Rise Industries

A potent swordsman is Architect William Hamilton Russell. When not designing country houses for tycoons in Newport, Islip and Wheatley Hills, he represents the U. S. on international fencing teams. He was U. S. champion in 1916, 1919, 1923. He was on the Olympic Team at Antwerp in 1920 and Paris in 1924. Last week he exhibited a whole case full of medals and a gold-plated rapier from his admirers in the Fencers’ Club.

Time magazine article 1932, via Archinect.

Holy identity theft batman! Someone posted our bank PIN numbers online. Yarcht, those wicked h4ck3r5!

In my email inbox today:

“According to the U.S. Census Bureau, with the following degrees, here\’s
how much you can expect to make in your lifetime:

High School Diploma: $1,900,500
Bachelor\’s Degree: $2,700,600
Master\’s Degree: $2,200,800
Doctorate: $4,200,900 “

Wonder why my Master/’s (sic) degree cuts my lifetime income by $499,800? That totally sucks man. Assuming I live to 92, that’s like 8,330 less bucks a year. Shit.

Maybe I should get a doctorate in something, I could use the extra $2,000,100 a year that’s going to bring in. Doesn’t specify say what to study, so I can study Internet Statistical Numerology. Watch for some emails like this from me in three years or so then.

There is a story about a great, Mies influenced house in the New York Times today. I really like courtyard style houses, and they use a great collection of artwork very well in the project. Photo-murals and video are integrated in a similar way to how Mies would use fine marble textures and figure sculpture.

+++ Check out these buildings built during the Soviet era. My fave is the Technololgical Institute in Belarus.

+++ Also take a look at what happened to this city after the Soviet Union collapsed. Some stellar photos.

I just added a banner for a charity organization called Child’s Play – over there to your left. They are a Seattle based group working to organize donations of toys, books and games for sick kids in hospitals across the world. 100% of all donations go to the hospitals. Their primary audience is the gaming community, but you don’t have to be a gamer to get involved – go to their site and see what you can do to help out. I will keep the link up through the holiday season.

Video Gaming Fridays

Yesterday I received the first part of my prize for winning the RetroBlast! Motivational Poster Contest (my poster was based on the classic Zork text game for the Commodore 64). So, I got a big box with a QuasiCON 2 Player Controller from Quasimoto Interactive. This is the sort of thing you install in your video game cabinet (only I dont have a cabinet yet), but it also works just fine on the coffee table. Plugs into my Playstation 2 (also works with PS3, Xbox, PC, etc…) and is ready to go. Now its all button bashing madness and retro-stick gaming. I set it up with my projector and the PS2 version of Asteroids (of course) and gave it a test run. Totally cool. SO we will have a little gaming party up in the Rise Studios this Sunday, if you are in the ‘hood. Here are a few pics.

I found some other good video game stuff out there this friday – like this old school Hamster Game I have been dying to get my hands on. Runs on pellets and water I hear.

And speaking of RetroBlast!, I found this cool video linked on their site showcasing the evolution of video game graphics over my lifetime. Starting of course with pong, then asteroids. The video is over at Break.com

Then I found this hot new calendar.. from Nerdcore. Pin-up girls with video-game consoles. It goes right on my Xmas list. Depending on where you work, this link is likely not work safe (nudies).

Lastly, but by no means leastly, this weekend there are two events at Telic in Chinatown (not the one in Boston, the one in LA):

(These take place among the installation Mario’s Furniture, by Hillary Muskin and S. E. Barnet, which we tested out on its opening night. I have to post a review/report from that too soon – but check the Telic web site below for more info on it.)

GAMES FOR 5 JOYSTICKS
Friday, December 1, 2006 @ 7-10 PM

ADRIENE JENIK
Saturday, December 2, 2006 @ 8 PM

Telic is happy to have two events on the final weekend of “Mario’s
Furniture 2,” an installation and game created by Hillary Mushkin and
S.E. Barnet. One is a screening of seven new games for a console with
five joysticks on Friday; and the other is a talk given by the artist
Adriene Jenik on Saturday. See below for more information.

TELIC Arts Exchange
975 Chung King Road Los Angeles, CA 90012
T: 213.344.6137
info@telic.info

Excerpt from my web posting entitled “Excerpt from my web posting entitled one reason why Yves Klein is super-awesome”

One.

Also – out here in LA, this guy Baldessari designed a show about Magritte. They must have chosen him because they both have double consonants in their names.

A court rules that Boys cannot compete on the Girl’s gymnastics team (well, in Madison anyway) – lucky for me I was allowed to back in the day. Similar situation too, no boys team due to lack of interest, but the girls team in my school welcomed my brother and I to the team. I got a bronze medal on the vault, my brother got a broken arm. Yowch.

Nice find Tim, but how am I supposd to get any work done with that around? Michele was just reading an article the other day about how bad the fine print is (you give away lots of rights) for YouTube… so its great to see a site dedicated to fine art video. Now I have a lot of videos to watch.