OS Agnostic

I have decided to move this blog over to space.nirak.net. I have a few reasons for this- OS-Agnostic implies that the blog will primarily be about computers, and for the time being it is not – I have a lot of interests and they change periodically, and computer system stuff figures in less these days. Most of my computer writing is done at nirak.net. I’m just not as interested in thinking about my OS anymore, I want to use the OS’s to do other things.

The funny thing about using Linux, OSX and Windows on a daily basis is that every time I am using one system I miss the features of another. When on Linux I miss my buggy but full featured adobe products. When on OSX I miss Windows 7′s excellent metadata view and window snapping and Linux’s ease of installing new apps/command line goodies. When on windows I miss a unix shell (yes, I’v tried, cygwin – it’s cumbersome and just not the same). I’m leaning towards getting a mac for my next computer (some time in the future), but in a grudging “oh, well, I guess if I HAVE to” sort of way.

The other reason I have for moving the site is so that I can run all my sites under one piece of software (WordPress with multisite) and one domain. This will make life easier for me, so hopefully I’ll update more often. I’ve also moved my free-artwork.com blog to the more generic art.nirak.net.

Consequently, os-agnostic.com and free-artwork.com are up for grabs if you want either of them. If you actually want to *use it for something* let me know (karin [at] nirak [dot] net). I’d hate for squatters to get yet another domain.

If you’d like to stay subscribed to this blog, here’s the new URL for the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/space_nirak

Thanks for reading!

This recipe was based on Quick and Easy Recipe: Yogurt Cake at the Kitchn, and a Google search for “rosemary yogurt cake,” which inspired the addition of orange zest. Also I added ground almonds in place of part of the flour, and almond extract.

(Weight in parenthesis)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk together in a bowl:

1 1/2 cups (12.4 oz) greek yogurt
2/3 cup (4.2 oz) olive oil
1 1/4 (9.6 oz) cup sugar
3 eggs
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp almond extract
1 tb (ish) orange or clementine zest
1 tb finely chopped rosemary (ish) – about 10 inches

Then add and mix until combined:

1/2 cup (2.1 oz) ground almonds
2  cups (9.4 oz) all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons (.4 oz) baking powder
3/4 teaspoon (.2 oz) baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch ground nutmeg
Pinch ground cloves

Put batter in a greased 9 inch springform pan, cook for 30 minutes, cover with foil, and cook for 20-30 minutes more, until tester stick comes out clean.

I used glaze made of melted butter, sugar, and clementine juice.

Since I would like to work in oils more, I decided I need a drying rack so all the horizontal surfaces in my studio aren’t covered in paintings. And since I don’t really care what it looks like, I made it out of cardboard:

This took a surprisingly long time – 2 days. I used aluminum tape, which is stronger and less goopy than duct tape in my experience.

I have also been spending time working on my sketchbook for the sketchbook project. The theme I picked is “…you’d be home by now;” so far I’m doing a lot of drawings around the house.

And some doodles:

The sketchbook project will be on tour throughout 2011, and I’ll be able to see the tour at SWSW because I am going this year!

I’m getting pictures added to the flickr collection faster than I am adding them here.

I’ve had a few non photogenic days in the studio. I worked in my sketchbooks, cleaned up a bit, and organized my oil paints.

I had a plan, to keep working on the small paintings I started, but they’re still wet. Like, not dry AT ALL. The thing I forgot about oils is that if you use linseed oil as a medium (which I did) they take forever to dry, where forever = up to a week. I used to have some quick dry medium (liquin), but I believe it’s all gone/dried up. Quick dry, in the context of oils, means hours or a day, but that’s certainly better than a week. I really love the look of paint thinned with linseed oil, though, especially when working with glazes. So I may need to change my process of working – basically, to have a lot of small paintings going at the same time. I’d also need a lot more space to dry these small paintings – I figure I can probably construct a drying rack that will hold 40-50 paintings pretty easily.

Another thing I need to think about is my choice of substrate. I’ve been working on primed illustration board, which is nice because it is cheap, sturdy, and easy to handle. But the downside is that it’s harder to frame/display. What I want to do is to make some cradled wooden boards. These can be hung by themselves. I suppose it depends on whether I think I’ll be giving the artwork away or selling it – and I’m still not much in the mood to sell stuff. Cradled boards would be too expensive to ship for giveaways.

I spent two entire evenings going through my oil paints. I’ve been given a lot of oils by people who don’t use them anymore, plus I had a lot from getting an art degree and working in an art store.

This is what I ended up with. I painted a bit of the paint on the tubes, which will be nice for choosing colors, but this’ll take another few days to dry. sigh.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on my sketchbook for the sketchbook project, and I’ll post some selections soon.

(I wrote this post yesterday but then forgot to post it. oops.)

Today Wednesday I worked with oil paint for the first time in a long time. I wanted to switch back to oil for a few reasons. I’ve never worked with oil on a small scale, only on pretty large paintings. Another reason is that oil is actually a bit easier to work with when one doesn’t have easy access to water. On a more practical level, I am out of some of the acrylic paint and acrylic ink I need, while I have tons of oils in every color.

There are several qualities I love about oil paint. One is that what you paint will look much the same when wet as when dry. This isn’t true with acrylics – paint becomes darker, more level, and sometime duller when dry (the cheaper the acrylic, the more this is true). Another is that long drying times mean more time to blend and correct mistakes.

Mostly, I just love the absolutely brilliant colors.

I am not really sure where I am going with this. It’s definitely not done, but I’m not quite sure of the next steps. I’m thinking maybe a lot of glazes on the purple – alizarin crimson, thalo green, ultramarine blue, indian yellow – which should combine to give a lovely dark muddy deep look. After that? not sure.

My process with these small paintings has been to just start working and then to see where I end up. This isn’t always working out so well. I need to have a bit more of a plan, especially if I am going to move to working with oils. Since oils take so much longer to dry, I can’t just try something and then paint over it immediately if it does not work.

As before, you can follow my process on flickr on the collection page.

First I started with pastel on some watercolor paper.

Wait, let me start with why you should never ever buy a roll of watercolor paper. I bought this roll of watercolor paper years ago, and have since used it a few times. But even if I tape it down and wet it, it never loses its curl. So I tried unrolling it all and piling a bunch of heavy stuff on it. That made it less curly, but still unworkable; I couldn’t keep it taped to the table without using tape that would rip the paper.

So anyway, I gave up on the pastel drawing, and tried to reroll the paper in the other direction. I decided I would do this with my other rolls (I cut the watercolor paper into 6′ x 4′ sections when I was trying to flatten it). It’s harder than you’d think to roll a big piece of heavy paper in a direction it does not want to go.

In the end, I only got three pieces of paper re-rolled.

So next I used another piece of watercolor paper that had already been primed on both sides. Ah, much better. I worked from a sketch, and ended with this:

I didn’t finish though, had to let the piece dry. I’m not sure what I think of it yet.

Then I carried my brushes downstairs to wash them, a practice that is really getting old. I *really* wish I had a sink upstairs.

I’m not sure exactly what my goals are for my November art project thing. So far it has amounted to spending time in the studio and taking pictures of what I do. That’s nice, but I feel like I should be working towards something. I started this as a project because all my write-y friends are working on NaNoWriMo. I’m hoping I’ll get my sketchbook from the sketchbook project soon in the mail so I can work on that.

I think writing about what I have been doing in the studio may be a bigger component of the project than I originally realized. It’s not often I pause to reflect on what I am doing, and I have never consistently put what I am working on “out there.”

You can see the pics from today on flickr, and the collection of sets here.

I recently asked for suggestions for non English music via Twitter. I like to listen to music with lyrics I don’t understand while writing or coding. I got lots of responses, listed below. I didn’t do any editing for duplicates, but there didn’t appear to be many.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions!

Twitter

¡Que Corra la Voz! – Spanish ska (@rossnelson)
Bad Shakyn – a bit more just ska, lots of English some German (@rossnelson)
Selda – Turkish revolutionary folk music (@littletinyfish)
Camille for French pop (@sgillies)
La Caravane Passe – French gypsy/klezmer wierdness(@sgillies)
“La Disparition,” by Keren Ann – A French-pop album (@jrep)
Tinariwenone – a group of Taureg musicians from Mali (@J450NK)
Kurt Weill in the original (@benwbrum)
Sigur Ros – they sing in a made up language (@junker1244)
Keren Ann – (early stuff) (@Fiona_Bradley)
Benjamin Biolay (@Fiona_Bradley)
Emilie Simon (@Fiona_Bradley)
Yann Tiersen (@Fiona_Bradley)
Tocotronic – German and pretty good rock n’ roll. (@redheadkitchen)
Ivri Lider – good Israeli pop (@jwiltshire)
Tim Maia and Elis Regina – Brazilian classics (@jwiltshire)
Bossacucanova – is good… (@jwiltshire)
Ravi Shankar – sitar music (@dejah_thoris)
Acoustic Brazil – good guitar music (@dejah_thoris)
The Rough Guide to Australian Aboriginal Music – digeredoo music, including rock music (@dejah_thoris)
Seu Jorge is amazing, in Portugese. http://bit.ly/9F8KoL (@gunderson)

Friendfeed:

Souad Massi has a lovely voice (@Kirsten)
Kiran Ahluwalia (@Kirsten)
Kitka (@Kirsten)
Yael Naim (@cavlec)
Camille (see on youtube) (@Pierre Lindenbaum)