Camp Chair

I decided to keep today's Funny Friday post simple with this video.


iPhone/iTouch users: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmPMlg4Na9s
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Happy Thursday - I Was On Tour

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Weird Animals - The Star-Nosed Mole

For today's post, I was intrigued by some of the weird and unusual looking animals we have on this planet of ours. Today, I chose the Star-nosed Mole for its unique look.

These moles are not rodents but belong to the mammalian Order Insectivora. Insectivora means insect eater, and this group includes moles, shrews, and hedgehogs. The most notable aspect of the mole is its large, powerful front feet, designed for pushing soil out of its way. The mole has an average total length of 5½ - 6 inches (14 - 15 cm) and a short, sparsely haired tail 1 - 1½ inch (2.5 - 3.8 cm) long. The fur is very soft and differs from that of most mammals because it does not project toward the tail. With their fur pointing up, moles can move forward or backward within their tunnels without rubbing their fur the wrong way and trapping soil in their coats. The coat is so fine and dense that it keeps out water and dirt. The fur is slate gray with a velvety sheen. Moles living in red clay soils sometimes appear rusty in color. Their bellies may be slightly lighter in color, and some may have tan or orange blotches on their bellies.

I'm not sure about their scientific name as I've found some conflicting information, or perhaps just different species of the same type of mole (who knows?). In one instance, I found that its scientific name is "scalopus aquaticus." Other times, I found it listed as "condylura cristata."

According to Wikipedia ...

The Star-nosed Mole (Condylura cristata) is a small North American mole found in eastern Canada and the north-eastern United States . It is the only member of the tribe Condylurini and the genus Condylura.

[It] lives in wet lowland areas and eats small invertebrates, aquatic insects, worms and molluscs. It is a good swimmer and can forage along the bottoms of streams and ponds. Like other moles, this animal digs shallow surface tunnels for foraging; often, these tunnels exit underwater. It is active day and night and remains active in winter, when it has been observed tunnelling through the snow and swimming in ice-covered streams. Little is known about the social behavior of the species, but it is suspected that it is colonial.

The Star-nosed Mole is covered in thick blackish brown water-repellent fur and has large scaled feet and a long thick tail, which appears to function as a fat storage reserve for the spring breeding season. Adults are 15 to 20 cm in length, weigh about 55 g, and have 44 teeth. The mole's most distinctive feature is a circle of 22 mobile, pink, fleshy tentacles at the end of the snout. These are used to identify food by touch, such as worms, insects and crustaceans.

In my research about this creature, I found a good PBS video on YouTube that I thought was worth sharing.


iPhone/iTouch users: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m0PMcXK6XA

What do you think? Do you like being presented with weird and/or unusual looking animals on Weird Wednesdays?  ▣


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What is Twitter? A Different 101 Explanation

I'm confident that many of you know what Twitter is. And unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard and/or read about the service and how it's gaining popularity. All the major media outlets are using it, promoting it, etc.

Twitter gained even more ground during the Iranian protests of a few weeks ago. When the Persian government stopped all journalists from covering the story, the people of Iran (Iranians / Persians) started to send out their messages using Twitter. Those of use who followed the events closely know that Twitter provided the news much faster than many of the news outlets. CNN was broadcasting certain things a minimum of half an hour after it had happened.

In the age of instant news, half an hour seemed like ... well ... old news. Twitter for news, you ask? What is Twitter really? And yes, many media outlets and businesses are using the service, but how is it really benefiting them? Those are all questions I intend to answer, and hope to do so unlike most others. This will likely be a multiple part post, so be sure to tune next Tuesday to learn more about Twitter.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service. Twitter is a "microblog." Think of it like a blog, only much smaller. In fact, you only have 140-characters (spaces and all) to communicate your message. So what you say has to be short, concise and of interest.

Twitter is simply a means to communicate with an audience of people who explicitly want to hear what you have to say --Such audience are called "followers;" which I'll cover in a bit. Twitter allows users to send updates, known as "tweets," via short message service (SMS) via your mobile phone, instant messaging, from your computer at home or work, or through a third-party application.

Some see Twittering / Tweeting as a way to simply report their "status" to friends. Some use Twitter to post interesting links. Some use it as a savvy marketing tool for their business or interests. Still, no matter how Twitter is used, there are countless ways to utilize this real-time messaging application.

If you’re new to Twitter, then my description might seem a bit vague. Allow me to make a comparison --We currently have many one-to-one, or one-to-few, methods and applications of communication including email, IM, etc. Taking that one-to-few and thinking of a one-to-many communication tool brings to mind blogs, for example. But what if you wanted a bit of both worlds? What if you wanted a one-to-X medium that could be as fast as email or even IM, communicates to all who are interested, has the flexibility of a blog especially in its syndicated/RSS features, can be done from the web or from your phone AND allows you to not just "talk" but also listen to others whom you value?! Perhaps ones that share a common goal, a similar business or just share your passion for a topic; whether it be a passion for that one hour, that day, that week or ongoing. That's what Twitter offers. Simply put, it's the telegraph of the web on steroids.

As the Mashable blog put it ... “Though users can answer the prompt, "What are you doing?", tweets have evolved to more than everyday experiences, and take the shape of shared links to interesting content on the web, conversations around hot topics (using hashtags ... more on those later), photos, videos, music, and, most importantly, real-time accounts from people who are in the midst of a newsworthy event, crisis, or natural disaster.”

Although the following video helps explain what Twitter is, I personally disagree with the use of Twitter they suggest; but again it was made more than a year ago. I do not, for example, want to know when someone is going to sleep, visiting the bathroom, drinking their coffee or anything mundane like that. Are there those who post such things? Unfortunately, yes. But I'm not one of them (thank God), and I don't follow such people; nor do I recommend that anyone should.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

What are Twitter @word, #word and retweets?

Let's take one at a time. Given Twitter's limited space, at 140-characters or less, you want to be able to reply to someone who tweeted about a topic of interest. For example, I tweet under my Twitter username "ahmadism". Let's say that I sent out a tweet, which would look like this.

A fellow Tweeter (a person on Twitter) may want to reply back to me. Should they hit the now-supplied reply button from the web interface of their Twitter account, their Twitter box (where the 140-characters go) would start with @ahmadism; assuming, of course, they're replying to the user "ahmadism." In the tweet pictured above, I'm not responding to anyone because an @ is not in the 140-character string.

So now you know what the @ symbol does on Twitter. What about the # symbol?
Often referred to as the pound symbol (in the US), within Twitter it's called the hash tag; or more frequently as the one word "hashtag." Hashtags are nothing more than string identifiers to make searching for a topic or keyword easier. Within Twitter's search, and even with the tools of many of the stand alone applications and web services out there, you can search for pretty much any word. But searching for a word will result in its use in a slew of topics, as you can imagine. Searching for the same word with a hash tag symbol in front of it, however, will result in the explicit use of that word for searching purposes. In the tweet pictured above, I used "#tiptuesdays" as a hashtag. That's because I serve themed posts every weekday. And I didn't want to find all tweets that contain "Tuesday;" instead, I wanted to find my Tuesdays posts as they relate to Ahmadism.com.

Does that make sense? In the previously mentioned Iranian protest, many people naturally used the word "Iran" in their tweets. But we didn't want to find just any "iran" tweets, we wanted to find the ones related to the protests as they're happening right there and then. Following the topic, a quick hashtag emerged as the de facto: "#iranelection". And when the young lady that was shot during the protests another hashtag emerged "#neda" (for her name). And the only way I found about it is because some of the tweets I was following, which contained "#iranelection" also contained "#neda" as a hashtag.

All in all, hashtags help you identify (yours & others') certain posts/tweets instead of following a user on Twitter. Naturally, now that there are strings to follow, trends of such strings can now be measured. Companies that tweet with a unique hashtag, for example, can see how popular their tweets are becoming because of the inclusion of their suggested hashtags. To get an idea of that, I strongly recommend that you visit hashtags.org.

So what are retweets?

To retweet (or "RT") means to allow Twitter users to share the best links, tweets, and gems they find from others using the service. Here's an image of someone "geekix" retweeting a post/update/tweet I submitted.

Let's explore what took place here. We see that there are the letters "RT" at the beginning of the tweet (after the username), which means that this post is in fact a "ReTweet." We then see the origin of the tweet specified with the @ sign followed by the name of the user. In this case, this ReTweet was of ahmadism. Finally, the rest of the message as it was originally tweeted (in this case by ahmadism) or as modified now by geekix.

I know I beat a dead horse on this one, but I wanted to really spell it out and cover it.

The rest of Twitter is about how to creatively use it. And for the sake of keeping this already-long-article short, I'll cover that next week. Until then.  ▣


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Inspirational Etch-A-Sketch® Art

The Etch-A-Sketch® dates back a little over 50 years ago. A little research shows that the Etch-A-Sketch®, unlike what Wikipedia says (needs to be corrected to match another page they have), was invented by Arthur Granjean (also seen spelled as Grandjean) under US patent #3,055,113. Granjean displayed his prototype, which he had built in his basement and called "L'Ecran Magique" ("The Magic Screen"), at the 1959 International Toy Exhibition in Nuremburg, Germany. There, executives of the Ohio Art Company saw the potential of the device, and acquired the rights to develop and produce it.

In one year of research and development, the Etch-A-Sketch® achieved its now classic name and shape (US patent #3,760,505). The red frame holds a glass screen, the back of which is coated with a mixture of aluminum powder and tiny plastic beads. Two knobs control the movement of a single stylus horizontally and vertically through the aluminum powder. As the stylus moves, it leaves behind a black trail on the screen. Shaking the device remixes the powder, thus clearing the screen.

Today, there are Etch-A-Sketch® models of various types, some with color and sound effects; but the original model, an overnight sensation in the Christmas season of 1960, has withstood the test of time to remain a classic.

There are a few practicing artists who use the Etch-A-Sketch® to produce professional lineographic work. Most artists make their work permanent by removing the aluminum powder. This is done either by drilling holes in the bottom of the toy or by removing the entire plastic backing. It is then resealed as a semi-permanent, shake-resistant piece of art.

Among such artists is Jeff Gagliardi. He turned the Etch-A-Sketch® into an art form. Over the last 35+ years, Mr. Gagliardi reproduced masterpieces by Van Gogh, Dali and Leonardo da Vinci.

Father-of-three, Mr. Gagliardi first picked up an Etch-A-Sketch®, which belonged to his nephew, when he was a college student at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

I did a drawing of the Taj Mahal complete with reflecting pools. Quite frankly, I didn't think it was a big deal, but my family wouldn't let me erase it, Mr. Gagliardi said.

The Taj Mahal

From that point on it became apparent that I had some sort of gift for drawing on this silly little toy.

People would walk past the serious work I was doing as a painter and want to see the Etch-A-Sketches.

"We're off to see the wizard"

In his bio, Mr. Gagliardi describes the art as "a quintessential American art form, where the medium truly is the message."

I love creating works that you wouldn’t expect to see — like a reproduction of a Renaissance master’s work, or the corner of a five dollar bill. It’s a totally familiar subject, but it now has an element of disbelief.

An Etch-A-Sketch reproduction of the corner of a five dollar bill.

Salvador Dali: "The Persistence of Memory"

Part of Mr. Gagliardi skill is to create works that hang vertically despite having to sketch sideways and producing lines which seem to have no connections. His art has been displayed at the Denver Art Museum and the Berkshire Museum in Massachusetts, as well as galleries around the country.

Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"

Pitchfork farmers in Grant Wood's "American Gothic"

A deck of cards' king of hearts.

There are other artists like Mr. Gagliardi. A quick search revealed Etcha's Flickr page and all that he does. A Google Images search for "etch a sketch" reveals many pictures of absolute wonderful masterpieces done with the toy.

Turning such a classic toy into a true art form is simply amazing, transpiring inspiration for many of us. If you have or know of any similar great work, on an Etch-A-Sketch or something similar to the Ghost in the Machine, then please share it with us in the comments below or send me an email of it. ▣

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