interesting interview with Alan Kay (who first envisioned laptop computers, GUIs and other cool stuff).

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 21:27:50 GMT

SonicBlue to File Chapter 11: It looks like the RIAA is winning another one as SonicBlue bites the dust. Never fear though, they are selling off their business units (who knows to whom?) so only the company is dying, not the products.

Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:12:23 GMT

TiVo: iTunes/iPhoto integration on the way [The Macintosh News Network]

Mon, 13 Jan 2003 02:46:21 GMT

Should We Rebuild Taller? Here's an AP story addressing the question...

By KAREN MATTHEWS

Associated Press Writer
January 12, 2003, 2:38 PM EST

NEW YORK -- Replacing the fallen World Trade Center towers with the world's tallest building would demonstrate courage. Or would it be hubris? Five of the nine designs for a rebuilt trade center propose structures that would surpass Malaysia's 1,483-foot Petronas Twin Towers as the tallest in the world. The trade center towers themselves were once the world's tallest at 110 stories each, or 1,350 feet. A public hearing is set for Monday to gather public opinion on the designs. A final plan is to be selected in the next few weeks.

Some people believe the new structure must be a dramatic statement "Failing to rebuild full scale is what paints a bull's-eye on other landmarks," said Louis Epstein, founder of the World Trade Center Restoration Movement. "It emboldens the terrorists to do more."

Beverly Willis, director of the Architecture Research Institute and a founder of a community group called Rebuild Downtown Our Town, agrees that the "wound" in New York's skyline should be repaired with something tall and distinctive.

However, she said, creating the world's tallest building without regard to the neighborhood "just seems to be not only impractical, but ostentatious and generally in bad taste." The nine designs by seven teams of architects were commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which together will choose one plan by next month.

While no one is suggesting the new construction will faithfully reproduce any of the models, officials will base their plans on one of the designs. Some, like Norman Foster's "kissing towers," offer office buildings taller than the twin towers destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

Others would consist of airy structures that invoke the towers without replicating them.

Daniel Libeskind's design includes a spire with the symbolically significant height of 1,776 feet, but only the first 70 stories of his building would house offices. Above the office level, tourists could visit his "gardens of the world," Libeskind said.

"It's like going to the high point of the Eiffel Tower," he said. "You don't go there for more than a few minutes." Greg Lynn, whose United Architects presented a design that combines five buildings into one crystalline structure, described a system of stairways connected every 30 floors by areas where people also could move horizontally. "From any point in the building you have literally thousands of ways to get down to the ground, so it's a very safe complex," Lynn said.

His team's proposal also includes a 1,620-foot tower. But if they build it, will anybody come? Last August, a New York Times/CBS poll found that 53 percent of New Yorkers would not want to work in an upper floor of any new building at the trade center site. Fifty-nine percent said that whatever is built at the site should not be as tall as the towers it replaces. That could change in the decade it will take to build the new offices.

"By that time, I believe all of the safety concerns will have been addressed," said Meyer Feig, who heads the World Trade Center Tenants Association. Feig, who ran a recruiting firm in the trade center's south tower, said his group consists of about 130 smaller tenants from the towers. Most group members who responded to a recent survey said they wanted to see at least a 110-story building on the site. "It makes the statement that we may have been attacked, but we'll rebuild and come back stronger than ever," Feig said.